The events of the next six days played out with such ravenous unpredictability that the residents of Riley couldn’t help but get swept away by it all. Per usual, rumors were the first things to fly (Didja hear about that O’Brien kid? No, what happened? Well, I heard he killed all these rabbits and et ‘em! No, you don’t say!! Yes, Maybeline told me so—she lives next door. She peeked through her fence and seen ‘em herself.), only to be shortly followed by the facts. But no one really seemed to care about those.
The shit officially hit the fan early Sunday morning when the guys in moon suits began the slow, meticulous task of removing the animal carcasses from George O’Brien’s back yard. Under the flickering glow of a street lamp, five of Riley’s finest stood watch as the moon men crew carried bag after bag through the gate to a table set up in the front yard, where other moon men labeled and categorized the bags before handing them over to a third group of moon men, who vacuum-sealed and loaded the bags into a van. The cops were there mainly to discourage looky-loos, once they arrived, from aggregating too close to the—show? No—scene was the better word for it.
And the public servants were lucky (or unlucky, depending how you looked at it) there would even be a scene at all. Dale Jacobs, their Lieutenant, had taken the call yesterday afternoon, the voice on the line mumbling something about a yard full of dead rabbits. Had it been Marcia, their regular board op, the call would have been immediately dismissed as a prank, the sort of sophomoric joke thought up by some bored kid trying to impress his friends. Not that it would have mattered had it gone down that way; they would have discovered the rabbit yard one way or the other. The smell alone.…Or somebody more credible would have called down the line and demanded they get someone over there quick before they rang up Sheriff Price.
"What d’y’all figger?" Officer Bob Wendt asked, drumming his fingers against the hood of the squad car. The question was aimed at any of his four compatriots, but only one took the bait.
Ernie Richardson, the youngest patrolman of the five, gave voice to what was on all of their minds. "If I had to call it—and believe me I wouldn’t want to—I’d say this adds up to rabies."
The others nodded in agreement. All five had seen the backyard, had smelled the decomposing flesh. Lieutenant Jacobs took it upon himself to put the call in to the CDC late Saturday afternoon, and the moon men crew, arriving in town just after midnight, began setting up camp in the O’Brien’s front yard less than an hour later. They had waited for daylight, though, before starting the clean-up. When prodded by Jacobs as to why they couldn’t get it over with while the world was still sleeping, the man in charge of the crew, Greg Franklin, mentioned a difficulty in procuring enough lights to do the job properly and safely in the dark.
Maybeline Adams was the first civilian to see the team when she stepped outside at the break of dawn to water her azaleas. Taking one look at the van and the hazard suit-clad men huddled next to it, she let out a great scream. "I knew it!! I knew it!! I knew it!!! Them boys done sumthin’ ta warrant this! They been livin’ in sin, and it’s finely catchin’ up with ‘em!"
Ernie Richardson pressed a forefinger to his lips and hurried across the street.
"Don’t shush me!" Maybeline snapped at the approaching silhouette. As Ernie closed in, Maybeline began rattling off Bible verses in a voice too drawled and high-pitched to understand.
Shaking his head and gritting his teeth against the din, Ernie stepped onto the porch, wrapped his arms around the elderly lady’s skeletal body, lifted it, and carried it through the open doorway. He lowered the kicking frame onto a sofa, then made his way back to the door. As he was leaving, he heard the click of a phone receiver rising from its cradle and the rapid-fire snaps of buttons being pushed. And there was nothing that he, or any of the other officers, could do about that. Well, that’s not entirely true—they could cut the phone lines, something Ronald Owens, Ernie’s partner, momentarily considered doing. But even that would be futile. Word gets out. It’s as simple as that.