The Body Farm

Sam never worried about money. Not for years. But his money-making machine—and his mouth—were about to be his undoing.

The local tavern reeked of stale beer and jealousy the night Sam made his fatal mistake. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting sickly shadows across the faces of the other farmers hunched over their drinks. Their hands were calloused, their backs bent from years of backbreaking labor that barely kept them afloat. And there was Sam, drunk on whiskey and arrogance, pulling out his wallet with a predator's grin.

One by one, he laid thousand-dollar bills on the sticky table. The crisp sound of each bill hitting the surface was like a slap across the face to every man present.

"That's just from last week's haul," Sam slurred, his eyes gleaming with malice. "Y'all might want to take notes."

The farmers sat in stone-faced silence, their knuckles white around their beer bottles. The air grew thick, suffocating. Finally, one of them—Dale Morrison, a man whose farm was on the verge of foreclosure—stood up slowly. His chair scraped against the floor like fingernails on a coffin lid.

"Getting late, Sam," Dale said, his voice tight as wire. "We should head out."

"Go right ahead," Sam laughed, not looking up from his money. "I'll keep counting."

The farmers filed out into the humid night, their boots heavy on the wooden steps. But their trucks didn't turn toward home. They gathered in the parking lot, engines idling, hate radiating off them like heat from asphalt.

"I don't know about you boys," Dale said, staring back at the tavern's lit windows, "but I think it's time we teach that egotistical son of a bitch a lesson he won't forget."

The others nodded, their faces hard in the dashboard glow. They drove to the gas station, filled their cans with kerosene, and waited. Waited as the town fell asleep. Waited as midnight approached and the cicadas screamed in the darkness.

The flames started small—just dancing orange sprites along the edge of Sam's tobacco field. Then they spread. Hungrily. Violently. The dry leaves caught like kindling, and within minutes, the entire field was an inferno, flames leaping thirty feet into the black sky, turning night into a hellish orange day.

The heat was so intense that it cracked the windows of Sam's farmhouse.

Sam jerked awake to the sound of his world burning. Through his bedroom window, he saw his empire being devoured, smoke billowing up to choke the stars. His first thought wasn't fear—it was rage, pure and primal.

He grabbed his rifle and burst outside in his underwear, barefoot, not feeling the scorching earth beneath his feet. That's when he saw them—shadowy figures silhouetted against the flames, laughing. Actually laughing as his life's work turned to ash.

Sam didn't hesitate. He raised the rifle, aimed at the tallest shadow, and squeezed the trigger.

The crack of the gunshot pierced the roar of the fire. One of the figures dropped like a puppet with cut strings, his laughter ending in a wet gurgle. The others scattered, stumbling toward their truck, their revelry turned to terror.

But Sam wasn't done. His eyes were wild, reflecting the fire, making him look demonic. He jumped into his pickup, the engine roaring to life, and tore after them down the dirt road. Gravel sprayed behind him like shrapnel. His headlights caught their fleeing truck, and he could see their panicked faces in the rear window.

He rolled down his window, aimed through his own windshield, and fired.

The glass spider-webbed around the bullet hole. The driver's head snapped back in a spray of crimson that painted the inside of their cab. The truck swerved violently, left the road, and flipped end-over-end before coming to rest in a ditch, wheels spinning uselessly in the air.

Sam skidded to a stop and approached the wreckage slowly, savoring the moment. Moans came from inside. One of the trapped men, his leg bent at an impossible angle, looked up at Sam with pleading eyes.

"We... we'll be back," the man choked out, blood bubbling from his lips. "Mark my words."