Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 6

Before we got back to the top of the ridge, we heard shots.

Schulz was dragging Leroy back up.

“Stupid asshole tried to make a break. They got night-sights.”

Majorlena put her hand over Leroy’s mouth to stop his screams. They gradually went down to whimpering. He died near dawn. We scrabbled a place for him in the sand and tipped it over him with our hands, then Schulz said some prayers.

The hunger was like real pain. We had a little water left, tasting of metal and coffee.

“We got to figure a way off here.” Schulz was clutching his belly as if he were trying to press it smaller.

“We stay near the vehicles,” said Majorlena. She was walking ’round. She didn’t look sunk-eyed, not like she had spent the night out in the open with no food or water.

“Yeah,” I said, “I know that’s official. But there’s exceptions.”

“There may be some of that melted sugar we could break off,” said Majorlena, like she was making a concession.

“I’ll go down to the trucks when it gets dark,” I said. Just the thought of filling my mouth with that real sweet taste near drove me crazy.

They let me go alone. I figured I would be entitled to extra sugar.

The driver’s body was stinking. Stars and moon were bright as electric, so I was afraid I’d be seen by snipers. But nothing. Got to the back of the truck and there was like smooth icicles hanging down. I broke one off and took a suck. Damn me if it wasn’t as sweet as candy at a fair. I felt the sugar running through me, its energy coming up in my blood.

When I scrabbled back to the top of the ridge, sending some shale skidding under me, the Major was waiting.

I gave her a piece of sugar.

“Where’s Schulz?”

“Getting some sleep down there.”

But he was next to Leroy’s body and when I shook him he didn’t wake up. I called softly for Majorlena to come down.

“What is it?”

She rolled Schulz over towards her and his face was cold and still in the moonlight, his eyes staring up at the stars.

“Jesus! How the hell? — he was okay when I went down.” I looked across and saw that Leroy’s body was partly uncovered, down to about the waist. Saw what had happened to that smooth skin.

“You reckon Schulz did that?” I said.

“Must have, unless it was wild dogs or something, but I’ve been keeping watch all the time you were down there. I didn’t hear anything.”

“Maybe Schulz went a bit crazy, didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Yeah, sunstroke, heat exhaustion.” She sat back. “I’ll have to make a report on it when we get picked up.”

It was the coldest night I have ever spent. There was no cloud cover. I didn’t sleep any, just sat up with my back against the rock. Majorlena was a little ways off, kind of hunched over. I closed my eyes at one point and then opened them a few moments later. She seemed to have shifted a little towards me.

“I ain’t going to get no sleep tonight,” I said.

Was I warning her or asking her? I still don’t know.

But I did go to sleep, and when I woke up, something was moving over Leroy’s body. It was a big mass of stuff, like a long beard trailing down from his neck. I stared for a few moments trying to make sense of it, rolling over so I could get a better look. There was a fluttering and crawling going on nonstop over Leroy’s chest.

I couldn’t see his face. It looked to be moving and heaving, and that was a big swarm of fat blowflies crawling over it and down his body. They glistened, their sticky bodies shifting and pushing, some flying a bit and then settling. In the wounds on his chest, there were flies right in the bloody furrows, twisting round and fluttering like whores in a jacuzzi.

Lying a few feet away, like she and Leroy was in a bed, was Majorlena. And then the flies was coming off Leroy in this black stream, climbing and hopping and flying towards her.

I took a step towards her, thinking she was asleep. I was going to warn her. Then I saw she was awake.

Worse than awake. Her mouth was open and the flies were crawling up over her body and she was saying things. I got closer and heard her whispering.

“Come on my little ones, Mamma’s thirsty, Mamma’s hungry. You know what she wants. She needs you now.”

And the flies were crawling into her dark wet open mouth, scrambling and fluttering over her lips, and she was chawing down on them.

The charred dead in their trucks down on the road was better than that. I sat there all night.

A patrol coming along the road picked me up next day. I told them to look for three more up on the ridge, but they only found two bodies.

I guess she’s still travelling with the army.

It was clear that Miss Appleby trusted nobody associated with my profession. Her attitude was no doubt influenced by her father’s disgrace and the tragedy ten years ago in 1881, the details of which, in the form of yellowed newspaper cuttings, I carried in my waistcoat pocket. Still, I persevered, suggesting that an arrangement between us would be to her advantage.

“Or at least advantageous,” I added, “to those unfortunate souls that you are blessed to assist.”

She wavered, perhaps because of the word blessed . A tactical addition on my part: both an appeal to her vanity and a validation of what she doubtless perceived as her selfless and lonely struggle.

“In that case, sir,” she said, “if I were to agree, I would insist that you omit the embellishments and half-truths common to the work of your kind.”

“Of course …”

“Remember your responsibility, Mr. Creswell. Your article could be the final nail in the coffin of an innocent man!”

The outburst coloured her cheeks. When passionate like that, I noticed her eyes were quite lovely.

I insisted that she had the word of a gentleman, and I would write only the truth as I saw it.

Her study was gloomy and cluttered; the deep-crimson walls decorated with the masks and tribal carvings that her father had acquired in Africa. I sat there watching her at work, her face paled by the dull morning glow from a window blurred with rain. She sifted through a pile of letters on her desk, tearing each envelope with a paperknife, scanning the handwriting and frowning at something or other.

“Fool!”

She tossed aside the letter, then, as was her habit, began a reply immediately.

I picked it up and read the pleas of a Derbyshire mother whose daughter-in-law’s burned remains were discovered in a bread oven. “Hm, agreed. Didn’t her son, the baker, confess?”

“Unfortunately much of the correspondence I receive reveals a tacit denial. It’s not possible for some folk to accept their loved one’s role in any abominable act. My father cautioned in his journals about such time wasters.”

“How do you know when they are genuine?”

“Intuition perhaps. And I am familiar with most of the current cases. I follow the reports in the newspapers.”

“All those embellishments and half-truths?” I said, winking.

She squirmed. “I am attempting to ease this poor woman’s suffering, Mr. Creswell, while at the same time imploring her to accept her son’s guilt. Not an easy task.”

The next letter caused her lips to tremble oddly. She brushed a stray lock from her forehead, turned and stared through the rainy window. I read the letter, from a Dr. Mortlock in Wales. “What’s so different about this one?”

“The brevity perhaps, a sincerity of tone measured in few words.” She stood and smoothed her lap, staring at me with a determined look. “Come, Mr. Creswell, we have no time to lose.”