Row 137...

for revolutionary's chem trails project...

Row 137. Randy loved harvest time. The late hours didn’t bother him. He had grown up on this 1000 acre farm and couldn’t think of anything he’d enjoy more than harvesting something he had planted.

The combine made its way around to the next 8 rows while the radio in his cab crackled out the latest on farm markets.

“We interrupt your regular programming on KFMT for a special news bulletin.” Came the announcer’s voice.

“This is Mary Henderson for CBS news. Reports are coming in across the nation regarding large flocks of dead birds falling from the sky and schools of fish turning up dead in hundreds of lakes. From New York City along the Hudson everything from whales to other sea life, have shown up by the scores along the Manhattan riverbanks and also in New Jersey along the shore. Reports have also come in from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Montana, Arkansas, Louisiana and California.

“The CDC commented that because of weather trends created by global warming, it may be causing some of the deaths. Other local authorities concur by adding there is nothing to be worried about as this does happen occasionally but usually goes unreported. Meteorologists say, however, that there is an anomaly with atmospheric pressure currently created a haze in the air and a repugnant odor.”

Just then Randy’s cell phone rang, it was his wife.

“Hello?”

“Honey,” she sounded panicked. “Can you come home? There’s something wrong with the livestock.”

“What? The livestock? Why, what’s wrong with them?”

“Well, first it was the cattle, they became restless and tried breaking through the fence and then one collapsed and then the rest followed. They have some sort of fungus around their mouths.”

“Are they still alive?”

“Yes, but they are breathing funny. I called Dr. Kittleson to come out and have a look. To be honest, Randy, I’m not feeling so hot myself.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Randy drove his combine to the edge of the field where he had left his truck. He noticed ammonia like stench in the air and looked around. The smells and the haze were normal during this time of year in the country. Dust from the harvesters, the smells from drying corn and anhydrous ammonia from the fertilizers in the field. But because of the last news broadcast, it left him unnerved.

The radio in his truck crackled and cut out from the usual station he had on. KFMT’s towers were only a mile and a half from his farm. He could make them out from here.

“…..now coming in….product of….griculture…..from Washington….ights in the sky were re……effect on the pop….”

Then dead air.

He flipped open his phone and speed dialed home. It rang four times and then his wife answered.

“Randy?” she sounded hoarse as if she’d been shouting, “Are you coming home soon?”

“What’s wrong?” he asked, “You sound terri---!”

Static and then dead air.

He closed his phone and threw it into the passenger seat and pushed down on the accelerator.

Just a mile from his home he noticed several pieces of debris in front of him. He skidded to a stop in front of them and noticed they were deer. About 12 bodies lay about across the road trailing into the ditch and into his field.

“What the hell?” he muttered to himself.

He got out and noticed it was harder to breathe the air as if he were in a higher altitude. The deer carcasses were covered with an orange fungus around their muzzles. Some of them were just barely alive, breathing shallowly.

He looked towards his farm and could see multitudes of his livestock were laying about his dooryard. He scanned the horizon trying to see through some of the haze.

He began panicking and grabbed a couple of the deer and dragged their bodies to the side of the road so he could get through.

Driving up into his dooryard his heart made a lump in his throat. Cows, chickens, goats, his two horses and even his hunting dog Alice were lying on the ground. Some barely living, the others were dead.

His wife stumbled out the front door and then fell into the front yard. He ran to her and there was an orange tint to her nose and mouth. Her breathing was raspy and wheezing.

“Dana, honey, are you okay?” he asked desperately.

“Can’t…hardly…breathe.” She gasped.

He picked her up and carried her to his truck and laid her in the cab. He got in the drivers side and lifted her head and laid it on his lap.

“I’ll take you into town to the hospital!” he tried to comfort her.

On the way into town, Randy saw some of his “neighbors” in the ditch and more animals lying about the roads and ditches. When he got to the city limits he stopped his truck.

The entire main street was littered with corpses. There were a few bodies that were still alive but just barely from the looks of them. Above he heard a rumble like thunder and he couldn’t pin point where the noise was coming from.

He returned to his truck gasping for air. The air was thinner and still had that hint of ammonia in it. It didn’t make sense since he wasn’t in high altitudes, he was on the flat plains of Minnesota.

Dana was shaking as if she were cold. He felt her forehead and was almost burned by how icy her skin was.

“Jesus!” he exclaimed and put the truck into drive and went 4 blocks into town towards the hospital.

The rumbling got louder and he spotted something in the sky. Directly above him there was what looked like a jet stream from a plane going perfectly vertical, but no plane. He got out of his truck again and noticed there were jet streams coming from nowhere as far as his eye could see from eastern horizon to western horizon.

Dana began a violent fit of coughing and he returned his attention to getting his wife to the hospital but kept glancing up at the sky.

The hospital was the worst of any place he had been to so far. Corpses, hog piled upon corpses. The stench of rotting flesh hung in the air almost overpowering the smell of ammonia in the air.

Dana coughed up a rusty rope of phlegm from her mouth as he tried to lift her from the car. Her body was ice cold and stiff. It felt like she was dead but her body was still breathing heavily as if struggling to hold on.

“Hang on, baby!” he said as he walked his way through the parking lots gruesome labyrinth.

By the time he got to the automatic doors of the Emergency Room, he was wheezing heavily. Something began rattling in his throat. His head began to swim in a fog as a rush of blood to the head hit him.

The dead and the dying decorated the waiting room. Not all of them patients. Nurses, Doctors, Paramedics too; lying there on the floors and desks and lounge chairs.

“Hello?” Randy shouted from the front desk, “Anybody? My wife is sick, I need some help!!”

No answer.

He adjusted his wife and then laid her down onto a nearby abandoned gurney. He was fighting back tears in his eyes.

“It’ll be okay, baby.” He said choking on his own sobs, “I’m sure they’re busy. I’m going to go back into the E.R. and see if I can find someone to help us.”

He kissed her frozen blue lips and tried to get into the ER but the door was locked with a keypad. He went over to the nurse’s station which was divided by plexi-glass.

Looking around he couldn’t see anyone there. But he was determined to see for himself. He shouted to the back but didn’t receive an answer. He went over and grabbed a chair and threw it into the plexi-glass and it fell apart.

He jumped over the service counter and looked around. More bodies laid about the place. Row upon row of corpses riddled with some form of orange fungus gathered about their nose and mouths.

“Is there a goddamn doctor around??” he shouted hopelessly, “Hello?”

He grabbed some surgical masks, fitted himself with one and then went out the ER door. He got to Dana and he dropped onto his knees.

“Dana?” he asked beginning to cry, “Honey, wake up. We’re going to have to try Fairbault County Hospital. Honey?”

She was gone. He knew it as soon as he saw her face when he came back. She looked relaxed and at peace. Light crimson saliva drooled from the corner of her mouth.

“Don’t leave me, Dana.” His sobbing began to jerk his body, “Dana, don’t do this to me. DANA!!”

His cries echoed through the dead hallways.

The sound of helicopter blades echoing off the front parking lot pulled him from his grief. He ran out the side doors he had come in and saw the wind given off by the whirring blades around the corner. He glanced over at his truck and then looked up into the sky.

He now saw where the jet streams were coming from. From Western horizon to Eastern he saw aircraft, triangular in shape, emitting some form of noxious cloud. The aircraft was made of some sort of reflective metal that hid them at a certain angle.

“There’s one.” Said a voice behind a gas mask.

He turned to see a group of people in haz-mat suits carrying automatic rifles.

“Hey!” he shouted muffled by his surgical mask, “Hey! I need help!”

He noticed that the bodies lying about him were decomposing at a rapid rate. Turning into bubbling puddles of a dark orange goo.

“Hey!” he began walking towards them, “Hey, what’s going on?”

“Take him out.” Said another voice.

“What are you---?”

Bullets fired from several guns ripped through the air and began taking chunks from his body.

“Jesus!” he cried out and started for his truck.

More bullets sunk into his body as he ran, digging holes into the tarmac and his back.

He fell and started crawling only feet from his Ford pick up.

As he reached his door and pulled himself up, one last bullet found the top of his head and sprayed his scalp across his driver’s side window. Blood stained his mask and he fell.

“Okay,” said the voice. “Let’s go inside and make sure the hospital is secured.”

“Sir,” said a voice from a man coming from the helicopter. “sector 5 is now clear. Delta team is heading back to base.”

“Good. Now we can have the clean up teams finish up this mess once we’re done.”

 

Author's Note

this story stems from an actual UFO sighting i had living in the country. i saw several aircraft as described from one horizon to the other, seeming to hover in one spot in a perfect line across the sky. they were triangular and you couldn't see them on one side but saw their reflective surface on the other side of them. i thought this fitting for revolutionary's "chem trails" project.

Reviews

[Revolutionary]

thank you and I will be using this.I proof read it rigth now because I am late from trying to get this stupid music on my poem but I will be reading it over and over again to place it properly in the work.I am having the fiction stories recited.I think I will use an older voice for this one with a Yah Yah accent.I know a youper that can do the accent perfect

[FireWoman]

Well aren't you just a breath of fresh air today?? Seriously, I loved this story. Very fitting with today's news and the Mayan calendar running out & all.

My uncle had Holstein cattle that all bloated up & died mysteriously after the area had been farmed for over 300 years... Hmmmm...

[Quinn Blackburn]

This tale gives great atmosphere... no pun intended :o) It rapidly takes readers from just an ordinary day to the bizarre reality such events would surely present. Something about the main character starting out on his combine put the notion into my head that these strange ships and noxious fumes were some other species' agricultural aids... they just happen to be setting up their new farm around our planet. I think it has also become a new bylaw of Humanity... never trust a guy in a Hazmat suit! :o) Great writing Bradley!

Minor editing thought- "Meteorologists say, however, that there is an anomaly with atmospheric pressure currently created a haze in the air and a repugnant odor.” the tense seems confused to me. Should "created" be "creating"?