The Queen of sinister

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Two storms. Without, the night torn asunder by the kind of jungle-beast weather that always marked the passing between winter and spring. Within, a storm of death and despair.

Bodies were heaped around the village hall with the sickening confusion of a medieval charnel house, on parquet flooring that had felt the celebratory tread of weddings and birthdays and anniversaries, and in the annexe, obscuring trestle tables that had served a thousand meals and more. Not even the kitchen's no longer sterile work surfaces were free of bodies.

At first, they had been placed in reverent rows, a futile attempt to impose order on an incomprehensible chaos. Eventually, when the full magnitude of what was happening became apparent, they were simply tossed in piles in one corner or another. Before the storm had started, the plan had been to dig individual graves, but those efforts had soon been outpaced. Now there was no hope of catching up. Occasionally their minds turned to the practical options — pit or fire, fire or pit — but the horror was too consuming for rational thought. A part of them knew the corpses would have to be disposed of quickly to prevent the spread of disease — the stench already left them breathless and reeling — but that would mean facing up to what lay around them, seeing and knowing and accepting. It wasn't just the stink of decomposition that fouled the hall. The corpses leaked a yellowish greasy pus from the suppurating sores where the swellings had blackened and burst like alien fruit. It pooled on the floor, became sticky underfoot, smelling like rotten apples dusted with sulphur. They all had perfume-soaked handkerchiefs tied across their faces, but that did little to protect them.

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