The Invasive
Page 9
Bishop turned to the hole with the flashlight.
A pair of blinking, black eyes glared at him from below, and a haunting, multi-clicking rose from deep in the burrow. The creature’s shovel appendages rubbed each other as if it was irritated, and its eyes filled with a murky, brown ink, replacing the black.
Before Bishop could discern more facial features, the giant bug’s head blew apart. Bishop’s ears rang from the blast, and for a second, he thought he saw a legion of black, blinking eyes nestled deep in the burrow, illuminated by the muzzle flash and several pulsing, red tags.
The wounded creature scurried into the bunker, shrieking and smearing its bleeding face against the concrete walls, leaving inconsistent streaks of slime like a confused painter. Bishop tried to follow it with the flashlight, and when the light seeped into the creature’s shredded eyes, it panicked even more. Colbrick let loose another blast and the creature collapsed, the wispy legs folding in and protecting the underbelly.
“Bishop!” Angela shouted from above, her voice sounding far away.
“I’m fine,” he said, ears ringing. “Did you find the headlamps?”
“Yes. I’ve got one on now.”
“We’ll be up in a minute after we plug this hole, OK?”
“What hole? What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Bishop said. “We’ll be up in a minute.”
The ringing in Bishop’s ears faded, and he heard movement from within the ominous hole.
The two men grabbed one of the cots and leaned it up against the hole, then stood back and examined their handy work. It didn’t look very impressive.
“Screw this,” Colbrick said. “Shine a light on that far shelf.”
Bishop did, and two reflective cans of liquid stove fuel caught the beam. Colbrick took each one and drained them into the hole. Gas fumes filled the bunker.
“What are you doing?” Bishop asked.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m having a beetle barbecue. Maybe we’ll get McCartney this time.”
The metal fuel cans gurgled as they emptied, the rivulets trickling down into the grim burrow, and who knows what creatures the artificial streams encountered. Without warning, Colbrick struck a match and tossed it into the darkness, igniting a fury of orange hell. Colbrick jerked back as the inferno exploded past his head, and Bishop caught the unpleasant odor of burning human hair.
“You alright, man?” Bishop asked.
Colbrick stood and dusted himself off, checking his hair with both hands. “Never been better.”
In the firelight, Bishop noticed Colbrick’s face had been penetrated by a few of the shotgun pellets. “Your face…does it hurt?”
“Nah. It’s nothing.” Colbrick grinned, his face glowing from the flames.
Bishop wondered if the man was crazy.
When the heat subsided, they stuffed mattresses into the hole, even managing to jam one of the cots into it.
“Much better,” Colbrick said.
They took as much of the food as they could along with the first-aid kits and went upstairs. Colbrick closed the heavy trap door behind him, and then dragged the rug over it.
“Not good enough,” Angela said.
They went into one of the lodge rooms and pushed an antique dresser along the hardwood floor, setting it atop the trap door.
“Yeah, still not good enough,” Angela said.
They dragged two more dressers and placed them next to the first.
“Now that’s a proper blockade,” Angela said.
Bishop looked at Angela, puzzled. “Don’t you want to know?”
“No,” she said.
“Can’t say I blame you,” Colbrick said.
“What happened to the quest for information?” Bishop asked.
“The curious cat is beat,” she said, collecting her hair in a ponytail and cinching it with a rubber band.
The three of them slumped onto the couch in the dark, two headlamps and a flashlight beaming light shafts here and there on the old logs. Strange how a place you’d never seen could keep you alive. Strange how a place redefined home. How long it would last, no one could know.
*
“I’m starting to get pissed,” Angela said, blowing upward at a lock of hair covering her eye.
“Maybe—”
“Not now,” she said, fuming. “I mean I’m really starting to get pissed off.”
Bishop said nothing. You do not get in Angela’s way when she’s in one of her moods.
“How many of these attacks will we survive?” Angela asked. “The next one? The one after that? When does our luck run out?”
“Big J’s been our lucky charm,” Colbrick said. “We’d be dead otherwise.”
“Then why did the owners leave?” Bishop asked.
“They probably saw the freak beetles in their bunker and hit the road,” Colbrick said. “Take a look around the property, there ain’t a vehicle in sight. They might have seen the beetles first, without seeing any of the other bastards. To us, them beetles ain’t shit.”
“So they took off,” Angela said.
“Yup.”
Angela stared at a porcelain figurine of a lassoing rancher on a far shelf. “They panicked and drove into a worse situation,” she said.
“Yup.”
“I’m not much of a religious person,” Angela said. “But God Bless the owners of Big J.”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Colbrick said.
“Oh, and Happy Fourth everyone,” Angela said, faking a sense of cheer.
They sat, holding their guns, their headlamps tilting down as they dozed off.
Spargus Text Feed
JennyGomes Jenny Gomes
@PaulaW Trucks pulling into driveway, big spotlights WTF
PaulaW PaulaW Anderson
@JennyGomes What are you talking about
JennyGomes Jenny Gomes
@PaulaW Knocking on door, shouting, they have dogs, too. Mom won’t answer.
PaulaW PaulaW Anderson
@JennyGomes OMG
JennyGomes Jenny Gomes
@PaulaW Other neighbors too. They’re coming upstairs. Soldiers. Need to hide phone. GTFO of Spargus
Branching Out
Sunlight illuminated the earth like it always has. The warming rays creased back the dark edge, revealing oceans and continents that always seemed to belong to each other. In one small corner of North America, these rays caused the receding glacier atop Kilbrix Peak to shimmer. These are the Apex Mountains, home of the last grizzly bears—a landscape that has survived the onslaught of development—a place that does not give in so easily. And as the sun first glinted upon Big J meadow, a strong, proud man walked, shotgun in hand.
“It’s a small world after all,” Colbrick hummed. His boots glistened from morning dew. His olfactory senses scanned for anything strange. His eyes were wild, yet contained.
Why are you so God damn happy? he asked himself. Because you saw two deer this morning, you old fool.
The two deer mattered.
The numerous flier droppings (and some of the small dead ones he kicked around) did not. Even those winged bastards couldn’t ruin his vision of the two deer. When he saw them, he’d stopped, and the hyper-alert mammals fled. He hoped that he hadn’t pushed them into one of the horrible things in the woods. It made him sick to realize that to the deer, the horrible things in the woods, were no different than himself. Hell, he shot and killed deer. Even ate ‘em. How was he any different? The new arrivals were just more things that wanted to kill and eat deer. This was nothing new to them.
Colbrick hung his head, the song coming to a halt as he continued to walk the meadow perimeter. Something flashed in the trees and Colbrick froze. Branches swished and a chittering arose from behind rustling leaves. A brown weasel raced up a tree, its tiny claws scrapping across the rough, twisted bark. It dragged a luxurious tail.
A fisher, he thought. Rare in the Apex Mountains. Seeing one was considered goo
d luck, and it damn sure felt that way today. Colbrick watched the fisher scurry out of sight up the old growth tamarack. Then he moved away, wanting to give it space. It was time to head back to the lodge, anyway.
Bishop and Angela walked out to meet him.
Angela had on a daypack, and Bishop hoisted one of the beefier backpacks.
“What you hauling all that for, slick?”
“Just in case,” Bishop said. “I’m taking a lesson from you.”
“And what do you have in your hand, Angela?” Colbrick asked.
“You know what it is,” she said.
“That’s right. Now don’t go shootin’ yourself with it,” Colbrick said.
She raised the Colt Python .357 and studied it with electric eyes, then looked into the sky.
“If those things come back, I’m going Clint Eastwood on them,” she said.
Bishop and Colbrick looked up and grimaced, for the sky was no longer a pleasant space gleaming above them. Now it was capable of hurling death via glowing eyes and looping mimicry.
Colbrick reached into his daypack and retrieved two yellow items, then handed one to Bishop.
“Wow…walkie-talkies,” Bishop said. “Did you—?”
“—yup. No luck. Empty as a casino in a recession. Nothin’ but snap, crackle, and pop. I found ‘em this morning in the tool shed inside a coffee can. Go figure. But they’ll work just fine if we need to contact each other. Use channel nine and remember they have a range of two miles, max.”
Bishop took out his cell phone.
“No bars out here, slick.”
Colbrick was right. Again.
Angela moved across the meadow and Bishop stayed back for a moment. Then he leaned into Colbrick and whispered, “If we’re not back by dark, don’t come looking for us.”
Colbrick walked away while nodding, and Bishop jogged over to Angela, who was waiting impatiently at the northeastern tree line.
“We could follow the road,” she said.
“Easy walking,” Bishop said.
“Or we could follow this horse trail,” Angela said, pointing into the woods.
They stared into the dark tunnel of vegetation, turned to each other, and headed for the road.
A moment later, they crept under the Big J compound arch, their nerves tingling. Gravel crunched under their feet, sounding like bullhorns in a monastery. Bishop watched the left side of the road, Angela the right.
“Do you think we’re exposed?” Angela asked.
“I don’t think so. The road is pretty narrow here.”
Angela glanced at Bishop and smirked. “Well aren’t you just a badass with that shotgun?” she said. Something about Bishop holding the gun fascinated her—a side of him she’d never seen. Heck, she’d never expected to be holding a gun herself. She grew up in the affluent Hamptons. The scariest things in those backyards were the tennis ball launchers. All her life, her mother had covered her like a war hero protecting a comrade from a grenade. That was before the drunk driver took her from this world. Angela watched her sneakers, and for a moment, she was on those Hampton tennis courts, and instead of a gun in her hand, there was a tennis racket. Birds were chirping, it was humid and her mother stood courtside, drinking iced tea and wiping sweat from her brow with a delicate, white towel.
“Angela?” Bishop asked. “Hey, Angela?”
She snapped hear head up and looked through Bishop, surprised.
“You OK?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just spaced out there for a moment I guess. Sorry.”
“I need you awake for this, OK?”
Bishop’s gaze lingered, driving home the point.
They winded up a hill, and there were so many tire tracks they couldn’t follow one set. A climax forest of spruce, tamarack, and aspen bordered the road. The sandy, cut embankment sometimes revealed the roots of an unlucky tree.
They stopped and listened to the woods. Goose bumps rose on Angela’s arms, and she cracked a smile.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
A pleasant call came from the north side of the road.
Wee-ah Wee-ah.
“A gray jay,” Angela said.
“You nailed it. That’s the first normal bird we’ve heard since this started,” Bishop said.
They watched the gray jay rustle in the vegetation, wings fluttering and head twitching.
“Amazing,” Bishop said. He grasped Angela’s hand and squeezed.
They followed the road downhill and spilled out onto a meadow a hundred yards wide. Fat bundles of hay lay staggered across the grass, as if waiting for a purpose.
Something moved on one of the haystacks. Bishop halted and yanked Angela to his side.
“Shhh,” he whispered.
Then he crouched and Angela followed, watching his eyes the entire time. She’d seen that reaction before and did not care for it, not at all.
Something else moved on the next haystack and glinted in the morning sun.
Angela looked to the haystack and then to Bishop.
A dark wave of dread, like food poisoning or a virus, overcame Bishop as the creatures pulled themselves atop the haystacks and hunkered down. Their hairy legs extended and groped as they placed their flounder-like centers upon the sun-warmed part of the hay. Their lone, bulbous eyes blinked lazily.
“What the heck are those?” Angela asked, her fingers tapping the .357.
“I’ve been calling them secapods. I’ve seen them before, back near the rental.”
“When I was out of it,” she said.
“Yes.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.
Bishop sighed, not wanting to tell her, but he didn’t want to lie to her either.
“When you were out, I watched a secapod attack a man and kill him.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she said. “All of these things attack.”
“Well, not all,” he said. “Remember the odd bird?”
“Yes, the one I told Colbrick not to shoot.”
“That one didn’t attack,” Bishop said. “You said there might be good ones.”
“But not these,” she said.
The glistening secapods rested on the haystacks, their fleshy centers rising and falling.
“What do we do?” she asked.
“We leave,” Bishop said. “Quietly.”
They started to walk the road, hand in hand, trying not to make eye contact with the secapods and trying not to crunch gravel. Halfway across the meadow, Bishop accidentally kicked a smashed aluminum can that had embedded itself in the gravel like a camouflaged flounder. The scrape of aluminum echoed across the meadow, each turn and flip of the can an eternity.
“You did not,” Angela said.
Bishop gulped and turned to check the haystacks.
Both creatures held their fleshy centers high above the haystacks, then marched in place as their lone claws poked and prodded the hay.
Bishop thought he glimpsed a mandible underneath their fleshy centers. Perhaps a weak spot.
The creatures bent their front legs so the midsections angled towards the road. At once, the bulbous eyes locked onto Bishop and Angela. Upon realizing their targets, the secapods emitted staccato clicking. One of the secapods had a rectangular, flashing tag under its midsection. Bishop counted the pulses. Forty beats per minute.
“How can they make so much noise?” Angela asked.
“Because there are more than two of them,” Bishop said, aiming the shotgun at the first secapod.
More secapods crawled out from behind the haystacks and groped their way towards them, their prickly, glistening legs stabbing into the dewy grass as their eyes rotated.
“Time to bail on this party,” Bishop said. “Are you well enough to run?”
Angela was already ahead of him, yanking his hand.
They sprinted down the road, and the secapods, which Bishop initially thought were slow, were not.
The secapods moved with precision, u
sing long strides and pushing off with their claws. Soon, the gap had closed, and when Bishop looked back, he counted four of them—one of which had reached the road and shit a white string of slime. The second secapod paused and flattened its midsection upon the road as it tasted the slime, clicking louder while it pressed itself on the foul juice.
“Angela?”
“Yes?”
“If we do not gain distance in twenty seconds—”
“—we stop and fire.”
“Mind reader.”
“Shoot, I don’t know if I can!” Angela said, her chest heaving.
“Of course you can,” Bishop said. “You have to shoot those fucking things for both of us. Do you understand?”
A strange noise came from the tree line.
Two weird eyes below a bad haircut watched them.
“Hey, it’s that bird,” Angela said, pointing.
Before she could utter another word, the odd, four-foot bird ran from tree line like a crazed ostrich, stumbling and losing balance but never falling. A long, thin neck connected the eyeballs and beak to a plump midsection with saturated emerald and purple plumage. Below this protruded four muscular legs, and powerful claws protruded from three-toed feet. The bird happily joined in the chase, far behind the fast-approaching secapods. Bishop was shocked at the speed of the secapods.
“Keep going, baby!” he shouted. He’d never run with a backpack and a gun before.
The weird bird gained on a tailing secapods, and to Bishop’s surprise, slammed its beak into the bulbous eye. The stabbing forced the secapod into a seizure, and it wrapped its legs around its midsection, shrieking. The bird let out a mournful wail and maneuvered its beak to its chest plumage. The chest feathers parted, revealing a fleshy straw appendage that slurped the gunk off the bird’s beak like an elephant trunk sucking water.
The next secapod paused when it heard the shrieking. The nutty bird took advantage of the hesitation and caught it, and it too was stabbed in the eye, the gooey contents licked from the bird’s beak by its own protruding flesh tube.
Angela glanced back and laughed. “Holy freaking cow! Two down, two to go!”