Book 2 Chapter 23: Dead at 2 O Clock

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I shivered again as tendril of icy water found its way under my hat and snaked down the back of my neck and was absorbed into the band of my bra.  For some damn reason I kept getting the occasional drop of rain inside my clothes.  Damned irritating it was.

Something crunched under my foot, my skin jumped even while the rest of me froze in place.  Biting my lip to keep from muttering (or screaming) out loud, I lifted my foot in excruciatingly exaggerated slow motion.   This town was just too creepy.

Damariscotta was empty. Completely empty. No corpses, walking or otherwise.  Every gas station was dry, every car utterly drained of even the smallest drop of gas.  Every house, every store, every building had been stripped completely clean.   Even the ‘blacksmith’ that made ornamental crafts and wrought iron fences had been stripped of its tools and metal.

All the cars had been shoved to the sides of the street with something that had dented and battered the crap out of them.  Not a single trunk, door or
hood was still closed.  Suitcases, boxes and bags of every description lay open, THOROUGHLY  plundered.  And every bit of the resulting debris had
been shoved to the sides of the streets.

We walked as quietly as we could through town, looking mostly for answers.
But there were none to be had.  The entire town had been systematically stripped of everything useful.  Half frozen tracks in the mud made it clear
that a large convoy of some sort with several tracked vehicles had been through
here.

“I think we know where at least part of Corpse Mountain came from.”  Sarah
was the one who finally cracked under the weight of the silence.  Her voice sounded as strained as I felt and unnaturally loud in the oppressive quiet.   I just shrugged in reply.

“Let’s just go. There’s nothing here.”  Sam whispered, her eyes darting
about nervously trying to pierce the thick New England fog.

“DEAD AT TWO O’ CLOCK!”  boomed through the streets accompanied by a
deafening roar.  Every single one of us let out started shrieks and dropped to the ground.

“Wait! Wait! They yelled!”  Another voice shouted.  The four of us desperately searched for the origins of the voices and the gunshot.

A tall figure burst the mist shrouded alley to our left and ran straight for us.

“Hey! Hey! We got live ones!”  The voice warbled and cracked like a boy half
way through puberty.  He ran right up to us and started babbling something about llamas.  Llamas?

“Damn it Peter. They are NOT llama’s, they’re alpaca’s!” The woman’s voice from the other side of the street sounded distinctly insulted.

I suddenly understood the term ‘flabbergasted’.  Flabbergasted. I was definitely
flabbergasted.

After much confusion and sincere apologies we eventually sorted out that the other three people running around the ghost town that had been Damariscotta were part of Bob and Elena’s group.  They ran the local alpaca farm.  I didn’t even know we’d had an alpaca farm in the area.

We traded minor bits of information and some more deer meat in exchange for a fifty pound bag of flour and some baking powder.

As it turned out it had been the motley group of military that had stripped the town clean.  And every other small town in a fifty mile radius.  It also turned out that they had a grand total of eleven people at their fortified farm to care for over two
hundred animals.  Mostly goats and alpacas.  Although, Peter amended, the ostriches were dying off really quick and so were the miniature ponies.

It was just so weird. I’d known, intellectually, that most of the locals were involved in either the farming or fishing industries in one way or another.  But I’d never, ever, given any thought to the livestock.

We split back up into our respective groups after only a few minutes and decided that Sarah would go with them, and the overly tall Peter would come with us.  Sarah would check out their living arrangements to see if they were suitable for a bunch of traumatized and mostly
pregnant women, and Peter would ‘interview’ said women to see if they could
handle the heavy labor on the farm.

The woman, whose name I never did learn was in a hurry to catch up with a small wandering herd of alpaca…alpacas.  What was the plural of ‘alpaca’ anyway?  She hurried her group on and we slowly trudged back to our trucks while Peter bombarded us with questions.

“He’s riding with you.” I didn’t even give Billy a chance to argue as I hopped into Sarge’s truck.  I also made him take that damn bag with papers in it.

The long drive back to Moosehead Island was conducted in blissful silence.  We drove past Christmas Tree Inn only to find it empty and continued on Newagen Inn.
Too many damn hotels on this little island. I thought, annoyed again.

I averted my eyes from my own house, mostly out of habit, and sped up a little on the long winding drive to the Newagen.  That was habit too. I’d
worked there most summers in various capacities since it was less than a
quarter mile from my house.  I’d hated walking there every day until I was old enough to take Mom’s minivan.

All four of us were speechless when we finally got inside. It was brightly lit and very, very warm.  There were fires roaring in the fireplaces and I could hear the distinct clacking sounds of billiards tables in enthusiastic use.  I had a moment of disjointed,
confused déjà vu until Sarge stomped into the foyer practically growling.

I let the others handle whatever the problem was and wandered slowly around the room.  My eyes stopped on an old framed letter on the wall.

“We hope you choose Newagen for a restful furlough from this troubled world.”  It had been written to a guest in 1943 after a major fire had burned the original inn to the ground.  I knew the story by heart by the time I was fourteen.

Swallowing back the abrupt, painful tightness in my throat and blinking rapidly to clear the excess of moisture in my eyes kept me occupied for a few minutes while I made my way back to the kitchens.

It felt like coming home.