The Crows Are Watching Us

They sat near the window, though the light barely seeped through the layers of bible-thin pages pasted against the glass. The crows had quieted now—mostly. A distant rasp of feathers and the occasional kraah pierced the stillness like warning bells. Lily could tell the rain had passed, but something heavier had settled over the land. Something that didn’t wash away.

Hep sat hunched over a dented tin of peaches, sipping the syrup like it was brandy. The knife he’d used to open it sat idle on the table between them, its tip stained. His fingers were dirt-lined, twitching a little, maybe from age or memory. Maybe both.

“They're still out there,” Lily said. Her voice was hoarse from sleep and tension. “Watching.”

“Always watching,” Hep muttered. “Crows never really sleep. They just wait.”

Lily moved to the window, peeled back another fragment of paper slowly, carefully. The world beyond was a canvas of gray. The trees in the field swayed gently, but in the top branches, unmoving shadows perched in rows like notes on a staff—silent, black, and unnervingly still.

“They were smarter than most animals even before the Fall,” she said. “Smarter than some people, too.”

Hep gave a hollow laugh. “Wouldn’t take much.”

She ignored him, her voice low and steady, as if reading from some old forgotten textbook buried in a school they’d never see again.

“They build these nests high up—top third of the trees, usually evergreens. Big nests. Six to nineteen inches across. Sometimes they steal from hawks or eagles—just refurbish the old bones of it. Lay three to nine eggs per clutch.”

Hep raised an eyebrow. “You sure you didn’t used to be a birdwatcher?”

“No. Just a reader,” she said. “Before.”

She let the paper fall back down over the glass, dimming the room again. “But now... they’ve changed. They’re not just scavengers anymore. They’ve adapted. With so many dead and not enough small game, they’ve turned to bigger targets.”

“Us.”

She nodded.

“We saw it outside Salina, Marcus and me. That boy by the tracks. Still breathing when they landed on him. Too weak to fight. They waited for him to stop blinking.”

Hep shifted uncomfortably. “They’ll go after the ones that smell like the end’s near. Or the ones that already ended. Like our friend in the back room.”

“Yeah,” Lily said, her voice distant. “They’ll take fingers and soft tissue first. The eyes. The lips. Like they know where to begin.”

Hep leaned back, shaking his head. “You know in 2002—Wisconsin got hit with West Nile Virus bad. Damn crows dropped dead outta the sky like black rain. Took years before they came back. People thought it was a blessing.”

He stared at the floorboards beneath his boots.

“Back then, we thought diseases came and went. We were stupid. Now we hope for a miracle virus like it’s a damn savior.”

Lily crouched beside the hearth, stirring the tiny embers they’d managed to spark from scavenged candle stubs and half-burned hymnals. She watched the flickering flame struggle against the damp.

“They’re omnivores,” she muttered. “They’ll eat seeds, mice, trash. Rob other nests. Steal from dogs. Even rip through a plastic bag to get at a half-rotten sandwich.”

“But they’re smart about it. Always a lookout bird in the trees. Family groups. They don’t go it alone.” Hep was looking at her now. “They sleep in roosts—dozens, sometimes hundreds of them. Whole blocks turned into feathered shadows. Each one watching the others, all remembering. And don’t think they don’t remember you.”

Lily nodded. “They recognize faces. There were studies. One professor pissed off a few, and they followed him for years. Taught their young what he looked like.”

“So we can’t hurt them,” Hep said. “Not unless we’re ready to deal with a lifetime of revenge.”

“But we can’t befriend them either,” Lily added. “They follow people they trust. Mimic voices. They learn where we sleep, what we eat, how we move. If one gets too close... it could bring the whole flock.”

Hep looked toward the ceiling, to the sound of clawed feet pacing above on the old roof, muted by dust and time.

“Damn birds’ve become the vultures of this world,” he muttered.

“No,” Lily said, “they’re worse. Vultures don’t learn your name.”

The room went still. Only the gentle clink of the horse shifting its weight in the bedroom gave away that life still stirred inside the house.

“I just want a day,” she whispered, more to herself than him. “A day without being stalked.”

“You’ll get it,” Hep said softly. “Just maybe not here.”

Outside, a sudden flutter of wings struck the window, loud enough to make them both jump. A crow had landed too hard, talons scrabbling against the paper-glass barrier. It cawed once—short, sharp, like a bark of warning—then flapped away again, disappearing into the swaying limbs beyond.

Hep reached across the table, tapped the knife once with a fingertip.

“They’re getting bolder.”

“Or hungrier.”

Three days. The water was gone by morning of the third, the last jug tilted upside down in Hep’s gnarled hands until the final drops tapped against a rusty tin bowl and echoed like church bells in the silence. Even the horse, its flanks more sunken than ever, was beginning to stumble on unsteady legs. Its eyes had turned wild, glassy with thirst.

“We can’t wait any longer,” Lily said.

Her lips were cracked, voice hoarse. She leaned against the rotting wall of the kitchen, one boot tapping against a loose floorboard, the other pressed to the faded linoleum like it might fall through.

Hep nodded. “Either we leave now or we die in here with the crows watching.”

They’d spent most of the last two days in near silence, huddled in the cold rooms of the church-house while the crows perched on fences, window sills, the collapsed eaves, and any tree within spitting distance. It was as though the flock had grown each day. Watching. Waiting.

“They’ve figured it out,” Hep muttered. “They know we’re still inside.”

“Then we give them something else to think about.”

She looked toward the back room. The smell had worsened, despite the door staying shut. Flies buzzed like static behind the wood. The man—what was left of him—was barely a man anymore. Flesh had receded into bone, lips pulled back into a toothy grin. There’d been no note. Just the blood, dried in rivers across the mattress and up the wall. A storm of pain behind a closed door.

“We use him,” Lily said.

Hep didn’t flinch. “He’d understand.”

They waited until the clouds gathered—low, dull, and moody. The wind picked up just enough to mask small sounds, and the crows fluttered restlessly as if they sensed movement but not from where.

Lily took position near the rear of the house, a cloth tied around her face to keep the stench at bay. The window—warped from water and time—resisted her grip. Hep moved in beside her with a crowbar, teeth gritted. Together they eased it up with a squeal that made both of them freeze.

Nothing. The crows remained clustered at the front.

Good.

The dead man was lighter than she expected. She and Hep wrapped him in a tarp they’d found in the storm cellar, not out of respect but necessity—it helped them drag the body without leaving a trail. Flies scattered as they hauled him across the creaking wood floor, each step a gamble against the house’s rotting skeleton.

Hep leaned out the window and scanned the back lot. “Now.”

They heaved.

The body hit the dirt with a muffled thud, rolling once and coming to a stop in a patch of dead grass.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then a single crow descended.

And another.

A third circled, then landed with a snap of wings and a curious tilt of its head. In seconds, the entire back of the house erupted in black flutter and shrill cries. The dead man disappeared under a writhing storm of beaks and feathers.

Lily shuddered. “They took the bait.”

“Now.”

They bolted for the front.

Hep cracked open the door and peered outside. The porch was clear. The yard—a minefield of broken glass and empty feathers.

“Go, go!” he hissed, waving Lily and the horse forward.

The plan was working.

Until it wasn’t.

One of the crows—a sentinel—cried out, sharp and high like a whistle blast.

Then they came.

A chunk of the flock broke away from the back yard and surged overhead, wings slicing air with violent purpose. Crows dropped from branches and fence posts like arrows from a skyward ambush. Within seconds, the front of the house was crawling with them.

“Inside!” Hep shouted.

“No time!”

Lily slapped the horse’s flank, sending it careening toward the gate. Crows swarmed, pecking at its mane and flanks, but the beast kicked and thrashed with a strength born of desperation.

One pecked at Lily’s scalp. She screamed and swung blindly with the butt of her rifle, connecting with a crunch. A crow spun midair and hit the ground with a thud—but others replaced it instantly.

“Get to the car!” Hep yelled, gesturing down the way.

They tore down the drive, Hep running beside the horse, Lily swinging wide and slapping birds away with her coat. One managed to rip through her sleeve. Another caught in Hep’s beard and tangled in his collar, but he yanked it free and hurled it against the side of a gutted sedan.

Then—open road.

The wind howled past them as the horse found its stride, galloping over cracked pavement as crows dwindled behind. A few pursued, but the majority remained behind, picking clean what had been offered.

The sky was smeared with cloud and soot as the church-house faded into the trees, a monument to the dead and the dying.

An hour later, they collapsed beneath a skeletal billboard with half the letters missing. The horse drank from a roadside ditch, muddy but wet enough to keep it alive. Lily bled from a shallow scratch above her brow. Hep was coughing again, but grinning like a fool.

“Well,” he rasped, “it worked.”

“Barely,” she muttered.

He looked skyward. “No more crows.”

“For now.”

She followed his gaze, wiping the blood from her forehead. “They’ll remember,” she whispered.

“Let ‘em. So will I.”

And the wind carried their scent further down the road, away from the house of bones and wings and death, into whatever came next.

But in the back of their minds, both of them wondered if the deadly disease had already passed to either one of them.

Part 18 of a series