The Genocides Read Free Page A

“What’d he say?” he asked Neil. Though the old man would not admit it, his hearing was beginning to go.
    “He says Studs got out into the cows. Sounds like a lotta hooey to me.”
    “Pray God it is,” Anderson replied, and his look fell on Neil like an iron weight.
    Anderson ordered Neil back to the village to see that the men did not forget to bring ropes and prods in their hurry to give pursuit. Then with Buddy he set off on the clear trail the herd had made. They were about ten minutes behind them, by Buddy’s estimate.
    “Too long,” Anderson said, and they began to run instead of trotting.
    It was easy, running among the Plants, for they grew far apart and their cover was so thick that no underbrush could grow. Even fungi languished here, for lack of food. The few aspens that still stood were rotten to the core and only waiting for a strong wind to fell them. The firs and spruce had entirely disappeared, digested by the very soil that had once fed them. Years before, the plants had supported hordes of common parasites, and Anderson had hoped mightily that the vines and creepers would destroy their hosts, but the Plants had rallied and it was the parasites who had, for no apparent reason, died.
    The giant boles of the Plants rose out of sight, their spires hidden by their own massive foliage; their smooth, living green was unblemished, untouched, and like all living things, unwilling to countenance any life but their own.
    There was in these forests a strange, unwholesome solitude, a solitude more profound than adolescence, more unremitting than prison. It seemed, in a way, despite its green, flourishing growth, dead. Perhaps it was because there was no sound. The great leaves overhead were too heavy and too rigid in structure to be stirred by anything but gale winds. Most of the birds had died. The balance of nature had been so thoroughly upset that even animals one would not think threatened had joined the ever-mounting ranks of the extinct. The Plants were alone in these forests, and the feeling of their being set apart, of their belonging to a different order of things was inescapable. It ate at the strongest man’s heart.
    “What’s that smell?” Buddy asked.
    “I don’t smell anything.”
    “It smells like something burning.”
    Anderson felt small stirrings of hope. “A fire? But they wouldn’t burn at this time of year. They’re too green.”
    “It’s not the Plants. It’s something else.”
    It was the smell of roasting meat, but he wouldn’t say so. It would be too cruel, too unreasonable to lose one of the precious cows to a party of marauders.
    Their pace slowed from a run to a trot, from a trot to a cautious, stalking glide. “I do smell it now,” Anderson whispered. He withdrew from its holster the Colt Python .357 Magnum that was the visible sign of his authority among the citizens of Tassel. Since his elevation to his high office (formally, he was the town’s mayor, but in fact he was much more), he had never been known to be without it. The potency of this weapon as a symbol (for the village had a goodly stock of guns and ammunition yet) rested upon the fact that it was only employed for the gravest of purposes: to kill men.
    The smell had become very strong; then at a turn in the path they found the twelve carcasses. They had been incinerated to ash, but the outlines were clear enough to indicate which had been Studs. There was also a smaller patch of ash near them on the path.
    “How—” Buddy began. But he really meant
what
, or even
who
, something that his father was quicker to understand.
    “Jimmie!” the old man screamed, enraged, and he buried his hands in the smaller pile of still-smoking ashes.
    Buddy turned his eyes away, for too great sorrow is like drunkenness: it was not fitting that he should see his father then.
    There’s not even any meat left
, he thought, looking at the other carcasses.
Nothing but ashes
.
    “My son!” the old man cried. “My son!”