The Reawakening (The Living Dead Trilogy, Book 1) (3 page)

“You heard your uncle’s explanation. Animals experience sensations that we humans can’t even detect, and they only have one way of expressing their discomfort.”

“Those cows were more than uncomfortable,” Dar said. “What do you think got them so spooked?”

“If I could tell you that, Dar, I’d be Dr. Doolittle.”

“Maybe cows can get all weirded out just like people. Think some cow Prozac would make them feel better?” She laughed.

“I doubt it, but I’m sure milk sales would go through the roof.”

I had no answer for her question. Deep down, she had intuited something inexplicable. I was a man of the city, not the country; a novelist who spent hours cooped up in his office making up stories. I was only glad that she hadn’t witnessed the brutal coyote attack that had taken place outside. I tried to convince myself that it had all been a hallucination, the likes of which had been caused by lack of sleep and a fertile imagination.

We made our way downstairs for breakfast. I went from room to room searching for Rick and Susan, but they were nowhere to be found. Biscuits and fruit awaited us on the dining room table. A frying pan filled with cooked bacon and sausage sat cooling on a cutting board.

“Where is everyone?” Dar asked.

“Let’s go over to the barn and see if they’re out there.”

We walked out to the barn located behind the house. The morning air felt brisk and sharp. The color in the sky remained jaundiced and now had the smell as if someone was burning wood. The air pressure had dropped significantly in the last hour. Maybe a storm lay on the horizon. A strong wind blew down from the north, kicking up straw and dust. I glanced over at the pasture where the coyotes had been, but saw nothing but barren fields of grass bending in the wind.

An odd feeling came over me as a flock of crows swooped down onto a patch of dirt and began to caw in unison.
Death!
Their black eyes glared at us, cool as assassins. Dar and I picked up our pace and jogged over to the barn. Upon looking over, I noticed something strange. The crows took off and began to form into an elongated V in the sky. The V soared straight up into the air like an arrow. Dar noticed them as well and stared at the strange formation with one hand over her eyes. The V soared higher and higher, bowing at the apex of its arc. Then it began a slow, vertical assault downward. In a matter of seconds they had picked up speed—and they were heading straight towards us.

“Oh my god, Dad, what are they doing?” Dar asked.

“They’re trying to scare us away. I’ll bet there’s a nest nearby with chicks.”

“No, it’s a sign of something evil. Look, they’re heading straight at us!”

“Hurry, get inside.”

The V shot towards us without any indication of letting up. We sprinted toward the barn. Looking over my shoulder, I saw the entire flock nose-diving towards the earth in a suicidal burst. The crazed birds crashed into the ground in a spectacular fashion, a plume of feathers rising up where we had just stood. It sounded like an explosion. Dust and dirt hovered over the impacted patch of grass, forming into a billowy cloud suspended over the ground. Suddenly everything went silent. I looked over and noticed that Dar was weeping. Had we not left the spot when we did, we certainly would have been attacked. I hustled Dar along.

We approached the doors of the barn, and as we did, I wrapped my arm around her shoulder. My brain felt discombobulated and detached from my body. What the hell was going on out here in the northern regions of Maine? Was nature finally rebelling against all the abuse and toxicity that mankind had inflicted upon her in the last hundred years? Or was there an explanation for this activity?

“There has to be a reason for this,” I muttered.

“It doesn’t really matter!” Dar screamed. “Can’t we just get the hell out of this hellhole and head back to Boston?”

I stopped near the barn door and let her bury her face into my shoulder. Her muffled sobs reverberated in my ears.

“I want to go home
now
. Screw this place!”

“Take it easy, Dar. It’s going to be all right.”

“No, it’s not going to be all right. Something bad is happening up here, and we’re stuck in the middle of it.”

“I’m telling you, there’s an explanation for all this.”

“There’s an explanation for everything that happens,” she said, looking up at me with fear in her eyes. “That doesn’t mean it’s normal. Hitler had an explanation for killing Jews, but it was still wrong.”

“Let’s go inside and see what Rick and Susan are up to. Maybe they can tell us more about what’s going on.”

I heard a strange sound as we turned to enter, as if a million wings were taking flight. I looked back and noticed that the dust had just begun to settle when suddenly it began to kick up again.
But how could that be?
The sound resembled a helicopter taking off from its launch pad. But there was no way those birds could have survived such a high-impact collision. Dar pushed away from me and stared at them in disbelief.

“That’s
so
not normal,” she said, watching as the tattered birds flew up and away in a chaotic fashion. “This can’t be real. Tell me I’m about to wake up and this has all been a really bad dream.”

“Get inside the barn. Come on now, hurry.”

I grabbed her hand and pulled her inside. The smell of hay and manure punched me in the nose. But there was another smell as well, rancid and unwholesome, though I couldn’t put my finger on what it was or where it could be coming from. I called out my brother’s name and heard his voice two stalls over. Dar and I went over and found him and Susan staring at one of the cows, a look of grave concern on their faces.

“What’s the problem?”

“The livestock are sick, Thom. They must have contracted some sort of viral infection in the last few days. Whatever it is, I bet this thing is ripping through the dairy community as we speak.”

“How can you tell it’s a contagion?”

“Poor girls are burning up with the fever. It’s no wonder they were acting so strange last night. They were hurting. Here, look at this.” He held up a vial of cloudy liquid. It was pink with dark red strands running through it. “That’s why they were crying out last night. Their insides are being ripped to shreds.”

“What’s in the vial? Blood?” I asked.

“I wish it were. It’s
supposed
to be milk. Now who in their right mind is going to drink this useless shit?” Rick stood. “This is bad news. The more I look at these poor gals, the more it looks to me like a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, although I can’t for the life of me see how this could happen.”

“That’s impossible,” Susan said, turning to me with tears in her eyes. “These cows have been treated better than most people have. We’ve raised them entirely on pasture, Thom, never even injected them with hormones or antibacterial medicine. How could they possibly come down with such a hideous ailment?”

“What are we talking about here?” I asked.

“Mad cow disease,” Susan said.

“I just can’t believe this is a case of mad cow disease. But how else do we explain their agitated state? The reality of the situation is that we can’t afford to take any chances. And it’s not an isolated event because all the girls have it.” Rick stood and looked around the barn. “I bet the local vet’s busier than hell. We’ll have no other choice but to put them all down, and the sooner the better.”

“Put them down?” Dar asked, tears in her eyes.

“I’m afraid so, kid. We can’t afford to have this thing spread to the surrounding farms, assuming they don’t already have it. Besides, the girls don’t deserve to live in such agony.”

Dar buried her face in my chest when she heard his reply, and I knew that we needed to return home as soon as possible, before the slaughter began.

“I think we’re going to gather up our stuff and head back to Boston,” I said.

“Sorry this had to happen, Thom, but I think that would be best for everyone,” Rick replied. “This won’t be something you want to stick around for.”

Chapter 3

D
AR AND
I
WENT BACK TO
our room and packed. Although she had stopped crying, I could tell that she was still upset by the entire ordeal. I folded my clothes, put them neatly in the suitcase, and then went over to help her. She pushed me away angrily. I sat on the bed and scanned my cell phone for any messages, but realized that I couldn’t get a signal up here in these remote northern parts. It occurred to me that this was the main reason why my brother had moved up here. To escape all the madness the modern world had to offer and live a simpler life.

A single gunshot rang out in the air. The killing of the herd had begun. Dar, kneeling in front of her suitcase, put her hand over her mouth and began to sob. After a few seconds, she resumed packing, wanting to leave here as soon as possible. But in her haste, she’d overfilled her suitcase and couldn’t latch it shut. I helped her rearrange her clothes until we managed to secure it.

“Are you okay?”

“What do you think?”

“This is life on the farm, Dar. It’s a harsh life, especially when animals are involved. It’s one of the reasons your mother and I decided to become vegetarians.”

“Stop being so holier than thou. And what’s your diet have to do with this situation? As always, it’s always about you.” She looked up at me. “Animals get sick and die. Someday you and I will get sick and die, whether we eat meat or eat tofu twenty-four-seven. So please don’t give me any more of your pious lectures.”

“You don’t understand, Dar, mad cow disease, if that’s what this is, results from feeding cows the rendered parts of other livestock. It’s how industrial farmers keep beef cheap and plentiful. People eating such tainted beef have been known to die from it, their brains literally turning into sponges.”

“Yeah, just like mine is from listening to all your bullshit.”

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I. I feel like I’m losing my mind up here with you. Why did we even come up here in the first place?”

“So we could spend time together before you go off to school.”

“Will you forget about me going to school,” she snapped. “And what about those crazy birds? What was up with that?”

“I don’t know why they did what they did, but there has to be a reasonable explanation for all this. Maybe they were infected with the virus too.”

“I don’t really care if they were infected or not. Let’s just hurry up and get out of this hellhole.”

I thought about the pack of coyotes, now certain that what I’d witnessed had not been a figment of my imagination. But I still had no explanation for it. All the animals I’d seen had been infected, diseased, and acting oddly out of character. Something up here in Maine seemed terribly out of whack.

The repetitive sounds of gunshots filled the air as each member of the herd got put down. Dar placed her hands over her ears and started to hum. I needed to get her out of here as soon as possible before she suffered a nervous breakdown. Her mental state was fragile, and I worried that she might be reaching her breaking point. She was a sensitive girl, her feelings crushed by the smallest of insults.

She’d once brought a wounded bird into the house and tended to it until it had healed, and she frequently captured insects in mason jars so that she could free them outside. Even her militant vegetarianism stemmed from her love of animals rather than any dietary reasons, despite her insistence that she loathed the taste of meat.

Once the gunshots stopped, an eerie quiet filled the house. Dar and I gathered our bags and headed downstairs. We stepped inside the dining room to say our goodbyes. Susan sat in one of the chairs, sobbing quietly. Rick knelt next to her, attending to her injured hand. He dabbed ointment on it and massaged it into the cut, before wrapping it in gauze.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I was saying goodbye to Lucy when she bit my hand. That’s never happened before. Lucy would never bite me.”

“None of them would. The cows were agitated and aggressive, classic symptoms of mad cow disease. I didn’t have the luxury of taking them out of the barn one by one. It had to be done as quickly as possible.”

“Lucy never would have bit me. Her head was not in the right place.”

“I told you not to name the animals,” Rick snapped.

“Sorry if I happen to get attached.”

“You’re still convinced that it’s a cow virus at work?” I asked.

“Has to be, though for the life of me I can’t figure out how. A virus like that gets into the animal, and it causes them to go haywire and do things they would never otherwise do. Same with people. Turns their brains into Swiss cheese. It explains why they were acting so crazy last night.”

After taping his wife’s hand, Rick sat in a chair and put his hands up behind his head. Susan stared down at the floor, her body shaking visibly.

“Now that the livestock are gone, what will you do?”

“The herd is insured, which should cover a portion of the loss. Susan and I will need to completely sterilize everything in the barn before we reinvest in more livestock. Viruses like this usually burn out in less than a month, which means we’ll have to wait and see what happens. We’ll probably wait until spring arrives before we buy another cow and start over. We still have our crops, and those won’t be affected by the situation. Guess we’ll just have to be vegetarians like you guys for the time being.” He smiled.