Bird's Eye View by Brian J. Smith

Trigger Warning: dead children

CLEAR skies for a dead world. 

What more could a crow like me ask for? 

I perch atop a power pole and survey the vast greenish-yellow countryside spread out before me. Tall spruce, dark-green pines and live oaks backdrop the expanse of rolling green hills. A blood red sun edges the horizon, traces the treetops and paints an array of neon blues and pinks across the sky. 

No planes or any of those frigging cheap plastic drones for me to dodge at all hours of the day and night. The crickets have been quiet for the past two weeks since this whole shitstorm started. I don’t know how long it’s taken me to get this far but all I do is count the seconds between the silence that chokes the life out of everyone left. 

If there’s anyone left that is. 

A strong coppery odor hits the soft cool breeze and caresses my beak. My dark feathery body glistens in the same dim orange sunlight glinting in the corners of my beady black eyes. I flap my wings for a second and bat the breeze away from me to keep from getting blown off of my feet.

I step near the edge of the top of the pole, my head twitching left and right respectively. I flinch my shoulders and screech at someone that doesn’t exist. 

A small white car sits along a stretch of two-lane blacktop cutting a fine swath through the countryside. Sunlight winks off of the rear bumper and the bits of broken glass dotting the pavement beside of the passenger door. Heat rises from the asphalt in thin lucid tentacles and chips away the paint to reveal the pockets of rust underneath.

A large pool of sticky red blood congeals across the hood and tells me a story that makes me sad. It’d once pumped through the veins of a person with a good heart, an abundance of love and a purpose. Now, it streaks along the roadways of America like all of the others before and after it. 

The road below me stretches east and west before receding into a domed archway of trees that obscure it from the thin gray blade of highway cutting along the horizon. 

It’s never been this quiet but who am I to complain? 

Movement flashes across my left eye. I step back and cock my head around to see what it is. A tower of thick black smoke rises in the distance far beyond the trees as if Satan Himself coming to survey the damage Mother Nature left behind. 

I sniff the air, unfurl my wings and take flight. My shadow floats across the serene countryside and resembles a large onyx crucifix. I flap my wings twice more, let off a loud birdlike screech and allow the breeze to carry me over the forest. 

My wingspan gives me a moment to reflect on things. There’s a difference between a crow and a raven so please don’t confuse us. I knew we look identical in color but I won’t get into it right now because I’m so goddamn hungry and I’ll bore you. 

A sign standing on the shoulder of a wide gravelly road appears on my right. The words NOW LEAVING bloom across the middle of the sign in bold cursive black letters; the rest of the letters in the town’s name has disappeared like the catalyst of its demise. A covered bridge sits on the far northwest corner and a white bell tower dotted with missing flakes of paint looms in the sky on the northeast; the bright red eye of a radio tower blinks in morse code. 

The further I venture through this ravaged country the more I realize something. 

Shit storm is a nice word compared to what other people have called it. 

Epidemic? 

Outbreak? 

I’m not sure what you’d call a bad case of the allergies but if they’re calling it that then it must be the truth. 

There’s a stench about this place that makes me realize why I won’t like it. It reminds me of a busted sewer pipe or burnt baby shit and as a crow I should know what the latter smells like. I’d caught the same stench two days ago when I’d flown through another town that according to the sign standing along the interstate was called Logan. 

It saddens me to think about that. Not because of the town itself but because of what I was doing when I got there. Well, when Tommy and I got there that is. 

Damn it, Tommy. I didn’t want to think about you but now I’ve got no choices. 

What can I say about Tommy but…

He was such a good crow. One of the best from one end of the globe to the other. He’d always call out to me if he found any food and he’d done it in such a way that none of the other crows could catch on.

Unfortunately, he didn’t die because of the other crows. The seconds of that horrible day still linger around inside of my tiny bird-sized brain no matter how much I try to forget about it. 

Timmy dives out of the sky toward that giant garbage dumpster outside of a nearby pizza place there was something about it that’d rubbed me the wrong way. He calls out to me in that special way that lets me know that everything had been okay and that there must’ve been something good about what he’d caught. He lands on the big black plastic lid on the left side, tiptoes across the edge for a second longer than he should’ve and leaps inside. 

I reach the edge of the roof and peer down into the metallic green paradise that reeks of promise and sustenance when something flies out of the corner of my eye. I cannot call out to Tommy in that special way that he once would’ve if it’d been him up here instead of me because the lid to the trash can came crashing down on him. His eyes glisten with regret and sadness, the former for his blindness to suspicion and the latter for his impending doom and maybe mine. 

My heart pounds against my chest for every time the lid was bashed against his left wing over and over again until his bird-like shrieks of pain and horror dies along with the wind. Someone calls out shoot the other one before it gets away damn it, their voice brimming with horror, desperation and hunger. My senses snap into alert and my wings carry me away from the scene and into the air before the first shot rings off. 

I turn right and soar over a flight of metallic sun-kissed bleachers ascending towards a cluster of treetops. I land on the bar between a goal post on the west side and tiptoe from one side to the other facing the east side of a large soccer field littered with dead bodies. A large scoreboard sits on the far right side of the field with words like HOME on one side and VISITOR on the other; the number 3 hovers below the former and the number 1 hovers below the latter. 

A tall red brick building sits off to the northwest as the familiar coppery odor I’d detected outside of town stings my nostrils. Sunlight reflects off the blood staining the grass and accentuates the motionless stares from the corpses lying before me. The smells of charred meat, blood, piss and shit rides on the breeze, tugs the two banners hanging down from the goalposts and stings my nostrils. 

Death has no age limit; no need to check your ID at the door. Young, middle-aged. They all have a number and each one of them had been pulled that day. 

They lie around like discarded toys in someone’s backyard, each one devoid of life and reason. Irregular red streaks stains their clothes to symbolize the method of their inevitable deaths, and glisten off of their faces and necks. A nest of flies hover above them and buzz with inhuman joy as I scan the field from east and west. 

A plump brunette in a pair of gray shorts and a black striped white tee shirt (its logo obscured by blood) lies beside of a bright orange cone with a meat fork jutting out from her jugular vein. The tall narrow-built man with buzz-cut black hair lies on his right hip, his back perforated with large dark stab wounds. The array of dead children in dark red and light green uniforms lying amongst the adults makes the aforementioned smells churn deep inside the pit of my stomach. 

Someone had used them for their intended purposes and left them here to rot for all of eternity. Death, family and relationships have a lot in common. 

I would feel bad if I were to go down and begin eating one of them. It’s as if that undying ripple of time, neglect, decay and death were going to finish them off better than I could. 

I fly across the field, ignore the bitter stench of death riding on the breeze sweeping across my nose and into a dense green forest. I cut through the narrow spaces in the trees, flap my wings and send frail leaves spiraling toward the ground on my way out. I glide over six blocks of small clapboard houses and neat stucco bungalows sitting on thumb-sized lawns behind faded yellow curbs, their picture perfect aura now drowning in a thick cloud of suffocating silence. 

In my left eye, a small stucco building sits on a patch of concrete next to a tall metallic flagpole with two colorful flags. I land on a dark blue metallic mailbox riddled with bullet holes and glance down both sides of the street. 

A chain of dead bodies and deserted vehicles scatter across the street, the former lying in pools of hot sticky blood like strange hieroglyphs. Thin spider-legged cracks etch across the front windshields of the vehicles and the windows of the nearby homes glinting in the still-rising sunlight. Open-faced newspapers, empty drink cans and Styrofoam cups scatter across the neighborhood and paint a heart-wrenching image of what used to be and what will never be. 

The soft spring breeze carries an errant newspaper across the street, and exposes a headline that fills me with a mixture of dread and horror. DON’T BREATHE the headline proclaims in bold black font with the enthusiasm of a horror movie from the black and white era. Five seconds later, it flutters out of sight. 

The smells of burnt plastic and cloth joins the death smell that refuses to leave me alone. A large lawn ornament of a heavyset woman bending over to reveal red polka-dot panties stands along the bottom front porch step of a stucco bungalow sitting across the street. The sun rises, and paints a canopy of shadows and sunlight across the curbs, sidewalks and lawns. 

A loud panic-stricken scream explodes from somewhere nearby. I flinch, my tiny bird-like heart stuttering in my chest and screech. I fly back onto the mailbox and glance around the street to see where it was coming from. 

I freeze and listen to it again. The note of harsh panic sends an icy chill down my spine and ruffles my feathers. I scan the street once more, thinking that one of the bodies have risen from the dead and are calling out to anyone with answers. 

I don’t have answers. All I have are sins. 

Footsteps shuffle across the west side of the street as a young girl appears in the periphery of my left eye. Her long dark hair sits on the back of her head in a thick black bun above almond-shaped dark eyes, small button nose, full lips and small chin. Blood streaks down the front of her white John Deere shirt like a red satin sash from a beauty pageant. 

She spins around, grinds her boots against the pavement and glances in the direction she’d came from. She looks to be about eleven or maybe twelve. Fingerprints of mud streak the thighs of her jeans as beads of sweat trickle down the sides of her forehead.

The worried expression on her face furrows her brows. Her mouth falls into a lopsided frown brimming with fear and confusion. An incoherent sob shudders inside of her throat, robs her next breath and returns it when she’d needed it the most. 

“Would you just come on?” She screams. 

More footsteps shuffle across the street. A new voice interrupts their urgent panicked staccato. 

“Run.” It says. “I told you not to stop.” 

“I’m not leaving without you.” 

A medium-built brunette with deeply bronze skin with the same long dark hair as her cohort appears brandishing a metal baseball bat coated with slick red blood. Blood stains her jeans and a long sleeved black striped shirt as lumps of mud cling to her black hiking boots. Basset hound brown eyes, wide nose, upturned lips and square chin accentuate her tan heart-shaped face; the sleeves of her shirt were pulled up to her elbows to expose an array of tattoos. 

She peers over her right shoulder and flashes an angry grimace at her. “I told you to keep running goddamn it.” 

Another series of footsteps shuffled across the street toward them. A thick cloying smell penetrated the air around us and fills the back of my throat with a sharp acidic aftertaste. It reminds me of the time I’d raided the garbage can of a young hippie couple living in an RV outside of Charleston three months before the world had a breath-taking bowel movement. 

It is a rich sweet aroma that smells like damp wood. Patchouli. 

A tall broad-shouldered man in a dark blue mechanic’s uniform and heavy black leather cowboy boots approaches the frightened woman. The small wisp of thinning blond hair jutting out from the sides of his light blue blood-soaked trucker cap flutters in the breeze sweeping across the street and tickles the crown of his forehead. Blood spackles his square-jawed face and stains the front of his uniform; a large brown stain covers the seat of his jeans and crotch. 

He peers at her chest with deep-set green eyes that look glossy and dilated. A big red blotch appears across the middle of his face behind his nose in the shape of a human skull. His nostrils act as the skull’s empty black eye sockets. 

His lips draw back in a wide vicious grin, revealing two rows of crooked yellow teeth and blackened gums. He lifts his right arm, and wriggles his fingers in the air. His chest rising and falling with each breath, he draws the scent of her fear, the fear for her life and the life of her daughter’s, deep into his lungs. 

The bat-wielding brunette takes a tentative step back, her pale white-knuckled hands still gripping the bat. Her lips tighten into an angry grimace. 

“Stay back.” She says. “I mean it motherfucker.” 

Her daughter looks on, her face creasing with shock and anticipation. She knows her mother will swing that bat at some point and time, and this nightmare will be over. Nightmares never end; they linger around like a bad memory. 

“I mean it.” The frightened woman says. “Stay the—”

She pauses, and raises the bat above her right shoulder. Her face twitches, shifting from courage to anger. She sniffs the air, draws her lips back in the same wide menacing grin on the face of her attacker, and spins around on her heels. 

The bat cleaves the air in a loud whistling arc. The mingled expression of horror and realization falls across the teenager’s face as her impending doom replays itself inside of her mind. Her daughter swallows the lump in her throat and mutters something under her breath that sounds like I love you Mom in a soft reassuring tone of forgiveness.  

It connects with her right temple, and whips her head back. A mist of broken teeth and blood spews out from the girl’s perverse mouth as her body spins in a death-like pirouette. Her hair explodes out from the back of her head in a dark and dismal wave that sweeps across the right corner of her chin and falls across her face. 

Her limbs go limp as her body plops onto the pavement. 

The mother’s eyes look glossy and dilated. Her teeth gnash together, spraying a fine spray of hot sinister saliva. The red skull-shaped blotch appears in the middle of her face like watching a flower blooming in slow motion. 

She raises the bat again and brings it down onto her daughter’s face again and again and again. A fresh coat of red pulp sticks to the crown of the bat, drips down onto the front of her shirt and glistens in the newly risen sun. The mechanic looks, flashing a rictus of inhuman evil as a pool of blood seeps out from the dead girl’s skull and across the pavement. 

Movement flashes across my right eye. She glances at me and taps the gore-soaked bat against her right hand with a feral expression on her face. He follows her gaze, his demonic eyes burying hot sharp pikes into my chest, and sighs. 

I flap my wings in defense and screech. They keep coming toward me, their shadows stretching across the sunlit pavement like a dark and sinister eclipse. I shiver at the dread pulsating through my dark feathery body and jostle my wings in hopes of chasing them away from me. 

Instead, I screech and leap into the air. They watch me take flight, their forms shrinking into distorted stick figures and grunt with disapproval.  

It doesn’t take a crow or a rocket scientist to know when you’re not wanted. 

Who do I have to kill to get some food around here?