Joseph Love - Kill Town, USA

“Yeah. We know.”

“They wanted the sheriff to do something. What could he do? Arrest a bunch of invalids at the hospital? Shoot them?” He shook his head and stared at the shut door. “They took over like we never been civilized. Hauled the sheriff out of his home. A kid, thirty or so. Named Joyce. They shot him and took over. Just like that.

“Shit.”

“They think it’s Revelation, all right. I’ll be damned if they’re taking me from my home. I told that little shit yesterday to get the hell out of here. Told him from twenty yards away as he come up the drive. Told him I was aimed right at his ocean blue eye. The left one. Under the freckle in his eyebrow. And I was. He backed that stolen police car right the hell off my property. They’ll be back.”

“We just want to get out of the mountains,” Audrey sounded distant.

“What you want ain’t what you’re gonna get. Now you have to want something else,” Sewell said matter-of-factly.

Sewell led us through the darkness of his house and onto the porch. He pointed behind the woodshed. “That’s the way you have to go. Through the trees. Eventually, they’ll search the woods. But they’re dumb. It’ll take a while to figure out. Until then, they’ll stick to the roads.”

“Where will that take us?”

“West. Out of the county, out of the mountains. It’s a long haul.” He took out a small mason jar from his coveralls. “I didn’t give it to you with your biscuits, but I want you to take it now. It’s muscadine jelly. Lena made it this summer. If you never had muscadine, you’re in for a treat.”

Audrey took the jar and stuffed it in my pack, wrapping it in a wool t-shirt. We walked into the woods behind the shed, leaving Sewell on the porch with a rifle in his lap.

The forest was uncut by trails. Hiking a hundred yards was taxing. And at the end, we would only be out of the mountains. There was still the business of the animals. The vigilantes. The poisoned locals.

“When it was just me hiking, I would walk for days and not see anyone. And when I did see someone, I guess I tried to act like I was friendly— but I kept to myself. I’d go so long without conversation and I missed it. But hiking with you is different.”

“We still haven’t talked much.”

“Exactly.”

“Maybe you spent too much time in the woods. Forgot how to make conversation.”

“Something like that.”

The trek was arduous. We climbed through clusters of fallen trees, snagging branches, and open pits of moist dead leaves and mud. We would be in the woods a long time.

We came to a massive, downed poplar, its trunk at least four feet wide. I helped Audrey climb up and she stayed put, straddling the log and waiting for me. When I joined her, she grabbed me by the shoulder straps and pulled herself closer. The wind was vicious on our faces.

“Thank you.”

“It’s just a log.”

“Thank you for my husband—for Watts.”

“I had to.”

“Someone had to. A long time ago.”

She smacked my chest and kissed me on the cheek. She turned to hop off the log. I pulled her back and put my lips on hers. We sat on that log a long time, our lips warm, pressed together. I didn’t want to leave.

“That looks like a retriever,” she said happily, still on the log.

An emaciated dog climbed through the brush. A stick gouged its open eye and it didn’t flinch. As the dog stumbled along, blood dripped from its snout and left thin red valleys in the snow.

Only twenty feet from us, I raised the Winchester and released the safety. I fired one round into its skull. The snow turned red and dimpled. Blonde fur and gray matter clung to the trunk of a tree. Its skull was split and empty like a grapefruit after breakfast.

That made three dogs. Only two deserved it.

We moved for hours after that, barely trudging along. We spoke little, straining our ears for what could be behind us, beside us. In front of us. The wood is a blind place.

It was then I realized there would be no break from the Trail.

The Appalachian Trail climbs half a million feet over two-thousand miles. That day, it felt like we walked the whole thing. And we walked until dusk.

We cleared a site large enough for the tent and set it up. It went up fast with a second person, but it was a squatter’s tent made for one person lying flat.

“How about a fire?” I asked.

There was plenty of light to gather wood. Audrey and I set out to collect kindling and inch-thick sticks, keeping the tent in sight. Once we dumped the firewood, I gathered several Y-shaped branches and drove them into the ground around our campsite. Then, I stretched long limbs over the crotches for a primitive alarm.

I made a pit fire. First, I dug a small bowl in the earth. Then, I tunneled an airway into it, facing the wind. It’s a good way to hide your location. The fire is hidden in the pit, but you still have a hot cooking fire and some light.

By then it was full night. I lit the fire. We sat for a long time huddled next to each other.

“How long do you think it will snow?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think it matters.”

“It doesn’t.”

I tossed on the sticks four at a time. Embers cackled and spit up into our faces. Something on the fire smelled like cinnamon. We opened a can of soup and shared. I swished the remaining whiskey in the flask. Almost gone. We split the whiskey between us. Audrey hung her head.

“I’m glad we went to Daddy’s,” she said finally. “I needed to find you.”

“You’re just lonely.”

“No. I needed someone so levelheaded. Watts was…unstable.”

“I’m just taking it as I see it.”

“Listen. I need to know you’ll do the same for me. If I turn into one of those things, you have to do it.” She took a deep breath. “You just have to.”

“Same for me,” I said. “You ever fire a gun before?”

“A twenty-two.”

“This is the same,” I patted the Winchester.

“That thing?”

“It is. Don’t be afraid of it.”

I built an enclosed box around the pit with the remaining sticks. I stood, brushed off the seat of my pants, and went to sleep in the tent. Audrey joined me, wedging herself into the sack, her face against my chest. There was no more room in the tent, barely an inch or two above our heads. Audrey fell asleep shortly. She snored. Her breath was hot on my face.

I tried to imagine what it was like for Sewell. To wait for one’s own death. To have nothing left of his former life. But I knew what it was like. I knew it long before I met Sewell.

It’d be a lie to say no one expected Dad to kill himself. I figured it’d happen eventually, but I never imagined what the day would be like. I didn’t imagine he’d do it in summer, or how hot it’d be. Finding him. Touching him.

Sprawled under a white oak. His head twenty feet away. I carried his head back to his body. I waited an hour before calling the Sheriff.

What a way to do it. Hanging yourself with a wire rope no thicker than twine.

Sheriff Duncan said Dad knew what he was doing using the wire. He jumped from pretty high up in the tree. Gave himself enough length to pick up speed. The wire sliced right through, burned the veins and arteries. No blood.

“Elaborate as all hell,” Duncan said it several times.

Dad’s eyes were open and sort of wet looking. Half-closed but still alive.

I struggled to reconcile the two images. Dad’s eyes were lustrous and hinted at the man he’d been. But when those folk woke up from their comas, they had dark, soulless eyes. No matter how good and loving the Human might have been, there was nothing but evil in those eyes.

I fell asleep thinking of Dad. Finding him in the same tree as my swing. Watching the medical examiner drop his head in a red plastic bag. Thinking I ought to sit in the shade. Wiping the sweat out of my eyes and wanting iced tea.