H Trope: Apocalyptic Diary
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July 4, 1895
Mother said that when she was a girl, they ate pigeon every day at a time, and sometimes for days and days at a time. She said she hated pigeon meat.
She also said that pigeon didn’t make you vomit until you brought up only blood. She said there were days when pigeon’s didn’t fill the sky and eat everything in sight, including people sometimes. When I asked her if they sounded nicer when she was a girl, she said, “No, they’ve always sounded like a rusty mill wheel pump in an afternoon breeze.”
July 14, 1895
Mother is worried. The store in town said that they’re out of shotgun shells.
Pa and Danforth, my oldest brother spent the afternoon casting lead ball shot and packing Grandpa’s old musket.
This morning, a family came through town in a covered wagon. Mother covered my eyes, but I saw before she could get her hands over them. The wagon cover was shredded and there were dead people in it. It didn’t look like they had any eyes, either. Mother took me and Dennis, Dorothy, and Debra into the tornado shelter. We’ve never had a tornado in Minnesota in the fifteen years since I was born, but Pa said there was one just before him and Mother met and courted. She started crying about the end of the world until Pa came down and held on to her tight. Danforth didn’t even say anything nasty to me when I held Mother’s hand.
After we got back to work, he came up to me and asked if I wanted to know what was really going on.
“Why you wanna tell me?” I asked.
“’Cuz you’re always readin’ them crazy books.”
His idea of crazy books are Jules Verne’s FROM EARTH TO THE MOON, and HG Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE. I shrugged, expecting him to start in on me again. Ever since he stopped school and started working with Pa, he’s acting like he’s all better than the rest of us. But I’ve seen the look on his face lately, like when the pigeons in the sky are worse than a tornado storm. When they all land and eat the land bare and there’s nothing we can do because the feathers and skin are poison, and the meat makes you vomit blood…Danforth said, “I been hearin’ some things in town.”
I scowled, crossed my arms over my chest – which had gotten bigger lately – and said, “What kind of things?”
He shrugged. “Fine then, if you don’t want to know.” He turned and headed out of the house. Mother busied herself with cleaning up after dinner.
I hated myself for it, but I blurted, “What have you heard?”
He turned and leaned toward me, “You know that crazy Wells book you were so moony over last summer?”
“THE TIME MACHINE?”
“That’s the one. I heard in town that it’s real. In Washington.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
He shrugged, “Someone said that someone said that even though it didn’t look like the illustration I seen, there’s a time traveler come to the president. A couple of years ago.”
“The illustration you saw was from a children’s book!”
He grunted, “Anyway, they said they heard that someone heard that the traveler asked about pigeons.”
“Why’d they want to know about pigeons?”
Danforth shrugged and went back to work. Mother called me to help with supper.
July 19, 1895
I’ve been thinking about what a time traveler could possibly want with pigeons. They’re monsters and the preachers round these parts think that they are a curse placed on mankind for the hubris of thinking he was better than nature. Most of them are old enough to remember when people actually ate pigeons instead of pigeons eating the clothes and food off us. Pa says that the pigeons don’t eat Human meat – except for the eyes. Mother hushed him up real fast and asked me if I’d heard what he said. I turned around and said, “What?”
Mother managed a pained smile and a glance at Pa that would have peeled paint from the outhouse – if there’d been any paint left on it.
Later that day, a pigeon flock passed over our town and it was dark enough to have to light the lanterns. The sound is horrible and we could hear the sound of the birds as they relieved themselves on our house.
Mother shouted at the roof as if she was trying to scare them away. She scared the littles so much, I finally had to hold the youngest and let the others lean on me.
It took fifteen hours for the flock to pass. Mother said, “This is the end of Humanity. The very, very end, and we will have died surrounded by meat we can’t eat any more, bereft of what food we grew and might have eaten, with our waters poisoned by pigeons who drop a deadly rain as they pass over us…”
Pa said nothing, but hung his head. Danforth and me looked at each other until finally Dan looked down. He was so much like Pa, it made my heart clench tight.
Outside, the deafening shriek of the passing flock faded into complete silence.
Names: ♀ American Midwest, ; ♂ American Midwest
Image: http://www.redflagmagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Extinction-5.jpg
[A longer version of this story titled "Pigeon" appeared in the March 2016 issue of the Scottish Science Fiction and Fantasy magazine SHORELINE OF INFINITY]
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