They knew what had happened, now.

There had been a Thing here, too, but the people had responded more quickly than those in Cericil, sealing off the central plaza and chopping down the root bridges so it couldn’t send feelers out into the rest of the city.

Any Walkers that had escaped had been burnt, the remains of the pyre located on the far side of the city, where he hadn’t previously explored.

It explained the locked doors and empty homes. If there was something inside one of the houses that could grow, it would hopefully remain contained until it starved. The furniture taken to fuel the funeral fires.

With the city cleaned, and unable or unwilling to deal with it further, those still alive had left, heading west, as they had suspected.

Brickwrath and Elegantlillies didn’t know how many had been lost, but the Thing had died over the winter, starved for a lack of food in the sparsely populated market square.

By the time they got there, all that remained of it was the corpse, a bubbling mass of rot and slime, surrounded by abandoned carts and the desiccated remains of those it had consumed.

Together, the two of them burnt the rotting remains, thankful for the filters on their masks. After that, they made a separate pyre for the drained and desiccated bodies of those who were left. Men, women, children, and those who were none of the above, all fed into the fire.

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Elegantlillies had refused to look at the bodies, in case one of them was her son or his partner. Brickwrath had checked each body for name tags, and had found a few. He would leave them in the memorial hall, for whoever recovered this place to deal with.

It was miserable work, but it had to be done, before the spring rains and summer heat revived any spores within the bodies, starting the whole process anew.

So many lost. So many people who would never have their names inscribed on the walls. No plaque for them, no words in the memorial book. Just… Gone. Their names forgotten, belonging only to the wind now.

It was a true death. It would be their death.

-

Sweeping the last of the dust and leaves into the bonfire, they conversed in muffled speech, wondering where it had come from. Things like this usually lived deep within the woods and didn’t come back to town unless disturbed. The militarised expeditions that went out that far were normally pretty careful. Both of them had done their time, and neither had ever seen the regulations flaunted, for good reason.

As they worked, they decided it may indicate a slow incubation period, but the horses getting sick after only a few days had to be a good sign, right?

Job finally done, every stray leaf collected from the marketplace and the bonfire burnt down to ashes, they set off back to his farm. They locked the gate behind them as best they could, and had left a summary of what they had found in the memorial hall and the eastern guard station.

They would stay at his farm there for what remained of January and February, and then, if they were both still alive, would head west, following the path of the other evacuees.

The villagers would have to fend for themselves, there was nothing they could do to help, the risk was too great.

Tired, and with heavy hearts, they started making their way back home.

He was gonna have to build another bed.