Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #14 May 2015 | Seite 83

it was not fear of anything from the good book that
chilled him under the bright sun. “We found tracks
leading here, just one set, one foot bare, the other with
a sandal. No tracks leading away.”

The soldier nodded and the two waited for the third
to return with an axe then set to work making a fire.
The brush was oily and burned hot, the corpse burned
down to no more than ash and bones while the three
men stood and watched. The fire staining the sky with
grey smoke that seemed to glow like fresh spilt blood
in the light of the morning sun.

Both officers looked at the feet of the dead body, one
with a sandal of old cracked leather, the other bare.
#
Captain Charterhouse, commanding officer of the
company, stood looking down at the dead body, both
lieutenants stood a short distance away. Doctor Adler,
the surgeon for the expeditionary force, was kneeling beside the body probing the chest wound with a
scalpel.
“Dead at least a month, or more most likely, given
the amount of mummification. Though this hole in
the chest is much fresher, hours maybe judging by the
lack of maggots round it. Odd thing, the sand on the
feet, almost as if this thing had walked here rather than
been carried,”
The doctor normally served in the garrison and was
hardly happy to have been dragged out into the dust on
this errand when he should have been treating the generous patients of the city. He looked up to see all three
officers exchanging looks that he could not read.
“Corporal, gather brush and burn that thing.”
“Right you are captain.” The corporal ordered the
closest soldier to return to the camp and fetch an axe;
the bushes were much too tough to be cut with bayonets. The three officers walked back to the camp
talking among themselves in voices too quiet to be
overheard.
“’Ere corporal you reckon that dead ‘un was walking
around last night afore he got shot like that?”
The corporal turned and gave the glare he was practicing for the day he was promoted to sergeant. “The
dead don’t walk around, they stay in the ground. You
remember that and keep your damn fool mouth shut.
Get me?”

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