I moved stealthily closer and closer to the town ever being acutely aware that if what I thought was really happening to the townspeople was in fact a reality than they may very well be out hunting in an effort to feed their new feralness of nature. That I had not come across any sign of Pastor and the children was also of great concern to me as I had expected them to be gone from the town already.
I smelled smoke! Forgoing caution I moved forward at a run up the last rise that lay between me and the town and there I stopped in horror as I took in the sight of the church wreathed in flames.
What was even worse was the imagery of the townsfolk parading about the church in a circling shuffle as if in replication of some bygone pagan ritual of child sacrifice from the ages of antiquities dark past. Screams rang out through the air from the children inside the burning church and yet the shifting mob outside only shuffled about faster as they threw their hands up into the air as if in worship of something unseen.
Not a child at all now remained among the ranks of the townspeople that had gone mad. Overcome by both the loss of the townspeople's human identity and the searing wrath at such an action of burning children alive, I unslung my sniper rifle along with the less bulky assault rifle that I carried as a companion weapon.
I snapped down the tripod legs of the 50 and unslung the bandolier studded with its oversized ammo from off my shoulder. Crouching down I laid out flat and slipped off the caps of the night vision scope mounted to the rifle.
The scene came instantly alive to me through the reticle of the scope. The back door of the church opened and smoke billowed out through it. Pastor stumbled out, followed along by the children.
Through the scope I saw that he had my gun in hand, but their appearance was what the others had been waiting for. The circling shuffle abruptly stopped and in mass the townspeople held up bloody knives and axes and screamed in glee.
Pastor started shooting those closest to him, but it did nothing to deter the demented newly formed cannibals of their own kind from wishing to taste human flesh once more. I breathed out and squeezed the trigger.
The rifle bucked against my shoulder like an old friend's handshake. The bullet tore off with enough mass and velocity to rip through an armored vehicle or penetrate the concrete wall of a house.
It savagely compacted with flesh once human, but now forsaken of by its soul and tore through it to pierce through the bodies of four others as blood sprayed about everywhere, only to be followed by eruptions of flesh and blood to the right and left as I continued squeezing the trigger on newly stacked up lines of opponents. The demented charge upon the coughing children faltered as the need for survival dimly registered with the animal like morass of their minds as more and more of them went down both singularly and in groups of screaming agony.
I loaded a new mag and I continued to pull the trigger without compunction or remorse of any kind and I wrecked a heavy toll within seconds upon a town gone mad with the desire for the flesh of innocent children. Every last one of these self-created monsters could go to hell!
The 50 once more empty I picked up my lighter rifle and open sighted I sent round after round into the scattering flock of hopeless cowards. My shots scored heavily and the ground around the church became bathed with blood and the bodies of those who had forsaken their faith.
The children were past the gore and moving in on my position. The older ones were carrying the smaller ones and Pastor had his arms wrapped around two as he headed the group up in making for my position as fast as they could all go without leaving any behind.
Silently I prayed that the older man didn't have a heart attack. My gun clicked empty and I rolled to my side to access another 30 round mag for it.
An arrow shaft slammed into the ground where I had just been even as wild yells erupted from behind me. I kept rolling and in an adrenalized motion I surged up to my feet as the new mag snapped home within the rifle.
I let the crossbow archer readying another arrow have it several times over, but then the others were on me and I had no more time to shoot. Holding my rifle up I deflected the down stroking blade of an axe.
I kicked the screeching assailant in the belly and sent him flying backwards, even as I shoved the butt of the rifle with brutal force trauma several inches into the face of a machete wielding psycho off to my right. Dodging away from the dying man's machete strike I kept moving fast and slipped away from the stabbing touch of a woman's outthrust butcher knife at me.
Smoothly I leaned forward and whipped up the strap of my rifle and it looped over the woman's head and as it fell about her neck I twisted the rifle, bringing the strap tight then as she tried to stab at me again, I kept the momentum going and abruptly tugged on my rifle in a twisting motion that took the woman off her feet and snapped her neck. She fell down dead and I unloosed my strap from off her neck.
Stepping backward I pulled the trigger and let the recovering axe man that I now recognized as the former postmaster have it several times. He collapsed and his out flung axe fell so close it nearly landed on my foot.
Two more of the pack remained and like the undecided rats of nature that they had become they waffled about whether to attack or run. I took care of the decision for them and as they fell bleeding to the ground I spun back to see what had become of the children.
They came huffing into view and with relief I saw that no one from the town had dared to pursue. Swinging back to cover my back, I scanned the area, but nothing moved in the dark.
Sounding completely overcome Pastor stumbled to his knees nearby and let go of the two kids he had carried free of the town. I swung my rifle over my shoulder, but thought better of it as I saw a boy of about twelve reach down to pick up a fallen machete and then with it gripped tensely turn to stare back at the town now brightly illuminated in the night by the church engulfed in flames.
"Here put that thing down." I said, approaching the boy and extending him my rifle.
He took it from me with shock and I said, "Just pull the trigger and it will go boom. You take up the rear and you shoot anything that moves you hear me?"
The boy nodded white faced and quickly moved back to the rear of the group. He had the fine makings of a soldier or at the very least a survivor.
I slung my 50 up off the ground and reloaded it. Holding it level at my waist with one hand, I extended the other down to the still out of breath man who had fought so hard to give these kids a chance.
Wearily Pastor took my hand and I pulled him up to his feet. Our eyes met and dimly we nodded at each other as if in confirmation of the common knowledge of the war we were in for from this moment onward.
"Alright everyone, this way." I said, as I began to lead the group off through the moonlit darkness for home even as the last vestige of civilized order burnt to the ground in the town behind us.
They would be after us soon enough. While they had plenty to eat for the moment the evil nature that they had given place to wouldn't be satisfied for any longer than a few passing moments.
The farm was not safe, indeed nowhere would be safe for us, but at least if we were on the move, then there was at least something better in terms of a chance happening to benefit us in terms of going in our favor. I'd let the kids sleep for a few hours once we reached the homestead, but before the sun was up we would be moving on.
It was too cold towards the North, nothing to the South appealed to me and from eyewitness accounts the West was even worse than the town that lay behind me. That left the East.
It was all that was left in terms of an option and dying of cancer right now didn't seem like such a compromise as opposed to being chewed upon by my own kind.
~~~~~~~
The night wore on and it took longer than I had thought it would to reach the house and when we did no light greeted us. I held the group up and listened, but I heard nothing.
Fear began to eat away at my insides as if it was an animal bent on destroying me.
"Stay here!" I ordered gruffly, as I made my way forward through the gloom of late night.
At any moment I expected to be pierced through by a scalp hunter's arrow, but the night remained eerily silent. I made my way through the gate that hung open into the yard surrounding the house.
A breeze drifted across the yard and with it a telltale tuft of white hair. I stopped and let my gaze follow along to where I made out the bloody and mostly picked clean carcass of what had once been Robbie.
Most of him was gone and all that remained was hair and bones. Cold sweat squeezed from my pores and with dread I stepped out toward the darkened house that bore the evidence of smashed windows and a general air of disruption of what had once been good.
Stepping inside with my finger on the trigger I stepped over upturned chairs and debris laying all about upon the floor. The room had been torn apart and from my view, all vestige of food in the kitchen was gone.
The floor was littered with broken glass and my boots crunched through it as I made my way through it and stepped into the bedroom. The room was dark, but my eyes saw no sign of the remains of a body.
Relief was far from me though. Where was JaLin?
I left the bedroom and made my way upstairs only to find more destruction, but the absence of JaLin or any sign of her. Going back downstairs, I reentered the bedroom.
Going to the bed, I let my rifle fall onto it. I lost it then and crashing down onto my knees beside the bed, I felt the intense pain of a loss too great as to ever be put into words as my body was wracked by deep sob after sob.
Reaching out I grabbed her pillow up and burying my face in it, I breathed in the smell of her and I cried all the harder.
"Oh God kill me now! I���… it would be a mercy!" I begged through my tears.
The floor squeaked behind me and the routine of training took over and one-handed I swung the rifle up as I spun around prepared to fill whatever it was with bullets, but there was nothing. The floor squeaked again and blinking I swung the barrel of the rifle to a spot where the floor was moving!
It was my ammo cache spot!
Crawling across the floor I ripped away the snug fitting boards of the cache location to take in the sight of JaLin completely folded over on herself in an impossibly tiny space.
"Oh God!" I exclaimed, as I pulled her out of the hole that I wouldn't have thought large enough for even a small child to fit into let alone a woman of her size. Not only that, but she'd been like this for hours!
Coming unfolded in my arms, she breathed in deeply with a gasp and stretched out as much as she could, all the while trembling with what I recognized as pain. I could only imagine how she felt. Glancing at the tiny hole I puzzled on the fact of how she'd even closed the floor boards back over top of herself.
I rubbed at her back and legs as she sat on the floor beside me and all the while I thanked God over and over again that she was alive. Having recovered her breath and some degree of mobility she turned her head to me and with tears falling she whispered, "Robbie."
Nodding my head, I pulled her to me as my own tears fell.
"He fight hard." She said brokenly before adding, "Gave me time."
I nodded and kissed the top of her head. Gathering her to me, I got up.
With her face buried against my neck I made it to the bed and awkwardly picked up my rifle. Managing it and her I headed for the door.
Along the way out of the house I said, "What do you think about us naming our first boy Robbie?"
She breathed out the word for yes in her language against my neck even as she kept her eyes averted from anything she might see in the yard. I made it to Pastor and the children and Pastor shouldered the big 50 for me.
Without a word said I led the way off towards the East all the while gaining strength from each breath of having the sensation of my woman alive and well in my arms. Hours went by and now she walked by my side, but still we traveled on as the sun rose in the sky.
We walked due East through the abandoned countryside seeing no one and that was good, because my tendency of the moment right now was to shoot first and ask questions later. That was one of the problems with the war to survive. It had a tendency to make monsters of us all.