AFTER (16 page)

"Hon…" he began, "I'm sorry about the way I spoke today. About praying and such."

Cassie sat there and said nothing, in that stubborn way of hers.

"I know how you always set store in your church work and all."

Cassie said nothing. Her church was dead. They had gathered in its sanctuary directly after the Burn. They had prayed, planned, tried to band together and make the best of it. But soon grim reality had taken the place of faith and good intentions, and the flock had scattered. Now the church house was empty… except for an evil that once had been their beloved pastor. Something that hung from the rafters, dark and monstrous, spouting obscenities and blaspheming the name of the Lord.

"I don't expect you to believe, Jubal, not being a church-going man and all," she told him. Cassie Hayes sighed. "I reckon it's too late for you to even start now."

The way she said that, to his face, saddened him deeply.

They sat there quietly for a while longer. Something past the tall pines, down in the valley, howled mournfully. Neither of them could identify exactly what it was.

"Jubal," said Cassie. "What're we gonna do about the
young'uns
?"

The farmer shook his head. "I don't know."

"If they don't eat, they'll die," she told him. "And I'd do anything to prevent that from happening." Her eyes grew grim. "I'd go as far as give my own life for the lives of my children."

Jubal turned and looked at her. The way she had said that chilled him to the bone. "What're you getting at, Cassie?"

She didn't look him in the eyes when she said it. "It'd be simple enough, husband. Put a bullet in the back of my head while I sleep tonight. The three of you should be able to live off…"

He bounded out of his rocker, cutting her off in mid-sentence. "No, ma'am! We ain't going down that road. I'd rather we all starve than do what you're suggesting. Ain't gonna be no sick sinfulness done betwixt us. Not like what goes on down in the valley."

Jubal thought of the sorry state that the world had come to lately. A traveling guitar-player named John had stopped by the cabin a week or so ago. What he had told them had been dark and discouraging. How folks were casting aside the laws of God and man, and doing the unspeakable. The fellow had rested for only a short while, then departed into the mountains, strumming that silver-stringed guitar of his.

Jubal held out his hands to his wife and she took them. Slowly, she rose from her rocker and they embraced. "Jubal," she whispered, her face buried against the fabric of his shirt. "I don't mean to be such a worry to you."

"We've got to be strong," he told her. "For ourselves and the
young'uns
."

She began to cry. "It's so confounded hard."

He held her tighter. "I know."

Cassie pulled away and regarded his face; long and handsome, his mustache showing hints of gray among the black hairs. "I love you, Jubal."

"And I love you more than life itself, woman," he said with a smile.

The two kissed, then held each other on the porch a while longer. Inside, they could hear Seth and Lenora talking quietly, playing a game of Rook. Their bodies yearned to respond to each other in that intimate way that had blessed them with their son and daughter. But they knew that was impossible. In the uncertainty of those dark days, they feared the monstrosity that the union of his seed and her egg might bring about.

 
"Papa?"

Jubal awoke in total darkness, startled. "Son? Are you all right?"

"I'm okay," said Seth. "Was just thinking, that's all."

The farmer was surprised that Seth was even awake at all. They had given him some strong pain medicine the dentist down in Pigeon Forge had given Cassie when she'd had some wisdom teeth cut out.

"Thinking about what?" he asked. There was no outside light in the cabin at all. Jubal had constructed sturdy wooden shutters that secured from the inside. It had been necessary when things outside began to get out of hand.

The boy hesitated. "Did the
preacherman
lie?"

"Lie? In what way?"

"You know, about evolution and such. He said it was just a bunch of bull. Stuff that non-believers made up. But it was a lie. Ain't that what's happening now… here on the mountain?"

Jubal felt Cassie roll over in bed and knew that she'd been privy to their conversation since it had started. He also knew that she didn't like it one
dadblamed
bit. For matters of faith and religion, Seth should have been asking his ma the questions. But Jubal reckoned the boy had deliberately left her out of it. If he had sought her advice, he would have likely received her by-the-Good-Book sermon on the evils of Darwin's theory.

"Well, to tell the truth," began Jubal carefully, "I ain't no scholar on science or divinity. But, yes, son, that's what's happening here. Not the kind of evolution that happens over thousands or millions of years, but a sped up version of it."

"And it's due to the radiation? From those bombs?"

Jubal considered it for a moment. "I reckon that's right. For some reason, it's settling high, up here in the mountaintops and not in the valley below. It's causing nature to turn itself inside out… the critters, the plants, the insects… they're all being twisted into something unnatural. Into things that the good Lord didn't intend to be."

"Papa?"

"Yes, son?" he asked, but he could already sense the question that was coming next.

"Will we change too?" There was a
waver
of fear in his young voice.

Jubal sighed. "I can't rightly say. It ain't happened yet, but maybe it could take some extra time with us… we being so
dadblamed
ornery and all."

Seth laughed softly. "Well, I hope it don't happen. I'm happy with the way I am right now."

"Me, too." Jubal considered something. "Seth, I was figuring to hike across the ridge tomorrow to Amos Sterling's place. Maybe see if he's got some supplies he could loan us. You think you'd be up to going with me?"

"Sure, Pa," said the boy eagerly. "My eye's aching a bit, but I reckon I'd be okay."

"Then we'll head out at first light," his father told him. "Just you and me."

The bedsprings creaked as Cassie rolled over again. "I suggest y'all hush up and get some shut-eye or you'll not be getting up till noon."

"Yes, ma'am," said the boy respectfully and spoke no more that night.

Jubal laid there for a long moment, attempting to get back to sleep. It was difficult after their talk, though.

"Jubal?" whispered Cassie beside him.

"Yes, dear?"

"Be careful tomorrow," she said. "There's no telling what's roaming around in those woods."

"I'll take my shotgun, just to be on the safe side," he promised.

Cassie sighed and rolled over again. Jubal wanted to go back to sleep just as swiftly, but for him it was a long time coming.

The pale light of dawn found Jubal and Seth taking a deer path over the crest of Hayes Ridge. It was the first time father and son had been out in the wilderness together in a long while. The last time had been a near-disastrous hunting trip they had taken a month or so after the Burn. They had been hunting a big buck when they had reached a clearing and found the animal standing there, waiting for them. It had been altered from its former state somehow… in a horrible way. Its coat had a strange green tint to it and its antlers had sprouted into a crazy tangle of razor-sharp spikes. Why there must have been more than seventy-five or eighty points in all! But what had startled them the most was the animal's eyes. They had bulged from their sockets and were bloodshot and crazy. Heavy yellow mucus had poured from the deer's nostrils as it pawed at the ground like an angry bull and charged them. Jubal had emptied his twelve-gauge into the beast, but it hadn't even slowed it down. It chased them halfway down the mountain before they finally escaped its fury. But they knew it was still up there somewhere, perhaps in an even more horrible state than it had been before.

"Be sharp, son," Jubal said, leading the way. "Keep an eye open." He instantly wished he hadn't said that. "Sorry."

Seth laughed. "That's okay, Papa."

Jubal was pleased by how the boy was holding up. Any other child his age would have been down with such a devastating injury. But Seth seemed to have handled it particularly well. In fact, the nine-year-old claimed that it hardly hurt him at all.

And, in some way, that worried Jubal a mite.

They reached the top of the peak and looked out across the North Carolina side of the mountain. Behind them was Tennessee and, miles below, Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and even further on, Knoxville. Jubal and his family weren't ones for towns or cities, having lived in the wooded paradise of the
Smokies
all their lives. But that paradise was swiftly changing into a very scary and uncertain hell.

They found evidence of that a few minutes after they began to descend the eastern face of the ridge. Jubal and Seth were nearing a bend in the trail when they heard a loud buzzing from up ahead. Cautiously, they left the pathway and took to the thicket. Picking their way quietly through a stand of honeysuckle, the two watched the source of the steady droning.

It was a hive of bees. They were jet black in color and as big as chipmunks. As they swarmed around the gaping split of a hollow tree, Jubal estimated that there were probably forty or fifty of them. Five of the winged creatures had lit on the body of a jackrabbit that had been chased down and stung to death in a patch of clover. The insects seemed to be picking the animal apart, little by little, and devouring it ravenously.

Within the hollow of the tree, they could see something glistening from a massive comb within. But it was not the sweet nectar of golden honey.

Rather, the black substance the murderous bees concocted was as shiny and wet as fresh road tar and reeked like bloated roadkill on a hot, sunny day.

Slowly and silently, father and son retreated into the forest, making their way down the mountainside by that route. As they went, they were keenly aware that what lurked, unseen, in the woods might be twice as deadly as those over-sized honey bees.

It wasn't long before they reached Amos Sterling's place. "Amos!" Jubal called out. "Amos… this here's Jubal Hayes and his boy!" He certainly didn't want to startle the old man and get shot in the process.

There was no reply. The little mountain farmstead with its single shack, chicken coop, and
graywood
barn looked completely abandoned. As they reached the porch of the house, they discovered that the door had been torn plumb off its hinges.

"Stay here, Seth," said Jubal. He checked the loads in his double-barrel shotgun and carefully mounted the porch.

He didn't enter the house. He didn't need to. From the open doorway he could see all that he wanted to see.

The place was in shambles. Furniture lay overturned across the boards of the floor and there were several places where holes had been torn open in the plank walls. The stench of death filled the front room and, at first, Jubal figured it to be old Amos. But it wasn't. A dark, hairy mass laid on the far side of the room near the cook stove, covered with green flies the size of field mice. It looked to be some horribly mutated boar of some kind. The critter was pert near as big as a grizzly bear and appeared to have been brought down with several blasts from a shotgun.

The thing that disturbed Jubal the most was the amount of blood in the place. It splattered the walls and set in congealed puddles around the floor. And it was a safe bet that it hadn't all come from the invading creature that rotted on the far side of the room.

Jubal turned and stepped off the porch. "Let's go see if we can find Amos," he told the boy.

Seth nodded. Together they walked toward the barn.

When they reached it, they found the big double doors cracked open slightly. "Let's be extra careful now," he told his son. Then they swung the doors wide and stepped inside.

Jubal squinted into the darkness. "Amos?"

In a far corner of the barn, cloaked by shadow, something moved.

"Amos? Is that you?"

Coarse, ragged breathing echoed from the dark form. "Stay where you are, Jubal," warned a wet, guttural voice that was familiar and yet not familiar at all.

"What's happened, Amos?" the lanky farmer asked.

Again that coarse breathing, low and rumbling. "A critter busted into the house a week ago. A wild boar… or it had been once. Gored me, bit me bad on the leg. Just about killed me… but I did him in before he could." Amos let out a wail of anguish. "Oh, dear Lord, I should've turned the gun on myself soon afterward!"

"Are you okay, Amos?" Jubal wanted to know, immediately knowing he was a fool for asking.

The old man laughed bitterly. "Hell, no, I ain't okay! That thing's bite did something to me. Something
godawful
."

Jubal took another step or two forward. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he could make out a massive form crouched in the hay of an abandoned stall. It was covered with coarse brown hair and its face was malformed. Long, curved tusks protruded from the corners of its mouth.