The Living Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Coast (8 page)

“The mounds are made of soil covered completely by vegetation, mainly local grasses. Measurements taken showed this particular mound was well over thirty feet tall with a flattened top. Circumference of 130 feet constitutes a perfect circle at the base. This particular site is at the bend of the river, a strategic location commanding an uninterrupted view of large portions of the river and fields. Prime agricultural land surrounds the area.

Our Indian guide, while exhibiting pride in displaying the mounds, said his people claim no ownership or credit as builders saying these earth pyramids were built during the time of the Long Winter by another race altogether, wehn-te-goh, the ancient ones, who were turned into monsters as a punishment for consuming human flesh.

Two former attempts made to open the mound yielded some bits of pottery and a large, perhaps over-large human skull, according to our guide. Our time being somewhat limited we focused our efforts on an area of the mound already ventured and thus already at least one level down into the whole. Breaking through a hardened layer of earth we found scores of skeletons folded in together in such fashion and in spaces only possible if the flesh had been removed previous to internment. They rested upon a thick layer of shells and hardened clay soil. All of the skulls were crushed, as if from repeated blows. The air was thick, moist and smelled strongly of the black mold covering the remains.

Piercing the level underneath we found a chamber containing numerous skeletal remains, all of them with spears thrust through the bodies, effectively pinning them to the ground. Oddly, there were depressions in the ground under the skeletal hands as if they had dug into the earth. Numerous fire-hardened sharp stakes all pointing inward were thrust through the exterior walls of the mound, completely surrounding the bodies. Various articles lay arranged in a circle. Most remarkable were a stone pipe carved in the shape of a crocodile and the skeleton of a very large snake. We continued tunneling down but merely encountered more of the hardened stakes.

Our guide informed us that the entire race of the mound builders perished over a period of years due to a disease that induced a violent madness in its victims although he knows few details of the disease or the perished race. His people consider the mounds forbidden and never approach them unarmed as they have a tradition that something still lives within them.

Plan to rejoin party at the river tomorrow. Water route will save us time and considerable expense as horses are exorbitant here. Received message from Captain Clark and additional boats await us in Indiana Territory.”

*
President Jefferson, an enthusiastic amateur naturalist, had high hopes that the party would encounter active volcanoes as well as prehistoric creatures like the mammoth and giant ground sloth which he believed might still occupy the unexplored western plains.

“So this would have been a few years before the earthquake. Why haven’t I heard of this? I’m a history major and went to some pretty decent schools. I wrote a paper on Lewis and Clark but I never saw any of this,” Bea said.

“Probably because this is something more like pseudo-history or crypto-history. When information doesn’t fit into the accepted and well-known parameters, it gets pushed aside or sometimes destroyed altogether. Think of the ‘Lost Gospels.’ There were also those Mayan texts that the Spanish priests destroyed. It happens in every field of study, including science.”

“There
is
a lot of conspiracy theory nonsense floating around out there. I guess some of it has to be culled. Their native guide mentioned a punishment for consumption of human flesh. Do you remember that tribe in New Guinea? The one where the women and children ceremonially ate the brains of their dead and developed that prion disease? ”

“Um, sort of.”

“You remember, it was kind of like mad cow disease. Their brain proteins had that abnormal fold in them and as a result they literally wasted away to skeletons and died. Those brains were eaten and the disease was passed on. It finally started dying away in the 1950’s and researchers thought it was because ritual cannibalism had been mostly wiped out. But that wasn’t the reason.”

“Why then?”

“Genetic mutation. Some of the women developed a gene that wouldn’t let the unhealthy prion attach to normal prions in the brain.”

“We’re dealing with a virus though.”

“I know but the human immune system can develop a gene that disables the virus. Or develop sufficient antibody response. Either works.”

“That would be great but in all the time this virus has been around our bodies haven’t developed a way to defeat it. Enough of us will have to survive to give it time to mutate and no one survives for more than a few days. And this virus spreads fast and isn’t confined to an island somewhere in the South Pacific. I follow your reasoning but the two diseases are very different.”

Bea closed the computer. “You’re right. I’m grasping at straws. But the mutation in New Guinea was incredibly rapid in evolutionary terms. It could happen again.”

“Maybe. If you’re interested there’s another one on there. I think it’s entitled
New
Madrid.
It deals specifically with the 1811-1812 earthquakes.
”

Bea scrolled through and eventually found it though it was simply labeled
Earthquakes.

The following eyewitness account of the 1811-1812 New Madrid Earthquakes is from John H. Baker of Kentucky. Involving four separate, major quakes with possibly two thousand aftershocks this horrific event caused church bells to ring as far away as Boston, Massachusetts and Charleston, South Carolina.

Many newspapers carried survivor accounts of the earthquake (see Eliza Braxton and Samuel Cocke) and while Mr. Baker’s handwritten tale was found in the offices of the defunct Ohio newspaper, The Clarion, it is unknown if it was ever printed or published as gaps exist in the archived copies of the paper.

December 16
th
, 1811

“We woke up in the pitch-dark cold, thrown from our bed onto the floor. A loud rumbling noise filled the air and I felt the room swaying all around. The wood groaned as it twisted and buckled. Florence was whispering, “John Jr., John Jr.” over and over again. I heard her trying to crawl across that heaving floor to get to the baby who wasn’t making any sound at all.

We couldn’t see anything but when the rumbling stopped I heard screams, people and animals crying out in the cold dark. Through the window we saw flashes of light that looked like they were coming out of the ground. Florence finally made it to the baby, who hadn’t woken up through the shaking.

When daylight finally came we saw some of the damage. Our house got off light, the chimney got thrown down and the door was jammed shut but we eventually got out.

The ground near the spring house was split open about three feet. We couldn’t see the bottom.  Water rushed into the fissure. The water stank, smelled like sulfur and it was warm to touch. We had to find a new spring fast.

Our neighbors weren’t so lucky. Jeb and Mary’s house was down, destroyed. Mary was going through the rubble to see what might have survived unbroken but I don’t think she found much. They are moving into the smokehouse for now. Jeb was off in the woods, hollering and cussing. Mary said he was looking for their animals.

I looked around again and realized our horses and cow were gone too. They must have all run off. I decided to try to get us some potable water and find the animals later.

December 20, 1811

We are all going to die if we don’t find a way out of here. The ground heaved again yesterday. The iron kettle fell off the ledge in the smokehouse and killed Jeb and Mary’s Eliza Jane. We buried her this morning under the cottonwood next to the church. Mary is grieved near out of her mind and won’t leave the grave.

Preacher said the Devil is alive and walking, walking to and fro in the earth. I do believe he is spending some time under the earth, too. There are cracks so deep you can’t see the bottom and people have disappeared without a trace near them.

Jeb heard that Chickasaw Bluffs are gone, fell right into the Mississippi and took those Indian mounds with them. I say good riddance. Those red heathens are afraid to go near them after dark. The one time I was up there I swear I heard something a-scratching inside the earth and I didn’t fancy staying after dark either.

We can’t leave yet. We still don’t have enough animals to pull the wagons. Jeb and I are going back into the woods to look for the horses tomorrow but I think they would have wandered back by now if they were still alive.

January 14, 1812

The land shakes almost every day now in gently rolling undulations with hard jolts from time to time. Sometimes I think my mind isn’t right. Jeb says this is how the end of the world starts. Maybe so. I don’t know how to fight something like this. With a storm you can watch the sky get dark and see the wind blowing the trees and you know what’s coming. This is different. Trees just fall over with roots pulled up and holes open up in the ground and swallow houses. Yesterday I saw a whole mess of hibernating snakes swarm up out of the ground and slither away into the creek.

Yesterday I ran into a fellow who said he saw the whole Mississippi River run backwards, washing trees and buildings along with it. Said Elm’s Corner is cut off now because the bluffs keep falling and there’s a river where there used to be a valley. Maybe his mind isn’t right either.

Jeb and I tracked the cattle all the way to a lake* neither of us had ever seen before. The whole area used to be just a wooded stretch, set in a valley that had several Indian burial mounds. The tops of trees were still visible, swaying in that muddy, roiling water. Dead deer and opossum, swollen and stinking, rolled with the waves.

We found the cattle. Torn apart and mostly eaten. Can’t tell what got to them. Jeb says the tracks around them are small, human, bare foot prints. People would have used knives or hatchets to get the meat. These look like they were savaged with bare hands. We still haven’t found any trace of the horses.

January 20
th
, 1812

On the western side of the new lake we met up with a group of Frenchies. They said they came from a town called Tonti where they made their home for nearly twenty years but were heading back north before the ground ate any more of them. We camped with them for the night in a clearing and were fortunate to have their company for an occurrence so strange that- well, like I keep saying, I think my mind isn’t right.

In short we were attacked as we slept. Not by the Chickasaw as I half expected but rather by creatures out of a nightmare. I happened to be taking the midnight watch with a Frenchie called Jean- Pierre when we heard a fuss among the horses. It began with frightened whinnies and snorts. The whinnies turned to wild screams of pain but we couldn’t see what was happening in the dark.

Jean-Pierre took up a burning brand from the fire and we made our way a short distance out of the clearing where we found three ponies down and in their death throes while wizened, withered figures fed on their entrails. These things were five feet tall or less but the ponies, tied as they were, made easy prey.

I shouted and two of the creatures left off their feeding and groped their way toward us. As before stated they were undersized and in addition had blackened, wrinkled skin and were thin as skeletons with long shocks of lank, black hair. Some wore brief, animal-hide loin cloths but most wore nothing. Blood ran down their chins to cover their chests.

I ran and snatched up my own branch from the fire and waved it in their faces to hold them back but they came on, unfazed, with no fear of the flame.

Most of the camp was awake by now. A shot rang out and one of the creatures was felled by a direct hit to the chest. It soon staggered back to its feet and wandered back to the ponies and commenced to feed again on the poor beasts.

With more lighted brands to cast light we destroyed the attackers, finally by chopping them to pieces. Despite the strength shown when they ripped the horses to pieces, they are slow and clumsy, though very difficult to kill.

Almost all kept watch the rest of that long night and at dawn we followed the creatures’ tracks back as far as the new lake. From the prints found in the mud they must have come up from the water though we found no canoes or rafts. We didn’t find tracks anywhere else around the lake.

The bodies rotted fast and we had little time to examine them but did note that they didn’t look like any of the local Indian tribes. They were shorter and broader with small but wide feet, short legs, and large hooked noses. They had eye sockets but no eyes. I’ve never seen anything like it before and hope I never do again.

January 28
th
, 1812

We arrived home two days ago and found the horses had come back while we were gone. Florence already had the wagons nearly loaded and was fretting to leave. The east wall of the house fell in one of the small quakes and crushed John Jr.’s cot. Florence had him in bed with her or we’d have lost him.