Keene Brian - A Gathering of Crows

“Hmmm,” Levi murmured. “Maybe the Lord is answering prayers tonight after all.”

As Randy roared along behind Sam and Stephanie, he felt a sick mixture of fear, revulsion and shock. He’d turned the CD player off because it was too much of a distraction. His eyes were wide as he gaped at the destruction. He didn’t see the man who had killed his parents, nor the man’s compatriots, but the signs of their passage were visible on every street corner. Racing through downtown and struggling to keep up with Sam’s faster car, it was impossible for Randy to avoid the killers’ handiwork. Brinkley Springs was no longer recognizable as the place he’d grown up in. Fires burned unchecked in a dozen homes and businesses. Cars and trucks sat vacant along the streets and in driveways, some with their doors hanging open or hoods up, as if their owners had experienced car trouble. He thought again of when they’d first fled. Sam’s Nissan hadn’t started at first—not until Randy had leaned against it.

Corpses, both human and animal, lay sprawled in the streets, yards and sidewalks. Randy knew most of them—if not their names, then at least their faces—but he forced himself not to think about it. If he pretended that he didn’t know them, that their deaths had no more meaning than some random NPC in a video game, then maybe it wouldn’t hurt as bad. Some of the corpses showed no obvious signs of trauma. Others had been mauled and mangled— eviscerated, torn apart, heads and limbs tossed aside with careless abandon. And a few had suffered even worse fates. A man jutted halfway through the pawn shop’s plate-glass window. Shards of glass had severed his head from the nose up. A small child lay sprawled in a plastic wading pool. The pool was filled with blood. A man had been impaled with his own arms and legs. The grisly appendages stuck out the front of his torso as if they’d grown from it. Several people had been burned alive. Their charred remains still smoked on their lawns. A red and brown and pink pile of slop next to a woodpile and a chopping block with a bloodied ax embedded in it defied description, but Randy was pretty sure he knew what it was. Bile rose in his throat as he looked away. Across the street, a woman hung from a tree limb, dangling at the end of an extension-cord noose. Her breasts had been torn off and her stomach ripped open. Her innards lay on the ground at her feet. Carved into the bark of the tree was a single word in big block letters.

As he sped by, Randy wondered what it meant. It was a strange word. Certainly not one he’d ever heard before. He wasn’t even sure it was English. And who had carved it? The men in black, maybe, but how? Randy had some experience carving his initials into trees. When he was fourteen, Randy and Cathy Wilson had gone together for a whole summer. They’d had a favorite spot down along the Greenbrier River—a secluded section along the riverbank, hidden by a stand of tall birch trees. They’d gone there nearly every day and spent the afternoons swimming and talking and making out. Randy had convinced her to go skinny-dipping, but despite his best efforts, he’d never made it past third base. Near the end of the summer, he’d used the lock blade hunting knife his grandfather had given him for his birthday to carve his and Cathy’s initials— along with a big, if somewhat lopsided, heart—into the trunk of one of the old birch trees. Despite the soft bark, it had taken him all afternoon, and that was just four small letters and a crude heart. The strange word on the hanging tree was eight letters long, and each of the letters was a good ten inches high.

He promptly forgot about it as they hit a straightaway near the outskirts of town. Sam accelerated and Randy had no choice but to do the same. He glanced down at the speedometer. The needle was edging toward seventy-five miles per hour.

“Slow the hell down, Sam. It ain’t gonna do us any good if you and Stephanie end up wrapped around a motherfucking telephone pole.”

He knew, of course, that his friend couldn’t hear him, but Randy didn’t care. Hollering at Sam made him feel better. It took his mind off the horrors around them. It helped him forget about what had happened to his parents. Randy bit his lip and gripped the steering wheel hard. He moaned, long and low, and then the tears started again. He blinked his eyes, trying to clear his blurry vision, but every time he did, he saw the grotesque images. His father, bleeding from dozens of lacerations, shaking and jittering as the glass shard speared his eye. His mother, bravely holding the steak knife and trying to defend him. The way the killer’s voice had sounded when he promised to turn Randy’s mother inside out. How his ears rang and his hands grew numb when he pulled the trigger. Worst of all, Randy remembered the look on his mother’s face when the bullet passed through the intruder and slammed into her instead.

“I’m sorry, Mommy.” He wiped his eyes and nose with the back of his hand. “I didn’t mean to leave you there. I just didn’t know what else to do. And there was Steph…”

What would Marsha say when she found out? What would she think of him? She’d probably hate him, and she had every right to. He’d abandoned their mother. He’d shot her. It was bad enough that he couldn’t save his father, but he should at least have been able to defend his mother. Instead, he’d killed her.

Randy hoped that his sister was okay, hoped that she was with Donny. If anybody could kick these weird fuckers’ asses, it was Donny Osborne. If Marsha was with him, she’d be in good hands. She had to be. Marsha was all that Randy had left. Marsha and Stephanie…

They blew past Pheasant’s Garage. It was dark, just like the rest of the town. As Randy caught up to Sam, something occurred to him. They hadn’t encountered any other cars or trucks since escaping his house. Oh, they’d seen plenty parked along the street or in driveways, and they’d seen some wrecked. But nobody had driven past them. Not even a motorcycle. He wondered why? What did it mean? Surely, they couldn’t be the only ones trying to get out of town.

His thoughts returned to Stephanie. He studied her silhouette through Sam’s rear window. When this was over, he was going to tell her how he felt. Enough was enough. Life was too short. He’d never really thought about that before. Sure, he’d known people who died—his grandparents, and a friend of his had died of leukemia in the fourth grade. But those deaths were different than tonight. He needed Steph to know how he felt about her, no matter what the consequences. Hopefully, Sam would understand and be okay with it.

Just beyond the garage, they passed a Mazda pickup truck with out-of-state tags parked along the side of the road. In front of the truck was a small pile of ashes that stirred as they sped by. Randy glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the ashes swirling in his wake. He glanced forward again, practicing what he’d say to Steph—

—and then Sam’s car imploded.

It happened so fast that Randy couldn’t be sure of what he saw. One second, they were zooming toward the sign that told folks they were leaving Brinkley Springs. The next, it was as if Sam’s Nissan had slammed into an invisible brick wall. There was a shockingly loud sound of a collision, and then the car crumpled, accompanied by the tortured shrieks of metal and fiberglass—and of Sam and Stephanie. The sounds lasted only a second. By then, the engine block was shoved through the rear bumper.

Randy slammed the brakes and spun the steering wheel. He felt the truck almost tip over as it slid sharply to the side, stopping only inches from the wreckage. He flung the door open and leaped out. The car was no longer recognizable. Neither were his friends. Earlier tonight, they’d sat in his bedroom, listening to music and playing video games and laughing and talking and breathing. They’d had arms and legs and heads and hair. He refused to believe that the scraps of raw, dripping hamburger that were strewn through the wreckage was all that remained of them. He inched forward, screaming Stephanie’s name, and something crunched beneath his heel. Randy lifted his foot and glanced down. He’d stepped on someone’s finger. He couldn’t tell if it was Steph’s or Sam’s.