Darrel Sparkman - After the Fall

Reverend Stephens turned to him. “I must go to the church, Mr. Trent, but I want you to know something. I love my daughter very much. I don’t want to see her hurt, and I cannot see how you could do anything else but hurt her.” The man smiled. “It’s been an experience talking to you.”

As he went down the steps, Trent spoke. “When you think about it, Reverend, you may realize we are on the same side.”

The man didn’t stop walking. “I can’t imagine that, Mr. Trent.” He continued toward the church, a tall man in a black coat, his back unbending to age—or differing opinion.

As they stood on the porch, Katie studied his face, her eyes dark and serious. “Now this is a side of you I didn’t expect. I thought you were eloquent with my father.”

“Your father isn’t a bad man, Katherine. He just has tunnel vision. Our only difference is a matter of viewpoint.”

It was then they heard the yelling. Young Tommy came tearing around the house, cutting under the reins of the horse. The animal reared and nearly broke free from the rail. Trent moved quickly to calm the horse. “Marshal, you got to come quick. Somebody went by the Clark’s house, and them people are all dead. The whole bunch of them are dead. Folks are saying it’s the plague.” Not waiting for a reply, the boy was off and running again, looking for the next place to tell his news.

He sighed and looked at her. “I’d better go, Katie. Most people wouldn’t know plague if it bit them on the ass.”

“Not without me, you don’t. I’ll be just a minute.”

As Trent and Katie rode up to the cabin that sat well back in the woods, a small crowd of people gathered in front and silently parted to let them through.

He heard someone say the people died of the plague, and he stopped and looked around at them. “Would any of you know plague if you saw it?” Everyone looked at him silently. He could see fear in their eyes, and he wondered why they were here, if they thought plague had returned. “I want everyone to stay back. You’re tromping up the ground where there may be tracks that I need to look at.”

Being hill people, this was something they understood and they backed slowly away.

As he went up the steps, he spoke quietly. “Stay outside Katie, unless I call for you. Let me know if the crowd acts up.”

At her nod of assent, he went through the open door. He could see straight through to the kitchen, and saw the bodies. In no hurry to get there, he treated the house as he’d treat a trail he was trying to figure out in the forest.

Quietly, he looked through all the rooms of the small house, his passage known only by an occasional squeaking board in the tongue and grooved floor.

He wandered through a rumpled bedroom full of homemade toys and piles of clothes. The other rooms were equally in disarray, not surprising with small children running about. Long lines of meat adorned the back porch, cut into thin strips and dried for jerky. He paused to smell the meat, thinking it might be a source of trouble. Finally, he stepped from the dirty back porch into the room he’d been avoiding.

All the family was around the kitchen table. He’d purposefully saved this room for last. There was no hurry. It was obvious that they were dead. He was old enough to know something about plague—at least enough to know this wasn’t it. Plague takes awhile, following the usual course of one person being infected, then spreading it to others. Even the new viral strains that cropped up during The Fall weren’t this quick, at least none he’d heard of. Whatever had killed this family had gone full course in a matter of minutes.

Finally, he did what he had put off for so long. He looked at the Clark family, individually… personally. The man and woman were both young and healthy looking. The woman had fallen forward onto the table, one arm outstretched toward the baby, and the man had fallen out of his chair onto his left side. The baby, about nine months old and sitting in a homemade highchair, looked like it was asleep. He stood there, absently brushing back a lock of wispy hair on the baby’s head. At a small noise, he glanced up and saw Katie watching him from the door, tears in her eyes. Looking at the table full of food, he knew it had to be something they ate, or the water they drank. The house was much too drafty to harbor any poisonous fumes or gas, and he knew of no mines around that would produce any noxious gasses. And there were no wounds on them. Seeing a pot of stew on the wood stove formed a question in his mind.

He found the answer in the trash under the sink. Several empty cans of prepared beef stew. The cans were green with corrosion, and had to be pre-Fall. How stupid could they have been? The food in those cans was spoiled. He knew from experience the toxin from bacteria growing in food was virulent and quick, sometimes making a poison of its own. They probably just warmed the stew enough to eat, and hadn’t cooked it long enough to kill the bacteria. He’d seen the same thing in the jungles of Central America. And the same thing here.

“What’d you find?” The voice boomed loudly in the room.

His head cracked against the bottom of the sink. Cursing, rubbing his head, and pushing down the urge to go for his gun—he looked up. “Who let you in, Murdock?”

The big woman held up her black bag. “I go anywhere, Trent.”

“Next time, hum a tune or something. You shouldn’t sneak up on a man like that. I’ve never seen someone so big be so quiet.”

“So, what do you think?” She ignored his complaint and looking around. “Poison?”

He held up a can, careful not to spill the contents. “This killed them.”

“A can?”

He straightened to his knees and a strangely quiet Katie gave him a hand up. “You’re some medic, Murdock. Old cans. The food was spoiled. There was certainly some kind of poison in it.”

Her mouth made a round “oh” as he went past her and onto the front porch.

“You folks gather around.” His quiet voice carried easily in the silence surrounding the house. The people waiting outside shuffled closer. He could see a few mercs in the outer fringes of the crowd. He supposed they were curious. Judging from the number, it looked like most of the honest townspeople were here.

“The Clarks are dead. All of them. There’s no mystery here. The cause is not the plague, or anything like it. This is what killed them.” Trent held up one of the old rusty cans. “I shouldn’t have to be telling you this, especially so long after The Fall. We all use material things made years ago. Material things. It’s the way we live. But you can’t do that with food, no matter how good it looks, how clean you think it is, or how hungry you are. If you don’t grow it, raise it, or kill it yourself, don’t eat it. That is survival rule number one, people. Anything you find in cans or jars may be spoiled. When something lies around for years, there is no end to the kinds of sickness it may breed.”

He looked over the crowd. “Whatever was in those cans killed the Clark family in a matter of minutes. You think about that. It just isn’t worth the chance. If any of you have food like that stashed away, get rid of it. If you know where this family got these cans of stew, go get the rest and bury them.”

Trent paused a moment. “Now, these people need to be buried. Any volunteers?” When several men stepped forward, he turned to Murdock. “You want to take care of this?”

Her green pallor belied her bravado. “Sure, I’ve seen worse.”

He looked at her quizzically, “You got a first name, Murdock?”

The woman looked at him and some color came back to her face. “None you’ll ever hear.”

Grinning, he left things in her hands, and walked back to the horses with Katie.