The Harvesting (12 page)

“
Let’s get the bodies
cleared, get April buried, and finish the job,” I said.

Solemnly, everyone nodded. Clouds
rolled in, occluding the sun. The wind whipped hard. There was a
bitter chill in the air. Ian knelt beside April. Jamie turned and
headed back to the tractor; he pulled off his gloves and dashed
them to the ground. The men moved off behind him. I looked up at
the sky. A hawk passed overhead. I turned and followed
Jamie.

Chapter 14

By the end of October, the first snow
began to fall. Though apple picking had ended in tragedy, the
bounty harvested lasted a long time. Ethel had us all cranking out
apple sauce and canning vegetables. In addition, Grandma’s house
yielded a treasure trove of supplies from the mundane, like rice
and sugar, to the more exotic, like Kevlar vests and a stash of
board games for children. We were ready to begin our
hibernation.

Mother Nature determined
she would not make things any easier on us. When winter arrived, it
was clear it meant to stay. The
Farmer’s
Almanac
predicted a harsh winter. Lake
effect weather dropped feet of snow on us. It was good on the one
hand because it seemed unlikely the undead could get far in the
deep snow. On the other hand, we were going through wood at such an
alarming rate that we had to adjust our habits. There would be no
more comfortable nights roaming about the cozy cabin. Frenchie, the
girls, and I had taken to wearing at least three layers at all
times and lived most of our life in the living room in front of the
fireplace. We spent the next several weeks in quiet
hibernation.

On Thanksgiving morning,
however, Jamie came by. He decided we
needed
turkey. That meant, of
course, a hunting trip was in order. Ian, who planned to come by
later, was due for a rotation in town so that left Jamie and me
with the task of hunting down a Thanksgiving feast. We left at the
crack of dawn.

“
How long does it take for
a human body to decompose?” I asked Jamie as we hiked through the
shin-deep snow into the forest behind Grandma’s house.

There was a fresh snowfall that
morning leaving a powdery, almost sand-like layer of snow on top of
already accumulated inches. In the early morning sunlight, the snow
picked up a prism of rainbow colors. It was peaceful and quiet in
the woods save for the swishing sounds of our feet in the snow and
our chatter.

“
Now what makes you think
I would know that?” he replied.

“
Seems like something a
medic should know.”

He chuckled. “I think it takes a year
if the body is exposed to the elements. If it’s in a grave or a
house or something like that, it will take longer. Depends on the
environment.”

“
Then, theoretically, by
spring there could just be a bunch of rattling skeletons walking
around.”

“
That’s a pretty gruesome
image,” Jamie replied.

“
No worse than a rotting
corpse walking around.”

“
True,” he replied and
then motioned me to be silent. “There,” he whispered, pointing to
some fresh turkey tracks in the snow. He looked around. “I bet they
are in the field picking at the wheat,” he whispered.

The tracks on the ground seemed to
lead two directions—toward the field and toward a thicket of
mountain laurel.

“
I’ll check there if you
want to check the field,” I offered, pointing to the
thicket.

“
Sure, just watch your
ass—which looks cute in those Carharts by the way—and yell if you
see anything—anything.”

Flashing him a smile, I rolled my
eyes, and we went off in different directions.

Jamie passed over a rise toward the
field, and I followed the turkey tracks toward the thicket. After
I’d gone a short ways, the tracks disappeared. I looked up into the
pines to see if they had roosted, but I couldn’t see them anywhere,
and I was not much of a tracker. I turned to go when movement
coming from the thicket caught my attention.

I snapped the safety off the hunting
rifle and knelt in the snow.

A moment later, an albino doe appeared
from the thicket. It was munching on the small tufts of grass that
stuck up through the drifts. It moved peacefully. It was an
amazingly beautiful creature. Its white pelt melted into the
surroundings, the pink around its crystal blue eyes, nose, and
inner-ear looking almost cheerful in the snowy landscape. It
started to move off. Intrigued, I followed.

The doe moved away from the path we’d
been following and deeper into the woods. I looked behind me to
ensure I could follow my tracks; they were easy to see. The deer
occasionally stopped and looked at me. It did not seem to fear me
and, in fact, looked rather inquisitively toward me. Something
about the creature made all the hair on the back of my neck rise.
She led and I followed. She trotted deeper into the woods, into an
area I did not know well. Here the trees grew very tall and thick.
Once we entered, I had a hard time following her. She began to
disappear behind the wide trunks of the oak trees. I made turn
after turn, catching glimpses of her as she wound deeper into the
forest. The snow seemed even more luminescent here. The hemlock
trees were covered in crystal-like snow and glowed iridescently.
The limbs of the large oaks were hung with glittering
icicles.

At last I saw her again. She stood in
a small space between two hemlocks, the trees bending toward her
like an arching doorway. She turned and entered the
space.

My heart raced. I followed.

Passing through the hemlocks, I found
myself standing in a small circular clearing. The entire space was
ringed with massive oak trees. The place was incredibly pristine
white and everything shimmered. Standing in the middle of this
space were a very tall and elegant looking man and woman. They both
wore white robes trimmed with fox-fur and moonstones. The man had
long, ebony colored hair and wore a crown that looked like the
horns of a stag. The woman had flowing blonde hair that was almost
off-white in color. She had large, doe-shaped eyes that
twinkled.

The man beckoned kindly toward
me.

I was frozen in place.

He turned and smiled at the woman. She
extended one hand toward me. In that hand she held a crown of
holly. She smiled invitingly.

I took a step forward.

“
Layla!” a voice screamed
in the far off distance.

A look passed between the magisterial
man and woman.

“
Layla!” I recognized
Jamie’s voice then and the urgency and fear in it. Stunned, I
realized he might be under attack.

I turned then, not looking back, and
headed out of the woods away from the pair. I stamped back over my
footsteps, cursing myself for foolishness when another person’s
life depended on me. I ran, my heart bursting in my chest, to get
to Jamie. If anything happened to him, if I lost him, I could not
forgive myself. The weight of the idea, of the thought that Jamie
could be hurt, hit me hard.

Moments later I found myself back at
the thicket where the doe had appeared.

Jamie looked frantic and was calling
my name.

“
Here, here!” I yelled,
relieved to see that he was alright.

“
Thank god,” he said,
dropping the birds he had been holding. I had not even heard the
gun-shots. He grabbed me tightly, squeezing against his chest.
“Where the hell did you go? I couldn’t find your tracks anywhere.
Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

I shook my head. “No, I was just--” I
began and then stopped. I was just what? What would I say? It was
one thing for Grandma Petrovich to have her eccentricities. It was
quite another for me to go around seeing things. “I got
lost.”

Jamie kissed the top of my head. “Oh,
Layla, please never do that to me again,” he whispered.

I looked up at him. Our eyes met and
something inside me saw Jamie in a much different light. I realized
then it was a feeling that had been growing all this time. With Ian
in the picture, my feelings were confused. Now, staring up at
Jamie, I was clear. One thing was very certain; I wanted to kiss
him.

He leaned in and set the sweetest,
lightest kiss on my lips. “Layla,” he whispered, brushing his hand
against my cheek and down my hair.

I did not resist. I kissed him back
and this time caught the sweet taste of his mouth. It was unlike
anything I had ever experienced in a kiss before. His mouth had a
natural sweetness, like the light taste of raw honey. His lips, his
body’s chemistry, were sweeter than any I’d known
before.

We pulled back and smiled goofily at
one another.

He kissed me on my forehead. “Two
turkeys, not just one,” he said and picked up the birds, “and what
did you get?” he asked with joking competitiveness.

The image of the pale woman and her
extended crown fluttered through my head. I smiled at him. Taking
my glove off, I touched my hand to his lips. “You,” I
replied.

He smiled and kissed my fingers. “I
like your answer better,” he said and then, slinging the birds over
his shoulder, took my hand and we turned back toward the cabin.
“Humm, who do you think will win the game tonight?” he asked
jokingly.

“
Well, Team Undead seems
to be having a great season,” I replied.

We both laughed and headed back to the
cabin hand in hand.

Chapter 15

That night I lay awake, restless. The
puzzle of the man and woman in the woods stuck with me. I
remembered that my grandmother had mentioned that forest spirits
lived in the woods behind our house. Is that what I had seen?
Forest spirits? Memories of old folktales floated through my mind,
a kaleidoscope of different cultures. What, exactly, had I seen?
And what, exactly, had they wanted from me? Part of me wondered if
I had hallucinated the whole exchange. I knew, however, that
whatever Grandma had done to me before the pandemic hit, her
special tea, had changed me forever.

It was nearly two in the morning when
I heard a snowmobile pull up outside the cabin. Ian had been
missing all day. Even though we’d asked him to join us, he did not
come for dinner. Part of me hoped he’d simply stayed in
town.

Our dinner had been perfect. We used
the old spit in the fireplace to roast the turkeys, and Jamie and
Frenchie made a meal out of canned goods. Kira and Susan had looked
truly happy, and I didn’t blame them. I also felt the happiest I
had felt in years. Jamie played board games with the girls all
night, giving me goofy and bashful smiles from time to time. Each
time he did, I just wanted to scoop him into my arms and hug him
until the world ended—again. I offered Jamie my spare room for the
night. He was sleeping, snoring loudly, in Grandma’s old sewing
room.

The front door opened and shut. I
heard Ian slide the bars and locks closed. A few minutes later I
heard him banking up the logs in the fireplace. I lay in bed and
tried to sleep. After half an hour, the whole house felt incredibly
warm. I slid out of bed. Checking on Jamie and Frenchie and her
girls, I found everyone else was asleep. In the living room, Ian
was sitting in front of a roaring fire. The temperature in the
living room was ghastly hot. His head was bowed. He held a bottle
of beer loosely in one hand.

“
I thought you didn’t like
warm beer,” I whispered, taking the bottle from his fingers,
setting it on the side table.

He looked up at me and smiled, but I
could tell right away that all was not well.

“
What’s wrong?”

He shook his head. “Nothing, I’m just
not feeling great. I’ve been having bouts off and on for the last
year or so. I just feel off, some pain in my stomach,” he
said.

“
Is it an ulcer?” I asked.
I kneeled on the floor and opened the chimney flue to let some of
the warm air out.

Surprising me, he took my hand. “I
think so.”

“
What did the doctor say?”
I pulled my hand back.

“
Nothing. I never went. We
couldn’t afford it.”

The
we
in the sentence hung in the air.
I put my hand on his forehead. “No fever. You feel
cold?”

He nodded.

Trying to make as little noise as
possible, I went into the kitchen and grabbed a teapot. I set the
water on to boil in the fireplace. After a few minutes I could hear
the water rolling inside the pot. I moved it from the heat before
it could whistle and made Ian a cup of tea. He smiled at me and
sipped it slowly.

“
I think we need to call a
town meeting,” he said after awhile. “The lake is frozen over, and
the river is starting to jam with ice. I think people are feeling
isolated, and at two houses I stopped at today, people had the flu.
They were worried they had whatever killed everyone else, but Mrs.
Finch thought it was just seasonal flu.”

“
It might not be good to
get everyone together if people are getting sick.”

“
They could wear masks and
gloves.”