Grasshopper Jungle

by Andrew Smith

Sometimes historians need to fill in the blanks on their own. It is part of our job.

  You trust us because we are historians.

  Historians are reliable blank-fillers.

  It is my job.

  Hungry Jack’s mandibles yawned open. A gooey string of bug saliva hammocked between his jagged side-hinged jaws. The mandibles opened and closed, opened and closed. Hungry Jack wanted to eat me and Ingrid. Hungry Jack pressed his head into the windshield of Robby’s Explorer. He tried to bite me through the glass, but he could not figure out what was keeping him from getting me into his mouth.

  He bit and bit at the windshield, each time leaving streaks of milky bug spit on the glass.

  Ingrid squeezed her way up between the front seats, into my lap, and also tried to bite Hungry Jack through the unyielding windshield.

  Bugs are not very smart, but Hungry Jack was persistent.

  I reached over to the steering column, but Robby had taken the car keys with him. Of course Robby would have taken the keys. He would have no way to enter the Del Vista Arms without his keys.

  I pressed down into the car’s horn.

  Robby’s Ford Explorer was exactly like Ingrid: barkless. The horn did not work.

  I pushed Ingrid back and scooted my way deeper into the rear cargo compartment of the car. Hungry Jack whipped his arms up and struck them into the windshield. He was figuring out the puzzle. Cracks starred outward from the impact, fracturing the windshield in every direction, all the way to the rubber gasket frame.

  At exactly that moment, Robby Brees stepped out from the foyer at the Del Vista Arms. When I saw Robby, he was standing on the sidewalk with some objects under one arm, only a few feet away from Hungry Jack.

  It was not a good idea.

  “Robby!” I screamed, but it was too late.

  CLICKETY CLICKETY

  THE COMPOUND EYES on an Unstoppable Soldier take up approximately three-fourths of his head.

  Hungry Jack could see the entire world around him at all times, even when he was focused on getting to me and Ingrid, who were hiding inside Robby Brees’s Ford Explorer.

  The poor old car took a beating from Hungry Jack’s tooth-spiked arms.

  Hungry Jack’s head swiveled entirely around when he detected the movement of Robby Brees outside the doorway to the Del Vista Arms.

  Robby Brees was going to be easy prey.

  Robby stood, frozen. I screamed for him to run, but Robby was not paying attention to me.

  I realized I was going to sit there and watch my best friend get killed if I did not do something about it. I crawled up from the rear compartment and grabbed the latch on the rear passenger door. I was not even thinking at that moment about how Robby and I were going to die together.

  All I knew is I had to do something for the person I loved.

  I opened the door and screamed at Robby again.

  Hungry Jack sprang down from the hood of the Explorer and landed squarely on his four rear feet. Hungry Jack was so close to Robby that his folded and spiked arms were practically touching Robby’s shoulders.

  Then Hungry Jack backed away from Robby. The monster butted up into the fender of Robby’s Explorer without ever looking toward me or Ingrid again.

  Hungry Jack ran, clickety clickety, down the street and disappeared into the night.

  Unstoppable Soldiers could run at speeds exceeding forty miles per hour.

  Hungry Jack was afraid of Robby Brees.

  I had seen it before. The first night—when Hungry Jack hatched out in that cornfield across from the Tally-Ho!—he did the same thing. He ran away from Robby Brees.

  It was because Robby Brees was God to the Unstoppable Soldiers.

  We found this out later.

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  “Uh,” Robby said.

  Robby Brees had still not moved from the spot I thought he was going to die in.

  “Holy shit, Rob.”

  I grabbed Robby and hugged him. We stood there on the street holding each other. Ingrid curled her body around our legs, wagging her tail.

  Above us, Ollie Jungfrau looked down from his window. He had regained his composure, but was still standing, soaked, in a puddle of his own piss.

  Ollie Jungfrau said, “I might have known little Dynamo was a queer, too. Dumb stupid lucky queer kids.”

  Robby and I had to get out of there.

  Robby Brees and I had shit to do, and monsters to kill.

  ON THE ROOF AGAIN

  ROBBY SPED ALL the way to Grasshopper Jungle.

  It turned out the things Robby wanted to get from his apartment at the Del Vista Arms were these: some clean underwear and socks, his toothpaste, the plastic lawn flamingo with the steel spike coming out of its ass, and the grimacing lemur mask.

  “I should have gotten some underwear, too,” I said. “What if we end up having to stay down there?”

  “I don’t know, Austin,” Robby said.

  “Neither do I,” I agreed.

  Nobody knew anything about what we should do.

  It was why we needed to get those last two reels of film from the roof of Grasshopper Jungle.

  Dr. Grady McKeon told us to get those films.

  We had to get the films and go back to Eden. Robby and I both knew that it was not too late, that the infestation was still in its first stage. We still had time, and Dr. Grady McKeon said there would be instructions for what to do on the last reels of the Eden Orientation Series.

  Maybe Robby and I could stop the Unstoppable Soldiers.

  Maybe Shann Collins would forgive me.

  Maybe that plastic flamingo would start shitting candy bars and vanilla ice cream out of its ass, too.

  When Robby rounded the turn onto Kimber Drive, his phone chimed.

  It was a text message from Shann Collins.

  Shann’s text message to Robby Brees said this:

  I hate you.

  Robby glanced at the message on the screen of his phone. I watched him. He did not show any reaction at all. Robby knew it was not a joke message, though. Then he handed his phone over to me so I could see what Shann had written, too.

  “I had a feeling you told her about me and you,” Robby said.

  I said, “I never lie, Rob. Shann asked me about it. I don’t know what I am going to do.”

  Robby sighed.

  I answered Shann’s text message using Robby’s phone:

  Shann, it is me, Austin. Please do not make this about Robby. I love you both too much. Can we talk?

  Shann’s answer came to my phone:

  You are disgusting. I hate you both.

  Robby pulled the Explorer into the alley at Grasshopper Jungle.

  If we had gone around to the front of the mall, we might have seen the mess Travis Pope had made at The Pancake House.

  Robby and I had no idea what had been going on at Grasshopper Jungle.

  He eased the Explorer along the back of the mall and parked beneath the metal ladder that came down from the roof behind From Attic to Seller Consignment Store.

  Robby and I left Ingrid inside the car and climbed up onto the roof racks of the Explorer. From there, it was an easy reach to the bottom of the ladder.

  “Um,” Robby said, “that creature-thing really messed the shit out of my car.”

  “Sorry, Rob,” I said. “We might as well call them what they are: Unstoppable Soldiers, created from the sicko brains at McKeon Industries who thought it was a good idea to mix bug sperm and blood with anything that happened to show up in their petri dish.”

  “Who would think it wasn’t a good idea to mix bug sperm and blood with shit?” Robby said.

  I said, “Uh.”

  Robby said, “I wonder what a can of bug spray would do to them.”

  “Uh,” I said. “I think Eden One Thirty-Three and Eden Five better get their butts onto the roof and find the rest of that movie.”

  “I do hate stopping a film right in the middle,” Eden 133 said. “Just when it was gett
ing good.”

  Actually, we stopped the film just when my grandfather, Felek Andrzej Szczerba, became McKeon Industries’s first Unstoppable Soldier.

  We climbed up onto the roof of the Ealing Mall.

  Johnny McKeon was hiding inside, just waiting for somebody to respond to his emergency alarm. Johnny McKeon was also going through the stock of handguns he had on display in the glass case at From Attic to Seller Consignment Store.

  Johnny McKeon had a lot of guns for sale.

  Robby and I had no way of knowing Johnny McKeon was directly below our feet.

  “Smoke?” I said.

  “Fags,” Robby agreed.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  We lit up.

  The steel film canisters were right where we had left them. I bent down and picked up both canisters. What we hadn’t noticed the first time we were up on the roof became strikingly obvious now. The film cans were wrapped with tape and marked with a thick black pen: Four of Five, and Five of Five.

  Robby said, “Can I ask you something, Austin?”

  I said, “Sure.”

  “Was it hard for you to tell Shann the truth?” Robby asked.

  I shook my head.

  “No,” I said.

  It was the truth.

  “Oh.” Robby said, “And you really don’t know what you’re going to do?”

  I took a drag and exhaled.

  “No,” I said. “I think I should just leave you both alone before I ruin everyone’s life.”

  “You wouldn’t ruin my life,” Robby said.

  “I don’t want to hurt you or Shann, Rob,” I said.

  I was ruining Robby’s and Shann’s lives, even if Robby told me I wasn’t.

  I was disgusted with myself.

  We threw our cigarette butts down and stamped them out on the grit of the roof.

  A police siren wailed. We could see the pulse of red lights coming closer through the night toward Kimber Drive.

  “Do you think someone saw us come up the ladder?” Robby said.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “We should get out of here before we get arrested, or shit like that.”

  DENNY DRAYTON HAS A GUN, MOTHERFUCKER

  JOHNNY MCKEON TURNED off all the lights.

  He was inside From Attic to Seller Consignment Store, waiting for the coyote cry of the Iowa State Patrol car that had been dispatched from Waterloo.

  The State Patrol was responding to an emergency alarm Johnny McKeon rang when he saw Hungry Jack and the other Unstoppable Soldiers in the alley at Grasshopper Jungle.

  There was only one bored trooper in the patrol car. He sat behind the wheel. He was bored because he was coming to Ealing. Nothing ever happened in Ealing, and he figured it was going to be another pile of Ealing nothing crap from a false alarm at an abandoned business in a loser town.

  Ealing, Iowa, was the elephants’ graveyard for American entrepreneurism.

  The trooper was named Denny Drayton.

  It was a good Iowa name.

  Denny Drayton’s skin was nearly translucent white, the sickly color of the coconut center in a Mounds bar. He had absolutely no hair.

  Denny Drayton needed to take a shit. He hoped wherever he was heading to had a shitter that worked, and toilet paper, too. Denny Drayton carried a pack of baby wipes in his patrol car for emergencies, like when he’d pull off to the side of the road and shit in someone’s yard.

  The baby wipes in Denny Drayton’s patrol car were made in a place called Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

  That is the truth.

  Denny Drayton chewed tobacco while he was on patrol. He held a plastic liter Diet Coke bottle between his thighs as he drove. The Diet Coke bottle was three-fourths full of hot tobacco spit. Iowa State Troopers were not supposed to chew tobacco on the job, but Denny Drayton had a motto for just about every situation he encountered.

  His motto was this: Fuck that shit. I have a gun, motherfucker.

  Denny Drayton’s motto was tattooed in an arc of Old English lettering that made a semicircle like a rising sun over his white and hairless belly button.

  Fuck that shit. I have a gun, motherfucker.

  Denny Drayton shaved his entire body every morning. He shaved all his hair off, even his eyebrows and pubic hair.

  Trooper Drayton also had a tattoo of the flag for the Confederate States of America. The stars and bars flag was tattooed directly on the front of Denny Drayton’s hairless scrotum.

  Denny Drayton was most likely insane.

  Denny liked to show off his hairless body and the tattoos of his motto and the Confederate flag in the shower room at the police station in Waterloo. Denny Drayton told his police officer friends that he got the tattoo of his motto for reading material, just in case he ever hooked up with a bitch who was smart enough to read and give blow jobs at the same time.

  Denny Drayton had one joke, and that was it.

  It wasn’t a particularly good joke, and everyone knew it. But Denny Drayton had a gun, motherfucker.

  The six-foot-tall praying mantis beast that used to be named Travis Pope lumbered out of The Pancake House on his four clicking lower legs. He was a little groggy. Will Wallace had been exceedingly drunk, and Unstoppable Soldiers are sensitive to eating drunk people and people who smoke meth and shit like that.

  Travis Pope only wanted to find the swarm and go dormant with them overnight.

  Denny Drayton was just pulling into the parking lot.

  Johnny McKeon noticed the flashing red lights through the glass front of his secondhand store. Johnny McKeon had a gun—a Smith & Wesson .500 magnum.

  The gun weighed six pounds.

  A Smith & Wesson .500 magnum could blow a man’s head off.

  Pastor Roland Duff saw the lights on Trooper Denny Drayton’s patrol car, too. Roland Duff had come back from Waterloo, where he had met a nice Christian man at the Tally-Ho!

  Roland Duff sat alone inside Satan’s Pizza. He was eating a small Stanpreme. Roland Duff was exchanging text messages with his new friend. Roland Duff was very excited. He had an erection. Pastor Roland Duff and his new friend were flirting suggestively, and arranging a date for Saturday evening.

  Roland Duff’s new friend was named Shaun Doherty.

  Shaun Doherty owned a septic pumping business. He lived in a town called West Bazine, which was in Iowa. East Bazine did not exist at all.

  Shaun Doherty and Pastor Roland Duff planned on meeting at the Waterloo Cinezaar on Saturday evening.

  They were going to see Eden Five Needs You 4.

  That was the plan, at least.

  Denny Drayton turned his spotlight onto the dark front of The Pancake House. His keen sense of Iowan normalcy alerted Denny Drayton that something was not right. Windows were shattered, the front door had been torn from its hinges, and it looked like there were some bloody shoes and a belt lying on the sidewalk in front of the mall.

  “Something’s not right here,” Denny Drayton said.

  Denny Drayton spit into his Coke bottle and pinched another wad of black, moist tobacco from a can of Copenhagen he kept pinned behind the patrol car’s sun visor.

  He farted. Denny Drayton admired the smell of his own farts.

  “I really need to take a shit,” Denny Drayton said.

  Then the Iowa trooper saw Travis Pope, an Unstoppable Soldier, moving with mechanical jerkiness through the debris field of blood, glass, clothing, and imitation-maple-flavored pancake syrup.

  Denny Drayton opened the door on his patrol car. He spit onto the asphalt of the Ealing Mall’s parking lot and then stood up, angling his spotlight so it would fully illuminate the strange creature in front of The Pancake House.

  It was not a good idea.

  Denny Drayton thought it must have been some kind of prank. Maybe somebody was making a movie or something. Denny Drayton wished he could be in a movie.

  “What the heck is that shit?” Denny Drayton said.

  Denny Drayton drew his pistol. His gun was a 9mm
Sig Sauer model P250.

  Denny Drayton’s pistol was made in New Hampshire.

  Compared to Johnny McKeon’s Smith & Wesson .500 magnum, Denny Drayton’s weapon was a rubber band gun.

  Travis Pope’s attention was riveted to all the lights blazing from the patrol car. He was not hungry, but he decided to kill the man making all the noise and light, anyway. Unstoppable Soldiers do that kind of shit.

  Johnny McKeon came outside just then. Johnny pointed his powerful pistol in the direction of Travis Pope. Johnny McKeon was not a good shot. He knew he would miss hitting the creature unless he got very, very close.

  Pastor Roland Duff had never had sex with another person in his entire life. He believed he was ready to have sex with his new friend, Shaun Doherty. Roland Duff imagined the thrill of experimenting with another man after all his lonely years. He was very excited about it. Roland Duff adjusted his uncomfortable erection and sat watching the police lights from across the street. He was curious. Pastor Roland Duff could not tell what was going on.

  Sometimes, Pastor Roland Duff counseled himself over his own doubts and weaknesses. He could not decide whether he was a virgin or not. Pastor Roland Duff did believe that masturbation was immoral and compromising. Roland Duff was frequently wracked by guilt. He was uncertain if he could still be a virgin and masturbate as often as he did. Pastor Roland Duff thought he would masturbate when he got back home that night.

  Pastor Roland Duff did not really get the chance.

  At exactly that moment, ash flakes fell like snow in Guatemala on the home of Robert Brees Sr. For some strange reason, Robert Brees Sr. thought about the son he’d left behind in Iowa. Robby would be sixteen now, he thought. Robert Brees Sr. watched the ashes falling and falling. He had not thought about his son in years.

  Eric Christopher Szerba was lying awake in a hospital bed. Eric was looking at the tubes and medications near the head of his bed, and wondering if anything there could be useful to him in committing suicide.

  Robby Brees and I were driving out from Ealing toward the McKeon House. We were going back to Eden to watch the last reels from Eden Orientation Series. Robby played Let It Bleed in the tape deck.