The Invasive

by Michael Hodges

  Yutu pulled himself up and groaned. When he got to all fours, he stretched his back legs. Then he shook his head as his goofy ears flopped about. Angela hugged him, and the sore pooch backed away from her grip, then licked her face. Bishop patted Yutu on the head.

  “You did real good, boy,” Bishop said, caressing his fur.

  Colbrick tossed Yutu another treat, and Yutu gingerly trotted towards the milk bone, then snapped it up with zeal. In seconds, he crunched it down to nothing and looking back at them with appreciative eyes.

  “I owe you one,” Colbrick said to Yutu.

  “It’s about time you were the one who had their life saved,” Angela said, wiping away salty tears.

  “I guess so,” Colbrick said, staring at the mountains that loomed above them. “But my time will come soon enough, folks. You can bet on that.”

  “Don’t be so morbid,” Angela said.

  “Look around. I’m nothing more than a reflection of reality.”

  “I see mountains and a couple of dead eels,” Angela said. “And we’re going to clean all this up, somehow.”

  “Maybe. But that don’t mean ole Colbrick’s going to be around for the awards ceremony.”

  Angela rolled her eyes. “You aren’t that old, Colbrick. You have just as good a chance as us.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Bishop cleared his throat. “We should get moving. The last thing we need is the fliers honing in on those gunshots—”

  Out of the corner of Bishop’s eye, a shadow blocked the sun, and a moment later, the sky filled with ominous, black shapes and the rhythmic beat of taut wings.

  “To the cave,” Bishop said, trying to express urgency without shouting.

  They scurried to the darkness like rodents from an owl and peered out with nervous, darting eyes. Yutu, still groggy from shock was the last to enter, his wispy tail swallowed by the blackness.

  The throbbing of beating wings surrounded them like a tribal death march.

  A swarm of small fliers zoomed about the slabs in blackening numbers, their soulless eyes glowing green. The looped mimicry of their gunshots emanated from the fliers paunchy midsections, echoing off the rocks in a psychotic cacophony.

  The survivors backed into the cave until they could back no more, the last of their fearful eyes disappearing in the gloom. They remained silent, for even the slightest whisper meant certain death. Daylight turned into a black fog of wings, and the wretched things hovered and zinged like infuriated mosquitoes for an hour—a hell of a long time to keep quiet.

  Finally, the small fliers gathered onto the backs of the large ones, their looped mimicry ceasing. Behemoth wings pounded up dust swirls. Shadows gave way to sunlight, and the wing beats faded down mountain.

  The survivors stepped out of the cave, grains of sand from the settling dust grinding against their teeth.

  Angela looked to the sky and shivered. Bishop put his arm around her.

  “Never seen anything like it,” Colbrick said, spitting. “Bats…bats can ping radar across the sky, and when it’s blocked by an insect, they know right where to find it. But this? Never heard it or seen it before.”

  “Each shot up here, each loud noise could be death,” Bishop said. “Unbelievable how fast they reacted.”

  “Yup.”

  “We’re getting closer,” Bishop said. “The fliers perch here on the mountains, listening to the valley which of course is where the humans are—”

  “You mean were,” Colbrick said.

  “Yes, were.”

  “Great. So we’re entering their territory?” Angela asked.

  “I do believe so,” Colbrick said, looking to the sky and shading his eyes. “If they get out of the valley, that’s how they’ll get the big cities. Sitting on all those buildings, swooping down and taking people like they were nothin’ but ants.”

  “Why not just shoot the fucking things off the rooftops?” Bishop asked.

  “Shooting them down would bring new fliers right to the shooter’s location,” Angela said, examining one of the dead eels. “I bet they could kill a bunch. But this would likely bring on even more, and soon the fliers would overwhelm the shooters, like an ant colony overtaking a spider. Sure, the spider is bigger and a tough predator, but when too many ants come upon one, they’re in trouble.”

  “Sheer numbers,” Bishop said, watching the sky.

  Angela reached down to tousle Yutu’s hair, and the pooch wagged his tail. “You know, in certain Amazonian tribes, it is alleged that elders can listen to the land, literally,” Angela said. “Bishop, you’ve been coming here for decades, well before we even met. Your father was here long before that. And how long have you been here Colbrick?”

  “All my life, miss.”’

  “So maybe you’re tuned into the land, too. Defenders of the natives, we seek to wipe out the invaders.”

  “Like Tuco Ramirez said, ‘we go kill them all,’” Bishop said.

  “Yep. Just like good ole Tuco,” Colbrick said.

  “Who’s Tuco?” Angela asked.

  “From the movie the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” Bishop said.

  Angela blinked. “Is that the ‘wa wa wa’ music I always hear in the living room?”

  Bishop grinned at her.

  “It’s a Clint Eastwood,” Colbrick said.

  “The greatest film ever made,” Bishop said.

  “No doubt about that,” Colbrick said.

  Angela rolled her eyes.

  Yutu headed up trail, preferring to follow the scent than to listen to the babble. They followed him while whispering to each other.

  The mountain peaks loomed closer and the air thinned, forcing them to take harder, more frequent breaths. This was particularly true for Angela and Bishop who were flatlanders, living full-time at a whopping seven hundred feet in Chicago. On this hike, they’d be traversing to twelve thousand feet. Bishop thought they were lucky to not be displaying the symptoms of altitude sickness.

  The slabs and boulders of metamorphic schist bloated into steroidal proportions, and some of them resembled eerie, behemoth fossils. The air chilled, and Bishop thought he could see his breath even though it was sunny and the middle of the afternoon. And why was it sunny? Nothing bad ever happens when it’s sunny. Right? Yet here they were, the valley crushed by invaders from who knows where, and if one were not cursed with this information, one would think it a perfect, bluebird day in the Apex Mountains.

  Yutu paused, lifted his snout into the air, and twitched it.

  “He’s got a new scent,” Colbrick said, raising his sawed-off.

  Angela and Bishop took cover behind a slab and peered at the sky. Bishop noticed the scent too—an all too familiar one. Gasoline.

  “You folks smell that?” Colbrick asked.

  “You bet,” Bishop said. “Gasoline, maybe some leaked oil too.” It reminded Bishop of when he used to work with his father on the family car in Chicago. His father had taught him the basics of car maintenance. He’d enjoyed those moments—the smell of motor oil, greasy, marked hands, ball games on the cheap radio dad kept in the garage, the bond they formed.

  “There could be other people up here,” Colbrick said. “Maybe a few of the outfitters retreated to these parts. Proceed with caution, folks. If there are people here, they must have an awful bad trigger finger by now.”

  They weaved around the misshapen boulders and slabs, each turn bringing a special flavor of anxiety. The rocks were riddled with cracks and scrapes, and here and there a fossil from the Cretaceous period was etched into the rock, as if screaming for release.

  The smell of gasoline grew stronger, and as they rounded a huge, warped slab, they came upon a theater-sized opening surrounded by shale slides. What they gazed upon made no sense at all, at least for a few seconds. Before them lay an alpine junkyard strewn with numerous motorcycle parts, leather jackets, and human remains.

  “Dear God Almighty,” Colbrick said, holding out his left arm to stop the progress of A
ngela and Bishop. Yutu sat at Colbrick’s feet and stuck his snout in the air, the breeze rustling his fur.

  “Unreal,” Angela said, grabbing onto Bishop with a bandaged hand.

  “You two stay here,” Colbrick said, stepping into the shale bowl. “No sense in all of us getting killed.”

  Bishop watched Colbrick pick through the junk, and Angela peered into the sky, shielding her eyes with her hand.

  Colbrick held up a bulky leather jacket and dropped it to the ground. He bent down several times for a closer look, spit a few times, and shook his head on multiple occasions. Then he met them back at the slab.

  “What we have here folks is a Harley Davidson group which was picked up, bikes and all, and dropped into this bowl. Angela, do yourself a favor—don’t look at the bigger pieces of slab.”

  “I’m not a kid,” Angela said.

  “Suit yourself,” Colbrick said. “We should stay spread about twenty feet apart. No sense in letting one of those things grab us all at once.”

  Colbrick had put it nicely. Harley Davidson parts were strewn in every nook from monumental drops. Scattered amongst the bike parts were pieces of clothing and chunks and strips of humans. Thick ropes of intestine, like rolled dough covered in spaghetti sauce trailed off one of the horizontal, jutting slabs. Chrome bike parts half-slathered in blood reflected the sun into their wincing eyes. Ahead, a misshapen pair of leather bike pants lay on the ground with the legs still inside.

  The rest of the body was missing.

  Strings of tough sinew and flesh glistened from where the body had been sliced in half, and the ground was discolored with blood. The leather pants and legs were twisted in a way which was inconceivable to the human mind, caused by the tremendous fall from the grip of the fliers. Chrome, blood, and chunks of humans were everywhere. The air stank of gasoline, coolant, oil, and the nose-stinging scent of exposed flesh.

  “I guess they don’t like Harley noise,” Bishop said.

  “Who does?” Angela asked.

  *

  They left the last few desperate trees behind, entering the barren world which only the cruel winds and now the creatures called home. Perhaps there were still a few wolverines, maybe a few mountain goats and grizzly bears—the only animals of size that called this barren environment home. Of winged, native life, there might be a few surviving golden eagles and peregrine falcons.

  Sweeping patches of snow and ice carpeted the shady crevices and gullies while metamorphic schist rock loomed into the royal blue sky, creating a striking contrast that suggested alien terrain. This portion of the Apex Range raced upwards in sharp, jagged edges. Geologists considered it an old range compared to much of the Rockies, but according to what Bishop had read, this is the opposite of how an old range would appear. Younger ranges were steeper and sharper in appearance. He did, however, remember reading in the Mapleton College library that some geologists were split on the exact age of the range, and the contradictions contained in several rock samples and the overall appearance were a source of controversy. Those days spent in the library seemed so long ago—back when he would read anything he could get his hands on concerning nature, always desperate for a fix while in the sprawl and turmoil of Chicago. He pictured the view from his office and wondered where the peregrine falcons went, and if the towering fortresses of the Magnificent Mile were now empty, the streets filled with a haunting peacefulness they had never known, the gargoyles replaced with real ones in some cruel joke only the cosmos could understand.

  As they worked up mountain, the Apex Valley spread out below them. Lush stands of aspen, fir, and lodgepole stretched on as far as they could see. Meadows rich with forbs and grasses punctuated the sea of trees. Bishop thought he saw Big J’s meadow, but he couldn’t be sure under the sideways sun that dangled at the tip of the peaks, daring to fall and usher darkness upon them.

  “We better make camp,” Colbrick said. “I ain’t hiking around this place blind.”

  Angela nodded and released her pack, then lowered it to the ground. Yutu paused on the trail and stared ahead, then turned to face them, as if saying come on, I know it will be dark soon, but I’ll lead the way! Instead, he sneezed and trotted back.

  A flat piece of ground on the west side of an enormous boulder made an acceptable location to set camp.

  They drank from the water bottles, and their stomachs rumbled. Bishop reached into his pack for the tent.

  “No stakes,” Angela said. “We pound those in, we’re doomed.”

  “I’ll try to push them in with my foot,” Bishop said. “If we’re not staked in, we could lose it.”

  “Don’t go clanking the poles either,” Colbrick said, carefully spreading his poles and stakes on the dusty ground.

  The tents went up with ease, for Colbrick and Bishop had seen their fair share over the years. Bishop had always been a tent geek, and Angela teased him on their camping trips for his weird fascination. He couldn’t help it. He always saw them as tiny, important forms of portable housing—maybe even the future of housing in a growing world. His father had told him never to go cheap on a tent or sleeping bag. You could on other gear, but never on those. As usual, his father had nailed it. The tents they’d just erected were of high quality and this gave him a sense of confidence in regards to their mission. They would need gear they could rely on—a shelter from howling winds, freezing temperatures, and even the sun which threatened dehydration in the afternoons.

  With the last stake in the stubborn ground, the sun—as if waiting for them—dipped behind Kilbrix Peak. The air cooled. The fading light ushered in a blast of wind, threatening to blow their tent sacks off the mountain. Yutu chased after the tumbling, colorful sacks.

  “Put the sacks in the tent,” Colbrick said. “The wind can’t get ‘em that way.”

  A single burner camp stove boiled plain pasta which they devoured like cavemen, the blue flame hissing and glowing as they chewed. Colbrick reached into his pack and tossed Yutu several milk bones, and rather than running off, Yutu joined them during their meal, crunching away like a maniac.

  “Jesus, Yutu,” Angela said. “You might alert the fliers with that chomping.”

  Bishop laughed.

  “That’s a damned good dog,” Colbrick said, his mouth full of pasta.

  Bishop’s mind retreated to that moldy, hot hallway, and how Yutu’s barks shattered his soul, and how he had to push through that smoke—not only because he wanted to save the dog, but because an unexplainable feeling compelled him to do so. The entire sequence—from entry to exit—had felt like slow motion, and he’d played everything perfectly. It was Yutu’s desperate barks that drew their attention on Main Street, and it is now Yutu’s sense of smell which may lead them to the source.

  Too many coincidences.

  He was never a big believer in destiny, or in preordained existence, but damn, sometimes he wondered. And the dream with his father at Big J, how do you deny that? Or his words?

  The first stars appeared over the horizon, setting upon the darkness with a subtle, pristine beauty across the eerie void. Yutu gazed upon the stars and tilted his head in awe. He whimpered, and the stars blinked down to him in some form of communication no man could understand, for only the truly wild and pure of soul can communicate with the stars.

  “You know animals, they ain’t as dumb as people think,” Colbrick said, ever watchful.

  “Of course,” Angela said. “The problem with what we think we know about them is that we’ve never been them. Until we experience that, all of our supposed understanding about their consciousness is speculation.”

  Bishop patted Yutu on the head, and Yutu looked at him with grateful, star-reflecting eyes. Venus was in there too.

  “I use to watch peregrine falcons out my office window,” Bishop said, studying the galaxy. “After several weeks of observing them, I realized that maybe I wasn’t the superior species. There I was, walled into a self-made prison, while these supposedly dumb birds dove and swooped ab
out me, free as can be.”

  Colbrick nodded. “You were the trapped one, slick. You were an animal in a zoo to them.”

  “I don’t know,” Angela said, forking the last of her well-earned pasta. “Did we really build a prison for ourselves? While I do agree the nine to five rut is a trap of sorts, I don’t think our structures were.”

  Bishop watched her eat, pained by her bandaged hands and black eye. He brushed her hair out of her eyes. “You doing OK, sweetheart?”

  “As good as I can be,” she said, frowning.

  He reached over and hugged her.

  Colbrick turned away and moved towards the eastern rim.

  Far below them, something shimmered in bright oranges and reds.

  “God damn,” Colbrick said, spitting into the night. “I think one of the road dams is on fire.”

  Bishop, Angela, and Yutu met Colbrick on the rim.

  To the east, out past Big J, huge, silent flames licked the sky where Highway 18 cut through the sea of green.

  “I hope that doesn’t spread,” Angela said. “I want these things gone, but wiping out the valley isn’t the way to do it.”

  Yutu growled as he watched the flames.

  “Even if by some miracle we stop this signal, how are we going to get rid of the ones already here?” Bishop asked. “It’s impossible.”

  “Yup,” Colbrick said. “Let’s worry about that for another day, partner.”

  “I want them gone,” Bishop said, kicking the ground with a swollen foot. Pain shot up his leg, but he didn’t care, not one bit.

  “Well, folks, I’ve enjoyed today’s competition for the Boy Scout Doom patch, but I’m beat,” Colbrick said. “I’d put out the fire but since we don’t have one, I won’t.”

  “Are you a fire hawk?” Angela asked him.

  “What’s that?” Colbrick asked.

  “One of those people at a campground who have huge fires day and night.”

  “Nope. I just need a fire to keep me warm, not to play with.”

  “Glad to hear that,” Angela said. “Those people get on my nerves.”