This story takes place on the Codori farm and draws on veteran tales of feral hogs rampaging among the wounded and dead the night of July 2. This story was previously published by Cosmographia Codex in their Campfire Stories series. An actor gave an excellent reading of it.

Just south of Gettysburg, near the farm of Nicholas Codori, the young soldier awoke in darkness to bugs biting his neck and face, working their way to his eyes. Thirst like he had never felt had brought him back. Above him was a star canopy and a mostly full moon, and around him, the farmer’s dark field undulated in spots with breathing, writhing men. Men with lamps moved around, leaning down, directing other men to get the still living to wagons.

But his mind was not drawn to these—he focused on the snuffing and snarfing just feet away. His attention sharpened when he heard flesh rip, then an explosion of snorts and snarls, tussling in the grass to his left. His adrenaline pumped, made him want to scramble away, but he found that, beyond gripping the grass with his hands, he could not move.

Now his last conscious memories came back—advancing with just a regiment in blue against a brigade in gray, nearly everyone going down, searing pain from shots in both legs. But those were flesh wounds because he didn’t fall. When an order called him back, he turned, saw relief coming, and then a concussive crack, blinding light, and finally darkness.

Why not die from an exploding shell? He was no better than his hometown friends who now mostly lay still around him. But why awaken now, still in this field, his legs and belly unfeeling and paralyzed, feral hogs snarling feet away over a dead man’s flesh?

He felt a tremor, lifted his head, saw a hog at his feet, its snout snuffing around his bare shins. Of course, he willed his legs to kick, his body to move, but nothing happened. Instead, he felt another tremor and saw the hog sink its teeth into his calf and shin, then rip. A chunk of red meat ripped free, and the hog chomped it loudly. It should have been wrenching pain, but the young soldier felt nothing. He tried to call for help, but the best he could manage was a dry croak much too weak to be heard by the doctors dozen of yards ahead.

Tremors and pressure drew his gaze back to his legs where the hog had moved up to his left thigh, straddling it. The soldier remembered the ball that had pierced his flesh, felt in memory the searing heat, but realized he hadn’t noticed pain from it since awakening. When the hog ripped through his bloody pants into the wound and ripped a chunk of flesh, the soldier felt nothing, but heard the hog grunting, chewing, chomping, and grinding.

So this was how it was going to end. Why had God awakened the young man for this? Perhaps because of the hogs he and his family had raised and slaughtered in Minnesota? Then again, hadn’t Jesus cast devils into swine, essentially killing them when they ran over a cliff?

The soldier took a deep breath and shuddered as the hog chewed into more of his thigh, its jaws clicking and smacking like a bad-mannered brother chewing with his mouth open. Then the young man considered that he had a unique perspective that most people were not afforded—he got to watch his own death without pain, to see how much his body could take before darkness overtook him. Would it be dark? Would he go into paradise and eternal burnings, as the scriptures promised?

He looked down again and saw the meat of his thigh fully exposed, blood oozing everywhere. He felt lightheaded and unquenchably thirsty, but still no pain. Again, he felt pressure and vibrations as the hog rooted into his guts. He watched it pull away from him, jerking its head as it yanked on a strand of intestine, pulling it longer and longer from his body. In the moonlight, he saw that his intestines were fleshy and pink, soaked in bright red blood. The hog ate the long strand, gradually working his way back to the young man’s guts, where it then rooted into his abdomen, ripping and tearing his unpacked intestines and stomach. A twinge of pain alarmed in his chest where he still had feeling, but no matter—so much of his insides were now outside that it had to be over soon. Perhaps some good rooting around and a chomp on his heart would do it?

A flash of light, a thunderous crack, and a wild squeal ended the rooting in his guts. The hog dropped dead on the soldier and an approaching orderly said loudly, “Goddamn hogs. They’d eat their own young. Private McAlister?”

“Sir?” said another voice ten or twenty yards off.

“Load this hog with the wounded and see to it that it gets to Cook for butchering.”

“Yes, sir,” said the other voice.

A moment later, the orderly stood over the young soldier and used his boot to push the hog off. He did not notice the soldier’s still blinking eyes until the soldier said, “Begging your pardon, sir.”

The orderly jumped back. “God in heaven! You’re alive?”

“I’d rather not be, sir,” said the soldier. “Might you use a bullet on me? Make it quick and clean?”

He gazed up and to the left at the orderly, saw the man’s shaded face, could see his eyes trace up and down the young man’s body.

“There’s no putting this Humpty Dumpty back together again,” he said.

The young man watched the orderly move close, aim his revolver at the soldier’s forehead.

“God bless you,” said the orderly. “And God bless the Union.”

The soldier half smiled. “The Union forever.”