The Onset

A Tale of Impending Doom

It had been quite the sight yesterday morning when the military jets flew over the farm. They had been in separate formations of three each as they roared over, very low and at full thrust, heading north. This was quite a sight too.

From high up in the loft of his barn, Will Hessler watched him come. He had first appeared as a dot on the northern horizon from more than a mile away on the pancake-flat land of central Illinois. The guy was coming straight down Old Tin Top Road, with waist-high soybeans on one side and tall corn on the other.

Now the man finally turned in and rode up the Hessler’s lane past the big maple trees that lined the drive up to his family’s farmhouse. Just easy as you please, like he was out for a Sunday ride. The stranger sat almost ramrod straight and pedaled along at an even pace.

His hair was matted and unkept. For some reason he was wearing a white plastic raincoat which flapped behind him as he rode. His face was dirty and haggard. A necktie flip-flapped raggedly over his shoulder.

Will was amazed at the surreal sight of him but also somewhat unnerved. His stomach fluttered and a certain undefined foreboding came over him. The jets had been troubling, but he thought that somehow, this may be even worse.

The bike’s front wheel was slightly off kilter or bent and it was wobbling a little, just adding to the way everything else was these days. At least for the last few days anyway, since the world had apparently been turned upside-down.

As the rider got closer, he stopped pedaling and just coasted. The man’s eyes never left the farmhouse. Sarah and the kids were inside, and Will watched him intently now. 

The stranger’s dress shoes were dusty and unlaced. What looked to be a very expensive pair of dress slacks was ripped at the knee. Will absently wondered why the man was still wearing his tie and he supposed that to some people, a tie is as standard as a pair of underwear.

The guy finally glided to a stop in the courtyard between the house and barn. He was the first person other than family that Will had seen since this whole thing started, whatever that was. The rider stood with both legs straddling the bike, an old-fashioned Schwinn with metal fenders over the wheels. A small swirl of dust wafted past him from his approach up the dirt lane. His eyes were still on the farmhouse.

“Hello stranger. How you doin’?” Will called out, as he stood up casually in the opening of the loft bay door. He had a bad premonition about this, but still couldn’t help being a little uplifted by finally seeing somebody. A small smile formed on Will’s face despite his trepidation.

“Got any food or water?” the man shouted, while quickly glancing around and trying to fix Will’s location.

It was then that Will saw the leather rifle strap under the raincoat, looped over the stranger’s shoulder and his smile melted away.

The man’s head swiveled from side to side trying to locate Will.

“I’m up here, and I asked how you were doing,” Will said with a flat, even voice that no longer held any welcome in it. He didn’t like the glimpse he got of the rifle strap, but even more worrisome was how the man had yelled. Not a scream really, but just a little too high-pitched. Almost unhinged.

The cyclist finally looked up and spotted Will standing in the loft.

“Look man, I’m in a hurry. How the hell does it look like I’m doing? There seems to be no damn people in downstate Illi-frickin’-ois, and the gas stations, rest stops and restaurants along the interstates are either closed or death traps. The only small town I rode into, I barely rode out of alive. Turns out small towns are just as dangerous as the big cities, just for different reasons. So, I’m doing the backroads thing and I’m hungry as hell. Once more Jethro, you got any food?”

He had talked so fast that Will wasn’t sure he hadn’t taken it all in. The words had come out all strung together and without pause. When he was done, the man looked at the ground for a moment as if gathering himself. Then he lifted his head with a calm but horrible smile. Without any warning, he had a short but violent coughing spell and spit out what looked to be stained in red. A string of it had clung to man’s unshaven chin.

Doing his best to ignore that, Will said, “No Jethro here. Name’s Hessler, Will Hessler. Where you from?”

“Okay, look, uh, I’m just…just hungry and thirsty,” he said and glanced over at the farmhouse again. The man’s shoulders then slumped. He shook his head back and forth slowly. “Fuck it.”

Getting off the bike, he let it clang to the ground, then reached around behind him and un-shouldered the leather strap. He swung what looked to be an old deer rifle around in front of him.

The gun was pointed down for now, but Will thought the guy’s eyes were shining too bright. There was a gleam to them that was just not natural. He was looking at a man who clearly was losing his grip or even worse, already had.

“Okay, so…okay, look. So, so, listen up here Bill, or Phil, or whatever the hell your name is. I haven’t got the patience for exchanging pleasantries and playing a game of twenty fucking questions here. Have you got anything or not?” The man’s voice had become louder with each word. His crazed eyes had also found and settled on Will’s Silverado parked just inside the barn, almost directly below where Will now stood.

“Well sure, I got food if you’re hungry, but where you from, mister, what’s your name?” Will did a quick sideways glance measuring the distance to where his Remington was leaning against a hay bale. He thought about chancing it but didn’t move.

“That truck dead, like everything else that’s electric or battery-powered? And how about the internet thing? Poof, gone, just like that.” The man had a more pleasant smile now, and his voice changed to a more normal tone, close to conversational. Like they were at a small diner drinking coffee and talking about needing rain, or asking how the crop yield was going to be this year.

Will started to say something but couldn’t find the words as he fought the panic rising in him. Time was running out here and he felt the need to do something but wasn’t sure what. The clock was ticking loud in his head though and all he could think about was Sarah and the girls. 

There was a long pause as the man looked down at the ground again waiting for Will to answer. It was perfectly still. No birds, no wind, no movement of any kind.

Startled by something, a dove flushed and fluttered up in the roof beams of the loft, settled and then fluttered again to an even higher spot. Will had almost been spooked into making a move for his gun right then, and he probably should have.

It was clear that there was no way to stop this confrontation. The air was thick with tension, just contributing to the already stagnant August day. No, this was not going to end well at all.

Finally, the man raised his head slowly. “Look asshole, in case you haven’t heard, the world is basically over as we knew it, or it’s getting there tout suite as the French say. I think you’ve had your final harvest Bucky so you can park the John Deere for good, okay?”

Will remained silent but ever so slightly leaned in the direction of his shotgun. He wasn’t really listening to the babble but watching the other man’s every move.

“So, who I am and where I’m from doesn’t mean a damn thing now, does it? And you know what else, Farmer Fred?” The man’s eyes were blazing like twin suns now as he stared up at the loft. “I don’t give a rat’s ass who you are, how many acres you have or how many generations your family’s been farming, or any other kind of happy shit.”

And having said that, the grinning Chicago Board of Trade executive who used to have grand visions of greatness, brought the rifle up in one clean motion. Quick and smooth, as if he were an old hat at this kind of thing.

Will froze for a split second, then lunged sideways, but he knew he had probably waited too long. He was gritting his teeth, waiting for the pain when he heard the sharp crack of the rifle. It was a matter of sheer luck that saved him, as the slug pinged and splintered the loft door frame just above where his head had been.

Grabbing his shotgun now, he heard the man below curse loudly. Crab walking back over to the loft opening, Will raised his head slowly to peek below and then quickly hunkered down again. Still standing right next to the fallen bike, the man was looking down at the gun and frantically trying to clear the bolt action, which was jammed.

Will decided quickly and rose up to one knee next to the door frame, steadying his aim on the man’s chest.

“Hey! Drop the damn gun. Do it now,” Will demanded.

The man looked up at him and smiled that special crazy smile again. All the while he kept trying to work and slide the bolt action.

“Do it. Right the hell now!” Will’s voice was strong, but he didn’t really know whether he could just shoot the man. He’d done it before but that was in a war, well over a decade ago.

The man ignored him and just kept trying to work the bolt of the rifle.

“I will shoot you!” Will tensed and readied himself for the kick of his shotgun.

“Okay man, look, hey. No problem bud, I’ll tell you my name…Nelson Cunningham. I’m from the suburbs of Chicago. Crystal Lake, ever hear of it? No, no I don’t imagine you have, you hick bast…” The man’s hurried words were scattered and irrational. “Anyway, you do know they’re almost all dead, right? All of them…You know that, right? Before the phones went out, I heard L.A., Chicago and N.Y. were first, but there had to be more. If you were way out in the western ’burbs like me, you had a chance. Just depended on the wind and where it blew the shit, I guess. Yeah so, know what I mean?”

“Mr. Cunningham, I will drop you.”

Nelson cocked his head and said, “I almost think the pulse bombs that came first were the worse thing though. Right? But I don’t know. What do you think? I mean hey, nothing runs or works anymore. Nothing, you know? I mean hey, so, what do you think?”

The man wasn’t really wanting answers as he continued his speed talking, “Oh and there’s plenty more of me coming south. Coming this way fast, Farmer Fred. I’m just out in front of the pack by a little. You know what else, hayseed? When they get here, man…when they get here, they’re not going to have any manners…going to make me look like a fuckin’ Boy Scout.” He let out a shrill, high-pitched giggle.

He shook his head violently then, and the shake worked its way down his body as if he was a dog who’d just come out of a lake. And all the while, he kept working at that jammed bolt action.

“Last warning. Throw the gun down.”

Just at that moment, the bolt on Cunningham’s gun finally did clear and it ejected the jammed casing out, loading another one. His deranged toothy smile got even larger. “Hey! Hey now! There we go man, that’s the fuckin’ ticket!” He quickly brought the rifle up giggling and aimed it at Will, but a boom from the loft came a split second before Cunningham could pull the trigger.

Will waited for a long minute, watching the man closely for any movement, then he decided to head down the wooden ladder. He felt nothing even close to remorse, like he thought he might, or maybe should have.

What he did feel was a sense of beginning, like this was only the first step into a hell that was just getting warmed up. A beginning of the end.

As he walked out of the barn he felt the warmth of the late afternoon August sun. He held the gun with both hands and approached Cunningham’s body cautiously.

About ten steps away from him, Will jerked to a stop. Out of the corner of his eye, far off to the northwest, he saw thin tendrils of smoke rising up in two different places. It was too far away to judge what and where it coming from, but to be sure, it meant nothing good. Tearing his gaze away from that smoke, he told himself that dealing with Cunnigham’s body would have to wait.

First, he was going to get the girls down in the storm cellar around back, just for the time being. The house would be the main focus for any bad actors. He’d load the cellar with up all the food they could manage to lug out there and luckily it was always cool down there, with a water spicket from the well. His mind was racing now.

Heading to the farmhouse, it was all he could do not to sprint. As he went, he kept adding to the list in his head of things they would need for the cellar, but his thoughts were interrupted.

It was a scream.

Or was it? He swore he had just heard a long and anguished scream, from way off, but his ears were still ringing from the shotgun a little, so maybe not. He listened intently and waited. Quiet, so very quiet.

No, nothing. Nothing more. He wrote it off as his imagination going crazy, crazy as the dead man lying in his courtyard. He looked back to the barn and saw the body of Cunningham still lying right where he had fallen, then quickened his step to the main house.

He pounded up the front porch steps two at a time, reached for the front door and then there.

There it was again. Another distant scream. He was sure of it this time. Maybe coming from the direction of the Schuster’s farm to the north, but they were too far away for the sound to travel that distance.

He turned the doorknob just as Sarah opened it from the inside and she jumped with surprise, her eyes wide with fear. Sarah started to say something, but she stopped, and her mouth dropped partially open in a dazed look of shock. She was not looking at him though, her gaze was over his shoulder.

Will turned, almost reluctantly, and they both watched Elizabeth Schuster running towards them, waving her arms wildly and coming right down the middle of Old Tin Top Road. At her age it was more of a trot than a run, but she was going as fast as she could.

The last scream coming from Elizabeth, right before they reached her, was the worst. It was the terrified and panicked wail of knowing both what was, and what would be.

                                                                        End