The Warblers Read online

  The Squamate was still slowly weaving its way through our yard, almost swaying, gently back and forth in slow, flowing waves that extended from its nose through the tip of its long, snakelike tail when suddenly it lifted its head straight up, knocking the hat to the ground. It roared, a sound I still hear in my dreams, the bandanna falling from its mouth and revealing a huge, gaping maw full of sharp little white teeth below a nose that was nothing more than two small holes. It took off in a run for our shed, tearing its coat free to fall in pieces, fluttering to the ground like butterflies what just dropped dead.

  Pa looked at me and said, “Dell, get in the house.”

  I nodded and went in the front door, but I went right through and came out the back. I had to get ahold of Nathan and stop him before he did harm to that poor, strange creature. If he killed it, its death would be on my shoulders, its blood on my hands. That debt that was just too much for me to bear on top of my old dog, Ginger.

  I stepped cautiously out into the yard, alert for either Nathan or the Squamate, or both. I listened for a telltale gunshot that would mean the end of her poor life, for I knew somehow that our Squamate was a female. I near had a heart attack when there came a piercing cry from the back shed. All of a sudden something tore up through the roof, bits of shingles exploding outwards in its wake, before landing with a thud right directly in front of me.

  It was a warbler, alright. First fresh one I’d ever seen. It had about a six, maybe six and a half foot wingspan made of huge, sickly pink, leathery wings run through with all sorts of dark red veins like bloody spider webs. A short, squat little body ended in a little nub of a tail between two huge thighs what led down to large, vicious claws. Above its ghastly looking breastbone, all raw angles and skin stretched taught over its bony ribs, its reedy little neck arched, ending in a massive head with a pointed black beak near two foot long and shaped like the scissors Ma sometimes used to cut our family’s hair. Its small, beady red eyes were fixed open and there was blood all over it.

  I stood there staring at it, unsure of what to do when there come another of those screams, followed by a roar and the sound of things being torn open and eaten. I stood stock-still with my heart beating in my ears like a marching band, unsure of what to do next. That was when my eye caught the glint of the setting sun off a rifle from the loft window of the barn. Nathan.

  I made my way to the barn as quick as I was able and scrambled up the ladder and into the loft. The ruckus from outside was more than enough to cover what noise I had made. I saw Nathan, crouched low to the window, aiming his rifle in the direction of the back shed. I swallowed hard and gathered up my wits and all my courage before I approached him. I wouldn’t let fear rule me the way I had when those things had gotten my dog. I would save the Squamate from a cruel and senseless death at the hands of a small minded boy what had some military schooling and done grown too big for his britches.

  “Nathan!” I said in the most authoritative voice I could muster.

  I saw the set of his shoulders change, so I knew he had heard me, but he kept his eyes out the window and his rifle at the ready. I approached him as calmly as I was able.

  “Nathan Scullory, don’t you harm that beast!” I said, trying to sound as threatening as Nathan himself had been earlier.

  Nathan didn’t move from his crouch, but he answered me that time.

  “What’s it to you, yellow belly?” Nathan growled.

  I clenched my fists, angered by him in so many ways I was shaking.

  “That there animal is on my property, paid good and proper to be here by my father. You will get up now and you will leave this place and you will not return or so help me god, Nathan Scullory, but you will be sorry.”

  I think I had finally got his attention, for he lowered the rifle and set it by the window frame. He stood up slowly, his back still to me. I noticed his fists were clenched, and by his posture I figured he was fixing to start a fight. I was willing to take pain for the things I believed in. I think I hoped that in some way, it might make up for my cowardice in leaving Ginger to be eaten by those things, a lonesome and painful death that my poor dog had not deserved.

  I stood my ground, my back stiff and straight, fists balled up ready for a fight that never came.

  Just as Nathan wheeled around to face me, there came a terrible crash and before I knew what was what, the Squamate stood before me. Her eyes were wild, face bloodied from her meal, bits of skin and sinew hanging from her dripping, knife-like teeth as well as her sharp claws. I turned and started to back away, heedless that I was backing straight towards Nate Scullory, who was between myself and the window. The Squamate looked at both of us, from one to the other, before letting out another terrifying roar and making straight for me, mouth open wide to show the void inside. My death lay in that void.

  Time seemed to stop where it was and everything took on a strange sort of feel, like something out of a nightmare where you can’t move and can’t stop the doom what’s coming for you even though you can see it, right there, plain as day.

  It was then that Nathan Scullory did something that I will never in my life understand. He rushed forward and pushed me out of the path of the beast, not even pausing to pick up his gun for protection. He could have stood by and let that monster eat me up as a distraction while he went for his gun, shot it dead as he had always planned to do without me to stand in his way. He’d have been a hero and I’d have been killed. Two birds with one stone, as Ma would’ve said. But he didn’t do that. Maybe it didn’t even occur to him. It might’ve been the military training or it might’ve been something else, but Nathan Scullory saved my life that day.

  When Nathan shoved me, I wheeled around backwards, trying to put distance between the Squamate and myself. I was turned around now so I could face the window, see the stars just beginning to peek out of the purple twilight above our farm. I tried to make my way over to the ladder what led down to the ground floor of the barn, supposing I could flee and get the attention of the Squamate’s handlers, but I tripped over my own two feet and fell from the hay loft onto the dirt below, the wind knocked out of me.

  I was gasping for breath, feeling like I might yet pass over, but even so I was unable to tear my eyes from the scene unfolding in the loft. Nathan stood before the Squamate, staring up at the creature, and she stared right back, her great big eyes fixed on what was in front of her. Nathan stood his ground and the beast wove from side to side slowly, fluidly like the predator she was, dancing an intricate dance of death. Her tail moved on its own accord, like it was a separate being entirely, dancing a quicker dance, the end flicking left and right like a dog catching a scent. The orangey light of the setting sun struck off the Squamate’s scales and made her look for all the world like she’d been set ablaze. Dust motes and bits of hay, no doubt stirred up by my fall, danced in shafts of that fading orange sunlight filtering through the wide gaps in the floor of the loft.

  It was through those gaps I watched as Nathan took a step towards the beast, seemingly fearless. Pushing me out of its path was possibly the bravest and most selfless act he had ever carried out. Maybe he had just wanted me out of the way so he could have at the beast, but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I couldn’t see too well just then. My vision was swimming in and out of clarity, or maybe it was the fading light, but it looked to me like everything was underwater: fuzzy and a little shimmery, more distant than it should’ve been. And I felt cold. Very cold, for the warm May evening. I felt nigh on to freezing.

  Nathan and the Squamate continued to dance their deadly dance without showing signs of stopping any time soon. I tried to cry out for someone, anyone, to come put a stop to it by any means necessary, but my voice stopped in a painful croak and wouldn’t leave my throat.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Suddenly and without warning, the Squamate lunged forward and bit the head clean off Nathan’s shoulders. I watched, not able to comprehend quite what had happened, as she stretched out her neck and
swallowed in one gulp, reminding me of a snake. I could see the round shape of the head as it moved down her throat.

  Nathan’s body fell backwards in a still twitching heap as his blood filtered down through the cracks in the floorboards, dripping onto the hay just past my feet. It was then that I looked down and saw what had become of my own body.

  When I had fallen, I must’ve caught the tines of the pitchfork I had leaned up against the bearing post that very day. It had plunged right through my thigh and broken. The handle lay on the ground beside me. My blood was everywhere, redder than the barn paint. It had broken my leg badly. I could see the jagged shards of bone, along with the three long iron spikes, poking out through my tattered and blood soaked overalls, but I couldn’t feel it none. It should’ve hurt something terrible by the looks of it. I tried to move my toes and found I was unable. I couldn’t move or feel my lower half at all. I tried again to scream, to call for help but I couldn’t utter a sound. I raised my head to look for the Squamate when all the strength what was left in me bled out, turning the world to blackness, and I remembered no more.

  EPILOGUE

  That was many years ago, and much has happened since. Larry Scullory shot himself in the head with his son’s own rifle on the night Nathan’s funeral was held. Nathan’s Ma went to live with some relations somewhere south of here soon after. Ma and Mabel returned from their stay with our own relatives sometime after the events of that tragic day. Pa could never look at me the same way again. I reckon at least somewhat on account of my part in what happened. As for myself, I won’t never walk again without aid of a cane, and slowly at that. What use is a lame son to a farmer, born and bred?

  I don’t rightly know what happened to the Squamate. The warblers had been dealt with and I’ve never seen hide nor hair of one, nor heard their racket, since. Pa never would let on what had happened that night. I do know it was him what found me, but I know not in what condition. I woke up in my own bed with old Doc Redding looking over me more than a fortnight later. While I know I was the subject of many whisperings among the townsfolk, none were ever spoke where I could hear them.

  Folk just didn’t want to talk about it around me, I guess. Just one of them things you have no choice but to come to accept.

  I learned many an important lesson that summer, but the one what seems most pressing is this: Sometimes in life we are faced with no good option, only evil, and it’s up to us to choose the lesser.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Amber Fallon lives in a small town outside Boston, Massachusetts that she shares with her husband and their two dogs. A techie by day and a horror writer by night, Mrs. Fallon has also spent time as a bank manager, motivational speaker, produce wrangler, and apprentice butcher. Her obsessions with sushi, glittery nail polish, and sharp objects have made her a recognized figure around the community.

  Amber’s publications include The Terminal, Daughters of Inanna, So Long and Thanks for All the Brains, Daily Frights 2012, Women of the Living Dead, Zombie Tales, Here Be Clowns, Horror on the Installment Plan, Zombies For a Cure, Quick Bites of Flesh, Daily Frights 2013, Mirror, Mirror, Operation Ice Bat, Painted Mayhem, and Return to Deathlehem.

  For more information, please tweet her @Z0mbiegrl or visit her blog at www.amberfallon.net and listen to her podcast, It Cooks, on Project iRadio!

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR