The heat came over the hills and choked the fields. Nobody knew where it
came from and it charged through the cornstalks and over the herds of
livestock. Cows and sheep dropped dead in their barns. Dust crept onto
porches as the paint peeled and cracked up the sides of the farm houses.
Fans whirred behind curtained windows to stem the tide of the encroaching inferno.
Those who stayed gathered in dark root cellars and quietly sighed in the stillness. They’d never seen a season of death like this. They didn’t know it was their last.
By the time it ended, lawns were bleached and the ground was baked hard
and dry. The wind pushed empty swings in empty playgrounds as shutters
creaked against their sills. Scattered bones remained to mark that this had
once been a town.