Fertilizer for Sale

A Short Story

“Where ya from?”  The upperclassman has a thick neck and a gap between his front teeth when he grins.  Glenn Harris, eighteen years old and a newly minted graduate of Cumberland County High School, is a head taller and a good fifty pounds lighter.  Crossville, he says. 

“A country boy!”  A grin spreads across the upperclassman’s face.  “Let’s see, says here you’re majoring in chemistry… Thinking about going into fertilizer?”

Not a bad suggestion, as it turned out.  He drifted into the right lane and eased up on the accelerator.  His territory covered all of western Kentucky, with a few slivers of Illinois and Indiana, and his last call of the week was a thousand acre spread between Hopkinsville and Cadiz. Glenn’s district manager had suggested a larger truck – something to match the big Chevys and Rams that his clients favored, but he was a salesman, not a farmer, and a two-ton behemoth was more than he really needed.  Besides, Glenn found that a modicum of financial discipline served him well, for a little modesty with his own signaled to his customers that he would be frugal with their own largesse.  Biff would be disappointed, he thought.  Son of a bitch was probably a middle manager in Knoxville now, some corporate drone who dusted off the motivational posters and spent his workdays memorizing the company mission statement. 

“You see, Glenn,” his professor explains, “a bachelor’s degree in chemistry is no good.  You have to go to graduate school and get your PhD.  Once you get your degree, you need to do at least one postdoc – two is always better, of course – and then you can write your own ticket. They even pay for meals and expenses, for the most part.”  Glenn had done the math in his head, and halfway through his sophomore year, he had dropped out for a hitch in the army.  He spent two years blowing up stuff at Fort Campbell, and in the last month of his enlistment, as aimless at twenty-one as he had been at eighteen, he had passed by the small office.  Roger had hired him on the spot.

He turned left at the mailbox (Herbert and Linda McElroy, 5410 Cadiz road) and pulled up the long driveway.  Ask anyone from Crossville about farming, and they thought of small plots, operated by families with second jobs in town, or of poor folks subsisting on land that had been in their family for a hundred years.  This farm was a whole different animal, a corn-growing behemoth of several thousand acres whose lifeblood was diesel and cash flow.  A dragon whose treasure was stored in thousand-ton silos. He bypassed the farmhouse and drove to the office, a modest prefab building at the back of the lot.  The shop, a large building with bay doors, sat at the opposite end of the gravel lot. 

“Made the doors extra large so we can hide the next flying saucer when it lands.”  Herb pokes him with a meaty finger.  “Didn’t know that, did you?  Big flying saucer landed just the other side of Hopkinsville in 1951.  They say another one crashed about ten years later, somewhere between here and Fort Campbell, and the army covered it up.”

A flying saucer, a combine – something like that, Glenn thought.  The doors were nearly always closed except during deer season, when Herb placed a recliner on the concrete floor, just far enough from the entrance to remain out of sight and picked off the does (“Goddamned hooved rats, if you ask me”) that invaded the adjacent cornfield with a precision rifle.  He stepped from the truck, and the air lay heavy in the summer heat.

“Herb?”  Glenn knocked on the office door.  “Anybody home?” 

Everything was so quiet.

Glenn tried to remember the last time that his presence had not been announced by a cacophony of barking dogs or honking geese and came up empty.  He had a sudden vision of Herb, standing up from his desk as an artery let go in his brain, falling, lying undiscovered for hours.  He tried the doorknob and found it locked.  Try the back door.  Glenn wandered to the far side of the building, where the office overlooked a small pond. 

“Oh, shit.” 

The office door had been splintered inward, and the adjacent window was broken.  A series of holes pocked the shattered door, the unmistakable impression of bullet holes.  Glenn pulled out his phone to dial 911.  No service?  Out the window, he had a clear line of sight to the nearest tower.  Something – an eagle or buzzard, perched atop the spire.  Herb’s computer and laptop were missing, but beneath the desk, he found a short-barreled pump shotgun and several shell casings.  A dozen unfired shells were scattered about the floor. Herb had shot it out with someone in his own office, but there were no bodies, no blood.  Glenn picked up the shotgun and loaded as many shells as the tube would hold. 

He stepped outside.  From the direction of the cell tower, he heard a strange call, a deep chirping noise that left him oddly cold.  The call was answered from somewhere nearby, and the atop the cell tower swooped downward and disappeared behind the trees.

Glenn stepped outside again and stared at the distant farmhouse.  Nothing appeared out of place, except that the satellite dish was missing from the roof.  The shop first, then the house.    He walked to the far side of the shop, where the door was standing open.  Whoever had ransacked the office had been in the shop as well.  Herb’s tools, normally put away neatly, were scattered about the concrete.  A roll of electrical wire trailed across the floor.  The shop had another office, small and dingy, where Herb kept old receipts. 

Something was moving on the other side of the door. 

Glenn crept toward the door as his pounding heart reminded him why his military career consisted of engineering work instead of carrying a gun.  Infantry? Special Forces?  No thanks, I’d cry if someone shot me.  Still, Herb was in trouble, so he kicked the door open and moved aggressively into the room.

“All right, you son of a bitch, get your hands up or I’ll –”

The words died in his throat.

 He had visited the zoo in Nashville that spring, and though the tigers and rhinos were impressive, the animal that impressed him the most had been the cassowary.  A giant flightless bird, perhaps five feet tall, it had stared into his eyes from behind the cage, and Glenn had noted the large claws on its three-toed feet.  “That’s the most dangerous animal they have,” he heard from a nearby child, a boy of about ten.  “They have really strong legs, and one kick can tear your guts right out of your body.”  The thing in the office had the general size and shape of a cassowary, with its long beak and clawed feet, but something around the eyes indicated more, perhaps a malign sort of intelligence. 

It tore at the computer with its beak, plucking out a specific part with surprising daintiness, but the part fell from its beak as the not-quite cassowary’s head jerked upward at the sound of his entrance.  It chirped at him, that same gorp-gorp-gorp that he had heard earlier, as it jumped atop the desk, and its claws tapped irritably against the wood as it advanced.  The beak opened wide as its head darted forward, and a glob of something flew past Glenn’s head.  He smelled an unpleasant, somewhat acrid odor as it stuck to the wall. The shotgun roared as the (bird?) opened its beak for another strike, deafening him in the small enclosure, Glenn worked the pump and fired again, and it fell from the desk in a heap. Glenn took an uneasy step forward as he reloaded.  The cassowary rose to its feet, still very much alive, and he ran, slamming the office door behind him.  Glenn didn’t see any fingers, and while the door would not hold, it would buy him a few precious minutes while that thing battered its way out. 

He ran toward the equipment shed, nearly tripping on the extension cord that lay in the gravel.  Behind, the chirping of one bird was joined by another… or three more, or six.  It was hard to tell – like coyotes in the darkness, the cacophony could have come from a single pair or a large group.  He sheltered behind a tanker, a large truck-borne beast used to spray anhydrous ammonia onto the field, and wrinkled his nose at the smell.  Glenn peeked around the corner, and three cassowaries lurked in the driveway, bobbing their heads up and down in a frustrated motion. Slowly they disbanded – two returned to the cornfield, and the third retreated to the shop. Why don’t they come after me?

His keys were in the truck, and it occurred to Glenn that he could simply drive away.  No – you can’t leave Herb and Linda behind.  The front door of the house was standing open, and he passed into the kitchen.

“Herb? Linda?” Behind him, Glenn heard the soft tap of claws on linoleum. 

The cassowary spat at him, and he ducked as the awful-smelling mucus struck the refrigerator behind him.  As the enameled paint began to bubble, the cassowary sprang through the air, and Glenn stumbled backward as it shredded the countertop with a clawed foot. Another slash, and it ripped the cabinet beneath the sink, scattering bottles of various cleaning fluids. He was outmatched, with little more than seconds to live, and as it readied a coup de grace, Glenn snatched up a bottle of blue cleaning fluid and hurled it at the bird.   

A pungent smell of ammonia filled the room as it sheared the bottle in two with its hooked beak, and to Glenn’s horrified surprise, steam began to pour from the creature where the liquid sprayed its face. The cassowary cried out as the liquid ate through its skin, and it staggered blindly about the kitchen before falling over.  My God, it’s like drinking battery acid, he thought.  Steam poured from the eye sockets as it staggered about the kitchen, then fell over.  Glenn staggered upright, then prodded at the unmoving bird with a booted foot.  Dead.  It had been killed by ordinary cleaning fluid. 

He located a second bottle of cleaner in the bathroom and went upstairs to search the bedrooms.  Herb and Linda were lying in bed, their faces spattered by gobs of the foul mucus, and Glenn cleaned their faces with a washcloth soaked in ammonia.  Herb stirred a little and moaned.

“Herb?”  Glenn slapped at his cheeks.  “Wake up!  We need to get away from here!” 

“Is that you, Glenn?”  Herb whispered.  “I can’t feel my feet.” 

“Sit up, and let’s see if we can get moving.”  Herb pushed himself onto one elbow, then collapsed onto the bed. 

“Can’t.”  He gasped for breath.  “Had the strangest dream last night… I was digging a new pond with the excavator, and I dug up something that had been buried a long time.  I think it was…”

“Little green men?” 

“Something like that.”  He smiled a tired grin.  “Crazy dream, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”  Glenn stared through the window, where a pair of birdlike creatures perched atop the cell tower. One of them held Herb’s satellite dish in a clawed foot.  “I need to go, but you lie still until you can feel your feet again. I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?” 

“Okay.”  He grasped Glenn’s arm.  “Strange dream, but do you suppose they could be real?  The little green men?” 

“Maybe.”  Glenn grabbed Herb’s key ring from the nightstand and pressed the bottle of cleaning fluid into his hand.  “Spray them with this if they come back.” 

He snatched up the shotgun and returned to the tanker as the cassowaries called out from the tower, perhaps searching for their missing companion, as Glenn fiddled with Herb’s keys. When he found the correct one, he fired up the engine. The cassowaries were bent over Herb’s computer at the base of the cell tower, and wires ran from the computer to Herb’s satellite dish.  They’re sending a signal, Glenn thought, either for a rescue or an invasion.  A pair of cassowaries scattered as the tanker plowed across the field, and Glenn jerked the wheel as he reached the tower. Herb’s computer crunched beneath his tires, but in the rear view mirror, he spotted a second pair of birds, moving unbelievably fast, loud wails emanating from their alien throats.  I guess they found their dead friend.  The four aliens gathered behind the truck in a semicircle and approached at a trot, like lions finishing a wounded gazelle. 

They reached the back of the truck as he fired the shotgun at the tanker’s relief valve.

A jet of ammonia, far stronger than the cleaning fluid erupted from the shattered valve, and all four creatures dissolved into goo, vanishing so quickly that Glenn doubted whether they understood what had happened.  He exited the truck and ran, careful to avoid the noxious cloud, and made it to the farmhouse as Herb and Linda staggered through the front door.

“Are they dead?” 

“They’re dead, but I blew up your truck,” Glenn said.

Herb smiled.  “Well, maybe you can give me a discount on next year’s fertilizer.” 

“Or maybe you’d like to settle down to something more regular, like a farm manager,” Linda said.  “If you wanted the job.”