Colony

by SpunSilk

Part eight : Civilization

You arrive at a village, and in this calm environment, one starts to hear echo.

––Yannick Noah

I looked at the woods around me with different eyes after that. 'Green, peaceful, and annoying' had become 'green, insidious, and threatening'. After the encounter with the thorns, Edward R. Murrow had decided playing in the undergrowth and pouncing on vermin were less interesting to him than was staying close to me. We explored a wide area that day, and knowing what to look for now, I discovered a number of structures, each one seeming to be a mound of thorn-vines to the casual observer, usually some 6 to 10 foot high. For a while it seemed to have been farmed-land with houses and barns scattered quite widely, but in one direction the houses appeared to have been built gradually more closely to one another. We followed that direction. My investigative reporter gene had kicked into high gear.

Between the structure-mounds, the natural "normal" woods had grown up in the intervening years. But it was possible with some imagination and an educated eye to see the land as it had been before. I was headed into a village, maybe a town. The question that presented itself was how? This question was followed quickly by two others: when? and why?

I carried with me the crowbar from my cabin and the rusty handsaw from the stone barn, but I was convinced the most useful tool I had on my person was the Mojo bag that hung around my neck. My personal energy level was back to almost normal, in-spite of my Colony infection, as I was given a great boost to feel 'the game afoot' once more. I eyed any vines with healthy suspicion.

In time I entered the part of the village where houses had been laid out in blocks, the square street corners still evident. There were fewer trees grown up here than out in the farmland, possibly the streets once had a covering of some type that had impeded tree seedlings sprouting. Without the trees obscuring the view, I had an easier time imagining the layout of the town, each mound of thorn-vines – a building. It was eery, walking silently through empty streets that had presumably once held action and bustle. Now just the wind sounded. The structure-mounds here in town were somewhat larger than those in the country, but were held tight by the same gripping thorn-vines. I did not approach the malicious botany, and the cat gave it wide berth as well. I studied at the destruction on all sides of me, and shook my head. Something had gotten real angry at this town.

It was hard to guess when this had happened, Not a lot of clues remained outside of the structure-mounds, no rusting vehicle bodies in the street for example. But as I was walking down one street, my foot kicked something metallic. I stooped and pulled a metal hat out of the thick weeds: a miner's cap with a small oil lantern on the front used for illumination in the deep dark. Hmm. If I'd had to hazard a guess, I'd say... late 1800s? Early 1900s?

As I rounded one block, something new came into view. A house stood in the next block – neglected and unkept, yes, but standing! I crouched as a reflex. But it was as dead as the rest of the neighborhood. I approached it cautiously. This one house had been spared, something made it special. What? A tidy two-story it had been in its day, with a generous porch sported by spindled uprights. Now its color was an even dust-grey and it gave the impression of a corpse that, although dead, refused to fall. What had once been an iron fence around the property was covered in thorn-vines, and what remained of it now was a twisted mass of bent rust. I passed through what had been a gate, and eyed the old house structure critically. I walked around it completely before attempting to enter. Odd, angular symbols had been painted on all sides in dark paint, and even though thorn-vines grew low around the foundation of the house, they stopped at about 10 inches of height. Now, I'm no botanist, but that struck me as unusual behavior for a plant. The foot-high symbols were painted at semi-regular intervals around the perimeter of the house, like a bad case of graffiti. On either side of the standing house, the neighbor's houses were little more than 10 foot mounds of lumber-supported thorn-vines. I didn't recognize the angular symbols painted on the house, but I theorized they could have offered some protection in some way.

I knelt down for a closer look at the vines. They looked healthy enough, green and sharp and tough, but they looked...well... stunted, is the word I want. I cautiously felt the leaves. I rubbed them pensively between my fingers. The plants looked... they looked...frustrated.

Edward R. Murrow sauntered to my side and also examined the short vines I was scrutinizing. He looked at the vines, then up at me incredulously. With his nose inches from mine, he then gave me an expression that clearly meant 'Anthropomorphizing a cat isn't enough for you? Now you have to assign emotions to a plant? ' I frowned at him, and got to my feet without answering. That's all I needed; a snarky cat.

We walked around to the front of the grey house. Edward R. Murrow, showing more curiosity than brains, slipped inside past the front door that had fallen from its top hinge. Now, I've heard tell, a cat is afforded nine lives. I had always figured that applied to me too, for some reason. Moving the door (with some effort) out of the way, I followed him inside.

The house still had furniture, albeit thick with dust. My foot falls echoed hollow with that old-wood sound. Stiff spindly chairs lay on their sides and a large roll-top desk stood against one wall. A couch that had at one time been upholstered stood on the far wall, one end of which looked like it had been used as a nest for a family of squirrels. White and grey dust lay on everything. Equally uncolorful black and white portraits hung on wall, the serious people in them staring out peacefully on a scene that was anything but. I left Edward R. Murrow investigating the old squirrel nest with laser-focused enthusiasm, and hazarded the wooden staircase myself.

Upstairs, I found only bedrooms. One of the beds was in worse condition than the poor couch downstairs. It looked like it had been used as a nest by a family of foxes. A quick investigation showed the family that had once lived here seemed not to have moved out at all. Clothing still lay in the drawers, trinkets still lay on the bed-side tables, on the ones that still stood anyway. In the largest bedroom, a bulky dresser stood to the side with a three section side-swing mirror – all three shattered, but more or less still in place. The mirrors looked like they had been efficiently broken with blunt blows. As I approached it, I was surprised by what I saw. After three weeks without having seen my reflection, my brain would not accept how haggard I appeared. I had dark circles under my eyes and even appeared a bit grey in the skin tone. How could something slowly sucking energy from my invisible aura make such a difference in my physical appearance? A hundred jagged pieces of Carl Kolchak stared wide-eyed back at me, then each scowled. I turned away. Pointedly. My terms.

I made my way through the upstairs but the only other point of interest was finding the back room had one corner of the structure that had some water seepage and was starting to sag under its own weight. Although somehow protected from crushing grasp of the thorn vines, the old house could not escape the clutches of time and neglect. Out the window, however, I spied something new I could not have seen from street level; looking out over the landscape of thorn-mounds, two other buildings in town were still two-storied! From the looks of it, a retail building and a church steeple.

I headed directly for that part of town, the cat looked up with interest when he saw me light out of the house, and followed me. He trotted silently behind me as I approached the first building, that looked like an old commercial structure. As I had suspected, the building had foot-high angular symbols painted around the perimeter to match the house I had just left. I couldn't believe my good fortune as I approached it; painted in fading letters across the facade were the words "General Store".

I peered through the front window, encrusted with grime but otherwise intact. Inside, time seemed to have been frozen. Merchandise still lay in orderly rows in old fashioned cabinets, although some shelving had toppled. The front door was still intact. I tried it, and it opened obediently for me, without the stiffness I would have anticipated. Edward R. Murrow slipped neatly past my feet to explore. I let out a long whistle as I took in the sight. A wide grin appeared on my usually dower and serious face as my delighted eyes flitted across the wares. Enough supplies to support a small city lay in front of me: under the dust were cans of salmon, nails, dusty cloth, gunpowder. Lamp oil, salt! Matches! I laughed out-loud. Holy Crow – toilet paper!

"Edward R, we are rich!" I crowed.

He sat regarding me cooly, unimpressed. I ran my hands over the hardwood cabinets, hardly able to believe my good fortune.

I gathered a sampling of the priceless treasures into a flour-sack for transport back to the cabin. Maple syrup (now maple sugar, but surely still sweet) went in, and candles. Also a fine knife. And, believe it or not, a bottle of brandy, older than I was. By the time I had gathered the most essential of the luxuries, the sack was heavy and over-full. I set it to the side of the door to pick up when I started back to the cabin.

Frustrated thorn-vines crouched around the outside of the old store at about 10 inches of height, just like at the house. On either side, and across the street, other stores had not fared so well, each was a mound of vines some 10 to 15 foot high. The breeze filtered through them in silence in the cool afternoon sun. I set off to see the church with the cat trotting silently behind me.

The church yard was telling. Thorns grew right up to the edge – and stopped. The church building and the small cemetery next to it were completely free of the malicious plant. And it had accomplished this without any angular symbols painted anywhere. I smiled smugly at this, and entered. The wooden church building echoed hollow at my footfalls. I had noticed some shingles missing from the roof outside, but inside stood silently as it had since... well since 'something' had happened. The pulpit stood abandoned, the choir loft, silent. A wooden frame on the wall at the front still held numbers announcing, to anyone that was interested, that the songs would be hymns numbers 45, 23, and 12. No songs were sung in the hollow silence. I returned to the sunshine.

The tombstones had much more to tell me. I quickly was able to establish the town had been established around 1850, and had been adding residents to the ground up until 1919. After that, they stopped. Near the most recent of the stones stood three graves with weathered wooden crosses – the only wooden ones to be found in the graveyard. Wood, not stone. These had no names, no dates on them, and it made me wonder. Edward R. Murrow slipped happily between the stones and the tall, thick grass that had grown up between them.

The graveyard looked so normal, a small piece of civilization frozen in time. It struck me as comforting in a way. Here, I was as close to people (or ex-people as it were) as I had been in many weeks. It was an odd sensation. I felt a connection. To what? To the human race? Not something I had ever felt in the crowded city, surrounded on all sides by them... There, humans had always been more of an annoyance. Now, in the quiet of my exile, I felt like... I belonged, somehow. With people. I felt more at home than I had anywhere since entering the exile. I sat on the church step facing the gravestones, musing.

I was sunk deep in my own thoughts, there in the cool sun, that's why the human voice made me nearly jump out of my skin.

"You stop right there."

I looked up in shock to find myself in the point-blank sights of a double-barreled shotgun.