by Jason Offutt
Another scream hit Terry’s ears. He looked up. It was from the mob; the mob had seen him. The black shadow of birds was even closer. “Holy shit.” He dropped the board and launched himself down the embankment, rolling in a dusty cloud to the bottom.
“Terry,” Nikki screamed.
He looked up; dirt streaked his face. Nikki stood at the edge of the culvert holding a Budweiser. It dropped from her hand and hit the concrete, foam spewing over the dust.
“Hey, are you—” Doug tried to stand and walk toward him, but his knees buckled. Jenna grabbed him around the waist and dragged him back onto the mattress.
Nikki knelt next to Terry and grabbed his face. It was pale, ashen. “What happened, Terry?”
He opened his mouth; his words came out slowly. “They saw me.”
July 28: Muskogee, Oklahoma
Chapter 3
The sun wasn’t setting; it was an hour too early for that. Andi Bakowski (“Two I’s so you can see better, toots,” Big Andy always told her) lay on her stomach on the dry, tarred roof of the Motel 6 in Muskogee, Oklahoma, staring at a quickly darkening sky. A black cloud had appeared on the southern horizon staining the curtain of blue that had looked like the intro to “The Simpsons” all day. The cloud seemed to have jumped straight from one of the sun-scorched cornfields on the other end of a cemetery that marked the city limits of Muskogee, a city made famous by a country singer who had never lived there.
Andi arrived at the motel before dawn with an M24 Sniper Weapon System over her shoulder, a Beretta M9 sidearm on her belt, a Pyle PMP45R megaphone in her hand, twenty rounds of ammunition, two grenades and a rucksack stuffed with four more boxes of ammo, bottled water, three MREs (one beef stew and two lemon pepper tunas. Puke) and chocolate that probably melted before 10 a.m. She’d taken a motel blanket and two rickety chairs from the room closest to the stairs, 217, and carried them to the roof, making shade from the summer sun. The makeshift tent didn’t matter; she still sweat through her fatigues.
Andi didn’t want to be in Muskogee, baking on the roof of a cheap motel, guarding the Good Lands from monsters and, worst of all, people stuck in the Bad Lands. President Donald Trump once promised to build a wall to keep out illegal immigrants from Mexico. The wall never happened. It took an international crisis to get up a chain-link fence crews were still stretching from coast to coast even as Andi lay on the roof, not to keep out people, but things that used to be people.
Something moved in the corn. Or did it? A trickle of sweat ran into Andi’s eye just as it looked as if a line of cornstalks moved, one after the other, like someone ran through the field. When she wiped away the sweat, everything was still. Everything but the cloud. It was moving, it was moving fast.
***
That was Andi’s job, to protect the Fence.
Sgt. Cotton Monroe, a big redneck from Southern Missouri, stood in the firelight the night Andi’s squad broke from abbreviated boot camp, the night before deployment in their own country. Cotton held a bottle of cheap beer between the index and middle fingers of his left hand, his right hand rested on his gun belt, hooked by a thumb. Cotton. What the hell kind of name was Cotton? she’d wondered the first day of Basic Training. She knew it wasn’t his given name. It couldn’t be. What kind of parents would name their whiter-than-white baby Cotton? Given his white-blond hair cut nearly invisible in a career Army high-and-tight, maybe they did. Cotton had been a hard ass during Basic Training – at first. He didn’t want the only woman in Basic to be in his squad. He told her the first day. Then he saw how she could handle a weapon. The first time at the range, she not only beat every man in Basic, she embarrassed them. Big, bad-assed Sgt. Cotton smiled at her. Just once, but that was enough. He got off her ass after that. All thanks to Big Andy who wanted a boy, but got Andi instead.
Cotton drained his beer and tossed the bottle into the fire. Cpl. Tennyson was ready with a second. Everyone but Pvt. Guthrie held a bottle. Cotton had provided enough beer to celebrate a graduation with no ceremony, but not enough for his soldiers to wake sluggish with shaky hands on their first day of active duty.
“Gentlemen,” he barked, then coughed into his shoulder, slowly looking back out to the circle of ten young men and Andi. Cotton took another swig of beer, then kept the bottle close to his chest. “And lady.”
Oh, shit Andi thought. He’s nervous. She’d seen signs Cotton had feelings, like the smile that broke just slightly on his blond stubbly face the day she set the unit record on the shooting range and the time she caught him looking at her over his tray of shit-on-a-shingle in the mess tent. He saw her eyes meet his and he looked away, his face red. That’s the problem with cottons, she told herself, they can’t hold it in forever. He’d been married, at least according to the indentation on his left ring finger. Andi had looked. Cotton had been married less than a year ago, or the mark would have faded, but whether the marriage ended in divorce or his wife turning into one of those things, she didn’t want to know. But if the mark was still on his finger, it was still in his head. That, she realized, she needed to know.
“Congratulations on passing Basic Training.” His voice stronger, more in control.
He’s got it together now.
The new soldiers sat around the campfire in a compound circled with military combat vehicles and big round hay bales from nearby farms, their fields fallow, the farmers long gone. The men stood and hooted. Some tried to clap, but their beer bottles got in the way. Guthrie clapped, the slaps carried through the camp when the other soldiers’ cheers died down.
“Thanks.” Cotton, more relaxed now, took a swig of beer. Many of the soldiers followed suit. Pvt. Mickelson stood to yell something, but whatever words came out, his heavy twang hid their meaning. Mickelson was a linebacker for the Arkansas Razorbacks before the Ophiocordon shitstorm. He was going to be a damn fine soldier, but got excited easily. Cotton held up a hand and Mickelson shut his mouth with the lip of a bottle.
“I don’t know why you signed up for this man’s Army,” he said, his voice strong now. No trace of emotion. “But what you’re doin’ here is Fence duty. Y’all already know about the Piper. Fuckin’ drug companies thought it would be a good idea to take some damn fungus from Southeast Asia. Offy-O-Cord-Ecepts unilater-all-is–” Cotton’s voice became even slower as he rattled off the recently memorized genus and species of the fungus syllable-by-syllable. “–and they gave it to people. Then it killed your mommas, your daddies, your sisters, your girlfriends and your goddamned third grade teacher.”
Cotton lowered his bottle to his side, gripping the neck like he wanted to strangle it. Maybe now, Andi thought, she knew what had happened to his wife. “But that’s where we got it,” he continued, his strong voice booming. “It’s been turnin’ people into some kinda monsters, but they’re not just monsters, they’re Southeast Asian monsters.”
Mark Paulson, an insurance salesman from Kentucky, laughed. “Then give us weapons that shoot chop sticks, Sergeant. That’ll–”
“Shut your goddamned mouth, Paulson,” shot out of Cotton’s mouth, cutting off the private mid-sentence. “If you’re that ignorant, keep it to yourself.” Cotton cleared his throat and started again, his eyes moving from soldier to soldier. “The higher ups think this is our advantage. It don’t get too cold south of the Fence, but north of the Fence, this country gets hard freezes every winter.” He paused and took a slow breath, trying to pick his words carefully. “Now I’m not sayin’ this is gonna work, but the people tryin’ to fix this problem think it might. By next Spring, two-thirds of the United States may be free of these monsters. Then we can work our way south.”
“Where do we fit in Sergeant?” Bob Litton from Tennessee asked, the night suddenly dead quiet, the popping and cracking of the fire the only sound.
Cotton took another swig of beer, lowering the bottle slowly. “I’m not gonna lie to you folks. You went through Basic fast. The Army cut six weeks off your training to get you out in the field ASAP. There ai
n’t many of us anymore; those left are ridin’ the Fence. Every grunt you trained with in Basic will be lined up across that Fence watchin’ for anything on two legs.”
The sergeant’s voice suddenly stopped and the circle of new soldiers grew still.
“Well, what are we going to do if we see one?” Guthrie asked. “What if it’s human?”
Cotton drained his bottle and tossed it in the fire after his first before looking up at Guthrie. His eyes betrayed no emotion. “These are your orders, son. Shoot it in the head.”
***
Andi’s world shifted from normal to now quickly. She often thought of the day she realized nothing would ever be the same again.
Big Andy stood in the doorway, wiping one of Grandma Bakowski’s blue and white plates with a dish towel. He wore red flannel over an AC/DC T-shirt; “Stiff Upper Lip,” the last concert he ever went to. A quiet smile broke across his lips when Andi looked up from her book, “Bridge to Terabithia,” the line of a tear visible on her cheek.
“You at that one part?” Big Andy asked, his voice big, but gentle at the same time.
Andi nodded and wiped the tear away with the back of her pajama sleeve before looking up from the dog-eared paperback she’d had since middle school. A soft glow from the kitchen framed his head in yellow light.
“How many times have you read that thing?”
She tucked her thumb in between the pages and folded the book on her lap. She forced a smile. “I don’t know. I can’t count that high.”
Big Andy coughed a short laugh and tossed the towel over his shoulder, the hand holding one of Grandma’s hand-me-down plates slowly dropped to his side. He stared at Andi’s bedroom floor for a moment before bringing his eyes up to meet hers. “Dinner okay?”
Andi nodded again. Soupy boxed mac and cheese. Deer burgers scorched on the outside, still cold in the middle. She wished he’d let her cook, but Big Andy didn’t want her to change anything. She had a job at the local grocery store. She had college. She had a plan for her life and he wasn’t going to let the Amazing Disappearing Carrie Bakowski interfere with any of it.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I did everything I could to keep your mom here. I—”
Andi threw up a hand to cut him off. “I know.” Three days ago, while Andi was asleep and Big Andy was out playing D&D with his nerd friends like they had every Monday night for the past twenty years, her mother had walked out with a carry-on bag, locked the door behind her and vanished into the darkness. Andi wasn’t sad anymore and she wasn’t confused, she was angry. “This isn’t on you, Dad. This is Mom’s fault.”
“Hey,” Big Andy said, his voice came out in a bark. He swallowed and ran his free hand over his stubbly chin. “Please don’t. You love your mom and your mom loves you. Don’t you ever tell yourself different.”
No. No, damn it. “Then—” She stopped. Big Andy had pulled the dish towel off his shoulder and wiped it across his eyes. Dad? She had never seen her father cry before. “Dad?”
He flipped the dish towel back over his shoulder and reached into the pocket of his flannel shirt. He pulled out an orange prescription medicine bottle. “I found this when I was taking out the garbage. If your mom didn’t insist on buying those damn cheap garbage bags, it probably wouldn’t have ripped and spilled out.”
Pills? Mom’s pills? “Is it—” Andi paused, not sure what to say. Ophiocordon? That would explain so much. “Is it the Piper drug?”
Big Andy nodded. “I didn’t know she was taking it,” he said, his voice shaky. “But it fills in some blanks about the last month. We both knew she was depressed. She finally agreed to go see Dr. Jane about it. Then she seemed better, you know, but she got better fast. Way too fast. She seemed—”
“Like old Mom?” Andi finished for him.
“Yeah.” His eyes glanced over at Andi’s Pink Floyd poster; his daughter’s taste in music always made him proud. He stared for a few seconds before he looked back at Andi. “She said she was okay, that Doctor Jane just talked her through her problems. But that was a lie. She didn’t tell me Dr. Jane had prescribed anything.” He swallowed before he spoke again, his voice like Andi had never heard it. He sounded old. “I think she left because she had the Piper Andi. She had the Piper and when all that shit went down, when people started dying, she didn’t want anything to happen to us.”
The Piper’s calling you to join him. Going by the book, her mom had felt euphoric at first, then had the symptoms of a cold, then a bloody nose, then she’d die and stand back up. If she was lucky, the fungus would eat away her insides and she’d fall back into a rotting pile. If she was unlucky, the spores destroying her mind would make her hungry – for people.
“Mom didn’t leave us?” she asked.
A smile that wasn’t a smile appeared and faded quickly. “No, Toots. I think she left for us.”
“Bridge to Terabithia” fell from Andi’s hand and thumped onto the thinly carpeted floor. Tears ran like they had the day she woke and her mother was gone. “Is she—?”
Big Andy shook his head. “I don’t know, baby,” her father said. He gripped the orange medicine bottle, burying it in his big right hand; the white child-proof cap was all that showed. “I don’t have a good-bye note, a phone number, or a letter in Dear Abby. This is all she left and she didn’t mean for me to find it.”
“But—”
“Hey,” he said, the words poured out loud and fast. “You want to go hunting tomorrow? Squirrel’s in season.”
Squirrel? She smiled. “You know I hate squirrel.”
“Yeah. I just thought me and you could, you know—” His voice trailed off.
Hunting. That was what they did together, their thing, ever since she was big enough to hold a rifle. “Sure, Dad,” she said, picking the book off the floor. “Just as long as you let me cook whatever we bring in.”
Less than a week later, her university closed its doors, at least temporarily. Temporarily with no idea when they’d open again. A week after that Big Andy got sick. He drove her to the Army recruitment center set up in her old high school gym, but he didn’t hug her good-bye. His nose was already bleeding. A month and a half after that she was a state away lying on the roof of a motel cradling a sniper rifle like a teddy bear. She knew her father was dead, although she didn’t know when, or where. All she knew was she was alone.
***
The black cloud seemed to grow from the cornfields. What the heck is that thing?
It moved in waves, undulating as if it were a great, living beast. It could be a flock of birds, but that’s what threw her off – it was too big to be a flock of birds, way too big. It covered the entire southern sky like this was Bodega Bay, California, or something. Andi eased the Leupold Mk IV scope up to her eye and aimed at the cloud.
“Holy shit,” hissed from between her lips. It was birds, black birds. Millions of them. She lowered the weapon and looked at the enormous flock with her bare eyes. In those few seconds, it had grown bigger, more ominous, closer. “What—” she started, but stopped herself. The what wasn’t important. It was the why. Why was a cloud of birds that stretched across the horizon coming toward Muskogee?
The corn moved again; something made its way in a single line toward the cemetery across the highway. She lifted the weapon up to her eye and drew a bead on whatever it was. Seconds later a man wearing a dirty white polo broke from the corn and fell against the iron fence that surrounded the cemetery. He paused for a second, panting, then threw open the gate and slammed it behind him.
“Shit.”
‘Shoot it in the head,’ echoed through her mind. Goddamn you Cotton.
The man pushed himself away from the gate and staggered through the cemetery. Crows landed atop the tombstones around him as if they guided him. She moved the M24 back into position. The man’s head bobbed slightly in the scope, but never moved from her crosshairs. Andi was steady, a rock; and when Andi pulled a trigger she never missed.
***
&nbs
p; “Hey, Bakowski,” a voice called from outside Andi’s tent the night before. She lay on her cot on top of a sleeping bag in her government-issue underwear; July was too hot in Oklahoma for much else. Her pulse jumped as adrenaline hit her bloodstream; the voice belonged to Cotton.
Shit. Andi was off the cot in a second, pulling on her fatigues.
“Wait a sec,” she said, her voice rushed. What is he doing here? There was something about Cotton that made her heart jump. Was it his laid-back demeanor? His backwoods drawl? His square chin? She didn’t know. She just hoped it wasn’t the fact that he was the first and closest authority figure in her life since Big Andy dropped her off at the recruitment center on his way to die. That’d just be weird.
She opened the flap and stepped out, ducking under the low door. Cotton stood on wobbly feet, another beer in his hand. The “don’t wake up sluggish with shaky hands” rule obviously didn’t apply to him. She swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump in her throat. It didn’t work.
“Yes, Sergeant?” she said, trying and failing to keep her voice steady.
His eyes, hazel in the daylight, but flat gray now, met hers. For just the second time since she met him, she saw Cotton smile.
“You’re a good soldier, Bakowski,” came out slower than usual. “Best shot I’ve ever seen.” His voice fell silent and the two stood in the darkness, uncomfortable.
“Thank you, Sergeant.”
He waved the hand holding the beer bottle. The liquid foamed in the moonlight. “No,” he said, his voice louder than he’d probably intended. “Don’t do that. There’s no sergeant, no private. This is just me and you here now.”
What does that mean?
He took a drink of beer and lowered the bottle. “I didn’t want you here before. I don’t want you here now. Reason’s diffr’nt though.”
