Some Will Not Sleep: Selected Horrors by Nevill Adam

Author:Nevill, Adam [Nevill, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Publisher: Ritual Limited
Published: 2016-10-31T04:00:00+00:00

They had kept slaves, captured along the trail through three states, and had used them to erect the hopeless wooden buildings of the Prophet Lehi’s Zion, on the shores of the Great Dead Sea. Once their labours were complete, the Nephites had eaten the slaves alive, right where they had sat exhausted in their chains. Amongst the dozen sets of dirty bones, the soldier moved a few greyish heads with the toe of one boot. The slaves were not the chosen and had never been converted. He moved out of the black barn and onto Main Street.

Beside the barn, where they’d been keeping the black carriage and the three hell mares, they had another three wooden shacks barely upright and facing the shimmering white sand that stretched to the ravines that he’d passed through that morning. At the end of the row of wooden buildings were a dozen tents, their dirty canvas sides billowing from the wind that came off the long, salty water behind.

The settlement appeared empty. Desolate. Damned.

The soldier had made good time out here though, and was sure that he’d beaten that long-legged Prophet back. Nephites tired easy; were always hungry; their salvation as the chosen seemed to amount to nothing more than scratching in the dust to gobble down any living thing that had blood inside it. He’d once found one buried waist-deep inside a skinned bear carcase, and feeding hard.

He guessed the population of Zion would rest inside the broken-down buildings and loose tents until their Prophet returned with something warm and squealing in the back of that black carriage. The soldier smiled. Laid down his bags outside the building beside the barn. ‘I will be avenged sevenfold. Yes sir.’ He sprinkled the kerosene oil around the wooden foundations of the building, and peppered the liquid with gunpowder. Nary a sound from within, not even a whisper, and he’d burned three Nephite infestations out of farms they’d occupied in Wyoming the exact same way. Nephites did not like fire; must have reminded them of home, he often mused.

He lit a cigarette and dropped the match into the oil, which lit off in a trail of blackish smoke, the flames invisible in the sunlight. The timber they’d used for the buildings was so worm-eaten and dry, and mostly cobbled together from wagon beds, that it took fire quickly and with a furious relish.

Outside the front entrance that was covered with a dirty muslin sheet, the soldier laid down his carbine and drew Old Wristbreaker. And waited.

But not for long. Deep inside, back someways in the darkness that they had all been lying inside, he heard the rustlings of thin limbs. Then a bumping of bony feet and a chattering of dry teeth sounded, and all getting nearer to the entrance as they came through that house of rotten wood, not yet warmed by the bright sunlight, but roused by the thick smoke.

They came out into the light of dawn, blinking and coughing and whimpering: three raggedy females.

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