Dire Harvest Book 1 Chapter 1

Dire Harvest Book 1, Zlo

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of Chris Altemara and Race Godsen, who taught me that I am capable of doing anything.

Quotes

They prefer their meals alive and terrified, for fear is their favorite sauce.

—Donald G. Firesmith, Demons on the Dalton

Keep away. The sow is mine.

—William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist

And when He came to the other side into the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men confronted Him as they were coming out of the tombs. They were so extremely violent that no one could pass by that way. And they cried out, saying, “What business do You have with us, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?” Now there was a herd of many pigs feeding at a distance from them. And the demons begged Him, saying, “If You are going to cast us out, send us into the herd of pigs.” And He said to them, “Go!”

—Matthew 8:28-32

ONE

THOUGH HIS EYES WERE CLOSED, and he was no longer inside of the old, run-down shack, the face still taunted him, etched into the back of his eyelids, glaring into his soul with black, lifeless eyes. He again gasped for breath as the acrid smell crept out of the doorway, following him into the overgrown garden. The odor wrapped its invisible arms around him from behind, cloaking him with its essence, squeezing him in an inescapable bear hug. His attempt to evade the smell by putting more distance between himself and the shed proved pointless. It had already found its way into the fibers of his clothes and made itself a new home.

How did he end up here tonight? There was no plan for this. Of course, a police officer needed to prepare for anything, but in Cumberland Springs, “anything” never amounted to much more than a speeding ticket or a cat stuck in a tree. He never imagined he would one day stare into the eyes of a living nightmare. Eyes that eagerly pulled at him, tempting him to fall into a hideous world of darkness and dread.

Moments ago, Glen Crawford’s life was simple, not completely boring, yet by no means bold. Vanilla. Just the way he liked it. The rest of the world could continue to spiral out of control—as it did through the eyes of evening cable news—as long as it left Glen, his family, and his tranquil town of Cumberland Springs in peace. He had always imagined the madness would someday discover this place where people were happy and kind and still respected and trusted each other. It would see simple folks in a tight-knit community living peaceful lives, enjoying quiet days together, and it would say: “This cannot stand!” It would ascend on their gentle existence, slither through the well-maintained streets and picket fences in search of the innocent, looking to deface and destroy the simple life which so many here have worked a lifetime to achieve. The world outside would indeed creep in one day, and tonight in Glen Crawford’s mind, that moment may have arrived.

He thought about his wife, Vicki, at home in bed, how beautiful she must look right now, curled up under their warm oversized comforter. Glen smiled at the thought. But how could he describe what he’d just seen to her? He couldn’t hide it. She’d see right through him the second her eyes met with his.

Get your shit together, Crawford! He thought, shaking his head, attempting to snap himself back to reality.

“Are you alright, Glen,” Mrs. Rolley said, touching his arm.

He looked down at the small gray-haired woman and smiled. Her concerned voice brought him out of his thoughts and back to the moment. Behind her, the potting shed loomed against the night sky, its dark opening reminding him of what lay in the shadows just beyond the doorway. Another shiver poked at the underside of his skin.

At around 9:30 this evening, when Glen got into his police cruiser after a late-night lunch break at Nana’s Diner, he noticed a thin sheen of frost had formed on the windshield. It was a subtle sign that Pennsylvania weather was about to throw its first punches of the year. Being the Chief of Police meant that when the mess came, he was sure to be waist-deep in car wrecks, stranded motorists, and a full buffet of other emergencies the snow season brought to the table. A frosted windshield on a cold November evening was a clear indicator of what would soon come this way.

He exhaled a long sigh. A cloud of condensation escaped his mouth in the frosty night air. He thought about getting out to scrape the glass, then vetoed the idea. The only thing he’d had planned for the remaining few hours of his shift was to sit at his favorite speed trap along Route 31 and listen to an audiobook. A few extra minutes in Nana’s parking lot while the defroster worked on the glass wouldn’t matter much.

Several chilling moments passed before a subtle warmth began trickling through the defroster vents. It would be another ten minutes before the windshield cleared enough to see through safely. He had the time.

“Car #1. Dispatch. Over…” The static laced words of the station dispatcher crackled through the police radio speaker. A squelch of feedback followed her voice.

Glen reached for the mic and pressed the side button. “Car #1. Over…”

“Be advised of a 10-66, Suspicious Person, reported at 414 Township RD #4. Over…”

Suspicious Person? Glen didn’t think he’d ever received that call before. There were no suspicious people here. In most places in America, a call like this wouldn’t give pause to a police officer. But here? There were no strangers in Cumberland Springs. The residents here promptly deposed every new visitor as soon as they came to town. All information ascertained by these innocent depositions—covertly disguised as small talk—quickly passed along the various wires and communication avenues throughout the rest of the community, thus removing the stigma of stranger and allowing the newcomer to conduct their business free of scrutiny. Glen couldn’t remember the last time he’d even heard the word stranger used around here, if he’d ever heard it at all. The tourists never lingered long on their way through to the ski resort 15 miles up Route 31. Maybe a stop for gas and a bite to eat at Nana’s, but they never stuck around for more than an hour, unless, of course, there was an event going on in town. A stranger was something altogether uncommon.

And she said Township Road #4. There were only three houses out there. One was for sale, the other had been vacant for several years, and the third was—“Was that Mrs. Rolley who called in? Over…”

“Yes, Chief, it was. Over…”

“Shit,” Glen said without activating the mic.

“She said a strange man is sleeping in the garden shed behind her house. Over…”

Glen stared at the frozen windshield, contemplating what he had just heard. A stranger in Mrs. Rolley’s garden shed? It took him a few seconds to realize it, but he was smiling. He had to think about it, though, this odd grin on his face. Where did it come from? As his thoughts dug deeper through the catalog of reasons, he came up with two: First, had he been so bored with life lately and so void of excitement that the thought of confronting a person unknown had awakened his sense of adventure? Could this be a fugitive on the run? A bank robber? Someone on the FBI’s most-wanted list? Those were all possibilities. Of course, it could also be a drunk from town who stumbled out there to sleep one off, and she simply didn’t recognize him (the most plausible explanation). The second reason for this unexpected grin—and probably the real reason—was that he knew the old garden shed on Mrs. Rolley’s property and knew it well. He had spent most of his childhood summers playing in that shed with her sons, Michael and Lucas. When the dispatcher mentioned the shed, a flood of memories washed over him. He could feel the warm July sun on his skin and could hear the laughter of the two best friends he’d ever had, cracking jokes and wrestling with each other on freshly cut grass. The garden shed was their clubhouse and the center of the universe for those unforgettable years, the years mostly everyone has and reflects upon often when adult life isn’t going well (what we wouldn’t give to go back for just one day). Glen now understood his smile and embraced it like an old friend.

“Chief? Over…”

The voice harshly snapped him back to reality. “Yeah Lindsay, I’m on my way out there now. Over…”

The frost had melted away in two oval patterns close to the dashboard. Not full visibility, but there was enough space to see through if he leaned forward. Glen had pulled people over in the past for doing this very thing, but they weren’t on official police business.

When he arrived at Mrs. Rolley’s home moments later, she was on the porch, arms crossed, face stern, like a century standing guard. “He hasn’t come out of there yet, or made any attempt to,” she said as Glen approached from the walkway. In her right hand, she held the grip of a nickel-plated revolver, which may have been a .38. Even though she was a small-framed woman in her seventies who couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds, she clearly wasn’t afraid to take on anyone who trespassed against her.

Glen smiled and tried not to sound condescending. “I’ll handle this, Mrs. Rolley. I think it's safe for you to put your gun back in the house.”

She looked down at the pistol in her hand and laughed. “My home defense. You know I’m out here all by myself, Glen.” She hugged him and kissed his cheek as he joined her on the porch. “You don’t visit me enough.”

“You don’t visit me at all,” he said and rustled her hair.

“You know I don’t get out much.”

“Well you should,” Glen said. “It’s not good to spend so much time by yourself. You’ll get weird.”

Mrs. Rolley was alone out here on this dark stretch of Township Road #4. Her dear husband Jim, of forty-seven years, exited ground level while sitting in his favorite La-Z-Boy by way of a cardiac arrest in the middle of Monday Night Football—Steelers vs. Ravens—five years ago. The entire community felt the loss when Jim Rolley passed. He had devoted his life to serving the people of Cumberland Springs by organizing events, attending church, belonging to the Masons, Lions, Rotary… If there was an event going on in this town, Jim Rolley had probably helped put it together.

Her eldest son Michael worked as a history teacher and lived in Florida, around St. Augustine. No one understood why Michael had moved clear down there. He could make the same living much closer to home, plus he’d had no family issues to speak of that would have pushed him to move so far. People stopped asking about him a few years ago, assuming he just didn’t feel at home in Cumberland Springs anymore.

Then there was Lucas, the Rolley’s youngest son. One of the saddest stories in local history. Most accepted the “Natural Causes” theory as the truth and have lived with it all these years. But there are those who never could digest that explanation, choosing to believe something more sinister was in play. Whatever the case, they found Lucas Rolley dead in Charlie Martin’s barn on a sultry August night in 1989 at the tender age of eleven. Mrs. Rolley tries her best not to think about it, and most folks have the decency not to bring it up.

She did as Glen had asked and went into the house to stow the pistol back on the nightstand beside her bed. As soon as she was inside, Glen proceeded around the back of the house to the garden shed.

The house, a well built two-story cape cod, sat on the front side of seven acres. Mr. Rolley had poured a cement walkway years ago from the front porch to the mailbox and pull-off where Glen’s patrol car sat now. Two large silver maple trees stood on each side of the walk, close to the road. Luckily, the power lines were across the road, so they didn't have to worry about the utility company butchering their beautiful trees.

Township Road #4 rolled past the front of the place but rarely saw much traffic. There were only two other residences out this way, and one of them had been empty for years. It was a nice, secluded place, but a little too far removed for a widow living alone. And definitely too far out of town for someone to wander out here aimlessly.

The garden shed seemed way more dilapidated than it did when Glen was a kid, leaning to the left and looking like it could collapse if you were to even slightly lean against it. The wooden slats which made up the exterior walls were sun-faded, split, and barely holding onto the frame. A garden that had once surrounded the shed was now a fenced-in courtyard of tall grass, briars, and various other iron weeds. Luckily, the old brick path leading from the house into the garden was enough to keep the weeds at bay, giving Glen clear access to the structure.

With each step closer, his mind opened doors to memories he hadn’t experienced in years, filling his heart with a warmth he happily embraced on this cold November evening. To Glen, this run-down old shack would forever be the clubhouse of the Cumberland Springs Adventure Society, the base of operations where he, Michael, and Lucas had planned out the expeditions they’d undertaken throughout the town and surrounding areas. Like the caves on Indian Hill that moonshiners had once stored their secret inventory in during prohibition, or the empty Walton Foundry, which had closed down in the 1960s, or the brick coke oven’s that once refined coal into coke and creosote oil for the steel mills of Pittsburgh and had dotted the hills throughout the region—none of which had been operational since the great depression of the 1930s. This area of Braddock County was vastly populated with natural caves, old railroad tunnels, and abandoned structures from industries that had long since moved on and left their skeletal remains, offering a virtual treasure map for adventure-seeking young boys to challenge their imaginations and pique their curiosities. Sadly, it was one of those adventures that had led Lucas out to Charlie Martin’s barn alone the night he died.

But now was not the time to revisit the past. An unknown individual apparently lay behind the door in front of him, and only God knew his intentions. Glen needed to focus. After all, if this was a homicidal maniac on the FBI’s most-wanted list, he didn’t want to get caught with his flag out in the wind.

The door seemed to fall open and almost slip away from its rusty hinges. When it hit the side of the shed, it made a sound like wooden boards being thrown onto a pile. Glen meant to shine his long-handled flashlight into the entrance as the door came open, but something had knocked him back and almost brought him to his knees. It wasn’t a solid force throwing him backward, but a wall of horrific, vile odor, like the lid of a septic tank being flung open in his face. He had instinctively taken a deep breath as the door opened, allowing millions of tiny stench molecules to flood his lungs as he inhaled, shocking his throat and sinuses. Suddenly, all he could muster were quick gasps as his body tried to block any more of the repugnant filth from getting into his lungs.

“I forgot to tell you about that,” Mrs. Rolley said from behind him. “He must have been shitting up a storm in there.”

Glen pushed past her to put some distance between himself and the potting shed. He was going to be sick if he didn’t get clean air into his lungs immediately. A raging river of shit had now washed away the childhood memories he’d so fondly recollected before opening the door.

“Want me to get you a towel to hold over your nose?” Mrs. Rolley called out. Glen was bent over in the middle of the weed-choked garden, trying to force as much air into his lungs as he could fit. He held up one hand and waved it, letting her know he just needed a minute. In reality, a minute would not help; it would take a lifetime to wash this smell from his memory.

Mrs. Rolley went into the house and came back a few moments later with a damp dishtowel. “You’ll have to hold this over your face when you go in there.”

He took the towel and wiped his face. It had a fresh linen smell, plus it was cool and damp. On this cold November evening, Glen Crawford was sweating as if it were the middle of July.

He continued taking deep breaths and looking back at the door to the shed, which still looked like it could fall off its hinges at any second. He had to find out who was trespassing in there; it was his job. But the thought of having that disgusting odor pass through his nostrils again made his stomach convulse.

After a few hard moments of contemplation, Glen gained as much composure as his constitution would allow. He held up his flashlight, put the towel over his nose and mouth, and boldly trekked back to the shed. The towel worked well, to his surprise, allowing him to breathe enough to at least peek his head through the entrance. The sight on the other side of the doorway, however, was one he would try—and fail—to forget for the rest of his life.

The shed had changed little since the last time he had been inside, some thirty years ago. Rusty shovels and assorted gardening tools hung on pegs along the walls. The workbench Mr. Rolley had built himself remained intact, still covered with dozens of orange terra-cotta pots. The motor-less reel mower that Glen, Michael, and Lucas attempted to cut grass with—never successfully—stood rusting away in the far corner. Also leaning in the far corner by the mower was a long rectangular sign with red child-like hand-painted letters. It read: CUMBERLAND SPRINGS ADVENTURE SOCIETY. The place looked as if it were still the summer of 1989, and the Society was about to meet to prepare for their next adventure. The only thing strange and out of place was a mass of something in the middle of the dirt floor.

Glen focused his flashlight beam, trying to determine what he was looking at. He knew there was supposed to be a man in here, but this seemed like nothing more than an old tarp with maybe a few tools underneath. He shined the beam around the room again. There was no sign of a man. The guy couldn’t be hiding under the tarp; the bulge didn’t look big enough to conceal a human being. He assumed the trespasser must have run off after Mrs. Rolley had discovered him. Although, what about the stench? There were no piles of feces in the room that he could see from the flashlight beam. The only place left to look would be under the tarp. And if the guy had left a giant pile as a gift for letting him stay in her shed, Glen had no interest in opening it.

“I guess he took off,” Glen said as he backed out of the doorway. His voice muffled through the towel held firmly to his face.

“What are you talking about, Glen?” Mrs. Rolley said. “He’s right there, behind you!”

Glen spun around quickly toward the open door. He dropped the towel from his face while reaching for his sidearm. “Where?” He shouted. The room looked the same as it had seconds before.

“Right there!” Mrs. Rolley exclaimed. She was pointing at the tarp on the floor in the center of the shed.

Glen removed his hand from his weapon, then picked up the dish towel and put it back over his face. “There’s no one under there. I can tell from here just by looking at the shape of it. Whoever you stumbled upon has run off. I’ll look around the property to make sure he’s not still lurking around. I’ll bet he’s long gone by now.”

“You’re not listening to me, young man!” She scolded him. “I found him under that tarp. I hadn’t been out here since Jim died, but I had a few boxes that needed storing, so I figured I’d put them in this old shed. The smell was so bad I thought I was going to keel over right as I opened the door. When I lifted the tarp… well… You just have a look for yourself.”

Glen looked into Mrs. Rolley's eyes. The woman wasn’t lying, though he’d never known her to do such a thing, anyway. There was only one thing left to do, and he wasn’t at all excited to do it.

Like ripping off a band-aid, he grabbed one corner of the dirty canvas tarp and flung it out of the way, exposing the hidden object underneath. The sight made him gasp in shock and back away as quickly as his body would allow. Mrs. Rolley wasn’t mistaken. There was a person under there, but a person by definition only. This thing didn’t look like any human Glen had ever seen.

Loose wrinkled skin hung over bones like worn curtains on a bent rod. He couldn’t have weighed more than 80 pounds. Glen could tell it was a he because all he was wearing was a torn t-shirt; the man was completely naked from the waist down. The body lay curled in the fetal position over a bed of excrement—now explaining the source of the smell. His flesh was pallid and covered in sores of various shapes and sizes. The fingernails and toenails, which were black, chipped, and rotted, hadn’t been clipped back in quite a while, and a few of them were torn off. One eye rested halfway open, exposing a deep black, fully dilated pupil, while the other, also black and dilated, bulged partially out of the socket. There was nothing even remotely resembling life behind the gaze of either eye. Glen wasn’t a medical examiner or a paramedic but felt strongly enough to say to himself: This fucker is dead!

He stepped out of the shed and headed for his patrol car. For the first time in his life, he felt faint.

TWO

THE SOLID DARKNESS OF THE MAN’S BULGING EYE grew even more revolting as it gazed out into nothing. It didn’t seem possible that life could have ever existed behind the black marble in the sunken socket. If the eye is the window to the soul, as they say, that part of him looked as though someone had viciously ripped it out decades ago. If this thing winks at me, I’ll run screaming like a twelve-year-old girl, Glen thought. But it didn’t wink. It didn’t flicker, move, or twitch. It remained still and black and lifeless.

Glen didn’t realize it at first, but he had been in a sort of mild trance, staring into the dark gaze of this thing on the ground in front of him. After a moment, he closed his eyes, shook his head, and ran his hands down his face to refresh himself. Things of this nature rarely bothered him—all part of the job—but up to this point, the job had never dumped a half decimated corpse into the middle of his childhood clubhouse.

At first glance, there didn’t appear to be any wounds, save for the myriad of open sores and chipped fingernails. The medical examiner could determine a cause of death in more detail after his exam, or autopsy if he deemed one to be necessary. Glen’s opinion currently leaned toward death due to self-neglect. Maybe he was a junkie who somehow stumbled his way into Mrs. Rolley’s shed, passed out, then took his final journey to the great beyond out here, an occurrence so rare in Cumberland Springs he couldn’t recall a similar instance. Except maybe for the time when Harold Ransier went missing overnight, and they found his body in the cemetery, frozen to a bench by his wife’s grave. Harold didn’t have a very pleasant look on his face that frosty January morning, but it was nothing compared to the face staring up at Glen tonight.

The towel he’d been holding over his nose and mouth had helped a bit with the smell, but it wouldn’t work well enough for him to stay in the shed much longer. As he stepped out of the doorway to get some air, he saw three men approaching through the weed-choked garden. The first was Larry Gilmore, one of his officers, and the other two were paramedics.

“Who called the medics?” Glen asked.

Larry shrugged his shoulders. “I guess Lindsay did?”

“I did,” Mrs. Rolley spoke up through the rag she held across her face.

Glen smiled with a hint of sarcasm. “Thank you, dear. You’re very helpful.”

As they continued toward the shed, the repugnant odor tickled their nostrils lightly. The three adult faces looked puzzled at first, then became increasingly more repulsed with each step closer. Larry slowed to a stop, as did the medics behind him, about 15 feet from where Glen stood. None of them spoke. They stared, confused, waiting for him to explain this horrifying scent filtering into their senses.

Glen’s voice sounded muffled through the white towel held against his nose and mouth. “Trust me guys, it’s worse than you think.”

“Hang on a second,” one medic said. He turned and headed back around the house to the ambulance parked out front. A few moments later, he returned with a small can of white paste. He took a generous dab on his finger, spread it under his nose, then passed the can around to everyone else. The rest of the men followed his lead. Miraculously, the smell of fresh pine now masked the terrible odor of feces.

The three congregated around Glen at the doorway of the potting shed like football players waiting for instructions from their coach. A look of hesitation and concern showing on all of their faces, resembling an almost childlike fear of an unknown nightmare that might lurk behind the door of a dark closet. Glen paused for a few seconds—mostly for dramatic effect. “Before you head in there, I’ll tell you it’s pretty bad. No, it’s more than that, it’s flat out disgusting! There’s an emaciated body on the floor that’s been lying in a pile of his own shit for God knows how long. I know we’re all trained to deal with things like this, but sometimes reality can throw you back on your heels. This one has definitely tossed me back on mine.”

Each man nodded in acknowledgment.

Glen stepped out of the way, fully exposing the dark opening of the structure. The two medics looked at each other as if playing a silent game of rock-paper-scissors, neither emerging the victor. Finally, Glen handed his long-handled flashlight to the taller of the two, silently choosing who would be the first through the door. The medic took the baton with a visible amount of apprehension, turned on the light, and slowly passed through the entrance. His partner followed closely behind. After a minute or two of silence, Glen heard the rustle of the canvas tarp. “Jesus Christ!”

Larry jumped when he heard the shout. “Is it that bad in there, Glen?” His boyish face and concerned expression reminded Glen of his son, Brandon, when the boy gets scared. Brandon didn’t like to admit it as he was cruising through his teenage years, but an open closet door in a dark bedroom still scared the shit out of him.

“Hell, Larry,” Glen said. “Other than a few of the car accidents I’ve responded to in the past, this is top of the list.” He put a hand on Larry’s shoulder. “The area is secure, and the medics can handle getting him out. You don’t have to go in there if you don’t want to.”

The young officer swallowed a mouth full of pasty dry saliva and looked past Glen at the doorway. He had only been a member of the Cumberland Springs Police Department for six months now, and although he'd seen a few gruesome training films, he had not responded to a situation like this up close. He and Glen both knew it was time.

Larry was another one of those lifelong Cumberland Springs residences—the ones who could trace their family back over a hundred years and were proud to run down their genealogy with anyone who’d give them a minute to do it. Each generation never moved farther than a block away from the last, and all seemed to share the same traits: community servants; church on Sunday at First Baptist; volunteers at every cookout, barbecue, street fair, fireman’s parade, church bazaar, pumpkin festival and 4th of July picnic this town could think up. At twenty-two years of age, Larry was right on course to be the man his family, and everyone else who knew him, imagined he would be.

When the young man chose the law enforcement field, he understood it would entail more than just parking tickets and speed traps, but up to this point in his career, that’s all there had been. Well, there was that bar fight between Nester Wade and Jim Phillips last month at Stoney’s, which he attempted—and failed—to break up. That one landed him a sizable ink blotch covering the left half of his face for the better part of a week. The two respectable citizens were putting on such a good show in the parking lot that no one in the crowd wanted to stop the main event. Larry had been patrolling the midnight shift when he happened upon a large cheering crowd in the gravel lot of Old Stoney’s Tavern on Route 31. When he tried to get in the middle of the two gladiators, one of them—probably Nester, but he couldn’t be sure—cold-cocked him and laid him flat out. After the dust cleared and everyone had scattered, Glen went by their homes and brought the two men to the station to face charges.

The scene inside the old potting shed tonight, however, was going to leave a mark on Larry that would last much longer than the shiner he received from fight night at Old Stoney’s.

THREE

RONNIE MILLER STOOD AT THE DARK ENRTRANCE of the decrepit potting shed, contemplating his next step. The flashlight Chief Crawford had given him cast a brighter than average beam, but not enough to see much from his position. The darkness seemed to swallow the light and digest it before it could illuminate anything inside.

This apprehension felt strange to Ronnie. It was just a simple body pickup; what could go wrong? But there was something in Chief Crawford’s eyes telling him there was much more going on inside this small room than his words had let on. The hair on the back of Ronnie’s neck stood and danced.

The stare from the other three men began drilling a hole into the back of Ronnie’s head. It was time to get moving. One deep breath, a silent countdown from three, and he set off to the races, breaking through the darkness, crushing his fear like an aluminum can. The sudden burst of confidence surprised him. He felt bold and empowered. The boost of courage and excitement put a large, self-assuring smile on his face—a smile which faded as quickly as it had emerged.

After his valiant charge across the threshold, Ronnie focused his flashlight beam on the faded gray tarp in the center of the room. At first, it didn’t seem possible that a human being was at rest under there; the shape was way too small, no larger than a bag of mulch or sack of fertilizer. But that’s where Officer Crawford had said to look. He stepped around to the other side of the tarp, grabbed one of the loose corners, and, with a quick pull, yanked it off of the object, letting canvas material fall beside him with the flare of a matador’s cape.

Initially, he didn’t know what he was looking at. The exposed figure had human features, but its condition was so extreme it seemed artificial, almost comical. Ronnie thought of the full-size plastic skeletons his ex-wife used to decorate their front porch with on Halloween—the older trick or treaters found them funny, but they put a good scare into the toddlers. He stared at the figure for a moment in the light of the shaky flashlight beam. It didn't take long to realize this was not a plastic Halloween decoration. A sensation coursed through Ronnie’s body, letting him know fight-or-flight mechanisms were engaging. He attempted to fall back on his training to remain calm—find a happy thought, cycle through baseball stats, list his favorite movies. But the harder he tried to send his mind to a better place, the more his emotions worked to force him back into the moment. Finally, all calming efforts failed, leaving him to the mercy of a pure gut reaction: “JESUS CHRIST!”

“Hey! Take it easy,” his partner, Devon, spoke up from behind. “You can’t blow your stack like that at a scene.”

Ronnie turned and shined the flashlight beam on Devon’s face. Devon was in business mode, stern and serious. He must have found that happy place Ronnie had failed to locate a moment before.

“I’m sorry,” Ronnie said, tilting his head down. “I got caught off guard.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Don’t lose your shit here. We have a job to do.” Devon took the flashlight from Ronnie’s hand and walked around the body, examining it from all sides, but staying a safe distance from the fecal mattress it rested upon. He shook his head in revulsion, not taking his eyes off of it. “We’re about to get dirty.”

Ronnie volunteered to run back to the ambulance for the battery-powered emergency lights, leaving his partner alone with the body. The two cops outside seemed content to stay right where they were.

Devon could have gone to work on the body right away, but with only the thin beam from one flashlight, he was sure his hands would end up in muck. He was the shorter of the two men at five-foot-ten, but he was much stronger and more experienced at handling traumatic situations than his partner. He’d spent two years in the Iraq War as a Marine Corps Medic—on-the-job training that prepared him for anything life could throw his way. His build was lean and mean, a result of a highly motivated personal training regimen which started the second his feet hit the floor each morning.

In stark contrast to Devon, Ronnie stood tall and lanky. Six-foot-four, skin and bones. Not by his own doing. He had consumed at least three to four thousand calories per day from the time he was a teenager. They said he had one of those fast-burning metabolisms, kind of like a rabbit. He was also very good at his job, though not as stern about it as his partner.

Devon could see cracks of light coming from Mrs. Rolley’s back porch spotlights peeking through the wooden slat walls, which were nothing more than barn siding, probably reused from a structure that had long ago fallen down. Shining the flashlight around the room, he saw rusted tools, metal fence posts, rolls of garden fence, broken pots, and several other nondescript items that hadn’t been used in years. Something in the corner among the rusted metal and faded wooden handles caught his eye. Leaning next to an old bladed push mower was a long rectangular sign with peeling red letters. Devon walked over to where the sign had rested for what might have been decades. He picked it up and wiped away countless layers of dust with his left hand. After several swipes, he was able to make out a hand-painted phrase: “Cumberland Springs Adventure Society.” It had to have been painted by a child; the lettering almost looked like something from a cartoon. The sign looked so old, Devon imagined whoever painted these letters was likely a grandfather by now.

A loud crashing noise came from behind, causing him to drop the sign. It was Ronnie, bringing the work light tripod through the doorway. The dilapidated door had finally let loose from its hinges and fell to the ground. Devon thought the entire building was crumbling down around him. “What are you trying to do, level the place?” He scolded Ronnie.

“I can’t help that the fucking door fell off! I barely bumped it!” Ronnie snapped back. Devon didn’t reply. There was no sense in having a disagreement in front of two police officers and the shit covered corpse.

Ronnie worked on setting up the lights while Devon figured out how to get the body prepped and ready to move. Both men knew this was going to be a nightmare extraction. Not only did they have to deal with the cramped space of the old shed, but excrement covered the subject of tonight's event from head to foot. Devon considered getting the bright yellow raincoats from the back of the ambulance. At least they could rinse those off quickly after moving the patient. The denim EMS jackets they currently wore would take forever to clean if any of this guy’s matter ended up on them. There was also the gurney; they’d have to wrap it in plastic before they could use it to transport the body. It didn’t matter how many precautions they took tonight, though, Devon and Ronnie both knew they'd be going home with shit on them somewhere.

After a few moments of blind fumbling and colorful cursing, Ronnie finally got the work lights in place. He hit the switch, flooding the shed with bright fluorescent light. It was cold and made the room resemble the inside of a refrigerator. Now that the light had fully illuminated the body, both men could see how unusual and disturbing the situation actually was.

Devon went to work right away, being as cautious as he could to avoid the mess. He wrapped a blood pressure cuff around the body’s left arm, which was so thin the cuff went around three times before it was secure enough to fill with air. Though the guy looked as dead as a rat in a three-day-old trap, policy dictated they check all vital signs at the scene before transporting a body. There was no room for error. He squeezed the black rubber ball attached to the cuff several times, filling it full of air, then opened the release valve to let off the pressure. As he had expected, the needle on the circular gauge did not move. Next, he held the end of his stethoscope to the arm below the cuff to listen for a pulse. There was no sound. As far as he could tell, the man was dead.

Devon looked up at Ronnie and shook his head solemnly. Ronnie acknowledged and lowered his eyes. Officer Crawford’s initial assessment of the body was correct. The man who had come to rest under an old tarp in the potting shed of an elderly widow was indeed deceased. Devon rose to his feet and stood next to Ronnie.

“Raincoats?” Ronnie asked.

Devon let out a slight laugh. “I was thinking the same thing a few minutes ago.”

“I’ll Radio Ed to bring them up. He shouldn’t be exempt from getting his hands dirty.” Ronnie was talking about Ed Martin, the ambulance driver. Ed had been bitching about his back for months now, so he pretty much stayed in the truck during every call, eating chips and smoking cigarettes.

“What the—” Devon exclaimed suddenly. The two words came out slow and soft. He was looking at the body. “Did you hear that?”

Ronnie stared at the body as well. “I heard something.”

“Tell me what you heard,” Devon said.

“Ok, well…” Ronnie seemed to be at a loss for words, which was unusual for him.

Devon interrupted Ronnie’s stammer. “I heard a gasp.”

“Yeah, I thought I heard that, too,” Ronnie said. “Could it just be the corpse expelling gas?”

Devon’s eyes opened as wide as his lids would allow. “Not if the chest is moving up and down. Look!”

Both medics stared in shock accompanied by fear as they witnessed the same impossibility. The body on the floor, which looked to be dead by all appearances, was breathing. Nothing else on it moved, only a subtle rise and fall of the rib cage. It wasn’t doing that a minute ago, but neither could deny that it was happening now.

FOUR

“CHIEF CRAWFORD?” a medic called out from inside the shed. The voice lacked any vestige of confidence.

Glen turned and headed inside. He didn’t ask Larry to follow, leaving the choice up to him.

Kneeling on either side of the body, doing their best not to genuflect in the mess surrounding it, were two very confused paramedics. A blood pressure sleeve squeezed the body’s left arm and the shorter medic held a stethoscope to its chest. The taller medic stood up and approached the chief. He shook his head and looked back at the scene on the floor. The young man’s mouth was open, but he couldn’t seem to speak.

Glen gave him a rigid look. “Do you have something to say, Ronnie?” It was easy for Glen to be stern with Ronnie; he had gone to High School with the kid’s mother and had known his family for as long as he could remember.

“Well… yeah, but I really don’t know how to say it.”

“Spit it out,” Glen said. He was becoming curt, not so much because of Ronnie’s behavior—he understood the situation would cause everyone to be off their rails a bit—but because he was over this night already. Getting the body out of here so he could fill out his report, burn his clothes, go home, and take a two-day shower was all Glen wanted to do now. Plus, he imagined he’d have some sort of nightmare trigger from this shit smell for the rest of his life, a thought that didn’t sit well with him at the moment.

“He's not dead,” Ronnie said.

Glen heard a gagging sound blurt out from behind him. Larry had taken a peek over his shoulder into the shack. Now he was stumbling around Mrs. Rolley’s garden, bent over, dropping the contents of his stomach.

“You didn’t say what I think you just said?” Glen asked.

“Yes, Chief. I’m saying he’s not dead. We’ve got a faint pulse and extremely low blood pressure. Plus, he just started breathing on his own.”

“The fucker has rigor mortis! I tried to move his arm. He’s as stiff as that statue of General Braddock in the center of town!” Glen realized he was yelling for no reason, other than being unable to control his disbelief.

“We’re going to wrap the stretcher in plastic, then get him to the ambulance. I can’t imagine he’ll even survive the trip to Memorial,” Ronnie said, lowering his eyes.

A tinge of guilt crept into Glen’s heart for reacting so strongly to the news. Even if the man had put himself in this condition, he was still a human being who deserved care and respect. Who knows, maybe he hadn’t done this to himself? The possibility someone may have put him here still existed. Perhaps they wanted him out of the picture, found a quiet spot, then left him for dead. Glen shivered at the thought. Those things happen in other parts of the world, not in Cumberland Springs.

He entered the shed once more to watch over the medics, mostly out of morbid curiosity. The white paste under his nose had worn off, allowing putrid odor to penetrate his sinuses once again. The emergency floodlights set up by the medics had cast deceptively eerie shadows around every part of the room. As his eyes scanned the walls and corners, they came to rest on the old sign with the red-painted letters. Thirty years ago, the Cumberland Springs Adventure Society, with all their weird tales and mysteries, could have never imagined an event like this, and in their own private clubhouse!

FIVE

THE OVERSIZED YELLOW RAINCOATS made a crackling noise as Ronnie and Devon put them on, the distinctive sound of vinyl sticking to itself. After suiting up, they wrapped the gurney in clear plastic—more crackling—while the two police officers stood by and supervised. There wasn’t much the officers could do—or wanted to do—to help at this point.

“If we don’t clean this guy before loading him, we’re never going to make it to Memorial without throwing up,” Ronnie said. There was probably a protocol written somewhere, for instances such as this. Neither of them could think of it now.

Using the disposable shop towels that were stashed in the emergency bag in the back of the ambulance, they did the best they could to clean off the man’s body before carefully loading him onto the stretcher, hoping to ease at least some of the odor that would ride along to the hospital with them.

The patient was so light that one of them could have easily lifted him without a struggle. But with the Chief of police watching over them, there was no room for error. If had they accidentally dropped the poor bastard, it would definitely make it into the police report. Neither of his arms or legs moved as they lifted his fragile body onto the stretcher. He remained grotesquely locked in the fetal position, staring at them with his dark, bulging eye as they did their work.

“Are you sure your equipment is working properly?” Chief Crawford said as they wheeled the stretcher past him. “This guy looks as dead as Abe Lincoln!” Both medics paused and glared at the chief with slight contempt. Glen could tell his remark had disturbed them; he didn’t push them any further.

Ed Martin rested his fat ass on the back bumper of the ambulance, smoking a cigarette while Ronnie and Devon struggled to push the gurney down the backside of Mrs. Rolley’s house. The concrete pavers Mr. Rolley had used to create this sidewalk some time back in the 1970s were now cracked, broken, and bulging, making it nearly impossible to navigate the stretcher. Ed took a deep drag from his smoke, not paying much attention to his fellow medics.

“A little help would be nice,” Ronnie shouted. Ed mumbled something in reply, pointing to his back. He was a good sixty pounds overweight and about as useful as sore tits. The only time you could get Ed Martin moving was when it was time to clock out for the shift change. Accompanying his overweight frame was a greasy, dark head of hair and an out-of-fashion Fu Manchu mustache. Ed often boasted about how, “Chicks love ‘the stache,’” but no one had ever actually seen him with a woman.

After a few harrowing moments navigating the gurney over the misshapen sidewalk—and one near spill—Ronnie and Devon arrived at the back of the ambulance with the man who they had now named John Doe. Cliche, yes, but calling him “the body” as the chief had been doing seemed morbid. Ed stood up and flicked his cigarette butt into Mrs. Rolley’s front lawn. “That thing stinks! I hope you’re going to clean it off before you load it in here.”

“That thing is a human being, Ed,” Devon scolded. “He’s a living human being.”

Ed stepped closer to the gurney for a curious look. “That don’t look like no livin’ human being to me. Are you sure you checked him out right?”

“Just get in the fucking truck and shut up, Ed!” Ronnie snapped.

With one solid heave from the back, the wheels folded under, and the gurney slid smoothly into the ambulance. Ronnie and Devon jumped in behind and slammed the doors shut.

Cold antiseptic light illuminated the back of the ambulance, eliminating all shadows, fully exposing the medics to a better understanding of what they were dealing with. John Doe’s condition in this new light shocked them even more than what they had seen in the shed. They looked at each other over the body in unified disbelief.

John Doe’s flesh had no color to it, only a cold, pale gray tone that resembled elephant skin. His mouth was open enough to show chipped and broken teeth, which pulled away from the gum line—it also had no color. Devon shined a light inside Doe’s mouth for a closer look and found a repulsive black tongue with no trace of moisture. The sores covering his body were open, seeping, and severely infected. There were traces of parasitism in the open wounds, but neither of the two wanted to think about that at the moment.

Ronnie spread a sheet out over John Doe’s body and pulled it up to his neck. It would be easier to ride out the rest of the trip if they didn’t have to look at this nightmare.

“Do I need to hit the lights?” Ed said, as he lumbered into the driver's seat.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Ronnie said.

They radioed the hospital and received instructions from the E.R. Doctor: Start an IV drip and keep the patient stable during transport. There were no further instructions.

“This goddamn truck is going to smell for a month!” Ed said from the front cab. Ronnie and Devon didn’t acknowledge him.

They had been on the road for only a few minutes when Ronnie had noticed a strange look about his partner. He couldn’t put his finger on it precisely, but Devon’s demeanor seemed off. His face was pale, and he was sweating and nervously looking around the cab.

“Hey buddy, you okay?” Ronnie said. “Devon? You okay?”

Devon didn’t answer. He continued looking around and becoming more intense. His breathing was labored, as if he’d just run a forty-yard dash. Ronnie knew his partner had been a corpsman in the Marine Corps during the Iraq War and had seen some very extreme events. Perhaps tonight’s situation had triggered something in him?

“Devon, you need to chill,” Ronnie said as he reached to put his hand on Devon’s shoulder. “You look like you’re about to freak.”

“There’s something in here with us!” Devon said in a voice just above a whisper. He sounded terrified.

Ronnie stared at him over John Doe’s body. Devon was still looking around the cab in every direction, pale-faced and sweating even more now. “Yes, Devon, that something is a someone and we’re taking him to the hospital.”

“Not him!” Devon scolded. “Can’t you feel it? There’s something in here with us!”

“Dev, you’re flipping. Once we get to Memorial, maybe you should sit in the coffee shop for a while.”

Devon became even more intense. His eyes looked twice their normal size, like they could burst from the sockets at any moment. He kept turning his head in all directions, as if he was trying to focus on something that was flying around the back of the ambulance.

This change in his partner made Ronnie nervous, not because he saw whatever Devon had claimed to see, but because he needed him to stay focused and professional from the incident scene all the way to the hospital. Their jobs—and a life—depended on it.

Devon lost control. He swatted Ronnie’s hand as he reached out to calm him and began screaming, “My God! It’s here! Don’t you see? Right here!” He jumped toward the back, and Ronnie instinctively lunged after him, stopping him before he could open the door. There was hardly any room for this wrestling match to take place in the ambulance's compartment. As they struggled, both men fell across the gurney onto John Doe.

“What the hell are you assholes doing back there?” Ed yelled from the front.

“Stop the truck, Ed!” Ronnie yelled. He was doing his best to restrain his panicking partner, but Devon wasn’t an easy one to hold down. “Stop the fucking truck!”

“We’re pulling up the drive to the hospital now. Just hang on for a second.”

“We don’t have a sec—”

Devon caught Ronnie right between the eyes with a hard elbow. Ronnie saw stars, lost the grip he’d had on Devon’s shoulders, and flew backward, landing face to face on top of John Doe. He jumped up quickly and reached back for Devon. It was too late. The back door was open, and all he could see was the silhouette of his partner running into the darkness, screaming as he ran.

SIX

THE WEATHER IN THIS PART of Pennsylvania during November is highly unpredictable, which is in stark contrast to the other eleven months. Seasons change with almost clock-like regularity around here, and one can accurately predict temperatures with the simple purchase of a Farmer’s Almanac, but in the eleventh month on the calendar, all bets are off. Many of the older residences have superstitious theories for why November is so erratic. Bill Harper, a local usually found wasting time and hanging around La Chance Hardware in the afternoons, says it’s because of an Indian curse. He believes they’re pissed off about the first Thanksgiving, and they want us all to remember that we’d have never made it through the winter if it hadn’t been for them. Lisa Avalon’s grandmother, Mable, says the crazy weather has something to do with a murdered girl from back in the mid-1800s. She went missing around this time of year. The girl’s spirit apparently comes back and stirs things up for a month (she doesn’t have a theory about why the spirit doest this). Then there are the scientific types who talk about wind patterns and low-pressure systems caused by the Appalachian Mountains that surround Cumberland Springs. Whatever the case, it mattered little to Danielle Cunningham as she stood outside of the hospital emergency room entrance, attempting to light a cigarette. The wind almost seemed to laugh in her ear every time she sparked her disposable lighter without producing a flame.

She knew she shouldn’t smoke. The head ER nurse was supposed to set an example, not only to the nurses and staff, but to the patients as well. Also, years of nursing school and training gave her an extensive knowledge of what those evil things were doing to her body. But then there were nights like this. Late shift at a small town hospital. Doldrums, monotony, tedium… smoking herself to death seemed like a way better alternative than dying of boredom.

Finally, she had maneuvered her head away from the wind and low enough for the plastic lighter to torch up a small flickering flame. A tiny portion of the tip of her Marlboro caught before the flame petered out. Danielle puffed in rapid succession, trying to get the cigarette to a full blaze. She was excited when it finally caught all the way, knowing that thousands of toxins were about to surge through her lungs. She didn't care. The rich flavor and rush of nicotine made it all worth it.

Danielle squinted her eyes into the wind as a vehicle approached from the bottom of the hill. It was the ambulance that radioed about fifteen minutes ago. She had hoped for enough time to enjoy a smoke before they had arrived. Perhaps if she could have gotten it lit sooner? She was about to toss her cigarette and prepare by the door when she noticed the vehicle moving erratically, swerving and rocking back and forth. Before reaching the awning of the ER entrance, the back door flew open, and a man jumped out. He stumbled a bit, then took off running down the hill. He was yelling something she couldn’t quite make out. A second or two after, the ambulance stopped, and another paramedic jumped out of the back. He chased the first one for about fifty feet, then stopped and ran back up to the vehicle. She recognized the second as Ronnie Miller, a guy she’d kind of known from school.

“Give me a hand with this, Ed,” Ronnie shouted.

A heavy-set man in a medic uniform came out of the driver's side door. “I told you I have a bad back!” He yelled. Danielle couldn’t believe someone would actually grow a Fu Manchu mustache in this day and age.

She ran to the back of the ambulance and helped Ronnie unload the gurney. “What was that all about?” She asked. Ronnie didn’t answer.

Together, they pulled the gurney out, letting the wheels automatically spring from underneath. Danielle stopped dead in her tracks when it rolled completely out, and she was face to face with the patient for the first time. She covered her open mouth to keep from gasping at the sight.

“Come on! Let's get him inside,” Ronnie snapped at her.

Danielle and Ronnie pushed the gurney up to the automatic doors at the ER entrance. Another nurse and an orderly took the patient from them and rolled him the rest of the way inside. Danielle stood and watched as they navigated through the corridor and into the emergency room. “What the hell is going on here?” She said, but Ronnie had disappeared. She turned around and saw him getting into the passenger seat of the ambulance. A second later, the vehicle was rushing back down the hill.

Most nights at Cumberland Springs Memorial were quiet and uneventful. There was the occasional car accident which could stir things up, but the ER mostly would only populate with chest pains, high fevers, and stomach issues. Tonight was a new one for the books. A half-crazed paramedic running out into the middle of the night and a horrible-looking poster child from Night of the Living Dead strapped to a stretcher. Could it get any stranger than this?

Purchase Dire Harvest Book 1 ZLO at these fine bookstores: