The air in the Turkmenistani village of Ýylanly usually held the dry, dusty scent of the Kyzylkum Desert. Today, however, something different tainted it, a smell acrid and cloying, like burnt wool and something else… something rotten.
Bayram, a man weathered by fifty-one harsh summers and winters, wrinkled his nose as he stepped out of his small, mud-brick house. He'd woken with a unease he couldn't place, a prickle beneath his skin that spoke of discord in the world.
He looked towards the vast, empty plains that usually comforted him with their predictability. Instead of the usual golden hues of sunrise, a sickly grey blanketed the horizon.
It was not the color of storm clouds, but something flatter, more lifeless. A shiver, unrelated to the desert heat, ran down his spine.
His livelihood, like that of most in Ýylanly, depended on sheep. For generations, his family had tended flocks, their lives woven into the wool and milk and meat they provided.
Bayram himself had spent more of his life amongst the bleating creatures than amongst people. He understood them, or so he had always believed.
Today, something was terribly, irrevocably, wrong with them.
He'd heard no sound from the sheepfold all morning, an anomaly so profound it had dragged him from sleep more effectively than any alarm. Usually, the air at this hour was filled with their restless shuffling, the impatient cries for breakfast. Silence now, thick and heavy, pressed down on the village.
He walked towards the enclosure, his sandals crunching on the dry earth. His heart, usually as steady as the desert itself, began to beat faster, a frantic drum against his ribs. The silence was not peaceful; it was expectant, like the stillness before a predator strikes.
Reaching the wooden fence, he stopped. He peered into the fold, expecting to see… he wasn't sure what. Perhaps a fox attack, though that wouldn't explain the complete absence of noise. What he saw stole the breath from his lungs.
The sheep were there, hundreds of them, packed together so tightly their wool seemed to meld into a single, undulating grey mass. But they were not moving. Not bleating. Not even breathing, as far as he could tell.
Their stillness wasn't the stillness of sleep. It was… absolute. Frozen. Petrified.
Bayram cautiously unlatched the gate and stepped inside the fold. The acrid smell intensified, stinging his nostrils and making his eyes water. He moved closer to the silent mass, his bare feet padding softly on the dusty ground.
He reached out a hand, hesitant at first, then touched the wool of the nearest sheep. It was cold. Rigid. Like touching stone.
Panic, cold and sharp, pierced through his daze. He pushed past the first few frozen animals, stumbling deeper into the fold. He had to see… he had to understand.
As he moved, he began to notice details he had missed at first glance. The sheep's eyes were open, wide and vacant, reflecting the sickly grey sky. They were all facing the same direction, towards the east, towards the rising sun that wasn't rising, not properly.
And then he saw it. On the ground, near the hooves of the frozen sheep, a substance. Black, viscous, glistening like oil slick on water. It seemed to emanate from beneath the tightly packed bodies, seeping upwards.
He recoiled, his stomach churning. He recognized the smell now, mixed with the burnt wool – decay. But how could so many sheep… and so quickly?
He stumbled back, away from the frozen flock, his mind racing, trying to grasp the impossible. He had to tell someone. He had to get help. But who would believe him? Frozen sheep? It sounded like madness.
He ran back to his house, bursting through the door. His wife, Ogulnur, was in the kitchen, preparing tea. She looked up, startled by his frantic entrance.
"Bayram? What is it? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"The sheep," he gasped, his voice hoarse, "Ogulnur, the sheep… they're all dead. Frozen."
She frowned, setting down the teapot. "Frozen? Bayram, it is summer. How can they be frozen?"
"I don't know," he said, his hands shaking, "Come, you must see. Something is wrong, terribly wrong."
He pulled her hand, urging her outside. She followed, her brow furrowed with worry. As they approached the sheepfold, the acrid smell hit her too. She stopped, her eyes widening.
"What is that smell?" she asked, her voice strained.
Bayram didn't answer, just pushed open the gate again and gestured her inside. Ogulnur stepped in hesitantly, then gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.
"Allah, Allah," she whispered, staring at the frozen flock, "What happened here?"
"I don't know," Bayram repeated, his voice thick with dread, "But something… something unnatural."
Ogulnur moved closer, cautiously touching a sheep, then recoiling as Bayram had. "They are… cold. Like ice."
She looked around, her gaze sweeping over the silent, still flock. "And all of them? Every single one?"
"Every one," Bayram confirmed, "And there's… this." He pointed to the black substance on the ground.
Ogulnur bent down, sniffing cautiously. Her face paled. "It smells… like death," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
They stood there, side by side, staring at the impossible scene, the silence of the dead sheep pressing down on them, broken only by the distant whisper of the desert wind. Fear, cold and sharp, settled into their bones.
News traveled slowly in Ýylanly, but bad news, like a desert fire, spread quickly. Bayram and Ogulnur were not the only ones to discover their flocks in the same state. Across the village, the same horrifying scene repeated itself. Sheep, frozen solid, eyes wide open, facing east, surrounded by the strange, black substance.
Panic erupted. Villagers gathered in the center of Ýylanly, their voices rising in a confused, frightened clamor. Some wept for their lost livelihoods, others shouted accusations, and some simply stood in stunned silence, unable to comprehend the enormity of what had happened.
An old man, Aksakal Murad, the village elder, raised his hand for silence. His voice, though trembling with age, carried authority. "We must be calm," he said, "We must understand what has occurred."
"Understand?" a younger man cried out, his voice laced with hysteria, "How can we understand this? It's madness! The sheep… they're just dead! All of them!"
"There is something… unnatural about this," Aksakal Murad continued, ignoring the outburst, "I have lived many years, and I have never seen anything like it."
"The smell," a woman whispered, her face pale, "That terrible smell… it's everywhere."
"And the blackness," another added, "It's seeping from the ground."
Bayram stepped forward, his voice clearer now, the initial shock beginning to recede, replaced by a grim resolve. "We must send for the authorities," he said, "Someone from Mary, from Ashgabat. They must investigate."
Aksakal Murad nodded slowly. "Yes, Bayram is right. We cannot deal with this alone." He looked around at the frightened faces. "Someone must ride to the nearest town, to Garrygala, and send a message."
A young man, quicker and braver than the rest, volunteered. He mounted his horse and spurred it into a gallop, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake, disappearing into the grey-tinged horizon.
The villagers waited. The sun, still hidden behind the strange grey haze, refused to climb properly into the sky. The air remained heavy, stagnant, filled with the cloying, acrid stench of death. Fear coiled tighter in their guts, a cold, constricting serpent.
As the hours ticked by, the silence in Ýylanly deepened. The usual sounds of village life – children playing, women chatting, the distant bray of a donkey – were absent. Only whispers, hushed and fearful, broke the oppressive stillness.
The young man returned late in the afternoon, his face grim. "They will come," he said, "From Garrygala. But they said… they said they have heard reports from other villages. The same thing has happened in other places."
A collective gasp rippled through the crowd. Other villages? It wasn't just Ýylanly then. This wasn't an isolated incident. This was… something bigger. Something far more terrifying.
The authorities arrived the next day, men in official uniforms, their faces impassive, their eyes sharp and assessing. They examined the frozen sheep, they took samples of the black substance, they asked questions, their voices clipped and professional, but Bayram saw something in their eyes, something he recognized – fear.
They brought with them equipment, strange instruments Bayram had never seen before. They scanned the ground, they tested the air, they spoke into radios, their voices urgent and low. Days turned into nights, and the mystery of the frozen sheep deepened.
The scientists, as they were called, found nothing conclusive. No known disease, no poison, no logical explanation for the mass death, the freezing, the black ooze. The reports from other villages confirmed the same horrifying phenomenon, spreading across the region like a silent plague.
Then came the birds.
First, just a few, circling high above Ýylanly, their cries sharp and frantic. Then more, and more, until the sky was filled with them, a swirling mass of wings and feathers, their cries a deafening cacophony that drowned out all other sound.
But they weren't circling normally. They were descending, drawn to something on the ground. The frozen sheep.
And then they began to eat.
Not pecking delicately, as birds usually do. They tore at the frozen flesh with savage ferocity, their beaks ripping and tearing, their claws scrabbling. They gorged themselves, ripping chunks from the unyielding carcasses, their eyes bright with a horrifying hunger.
The villagers watched in stunned horror as the birds consumed the frozen sheep, the black ooze spreading further as the carcasses were disturbed, staining the ground like a creeping shadow. The stench intensified, becoming almost unbearable, a suffocating blanket of rot and decay.
Bayram felt a sickness rising in his throat. This was beyond anything he could have imagined. The frozen sheep, the black ooze, the sky filled with ravenous birds… it felt like the world itself was unraveling.
One evening, as the sun, a pale disc behind the grey haze, began to dip below the horizon, Aksakal Murad called Bayram and Ogulnur to his house. His face was etched with worry, deeper lines than Bayram had ever seen before.
"The radio… I have been listening to the radio," the old man said, his voice low, "The news… it is terrible. It is not just sheep. It is cattle, goats, horses… everywhere. They are calling it… 'The Great Stillness'."
"The Great Stillness?" Bayram repeated, a chill running through him.
"Yes," Aksakal Murad nodded, "The animals… they are all falling silent. Freezing. Dying. And this… this blackness is spreading. They say… they say it is coming from the ground."
Ogulnur gasped, her hand flying to her mouth again. "From the ground? What does it mean?"
Aksakal Murad shook his head slowly. "I do not know. But they are speaking of… evacuations. Of leaving the villages. They say… it may be dangerous to stay."
Evacuations. Leaving Ýylanly. The thought was unthinkable. This was their home, their land, their life. To abandon it… it felt like abandoning themselves.
"But where would we go?" Bayram asked, his voice desperate. "Where is there to go?"
"They say… to the cities," Aksakal Murad replied, "To Mary, to Ashgabat. They are setting up shelters, they say."
The cities. Concrete jungles, filled with noise and crowds and unfamiliar faces. Bayram had visited Mary once, years ago, and the memory was of suffocating heat, endless dust, and a sense of being lost, insignificant. The thought of living there… it was a different kind of horror.
That night, Bayram and Ogulnur lay in their bed, the silence of the village pressing down on them, amplified by the absence of the sheep's bleating. The smell of decay seeped into their house, clinging to the air, tainting their dreams.
"What do we do, Bayram?" Ogulnur whispered, her voice trembling, "Do we leave? Do we go to the city?"
Bayram looked at her in the dim light of the oil lamp, her face pale and drawn with fear. He had no answers, only a gnawing sense of dread. He had always been a man of the land, of the desert, of the sheep. He knew nothing of cities, of shelters, of surviving in a world without the familiar rhythms of nature.
"I don't know, Ogulnur," he admitted, his voice heavy with despair, "I just… I don't know."
They stayed in Ýylanly. Many villagers left, driven by fear and the promises of safety in the cities.
But some, like Bayram and Ogulnur, and Aksakal Murad, and a handful of others, chose to remain. They couldn't abandon their homes, their ancestral land. They would face whatever was coming, here, in the place they belonged.
Days turned into weeks. The Great Stillness deepened. The birds finished with the sheep, then turned to other creatures, then to each other. The sky remained grey, the sun a pale ghost. The black ooze spread, creeping across the land, staining the earth, the houses, everything it touched.
Food became scarce. The wells began to taste strange, tainted with the blackness. Sickness spread among the remaining villagers, a slow, wasting sickness that weakened their bodies and clouded their minds.
Ogulnur fell ill first. She grew weak, feverish, her skin taking on a greyish hue. Bayram cared for her, nursing her with what little water and food they had left. But nothing helped. She grew weaker, fading like the dying sun in the grey sky.
One morning, Bayram woke to find her still beside him in their bed. But she wasn't breathing. Her eyes were open, wide and vacant, just like the sheep. Frozen in death, facing east, towards a sun that would never truly rise again.
Bayram stayed by her side for a long time, numb with grief, his heart a cold, empty void. He was alone now. The sheep were gone, the village was almost deserted, his wife was dead. The world he knew, the life he had lived, was gone, frozen, just like everything else.
He carried Ogulnur outside and laid her gently on the black-stained earth, facing east. Then he walked back into his empty house, the silence echoing around him, heavier than any grave.
He sat down on the floor, leaning against the mud brick wall, looking towards the east, towards the grey horizon. He felt no fear now, only a profound, crushing sadness. The sheepocolypse, they called it. But it was more than just the sheep. It was the end of everything.
He closed his eyes, and waited for the stillness to claim him too. He waited for the cold to seep into his bones, for the blackness to consume him, for the silence to become absolute.
He waited for the world to end, not with a bang, but with a chilling, desolate, stillness, under a grey and dying sky, in a land that was no longer home.