Legion's Arc

Chapter 15 of 22

Six days after Ezekiel locked the cellar door, the barn had gone quiet. The trapped people no longer screamed. Most lay still on the dirt floor, weak from hunger and thirst. Then the rats came. They slipped through a crack in the rotting boards, first a few, then a flood. Their small dark bodies covered the floor. Sharp teeth found the weakest first. The living pushed against the sagging walls, but there was no way out. The floor seemed to move. Outside, footsteps crossed the ground. A young woman walked slowly toward the barn. She stopped at the ruined door with its jagged hole. She heard the rats. She heard the gnawing. Her hands shook. Her mother had been dragged from their village weeks ago, called a witch. She had searched every road since. Now she pressed her face to the broken boards. "Mama?" she whispered. "Are you in there?" A thin voice answered from the dark. It was enough. The woman grabbed the iron latch and pulled. It held fast. She threw her shoulder against the wood again and again. Splinters bit her arms. The door cracked, then broke. Cold air rushed in. As the girl’s eyes adjusted to the dark, the large empty barn slowly came into focus. As she slowly walked across the floor trying to identify where the voice of her mother was coming from, she noticed the floor was trembling. Softly at first and then stronger and stronger to where she barely could stand. The boards on the floor began to creak and bend. The squeaking sound became louder and soon began to change to the sound of human screaming. Then through the screaming, she could hear her mother’s voice booming over the noise of it all. She didn’t understand the language, but it wasn’t something she hadn’t heard before. But never this way. The sound became deafening so much so that the girl had to cover her ears. That was when the floor gave way beneath her. Hundreds of rats covered her instantly keeping her from being able to move or breathe. She was overwhelmed in an instant until the sound of her mother’s voice screamed “No!” The wild rats scattered from the sudden opening in the floor, streaming past the woman's feet and out of the door into the trees. She looked down at what was left of her daughter. She didn’t know she was there. All she wanted to do was get back to her daughter. Now she was gone. The mother bent down and picked up the bark covered book left on the floor. She turned a few pages and then stopped and softly read the ancient script over and over again. Then louder. Outside, the sound of hundreds of rats running toward the barn could be heard. At the height of the woman chanting, she bites her own wrists and allows the blood to spill on the page of the book. The rats then began to cover her legs, then body, arms, then over her head until she became one with the swarm. Until she was one of many. A legion.