Spare Parts
Part Thirteen
Garrett’s midnight walk across the creek and up the hill was a simple affair. There was no sign of the struggle had over by the barrel washing station. No bodies or signs of immediate retribution had against the rest of the pail men. It wasn’t until Garrett got to the first rows of dark huts that he began to notice signs of life, or what last signs life had to show in that place.
The chickens were free roaming, they most likely pecked and clawed their way free once the food and water stopped being delivered. The pail men were all in their hut at the edge of the simple village. They had all been murdered. Some strangled, some bludgeoned, a few hacked up with machetes. Most didn’t know to put up a fight when the time came and the few who did probably caught the worst of it. Besides the children, if there were victims of this place and its end, they died in that hut.
Garrett walked past and into the village and ever further past the dark and closed up huts until he reached the center where the Believer’s kept the altar to their idol poster. Some of the faithful were there. Those who died last most likely, and/or those who found their last and only comfort looking at the blank eyes of their made-up martyr Goddess as they vomited and shit themselves to death. The astounding and also most wasteful part of the whole display was the dais of raised earth around the altar. The ground was still red with all the blood, it had soaked in and dyed the grass a rusty maroon.
Goats, dozens of them, all laid out and around the poster. Tribal offerings to an angry imagination. As the last few days went by, they must have just kept slaughtering them in an attempt to appease the poster that was laying waste to them all young and old. Something toward the center of the pile, closest to the altar and laid atop the other offerings caught Garrett’s eye and he dared to step around and over the splayed goats.
As hope dimmed for them and the lights went out in hut after hut, they decided goats weren’t getting the job done. There were six of them, draped over the goats in a circle around the poster. The Believer’s decided the present was more important than the future, they all had their tiny hands bound and their necks slit ear to ear. The death would have been quick, the fact that the children’s hands had been tied and some had bruises spoke to the terms of the arrangement. There was no reason for Sarah to know about that part.
Garrett walked from hut to hut, making sure the only things left alive were the chickens and then he did his best to collect some eggs and some untainted vegetables for breakfast before retreating back to the bunker.