“Just ghosts,” Charlie said suddenly, causing me to jump.
“Don’t be foolish. There nothing here for ghosts, either.” I snapped, much harsher than I intended. This abandoned town was creeping me out. I looked over at Charlie. “Sorry, man. This place is just wrong.”
“No prob. What’s that?” Charlie pointed to an area on the outskirts of town. “That looks like smoke.”
Sure enough, there was what seemed to be a cloud of smoke hovering over the far edge of Mazon. “Let’s go look, maybe they’re survivors who could tell us what happened here,” I said, hopeful.
We stayed on the rails, the tracks taking us towards the smoke. The fire seemed to be on the other side of a small grove of trees and the vegetation was dense enough to not allow us to see through.
As we got closer, Tommy thumped on the roof. “That’s not smoke,” he called out. I strained to see and as we went farther, we cleared the trees and could see.
Tommy was right. It wasn’t smoke. It was thousands upon thousands of flies, hovering over a massive pile of corpses. Charlie stopped the truck and I got out, covering my face with my balaclava and goggles in an attempt to keep the flies away. I crossed over the greening grass and stood at the edge of the carnage. The people had been worked over by the flies and many of the faces were gruesome to look at, especially the children. I didn’t see any signs of violence or any indication of how they died. Charlie and Tommy spread out on either side, looking for clues.
The bodies were clustered in small groups and as I looked around, I began to realize that the majority of the people died as families. What in the world could possibly have happened? Were they all infected and decided to save the rest of the community by coming here to die? I didn’t have any answers. One thing was curious, though. In every single group, one of the dead was clutching a small wooden cross. I started to circle the small clearing, mentally counting the number of bodies. After I reached six hundred, I gave up, figuring the entire town was here. The flies’ buzzing was extremely loud, nearly masking all other sound. Maggots were everywhere, writhing underneath clothing, causing me to swing up my rifle more than once when I thought I saw movement.
I reached the other side where Charlie and Tommy were standing. “Anything?” I asked looking at another pile s of bodies. This group, about thirty of them, was not as orderly as the others. In fact, they seemed to have been left where they fell.
“I think these were zombies,” Charlie said, indicating with the barrel of his rifle a neat hole in the forehead of the nearest corpse. There were similar wounds in the rest of the corpses that I could see, evidence that these people were infected and put down. But if they put down the Z’s, why would they leave their town and come to this area to die? It made no sense whatsoever.
I started back towards the truck, signaling the other two to follow. We wouldn’t get any answers from this place and like Charlie had said, this town was full of ghosts.
Just as we passed the trees, a small figure stepped out into the open. Three rifles trained on the small man as he stood there, staring at the bodies. Flies landed on his face and clothes, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was dressed in casual clothes, jeans and a flannel shirt. I noticed the bulge of a holster under his shirt and signaled to Charlie the man had a weapon. He looked to be around seventy, but was probably younger. He didn’t seem to notice us, his haunted eyes were fixed on the death in front of him.
I moved closer, lowering my rifle, knowing that Charlie and Tommy had moved to the sides and still covered the old man. “Sir?” I asked, “Are you from around here? Do you know what happened here? Sir?”
“He lied to them,” the old man said, his voice barely carrying over the din of the flies. “He lied to them and led them here and watched as they died for him.”
Confused, I pressed for answers. “Who lied?”
The old man glanced my way, his piercingly blue eyes barely acknowledging my existence. “This town had a preacher, who told the people the dead rising was a sign of the end of the world. He told them there was no hope, that after the dead had finished, the world would be consumed by fire and cleansed by God, who was angry at the world. He lied when he said everyone was dead, that this town was the last one on Earth. He told them he had visions from God, telling him what the townspeople had to do to be saved.”
I just scowled, remembering preachers and pastors from my own past who were little better than charlatans, claiming a connection to God that was more false than their claims of salvation. But I also remembered how persuasive these men were and how with just a few words they could whip a crowd up to rapturous frenzy. Opportunists, every one, and the Upheaval brought more opportunity than most dared dream.
“He had the people bring out their sick relatives, then made them watch as they turned into those nightmares. He said it was God’s curse on the land and the only way to heaven was on his path.
“I didn’t think they would believe it, but they had no way of knowing they weren’t alone. Out here they were cut off and the preacher wouldn’t let them leave. He then told them that the day to get to heaven was here and he would help them along.”
The old man brushed an errant tear that had strayed down his cheek. “He led them here and gave them pills and prayed over them as they died as families. This town died from lack of hope. They had no hope.” The man’s reedy voice faded off.
I found it ironic that had the town just waited, we would have proven this preacher wrong on all counts.
“What happened to the preacher?” I was curious to see if the man had moved on or followed his own teachings.
The old man’s voice hardened. “I found him going through people’s homes, taking what he thought would be valuable. I gave him his reward.”
I didn’t ask what that was, already guessing the answer. I backed away from the old man and signaled Tommy and Charlie to head back to the truck. We trotted back to the vehicle and spun around as we heard a shot behind us. The old man’s body lay crumpled in the grass, his blood showing bright red on the brown landscape.
As I got into the vehicle, Charlie spoke up. “You knew he was going to shoot himself, didn’t you?”
I nodded. “He had nothing left to live for. Not even revenge.”
“Is what happened to this town why you keep going, why you keep trying to find people?” Charlie pressed, asking a more personal question than he had ever asked before.
I nodded again. “Think about it. If you figured there was nothing left to live for and the rest of your life was going to be a struggle just to survive, wouldn’t you trade that for a promise of salvation? If this life was over anyway, what would be the point? We’ll never have the lives we once had, but we can at least live. That’s our revenge against the dead. That’s how we drive back the nightmare. We make what we have left worth fighting for.”
Tommy spoke through the back window. “We gonna go back and see if there is anything worth bringing back to the community?”
I shook my head. “That place is dead. Worse than if it had been overrun by zombies. The soul of that town is dead. I don’t want anything from it.”
Charlie nodded and hit the gas, sending us on our way to Verona, the next town on the map. As I looked in the rear view mirror, I could have sworn for an instant I saw hundreds of people in the tracks behind us, watching us leave. When I blinked, they were gone. Ghosts, indeed.
17
We traveled down the rails, keeping an eye out for anything unusual, although finding something more unusual than the last town we visited would be a stretch. We plowed ahead and in short order came to the outskirts of Verona. It was easy to see the differences. Verona, while a small town, was ringed by a six-foot tall earthen hill, the dirt and clay being used from the ditch that was directly in front of the hill, making it a twelve-foot obstacle to any roaming dead. The hill had an opening for the railway, and I assumed others would be found where roads entered the town. Across the opening was a wooden door made from four by fours, hung on a frame that was set into the hill. I could see the door swung outward, so it would be doubly hard to break it down. The rail bed fell away into the ditch, so any attacking horde would only be able to hit the door one, maybe two at a time.
“Stop here,” I said to Charlie as we pulled closer. Put your rifle down and sit in the back of the bed,” I called over my shoulder to Tommy.
“What’s going on?” Tommy asked.
