Prologue

I've been editing some of my work, and did it ever need it! Nano is great for getting you moving, but the reread can be painful. I can find those spots where I was tired or maybe had a bit too much wine. Other spots were just bad, and I had no excuse save for trying to get the words on paper so I could complete the challenge. It was a lot of fun.

Here is the edited version of a rather long prologue. It still needs some work, but I think it's getting there. I haven't decided if I'll leave it so long, or integrate it. I will probably leave it, because it needs to be there. It has a purpose, but I won't disclose it here. At least, not yet.


Hush

Prologue

After fifteen years, during which he’d endured a deadly house fire and the loss of his wife and child, Justin Doyle had come to terms with crushing loneliness and a hermit’s self imposed exile, but he was still not accustomed to goat’s milk. That powdery, slightly nutty taste would never sit well with him. The fact that it brought in beer and mead making supplies didn’t help his attitude on the matter. Just the same, it was what there was, and it was lucrative enough to keep him in the items he needed for his favorite endeavor. That made milking and goat keeping worthwhile parts of the daily grind. It even saved him from too many trips to the fort.

Justin finished with the doe and pulled the bucket from beneath her. She continued her meal while he shooed the cat, interrupting feline visions of a stolen drink. Placing the bucket high on a shelf, he released the doe, but allowed her to finish her feed before putting her back in the small pasture with the other goats. Returning to the milking stall, he again shooed the damned cat, who was now up on the shelf and filling her stomach with fresh cream, before bringing the milk into the kitchen for straining.

Daylight streamed through the dust streaked window, casting unfelt and unappreciated warmth over the scarred and numb skin of his face. His left eye squinted shut at the strengthening light, while his right eyelid drooped in its lopsided way, oblivious to sun, warmth, or, in fact, any sensation at all beyond the occasional phantom memory of fire. The sun catcher cast patterns on the floor, catching his remaining eye and reminding him once again of the changes in farm life. In his grandfather’s day, milking was accomplished before full light, often with sleep still in the eyes and the body arguing with the mind about the proper habits of diurnal creatures. An early start meant a timely finish, with luck. That kind of start was impossible now, at least if one wanted to continue upright and healthy. The same went for enjoying cow’s milk. Justin’s last cow had died long ago, and was a rarity even then. Too impractical a creature for the modern world.

Milk in the cold box and goats turned out for grazing, Justin allowed himself a quick breakfast before completing morning chores. It would be a busy day, with four does to cut, a young buck to wether, and planting to finish. If he was lucky, the day would end before twilight and he could sit down to his books.

Books filled most of Justin’s quiet hours. He wasn’t one for novels or sex books or even farming manuals. He cared little for stories set in the old days, except for the funny reminiscences of his grandfather. He never knew a woman to carry on like they did in the skin mags, and that bit of phoniness took all the fun out of them. He had a good memory and nimble fingers for such large hands. These did more for him than skin mags ever could, and without twisting his expectations. As for farming manuals, they weren’t much good anymore, being so dated, and there weren’t many more being written now, things the way they were. No, he kept to his brewing books.

Brewing was a fine art in Justin’s estimation, one of the oldest of man’s communal endeavors. In fact, man might not have settled into making stable civilizations if not for finding fermented wheat on the ground, liking the buzz, and figuring out how to make it happen again. That was what his books said, anyway, and he could believe it. Eating wheat and barley was all well and good, and necessary for survival. But brewing it, making something that could nourish the body as well as soften the edges of reality, enhancing a man’s own image of himself or making him face the deepest, nastiest corners of the soul, even for a short time… Well, that was about as high an aspiration as one man alone could hope for. Practicing his art meant more work and field space taken for hops, but it was well worth it to keep the tradition alive, not to mention a source of income. “Bootlegging” was an old term long out of date, but it had a nice ring to it and the nefarious connotations made his infrequent dealings with Fort Hogan a touch more bearable.

Justin had collected ten books dedicated to the art and science of brewing. All were older than his granddad had been before he died, two as thick as a dictionary, four as wide in the spine as his forearm, two no more than magazines, and the other two small enough to tuck into the space between his bed and the wall, which made them convenient for bedtime study, even if they weren’t as in depth as the thickest of them. He knew the thinnest by heart, and could recite whole passages from the rest. After years of study, he kept finding new ways to combine the information and make new concoctions.

Looking forward to a night with his books was all well and good, but there was still a lot of daylight and still a lot of work, so he might as well be about it. He grabbed the shotgun and the milking bucket, and decided to take the machete for the kudzu creeping in by the north field.

The last of the chickens brought in for the night, goats rounded up with the help of the dogs and the a field planted broadcast, Justin felt justified in taking a few moments on the porch for a stretch and a leisurely scratch at his crotch. Heineken and Bass, the two farm dogs, lazed at his feet, waiting with patience that belied their hunger. He regarded them with an affection he was not wholly aware of, thinking that if they’d the wit and vanity attributed to higher creatures, they might have taken exception to such undignified names. But being dogs, they accepted it with good grace.

The early spring breeze rippled over their coats, bringing with it the clean scents of hay, freshly dug earth, and honeysuckle. All these things he associated with life and the promise of a new beginning. At times Nature seemed a jaded whore, dry and cold and only functional in the most basic sense. At other times, like tonight, she was as warm and sweet as a chaste young girl, inviting thoughts that the best was yet to come and could remain forever pure.

Of course, he knew better. Any child did, or should. The girl could become the whore, fulfilling dreams of the child, but choosing only the shambling wreck of the nightmare. He could remember a time when things were different than they were now, when the boogeyman was just imaginary. The whore had held sway ten years ago when she burned his house, and not much mattered after for a goodish while. Still, honeysuckle reminded him of his granddad’s stories, despite his dad’s contempt for those tales. The old ways were important to Justin, because they spoke of other possibilities. It seemed to him, if things had been a certain way once, they could be that way again. Even if they couldn’t, the act of remembering the old times left a body with a sense of hope that things could at least be better. Things could change. They had once, and so radically that a sense of hope was still a thing to be held to, but only with a caviat. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Most of his hope was gone, along with grandfather, father, wife, child, and cow’s milk, but there was still enough honeysuckle to remind him to hold to what was left.

With a mind to checking on the cut goats one last time before settling in for the night, he turned toward the barn, slapping a thigh in signal to the dogs. They were good company. Heading for the barn, he paused and turned back, only an instant slower than the dogs. That scent. There… now gone. He must have imagined it. No, the dogs were reacting too. They had their hackles up about something. He stared in the direction of their pointing, twitching noses, pulling the shotgun from its holster.

He waited, staring out at the night, watching for movement, and waiting for the scent. Especially the scent. Minutes passed. One hair at a time, it seemed, the dogs settled. Justin did not. That scent had been there, dammit, and he could not dismiss it, despite what the dogs were telling him.

He stood and watched, listened, smelled, for a good ten minutes before deciding it must be safe. They did not just change their minds after finding a food source. He must have imagined that scent. After all, he’d been thinking of how fast things could change, how they could go bad. Thinking could do things to the mind; make a man sense things that weren’t there at all, or even ignore things that were. Hadn’t he been told enough times as a boy?

He turned and headed for the barn, both dogs riding his wake.

The barn was cool, smelling of hay and warm goat. Leghorns roosted on makeshift perches, on stall doors, and one even on a goat’s back. Justin shoved that one off, ignoring its indignant flapping as he looked closely at the stitched vertical line in the animal’s shaved throat. He checked all four goats he’d seen to, seeing more leakage than he cared for on only one. He hated cutting them, but being out so far from the nearest fort, he didn’t care to chance noisy animals. Nicked vocal chords seemed a small enough price to pay for continued existence. Losing an animal to surgical complications and stress now and then was hard, but a necessary evil in light of the alternatives.

Justin scratched the head of the last goat in his makeshift recovery ward and headed for the house. The squeak of the barn door rollers was awful. He made a mental note to oil them. The wind picked up a bit, again bringing him the scents of farm and woodland-and something else. He stopped in his tracks, sure of what he smelled this time, surer of the reaction of the dogs, which were now hackling and growling. Bass let out a sharp bark, glaring in the direction of the north field, the one just adjacent to the woodlot.

Not sparing another moment, Justin unslung his shotgun and ran for the house. Heineken and Bass ran with him, close enough that he felt them brush his heels as he ran.

The scent grew stronger, much stronger, as he neared the porch. Skidding to a stop, he turned and studied the dogs. They were now a terrible sight to behold, hackles up, stiff legged, fangs bared and tongues whipping in and out between them. They were looking toward the house. Justin followed their now deadly gaze, and his bladder let go.

The front door was open. The meager light from the lantern he’d lit before heading to the barns silhouetted three figures-or was it four?-standing on his front porch where before there’d been nothing but an old rocker and the inviting warmth of the hearth. They were stoop shouldered, and moving jerkily. One seemed to be covering its face with its hands and Justin could hear moans. He couldn’t tell more than that as his head felt like it was losing mass and with it, intellect. He was growing cold. Dimly, he wondered if this was what panic felt like.

Bass barked again, following up with a low growl, Heineken following that with two stiff legged steps forward. Justin shook his head clear just as the figures in the doorway-it was four, not three-ran toward them.

He took a moment to hope the new shells worked and pulled the trigger. His first shot hit the front runners. One fell, flopping into the dirt like a marionette with its strings cut, flesh burning. The second, he guessed a woman, screeched as she fell to the ground. She staggered up again and moved toward him less one arm, her neck spouting blood in a great, black jet. Sharp, white protrusions smoked where her right side should be. She made five running steps before falling to the ground again and beginning a feeble crawl.

The third was running faster, more crazed than the others. Justin’s second shot took him, or her- it was hard to tell with caked mud and froth as thick as goat’s milk still warm in the pail covering the face and upper body. The blast removed the head and shoulders, leaving than stringy flesh and a rain of blood and gore. The air thickened with a smell so much like that of his coldhouse during butchering. The rest of the body kept coming, reflex and momentum carrying it straight into Justin, knocking him to the ground and the wind from his lungs.

Justin lay wheezing and numb from the impact, waited for the hopefully inevitable return of his breath. When his lungs finally allowed a deep, whooping breath, it seemed more curse than gift as he caught the combined smells of feces, blood, urine, and that other smell, sharply familiar and disgusting. The body over him leaked hot fluids, the carotid artery still spraying, sending a hot stream over his face and into his mouth. Somehow he’d failed to notice this while trying to catch his breath. He inhaled and choked on the foul substance, tried to scream, then vomited as he struggled to climb out from under the repulsive weight and scent of his kill.

Rocking hard, he managed to roll from beneath the corpse. He heard the dogs snarling as they attacked the fourth (human? Are they really human?). It screamed like nothing he’d ever heard, flailing and biting at the dogs, managing to grab hold of Heineken’s head. He bit into the dog’s ear, causing a yelp in that howling, screaming voice that told of great hurt.

“Out! Out!” Justin took aim, thanking whatever gods there were that he’d spent the extra money on a shotgun with a clip rather than on some whores. The dogs left off their attack, as directed, and backed off. Heineken left behind most of his ear.

The third shot took the last attacker in the chest, blowing most of it out behind him. Incredibly, the man remained standing, shivering violently. Justin fired again as it began to fall. It hit the ground with a thud, and Justin fired again, then again. He kept firing, walking forward, until he stood just over the corpse. Two more shots left it almost unrecognizable as anything human. He stopped, breathing hard through the harsh smells of his own urine and the blood he’d spilled. Heineken whimpered. The wind sighed, seeming to acknowledge the dog’s pain and the human’s fear. If there’d been any witnesses, Justin, his dogs, and the corpses around them would have made a macabre tableau against the deepening darkness.

Snapping branches brought Justin back to the moment. Heineken’s low whining turned to a sharp snarl in counterpoint with the wind’s sighing. Figures emerged from behind the house. A lot of them. Beyond counting, it seemed.

Justin broke and ran for the house, making of it a finish line in an unthinkable race for survival. He hit the door with his shoulder, sending it flying back with enough force to hit the far wall and bounce back. He kept moving, shotgun held out before him like a battering ram, his booted feet resounding off the wooden floor with a booming reminiscent of distant summer thunder.

In his head, he ran through the steps of survival. Through the kitchen, sharp right into the hall, toward the bedroom. Halfway down the short hall, just past the bathroom. Yank down the trap, pull down the steps, up as fast as his feet could find the rails. DON’T FORGET to drag the trap rope with him! From the attic floor, pull the rope, watch the steps accordion shut. Wrap the rope. Send up a flare.

He made it through the kitchen, managing to wham his elbow on the door jam on the way by. His feet skidded as he made the turn, almost tangling and throwing him to the floor. His outthrust arms clutched the gun like the lifeline it was as his elbows painted small lines and circles in the air. He regained balance and momentum, never having looked anywhere but at the rectangular break in the ceiling that was his salvation. Upon reaching the hanging rope of the trap, he lurched to a stop, leaning almost far enough forward to overbalance, the backward tilt of his head preventing his smashing forward. The trap obeyed his frantic yank just as he heard screams and the most terrible snarling he’d ever heard from his dogs. Then came the yelps of pain intermingled with the screams and snarls.

Justin made the top of the trap and began hauling the rope, watching the steps bend and break in the middle. Now he could hear the wet, gurgling snarl-yelp of a dog in extreme distress. He thought it was Bass.

As the door closed and he tied off the rope, he heard another long, drawn out yelp, and then it stopped. The screams continued, drawing closer. Unacknowledged tears traced a path along the gullies and ridges of his half withered cheek before finding smooth flesh again, only to continue down to his chin before falling to the thick dust of the attic floor.

He sat hunkered down, waiting. The noises came closer and the sounds of ransacking began. Kitchen cupboards squeaked open, some loud enough to cause a frenzied flurry of destruction, followed by brawling which ended in dull thuds and screeches. The smell intensified, again familiar as it was repulsive. Then he remembered.

Almost thirty years ago, he’d gone bow hunting with his dad. It was one of the few activities that excited the man, making him twice as communicative and even jovial in the way that bullies in a magnanimous state of mind might be. His grandfather had warned Justin about keeping silent, paying attention to the changes of mood in his father, but more importantly, to the changes in the environment. Absent bird song, snapping branches, and lessened animal activity were all indications the smart man should sit up and pay attention. Smells were also to be attended, smells were important. They could mean the difference between life and death.

They’d been easing along, looking for signs of game, his dad in the lead. Sunlight reached through the interlaced branches of oak and hickory trees, the interplay of light, shadow, and haze creating a feel as fantastic as it was primeval. Justin could imagine himself moving through the woods in nothing but a loincloth, his only weapon a sharpened stick, his shoes made of leather wrappings. A sharp rap to the bridge of the nose brought him out of the daydream even as it brought tears to his eyes. His dad’s back remained as still and solid as if he’d never moved, but Justin knew he’d jut been reprimanded for “that fuckin’ daydreamin’ that never did no good.” He got back on the clock, and never mind the feel of old, dead leaves, brambles and tree bark against bare flesh.

He was wiping his eyes with quick, economical motions before his dad could slam him for that weakness when the smell hit him. It was strong enough to water his eyes again before the breeze shifted and pulled it away.

“Dad…”

“Shut. Up.”

Justin shut.

They remained where they were long enough for pins and needles to begin making their way down Justin’s legs. Try as he might, he couldn’t help the way the bird song and occasional rustle of leaves from leaping squirrels and chipmunks took on a monotonous, senseless feel, the same way saying your name over and over makes it a nonsense word.

A few moments before, just before Justin thought his feet might become permanent parts of the leaf-covered floor, his dad motioned forward. They moved cautiously through the increasing thickness of the woods. Justin hadn’t been through this part of the woods and the unfamiliar territory set off new fits of daydreaming. This time, he let the movie play in the far back of his thoughts, where his father could never see, much less reach.

Dry soil and the beginnings of muscadine and blackberry vines gave way to dense bramble and wet leaves. They’d found a low spot in the woods where intense sunlight combined with spring runoff to form a basin of decomposed, soggy leaves, brackish water, and a smell of decay so strong there had to be a recognizable source. In just a few seconds, they found it.

Two deer carcasses lay at the edge of the basin. They were well rotted, with bones showing through stretched skin and maggots squirming in eye sockets that seemed too wide for deer. Browser’s teeth protruded too far from shriveled lips. What was somehow worse than the normal signs of decay were the bite marks. Someone, or something, had been gnawing.

“Come look at this, son.”

Rare words from a man who’d seemed always taciturn, always distant. Justin took advantage of the opportunity, hoping, as always, for a chance to know this man.

They moved in closer to the carcasses. The smell made Justin want to puke. The closest he could come to describing that smell was fresh dog shit heated and dipped in old, tacky blood, and that wasn’t really close.

“Look here at these marks. What do you think made them?”

Justin studied the marks his dad pointed to. They were ragged and mostly shapeless. Here and there he could make out a rough half circle. Near one deer’s flank he saw a strange lump that didn’t seem to go with the rest of the animal. It was grayish, small, and half buried in the place where the deer’s belly met the butt end. Ignoring his rising gorge, he leaned closer. It was a tooth. A human tooth.

“Those…things? Those…”

“People, Justin. Those things, as you call them, are just people. I believe that. This is one reason why. They need to eat just like we do, and a dead deer carcass will serve just as well as anything else.”

Justin stood staring. Here was evidence that they were at least organic. Organic things needed to eat. Demons didn’t. At least, that was how he figured. And it wasn’t likely a normal person had tried to bite the deer to death. Biting it to death. Now maybe that was something his dad hadn’t thought of.

“How’d they catch it, do you think? Can they run faster than normal humans?”

His dad turned and looked at him like he was a new species of bug, cold blue eyes crawling over him with a combination of curiosity and disgust.

“No” he said slowly, as to a small child. “It was dead when they started eating. Those bite marks are fresh. The deer isn’t.”

Justin looked again and realized he was right. The deer had been dead for days. The bite wounds were still raw, though bloodless. The deer hadn’t bled when it was bitten.
But that meant…

“Are they close?” He was whispering now, head dipping below the level of his shoulders as he looked around.

His dad gave him that look again, the one that told him just how stupid he was.

“If they were, you’ve already made enough noise that they’d be on us by now. They aren’t here. But they aren’t long gone either. Notice that smell? Isn’t it worse than it ought to be?”
He was right. The death smell was recognizable, but so intense. It almost had an overtone of dirty dog and wet chicken.

Watching him closely, his dad told him, “Yes. Remember it. Keep it at the front of your mind. It may save your life someday.”

He’d remembered, and that scent carried with it the memory of a few rare moments in his youth when his dad had tried to teach him. That scent was revolting, but it was also pleasantly nostalgic. Funny how that could be.

It hadn’t saved him though, not really. He’d known the smell on the wind and ignored it. If he hadn’t, would he be any better off than he was now? Maybe his dogs would have been. They knew how to climb the ladder, he’d taught them, just in case.

As his dad had often said, there was no point in worrying over what might have been when there was plenty to deal with now.

He listened to their activity, trying to figure out how close they were. If he was quiet, he could send up the signal.

He turned slowly, carefully, avoiding possible squeaks that might bring them. They couldn’t get into the attic with the rope pulled up and tied, but better not to take chances. He didn’t think he could take listening to them jumping and screaming at the entrance to his hideout.

He moved to the far end of the eaves, where he kept his water supply and the flares. The small window at that end let in a little moonlight-and a good thing, too. He’d left a lantern up here, but the idea of fire in this enclosed space with nowhere to run but into those things-those humans, he’d been forced to admit during that hunting trip with his dad-was more than he wanted to contemplate.

He reached the window, put down his gun, looked to his right and felt around a little. He touched one of the flares. His hand contacted something spongy, like cardboard soaked in dew. Wet.

Why were the flares wet?

Holding off the onset of panic, he looked and felt for his water supply. There should be a huge keg of water. He saw the shine from the metal side of the keg at the same time his hand hit the hard side. He hesitated, listened for what waited below. They weren’t close enough for him to worry much, so he took a chance and tapped lightly at the keg.

It was hollow. The water was gone.

He felt for his flares again. They were wet. All of them.

Somehow, his water supply had sprung a leak. There was none to be had. Worse, his flares were useless. There could be no call for help. Letting out a huge sigh, Justin found he could barely draw a restorative breath. All he could manage were short, whistling hiccups that brought little relief.

After a time, he pulled his knees to his chin, dropped his forehead, wrapped his arms around his legs and rocked.