Among the Roaring Dead by Christopher Sword Page B

for as long as he lived.
    The little sickly child came out of the water and ran for Jess. He was small and not very strong.
    Jess pushed him up against a tree, pinning the boys’ shoulders with his weight on his hands. It thrashed vainly and Jess noticed the large blisters on the boy’s arms and the white film that seemed to cover his eyes completely. It reminded him of dead fish washed up on the shore – the opaque white eyes being the clearest indicator of the absence of life.
    Finally, the boy stilled.
    “Can you talk?” Jess said. “Can you hear me?”
    There was so little space between their faces - Jess was hunched over, his weight keeping the child still. The boy’s mouth dropped open and Jess waited for the words to come out but all that happened was a tongue appeared instead, like a snake tasting the air. His tongue darted around for a few moments and then it retreated back into its mouth.
    Jess was disgusted, but couldn’t seem to forget that this was a child in front of him. Ill or in shock, or outright something else entirely, he wasn’t sure, but the shape and form were undeniable. This child was probably about Justin’s age.
    But though the child-thing had recovered its tongue, its mouth still hung open and when Jess was about ready to loosen some of the weight that kept the thing stilled he noticed the sound coming from its throat.
    It started like a low hum. It was like a thousand bees just at the periphery of your hearing and getting closer and closer. It finally developed into a long low moan and then the boy started to fight again, struggling to get free. The thrashing of limbs started up again; flailing, clawing and grasping.
    There were no other witnesses - save whatever the child-thing saw in the last moments through its deadened eyes and Jess’s own tortured memory banks.
    When it was over, the tree had been used like a nutcracker; it was harder than the boy-thing’s head.
    Jess was wet, cold and he now had more blood on him.
    He took off running again, his limbs beyond exhaustion, his mind not quite ready to quit and his body almost pushed to the brink of finality.
    There were trees everywhere. Some were brown, and others, being white, were easier to see in the dark. But still more littered the floor where he ran. Many trees had fallen over for some reason that tripped up his feet and knocked him to the ground.
    Still, he ran. Cut and bruised and winded so badly that it felt like his lungs were on fire.
    He scrambled like a wild, mad thing, running straight into trees and nearly flinging himself off the edge of a cliff with nothing but the rocky riverbed some thirty feet below. He finally stopped a moment, looking down upon the black water and barely visible rock-bed when something swung out and struck him along the side of the head.
    He rolled over onto his knees and saw a woman in a white jacket standing before him with a baseball bat coiled for another strike. The woman looked like a ghost in the snowy woods, wearing all white. Even her hair, long and wavy, was a white fresh as a layer of wintry precipitation.
    “I advise you to speak, if you can,” she said.
    Please don’t.
    That was all Jess could muster.
    He was about two feet from the edge of the cliff and wondered if he could survive the fall. He could hear the water below but did not know how deep it was. Further down, near the tent, it seemed to only be three or four feet at the most.
    “Well, I have certainly heard better pleading speeches from people offered open access to the pulpits, but I suppose one word is almost as good as psalm thirty-seven twenty-five, at least under the circumstances.”
    The baseball bat fell to her side and she began to walk away.
    “God willing, and if you’d like to live, you might want to walk with me for a while.”
    Jess got to his feet and turned around, to make sure that no more things were coming after him.
    The woman walked north along the river’s edge. She was better prepared for the