Storm Driven Progress

Chapter 4: Missing Cows and Zombied Folks

The morning awoke to a howling wind and the clattering of a piece of metal skipping down the road. No birds were singing, though Sergeant Bell could hear some crows having a domestic in the rookery over the road and a lone one nearer the building. He listened hard. Couldn't hear any rain. He half registered a telephone bell ringing in the distance.

He got up and opened the curtains a smidgen. Steady, fine rain washed the great outdoors and kept the meteorological momentum flowing. A gutter on the corner of the roof was about to give way. He made a mental note to speak to the boy about his handyman skills.

To bewail the weather was to waste time and energy. His mother used to say, "it'll do what it wants and there's nothing to be done about it." He wondered if it would ever stop. Perhaps this was the end of the world.

A bump from the next room spurred him on. Time to put some ideas into action.

He put the kettle on the hob to boil and opened his pocketbook.

"Anything new?"

Gideon's arrogant tone annoyed his uncle. "I've got a few things I could do with you helping me with if you haven't got anything else to do," he said stiffly.

Gideon sized his uncle up. "Just the little matter of getting a job, nothing big."

"Well until then you can do some things for me." Something for nothing wasn't real life and he thought it time the boy learned that for good. And after he got a job he could pay rent.

The distant telephone had never stopped. Sergeant Bell opened the door onto the stairs that led to the police station and realised it was the station phone. Something else had happened.

He raced downstairs without another word, spun on the banister at the bottom and threw open the office door with a bang.

The phone stopped. Gideon ran into him from behind.

The telephone began again and he put the receiver to his ear.

"Crackenby Police?"

* * *

The road dropped down into a deep cleft in the desolate moor. The valley floor was flat and green with uniform fields and a serpentine beck meandering through. The rain seemed to drive from the ground upwards and rivulets ran up the windscreen bottom to top. The little Morris chugged its way through the rushing waters and halted in the farmyard. Sergeant Bell couldn't see where to go. He'd never had need to visit this farm before. Only barn walls presented themselves.

A collie dog trotted into view. It had the nonchalant haste of a guilty party. Perhaps it had just come from the house.

The sergeant resigned himself to the weather once again. He slammed the door to draw attention and strode round the corner from which the collie had come. The back door of the house was in full view, ajar and swinging in the wind. He banged on the door and entered the kitchen, calling out to the inhabitants. No response.

A half chewed, half plucked chicken lay spread-eagled on the floor. The collie's misdemeanour. A note lay on the kitchen table, written in heavy chinagraph crayon: In the Ash Paddock.

Sergeant Bell exited the house and rounded the next corner to see four people standing round a ragged tree stump. As he got nearer, he could see greenish smoke drifting from the tree. Or was it smoke? The tree didn't look burned, just bare and branchless, a standing trunk alone.

He reached the group. "Mr. Sorensen?" He guessed the farmer was the older man, the other two men were young, and the girl was likely the daughter. He didn't know if there was a wife.

No-one responded.

"Mr Sorensen?" Never get angry at the general public. They don't like it.

The man looked up slowly. "Half my herd in one go," he said. "Investigation won't solve that."

Investigations didn't bring back peoples' livelihoods.

"You'll have insurance of some kind?"

Sorensen's eyes flashed. "When I want financial advice from a police officer, you'll know it."

Insurance was a payment too far for many farmers. Sergeant Bell scanned the ground around them, through the rain. The grass was pockmarked with small, deep holes, rocks visible in spots between soil and blades of green. A series of large ditches surrounded the tree stump and the craggy rocks behind it had been writhed apart. A curl of smoke drifted up from the base. The tree had clearly been hit, but he couldn't see why it still stood while what looked like ... he counted the craters ... seven cows had vanished. It appeared to be the same circumstances as the sheep and the dog at the Wilkinson farm, though financially more serious for the farmer. And that tree was odd.

"Can you tell me what happened? In the dry?" he added as Sorensen opened his mouth.

The farmer gestured at the girl. "Take Sergeant Bell into the kitchen and make a pot of tea." His mouth turned up with a hint of a sneer.

She set off to the house with neither hesitation nor enthusiasm. The sergeant followed, stumbling and slipping in his galoshes over the stones in the gateway.

* * *

The sergeant parked himself in front of the open fire and watched the girl putting the kettle on the range. Her face was an odd colour, almost jaundiced, he thought. He blinked. Must be the fire giving her that hue.

She said nothing as she opened a tin of homemade biscuits and lifted four mugs from the hooks by the sink.

A series of thumps came through the back door as the men took off their boots and coats. Sorensen's malefic gaze fell upon the sergeant as he entered the kitchen.

"Nice and warm, now, Sergeant?" He sat down in the chair at the end of the table and his sons joined them in silence. The grey-yellow of all four faces concerned the policeman. Sergeant Bell wondered again about disease. This was the second family he'd visited about the same type of event and both seemed unwell.

"Tell me what you know, please." He pulled out his pocketbook and turned to the last page he'd used.

Sorensen shook his head peremptorily. "N'owt. Nothing at all. I went to bed last night and the herd was close to the house and more or less under the tree. Got up asmorning and that's what I found. That peculiar smog everywhere. Tree must've been hit, and the water on the ground must've done 'em."

Sergeant Bell' pen stopped. "I noticed the tree was still standing, but there's no sign of the cattle. Why do you think that happened?"

"Sergeant." Sorensen leaned towards him, glowering. "I can't even work out why the beests vanished, never mind why the tree didn't."

Does lightning make its victims vanish?

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