The animal was dying. His bowels released, then his bladder. A trio of convulsions barreled through his body, followed by a final, violent tremor, every part of him stiffening. He held this position for several seconds, as if stretched on wires. Then the air went out of him and he was still.
Caleb crouched beside the carcass, lifting the lantern over the animal’s face. A bubbly froth, tinged with blood, was running from his mouth. One dark eye stared upward, shining with reflected light.
“Caleb, why are you holding a gun?”
He looked down; so he was. It was George’s revolver, the big .357, which he’d hidden in the shed. He must have grabbed it when he’d retrieved the lantern—an action so automatic as to escape his conscious awareness.
“You need to tell me what’s going on,” Kate said.
Caleb released the hammer and swiveled on his heels toward the house. The windows shimmered with candlelight. Pim would be making supper, the girls playing on the floor or looking at books, Baby Theo fussing in his high chair. Maybe not; maybe the boy was already asleep. He sometimes did that, passing out cold at dinnertime only to awaken hours later, howling with hunger.
“Answer me, Caleb.”
He rose, slipped the pistol into the waistband of his trousers, and drew his shirt over the butt to conceal it. Handsome was standing at the edge of the light, his head bent low like a mourner’s. The poor guy, Caleb thought. It was as if he knew that the job would fall to him to drag the carcass of his only friend across the field to a patch of useless ground where, come morning, Caleb would use the rest of his fuel to burn it.
45
By late afternoon, Eustace and Fry had canvassed most of the outermost farms. Overturned furniture, beds disturbed, pistols and rifles lying where they’d fallen, a round or two fired, if that.
And not a living soul.
It was after six o’clock when they finished checking the last one, a dump of a place four miles downriver, near the old ADM ethanol plant. The house was tiny, just one room, the structure hammered together from scrap lumber and decaying asphalt shingles. Eustace didn’t know who’d lived out here. He guessed he never would.
Eustace’s bad leg was aching hard; they’d have just enough time to make it back to town before dark. They mounted their horses and turned north, but a hundred yards later Eustace held up.
“Let’s have a peek at that factory.”
Fry was leaning over the pommel. “We ain’t got but two hands of light, Gordo.”
“You want to go back without something to show for it? You heard those folks.”
Fry thought for a moment. “Let’s be quick on it.”
They rode into the compound. The plant comprised three long, two-story buildings arranged in a U, with a fourth, much larger than the others, closing the square—a windowless concrete bulk connected to the grain bins by a maze of pipes and chutes. The skeletal husks of rusted vehicles and other machinery filled the spaces between the weeds. The air had stilled and cooled; birds were flitting through the glassless windows of the buildings. The three small structures were just shells, their roofs long collapsed, but the fourth was mostly tight. This was the one Eustace was interested in. If you were going to hide a couple hundred people, that would be a place to do it.
“You got a windup in your saddle bag, don’tcha?” Eustace asked.
Fry retrieved the lantern. Eustace turned the crank until the bulb began to glow.
“Thing won’t last more than about three minutes,” Fry warned. “You think they’re in there?”
Eustace was checking his gun. He closed the cylinder and reholstered the weapon but left the strap off. Fry did the same.
“Guess we’re going to find out.”
One of the loading dock doors stood partially open; they dropped and rolled through. The smell hit them like a slap.
“I guess that answers that,” Eustace said.
“Fuck me, that’s nasty.” Fry was pinching his nose. “Do we really need to look?”
“Get ahold of yourself.”
“Seriously, I think I’m gonna puke.”
Eustace gave the lantern a few more cranks. A hallway lined with lockers ran to the main work space of the building. The smell grew more intense with every step. Eustace had seen some bad things in his day, but he was pretty sure this was going to be the worst. They came to the end of the hallway, and a pair of swinging doors.
“I’m thinking this might be the time to ask about a raise,” Fry whispered.
Eustace drew his pistol. “Ready?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
They pushed through. Several things hit Eustace’s senses in close order. The first thing was the stench—a miasma of rot so gaggingly awful that Eustace would have lost his lunch on the spot if he’d actually bothered to eat. To this was added a sound, a dense vibrato that stroked the air like the humming of an engine. In the center of the room was a large, dark mass. Its edges appeared to be moving. As Eustace stepped forward, flies exploded from the corpses.