by M. L. Banner
“Philip?” Thomas begged, pointing back behind his friend, who was stooped over in his seat.
There were dozens of stragglers, flying irregular patterns, rather than the normal sinewy lines of a flock. In fact, the flock had looked rather irregular as well. The stragglers were flying lower too, so he could hear their cackles more prominently. Several of these seemed to be flying toward them.
The attack was quick, and before either of them knew it, they were overwhelmed by the demonic-looking blackbirds. The birds screeched at them and dove into Thomas, burying their beaks into his flesh, followed by clawing and ripping.
Thomas got turned around while swinging at the offending birds, when he heard gasping and cries from Phillip, and then a scream. But it wasn’t a scream of terror. It sounded like frustration, or anger.
Thomas batted away two of the birds, and this gave him enough of an opening to turn to see his friend Phillip—his buddy since childhood—leap off his seat and land on top of him. Phillip dug his fingers into Thomas’ skin, and his friend opened his mouth wide, like he was going to take a bite out of him. “What are you do—”
Shock stopped his words as he saw Phillip pull away from him with a chunk of Thomas’ own skin in his mouth. This part horrified him, as did his friend’s insane behavior. But what made him piss his own pants was his friend’s red eyes.
Part II
PARASITIC
“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.”
Friedrich W. Nietzsche
Prologue
Fifteen Years Ago
The dog came from out of nowhere, completely silent, rather than the usual vicious pooch announcing its terror long before it reached you. It crashed into her right side like a freight train. She only heard the briefest sound of the monster gulping one last bit of air before it struck.
When she hit the ground, she heard the animal grunt from their impact and then growl as it attempted to get a better grip on her side, so that it could set itself to ripping her flesh.
If she had any time to think about her situation, she would have probably panicked. This was where her training kicked in. Her gun was already unholstered, and so she quickly fired off a shot. But it was from the same side as the mutt. She missed. Quickly, she switched hands and shot once more from her left.
A long moment of quiet passed. Not more than maybe twenty heartbeats.
They both lay in a heap, but only she was panting.
Upon quick inspection, she concluded this was not your back-yard, shit-bird variety of pit bull; this was a pure-bred Vizsla: slick, muscular, and very powerful. The Bureau already knew that the dog’s owner had bought a half-dozen over the years from a breeder in Jackson, about ten miles south.
Of course it never occurred to her superiors in the FBI, who put together this raid, that the dogs might be a threat, only their owner.
Well, they screwed the pooch on that one, she thought.
“Sitrep, people,” blared her earpiece.
“Taggert here... Wren here... Anderson here...”
With some effort, TJ pushed herself onto her knees. She lifted her mangled shirt edge to inspect the wound. It looked pretty bad.
“Sitrep, Williams.”
Her black FBI jacket came off—damned thing was too hot anyway. She pulled off her shirt with a grunt and groan, thankful she was wearing her sports bra and not one of the frilly Victoria’s Secret-things Ted bought her. Folding it lengthwise until it was a long, thick strip of fabric, she wrapped it around her side, making sure both ends of the wound were covered enough. Holding the ends of the jacket arms, she spun it around, turning it into a cord, with most of it bunching up the middle. It too was placed over the wounded area. Finally, she tied the jacket’s arms tight around her other side, cinching it down to hold the field dressing, and hopefully stem the flow of blood.
It would have to do until this was done.
“Williams, report,” her earpiece hollered at her again.
“Williams here. Damned dog frickin’ bit the shit out of me. Had to shoot it. I’m good to go. 10-76.”
“Roger.”
She should have called in 10-52, Ambulance Needed. But then she’d have to walk ten times as far back to their mobile base, and she really wanted to get this sonofabitch, especially after now learning he was training vicious dogs.
She drew her weapon again; it had been holstered while she’d rendered herself aid.
Each step forward elicited a painful grunt, and she could feel a warm trickle of blood drip down her backside.
Worse yet, she felt a building anxiety, giving way to a constant need to check her twenty for another crazed animal.
The ranch house was only a hundred yards away, and no doubt their perp would be looking out his window in her direction. So she had to approach it covertly, which was damned hard to do without much natural cover. With any luck, he’d think her gunshots were from a hunter, illegally shooting on the Yellowstone National Reserve property, contiguous to his. He had often called in complaints to Game and Fish about this.
The worst case scenario would be the guy coming out, guns blazing, and then they’d have another Waco on their hands. And that they did not want. The guy may have been a murderer, but they didn’t want his dozen-member family hurt too. They were the reason TJ had to keep going.
It was because the kids hadn’t been seen for several weeks, and all of them missed the first two weeks of the fall semester that a couple of deputies from the Jackson Sheriff Department were dispatched to check on the family. Upon arriving on the scene, there was a single panicked radio broadcast from one deputy. The dispatcher claimed the caller said only, “He’s crazy.” Nothing more. An hour later, the FBI stepped in as they were not coincidentally investigating two missing hikers from Prague, who were last seen wandering in the same direction as TJ was now.
She stopped to regain her breath, and to readjust her field-dressing, which was already coming loose. She was sweating like it was ninety out, when it wasn’t much more than sixty. She pressed her palm to her bicep. Her skin felt cool. Do not go into shock, she told herself. As if one could coax oneself into not doing so.
She cinched her jacket-pressure-bandage even tighter, moaning at the pain, while she trudged forward the last few steps.
The moaning continued, but this time it wasn’t her.
“This is Williams,” she whispered. “I’m at the southwest corner of the corral fence-line, about fifteen yards from the home. I’m hearing some sort of... moaning. Going to investigate.”
“Hold up Williams. Wait for your team.”
The rest of her advance team reported in, but much farther away. She would be there long before the others, which meant no backup. Yet, if the moaning was from an injured family member or the hikers, waiting longer might end up killing one of them. To buttress her argument for moving forward, she was feeling queasy. It occurred to her, she’d have to finish this pretty quickly, before she passed out. The last thing she wanted to do is blow the whole operation passing out before they got ‘em. She’d rather accept a verbal tongue lashing, if it meant they could catch this SOB.
Maybe I could claim delirium from the dog bite. It wasn’t too far off, she thought.
She’d press forward, moving along the back fence line.
Within a minute, she heard the moaning sound again, only it was more of a groaning. It was coming from the dark opening of the barn, diagonally across from the corral.
TJ slipped in between the rough slats of the split-rail fence and yelped when she saw where she stepped. She thought for a moment it was another dog. But it wasn’t.
Below her foot and against the fence lay a dead horse. Practically gutted. A dark stain circled the carcass; the blood had mostly seeped into the corral’s soft dirt. There were multiple small round puncture wounds and deep gashes in its throat and sides, like it had been mauled by a wild animal.
Her head pivoted, searching around her twenty
for the wild animal that did this. Her breathing accelerated, to the point of hyperventilating. The perp had more dogs. What if they were just as vicious as the one that attacked her? She felt a chill shoot across her spine.
TJ bent over to catch her breath. It was either the blood loss or her hyperventilating or both: her dizziness turned to double vision. At any moment, she felt certain she’d either panic or pass out. Touching the lower edge of the bunched-up shirt against her side, her fingers came away very wet and dark red. She was losing too much blood. She needed to call it. Losing any more blood, she’d surely lose consciousness, maybe even die.
A low growl, like a dull echo, pulled at her. Her head drew up, attempting to find the sound, and she instantly saw it.
Or rather him.
Their perp, Jim Tanner. Father of ten. Multi-millionaire, ranch owner. Perhaps even mass-murderer. Was the one growling. And running.
He was running toward her. In his hand, he brandished a metal rod, like a piece of rebar.
“Subject is running toward me, yelling,” she warbled over their comms.
More like screeching, at her. He sounded and looked like some crazed wild animal. An insane thought hit her: maybe their perp, and not one of his dogs, mauled the horse.
“Mr. Tanner. FBI. Freeze!” she demanded, but it came out a weak croak. She raised her Glock 29. He was sighted in, with only the slightest of twitching. Good thing, there were at least two of him coming at her.
He kept coming, only faster.
“Mr. Tanner, I’ll shoot you,” she hollered. Her own voice sounded distant, like it was someone else’s.
TJ dropped to her knee, not just to keep her gun hand steady: she was seeing three of everything now.
“Stop!”
He didn’t.
She fired. Three times. One for each of him.
Then she tumbled to the ground, her strength leaving her.
“Subject down. Officer needs assistance,” she whispered over her comms, and then passed out.
~~~
Present Day
Even though this incident had long since been paved over by years of other forgotten memories, the abject fear of attacking animals born from it clung to TJ’s daily consciousness.
Only now did she consider that moment. Not for what she would have done differently, but for one important detail about that crazed dog, and equally crazed man. It only occurred to her on this day that the man they were going to try to arrest, the man she ended up shooting and killing, had one physical attribute that she had completely forgotten, until now.
Yet when the memory burst into her head like the pain she often felt from the physical scars to her right side, she knew it was important.
His eyes were blood red. Just like the animals they were seeing today.
The Journal of TD Bonaventure
DAY FIVE Cont...
... THE DAY I LOST MY WIFE.
THERE WAS SO MUCH WE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND AT THAT MOMENT.
FOR INSTANCE, IT WASN’T JUST THE ANIMALS WHO WENT CRAZY. THIS POINT SHOULD HAVE BEEN OBVIOUS TO ALL OF US. BUT BY THE TIME WE FIGURED IT OUT, IT WAS TOO LATE.
EVEN AS WE STARTED TO RELAX, OUR ONLY CONCERNS WERE FOR THE ANIMAL ATTACKS. AND THOSE, WE THOUGHT—IT WAS MORE LIKE HOPE—WERE POTENTIALLY EBBING. THAT’S WHEN PROVERBIAL HELL BROKE LOOSE ON OUR SHIP.
TJ AND I WERE BEING UPDATED BY THE SHIP’S STAFF CAPTAIN, JEAN PIERRE. THE INTREPID DID IN FACT HAVE SATELLITE. THEY HAD TOLD GUESTS OTHERWISE TO KEEP THEM IN THE DARK, SO THEY WOULDN’T PANIC—LIKE WE WERE DOING WHEN WE HEARD THE REST. THEY HAD BEEN MONITORING THE GLOBAL NEWS NETWORKS. IT WAS BAD: EUROPE AND PARTS OF ASIA HAD DEVOLVED INTO CHAOS, AND ANIMAL ATTACKS WERE SPREADING LIKE WILDFIRE OVER EVERY CONTINENT, EVEN IN NORTH AMERICA.
WE HAD WITNESSED SOME OF THIS FIRSTHAND ON OUR TRANSATLANTIC CRUISE: FIRST, AT MADRID, IT WAS A RABID-LIKE DOG; THEN, AT MALAGA, IT WAS THE BIRDS, FOLLOWED BY THE RATS; THEN, AT GIBRALTAR, THE MONKEYS; AND FINALLY, THE DOGS, BROUGHT ON BOARD BY SOME WELL-HEELED PASSENGERS, HAD GONE CRAZY TOO. ALL WERE SYMPTOMATIC: BLOOD-RED IRISES AND MOST HAD AN ABSOLUTE DESIRE TO KILL, EVEN WHEN MORTALLY INJURED. UNTIL THEN, WE HAD THOUGHT THE TROUBLE, LIKE THE VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS, HAD RUN ITS COURSE AND WOULD BE EVENTUALLY OVER. BUT THIS WAS BASED ON INCOMPLETE INFORMATION.
THE PET SPA’S VET FOUND HIS WILD BOARDERS AFTER THEY HAD GOTTEN LOOSE AND BELIEVED THEY WERE NO LONGER AGGRESSIVE. AND WHEN I RAN ACROSS A RED-EYED FERRET OUTSIDE OUR ROOM—THEY SUSPECTED IT WAS BROUGHT ON BOARD BY ONE OF THEIR CREW—IT WAS ALSO NOT AGGRESSIVE. BECAUSE OF THESE EXAMPLES, WE ALL HAD ASSUMED THAT THE AGGRESSIVE TRAITS OF THIS DISEASE WOULD PASS. WE DIDN’T KNOW BEING SYMPTOMATIC DIDN’T AUTOMATICALLY MEAN AGGRESSIVE IN EVERY CASE.
AND HELL, THROW IN A MONSTROUS ONE-HUNDRED-FIFTY-FOOT TSUNAMI IN THE MIDDLE OF ALL OF THIS, JUST TO DIVERT OUR ATTENTION FROM THE REAL PROBLEM. AND WHEN THE SUN PEEKED THROUGH THE VOLCANIC CLOUDS, WE WERE ALL READY TO FORGET THIS, AS WE WOULD WITH ANY BAD DREAM. BUT THAT WAS OUR NORMALCY BIAS... AND OUR IGNORANCE.
IT WAS THEN THAT THE BOOM WAS DROPPED ON US BY JEAN PIERRE.
MY WIFE TJ WAS PROBABLY THE TOUGHEST WOMAN I’D EVER MET, AND YET SHE WAS ABSOLUTELY PARALYZED BY A FEAR OF BEING ATTACKED BY AN ANIMAL. IT WAS UNDERSTANDABLE WHEN HER HEAD DROPPED DOWN IN ANGUISH, AND A WELLSPRING OF TEARS FLOWED FROM HER FACE.
I TOO FELT GUT-SHOT. I HAD FEARED THIS VERY THING FROM THE MOMENT THE FIRST SIGNS OF THIS RAGE DISEASE (AS THE MEDIA WAS CALLING IT) SPRANG UP. AFTER ALL, I WROTE A DAMNED BOOK ABOUT SOME VERSION OF THIS MADNESS. OF COURSE, I HAD WRITTEN ABOUT MANY POTENTIAL APOCALYPTIC EVENTS. I NEVER REALLY EXPECTED ANY OF THEM TO COME TRUE. THIS ONE APPEARED TO BE WORSE THAN EVEN I HAD ENVISIONED: IT WASN’T TERRORISTS OR ANARCHISTS WHO HAD WEAPONIZED THE T-GONDII PARASITE, WHICH ALREADY INFECTED MOST MAMMALS AND REPROGRAMMED THEIR BEHAVIOR AGAINST US; IT WAS SOME BACTERIA FROM VOLCANOES THAT IGNITED THE T-GONDII PUPPET-MASTER TO PULL THE STRINGS OF ITS MAMMAL HOSTS AND SET THEM AGAINST US, EN MASSE.
AND AS BAD AS IT APPEARED IT WAS GOING TO GET, WITH MAMMALS OF EVERY STRIPE ATTACKING HUMANS EVERYWHERE, WE HAD NO IDEA THAT IT WAS ABOUT TO GET SO MUCH WORSE.
YOU SEE, IT WASN’T JUST THE ANIMALS, IT WAS THE HUMANS TOO.
THE REPORTS OF HUMAN ATTACKS SO FAR WERE INFREQUENT AND BLENDED IN WITH THE OTHER CHAOTIC STORIES AND WERE NOT RECOGNIZED AS A SIGN OF THE GREATER PROBLEM. AT THIS POINT, THE WORLD WAS RUNNING FOR THEIR LIVES FROM THE ANIMALS AND NATURAL DISASTERS, AND SO FEW HAD TIME TO ANALYZE THE DISEASE’S PROGRESSION LEADING TO ITS ULTIMATE HOSTS: HUMANS.
BY THEN, IT WAS TOO LATE.
OUR SHIP WAS IN FACT A PERFECT MICROCOSM OF THE T-GONDII’S EVOLUTIONARY PROGRESSION: FIRST ANIMALS WITH HIGHER BODY TEMPERATURES, THEN DOWN THE BODILY TEMPERATURE-SCALE, UNTIL FINALLY HUMANS WERE AFFECTED. BUT WE DIDN’T KNOW ANY OF THAT YET. AND I’M GETTING WAY AHEAD OF MYSELF.
THE DAY THAT EVERYTHING FELL APART, THIS DAY IN FACT, STARTED WITH JEAN PIERRE’S SIGHTING OF A CLOUD OF BLACK BIRDS THAT WERE HEADED OUR WAY.
39
The Birds
It was like a gut punch.
TJ Williams had doubled over, grabbing her side right where the dog had gotten her years earlier. It almost felt like the dog had hit her full force once again, pushing all the air from her lungs.
But it wasn’t the dog.
It was the piece of a missing memory. Something she had forgotten entirely. Until then.
Those damned red eyes!
“Are you alright, Hon?” Her husband Ted asked. He clasped a comforting hand onto her back and bent down beside her, no doubt thinking she was not dealing well with the future prospect of unending animal attacks. He wasn’t altogether wrong.
She rose up and Ted matched her movements. His eyes poured out deep concern for her. She so wanted to alleviate his anxiety; to tell him “Yes, I’m fine.” But she wasn’t fine.
Her fingers reflexively brushed over her necklace. It was something she found herself doing constantly, even though she’d just received this anniversary gift from him. It was representative of his view
of her, and in fact what she wanted to be: a fearless warrior. But that wasn’t her at all. She was plagued with fear. And it was all because of that day.
Those dark images from the past, the ones she had been hiding from, all at once flooded her mind. That horrific moment in her life that had shaped her; that had molded her into the weak person she had become, so that now she practically hid from her own shadow.
Because of the pain that moment caused, she had long since repressed those images and their accompanying feelings of terror. Yet the terror always remained.
And somehow she’d forgotten that the dog’s eyes were the color of blood?
And yet, as troubling as that was, it wasn’t the gut punch. That came the moment Jean Pierre mentioned “people”: that was when she remembered the man that she shot, the one who was about to attack her.
He had had red eyes too.
“As I was saying,” Jean Pierre’s voice had boomed over the stiff headwind which was whipping through the swing deck where the three of them had been standing. He had paused to get a better look at a black cloud off their starboard bow, getting closer. “It’s spreading everywhere, to animals of every stripe—especially dog populations... and people...”
It was his people comment that was the key that unlocked the red-eye memory she’d buried.
She blinked back the pain to see Jean Pierre had pulled his binoculars away from his head to examine them, as if there was something wrong the eyepiece, or his own sight.
After a very long pause, he finished his thought, “...and people are getting attacked in larger numbers.”
He paused again.
TJ’s mind was a jumble. While Jean Pierre focused on the fast-approaching cloud, TJ thought more about what he actually said, not what she thought he was going to say.
