“I c-can’t f-feel my l-legs,” the older man gasped. “What’s ha-happened? I can’t f-feel my damn legs.”
“Salty,” the woman cried out. “Are you okay?”
“S-Sarah,” the old man answered. “Is that you, girl?”
I was surprised that he was still conscious. He’d been gushing blood, going into shock, and having a seizure, yet despite this, he remained awake. Hardy stock, I guess. That’s why they call us the greatest generation.
The young man and woman climbed out of the wreckage and I helped them hobble over to Carl and their friend.
When the woman, Sarah, saw the bone poking through his torn flesh, she screamed, burying her face in the young man’s chest. The one on the ground, Salty, looked at her in puzzlement, and then glanced down at his leg. When he saw what had happened, he began to scream, too.
“My leg! The damn bone’s come out!”
I motioned to the younger man. “What’s your name, son?”
He eyed the rifle suspiciously and then met my stare.
“Kevin. Kevin Jensen, out of Baltimore.”
He sounded tired—and old. Were I to have guessed, I’d say he felt as old as me. I wondered what he’d seen in the past few weeks (other than this helicopter crash) to make him sound that way.
“Nice to meet you, Kevin. Let’s start over, okay? My name is Teddy Garnett, and my friend over there is Carl Seaton. We’re the Punkin’ Center, West Virginia, welcoming committee. We don’t mean you any harm. You folks have been shaken up, that’s for sure, but we’re here to help you.”
Salty’s screams of pain had turned to whimpers again. He was fading in and out of consciousness.
“Somebody shot at us,” Sarah said. Her expression was one of disbelief.
“Like I said, that was my neighbor, Earl Harper. I’m real sorry about that. He figured you folks were the United Nations occupying force or some such nonsense. Earl wasn’t wrapped real tight before any of this happened”—I waved my hand at the sky above us—“and I’m sure it hasn’t helped his mind at all. In fact, the weather probably made him worse.”
Kevin glanced around in a daze. “Where’s Cornwell?”
“Who?” I asked.
“Cornwell. Our pilot. Did he survive?”
“I’m afraid not.”
I glanced at the wreckage of the cockpit and Kevin started toward it, but Carl pulled him back.
“You don’t want to see that, son.”
I stared at the ground as Sarah began to sob, her tears indistinguishable from the raindrops on her cheeks.
Carl broke the silence. “Let’s get—”
Something cracked in the woods—loud, like another gunshot. I think we all jumped, and Kevin screamed. The noise was followed by the sounds of wood snapping and splintering as a tree crashed to the ground. The echoes rang through the air. I thought about my apple tree and how it was slowly being uprooted. Then I thought about the strange holes we’d found.
“Look.” I grabbed Kevin’s arm. “We need to make sure Earl can’t cause us any more trouble, and then we need to get your friend…” I snapped my fingers, trying to remember his name.
“Salty,” Sarah said. “His name is Salty.”
“Salty,” I nodded. “We need to get him inside and check you folks over. You’re probably in shock right now. Carl and I are going to go take care of Earl and fix up something to safely move Salty with. Carl’s stopped the blood flow, but if we don’t sew him up soon he’ll be dead for sure. You folks stay here with him until we get back. Make sure that belt around his leg stays tight.”
More snapping and popping came from the forest. That’s when I really started to get scared.
“What’s that in the woods?” Sarah asked.
“Probably just some deer,” I assured her, “scared from the crash and all the shooting.”
Carl gave me an odd look but said nothing.
I handed Earl’s rifle to Kevin. “You know how to use this?”
His face darkened for a moment and he got a strange look in his eyes. “I had a crash course on guns not too long ago.”
“Good. Take this one.”
I think he saw in my eyes that something was wrong, because he said, “You’ve seen them, haven’t you?”
“Seen what, son?”
“The things from below. You’ve got them here on dry land too, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Kevin, but yeah—I think I heard something out there. We all did. Don’t know what it is, but I don’t like the sound of it.”
He glanced back at the tree line and then, without a word, escorted Sarah over to Salty.
I checked the injured man’s makeshift tourniquet, and then Carl and I waded toward the shed.
“Teddy, do you really think we ought to be moving that old fellow? He’s hurt pretty bad.”
“Actually, I don’t.” I answered him in short gasps, winded from the last few minutes of exertion. “But I don’t see how we’ve got a choice. If we move him, there’s a chance we may hurt him even worse than he is now. I don’t reckon there are any doctors around these parts to treat him, and I’m not sure what we can do, other than sew him up with a needle and thread. But if we leave him out here, he’s going to die for certain of pneumonia.”
“So what do we do? What’s the plan?”
“Well, I reckon we’ll get some duct tape from the shed and some kindling from the woodpile and make a splint. Then we’ll get the wheelbarrow and haul him right up to the house, after we pop that bone back into place.”
Carl looked queasy at the prospect of setting the splintered bone. “You know how to do that?”
“Not really.”
“But we’re gonna try anyway?”
I sighed. “Let’s be honest here. No matter what we do, this Salty fellow is probably going to die. He’s lost a lot of blood, and even if we do manage to reset the bone and sew his leg up, we don’t have anything here to fight the infection. He could get gangrene. But we still have to try.”
“We could amputate,” Carl suggested. “Cut it off and cauterize the wound, like they do on television.”
“Do you honestly think you could do that, Carl?”
“No. I don’t reckon I could.”
“Me neither.”
“What about Earl?” he asked. “He ain’t going to be happy when he finally wakes up. I knocked him a good one. Not to mention we helped these folks from the United Nations.”
I stopped in my tracks. “Carl, do you really think those poor people back there are U.N. invasion troops? For God’s sake, the helicopter wasn’t even black.”
Carl’s wet ears turned red. “No, I guess not.”
“Let’s just lock Earl up in the shed, till we figure out what to do with him.”
“He ain’t gonna be happy about that, either. He’s liable to be madder than a porcupine in a pickle barrel.”
I smiled. “At least he’ll be dry.”
Earl lay where we’d left him, unmoving. He’d thrown up muddy water all over himself. I checked his pulse and felt it beating beneath his cold, wet, liverspotted skin. Carl grabbed his legs and I tugged his arms, and we dragged him through the mud to the shed door. As we did so, I noticed the hole next to the woodpile that we’d discovered the day before had caved in. All that was left was a big depression in the earth.
Carl fumbled with the rusty top latch on the door. It clicked open, and he bent to undo the bottom one. Suddenly, I recalled the muffled noise I’d heard yesterday, from inside the shed, when Carl and I were messing with the drum of kerosene.
“Carl, maybe we’d better—”
The wind ripped the door from Carl’s grip before I could finish. The door slammed back and forth on its hinges, allowing us to see inside.
The shed stood empty. Well, not empty, mind you. Just not what I’d imagined might be in there. My riding mower and seeder and wheelbarrow, and my drum full of shelled corn for the deer and squirrel feeders, and my fishing equipment, garden tools, shovels, picks, hoes, and axes, and my workbench…but nothing else. Nothing that could dig a tunnel beneath the ground. The oak plank floor was empty of monster worms or giant groundhogs.