Ravenous

by John Inman

  Terry gnawed the inside of his cheek as Bobby accelerated past the silent casino. They weren’t far from Spangle here. The casino—or what was left of it—was the only hint of civilization to be seen. Behind them, they knew, ten or fifteen miles beyond their taillights, they would run across the roadblocks quarantining the area. With cops on duty, making sure no one assholed along from the outside to accidentally—or purposely—enter the feeding zone.

  Terry had thought, had hoped, that once they got past the Spangle town limits there would be fewer signs of the creatures. Like maybe the beasts would be concentrating their efforts on where the most food could be found. In the populated areas. In town. In neighborhoods. In the places where people congregated. Where it would be easiest to find them and take them down.

  But if the creatures had attacked the casino, which was only a short distance from Spangle, how safe would he and Bobby really be in the cabin on their tiny mountain? Would they be lucky enough to find that little nook of the world ignored by the creatures because they were off somewhere else seeking more abundant game? Would he and Bobby be safe enough to live out the rest of their lives there, or at least survive long enough for this madness to be finished one way or another? If it ever would?

  Bobby drove on, with Terry sitting in silence beside him. Fidgeting. Worrying. In the back, Bruce snored relentlessly on.

  They were in the foothills now. Up ahead, Terry spotted a ramshackle roadside market. Back before the world went to shit, they used to come here to buy fresh produce and other necessities from the old Mexican woman who ran the place. Her name was Maria, Terry remembered. They were about twenty minutes from their cabin.

  “Let’s do some looting,” Bobby said with a forced grin.

  He pulled in next to the market, raising a billowing cloud of dust from the gravel parking lot. When the dust settled, they looked out on the place. There wasn’t a windowpane left intact on the structure. A great hole had been torn in the roof.

  When Bobby unleashed his seat belt and reached for the door handle, Terry laid a hand on his arm, holding him back.

  “Are you sure it’s safe?”

  “No,” Bobby said. “Of course I’m not sure.” And with a tiny devil-may-care grin, he slid his arm from Terry’s grasp and stepped outside. Terry followed.

  The tiny store lay somnolent in the drowsing heat. The air was dry here. Santa Ana dry. Crinkling the tender linings of the nostrils. A hot breeze was blowing through, weird for December. Terry blinked in surprise to see a tumbleweed roll past and lodge itself under the front bumper of the Jeep. This stretch of blacktop road was as deserted as the streets in town. There were a couple of homes a little farther along, but if there were people around, they were hiding out. Cowering in basements. Hunkered down in the shadows. Waiting, praying, for this hell to pass. Trying not to make a sound, although sound did not draw the creatures. Trying not to bleed, because blood was what the creatures craved.

  “It’s like the Old West. Only spookier,” Bobby muttered. He was smiling when he said it. Unflappable, as usual.

  As carefree as a tourist, and without so much as peeking around the shadowy doorway first, Bobby strolled inside the store and disappeared. Terry had to hustle to keep up.

  Inside they stood side by side while their eyes adjusted to the dark.

  When they could finally see, Bobby exclaimed, “Eureka!”

  Two minutes later, they were both scraping tinned goods off the shelves and dumping them into one of the rickety shopping carts the store very kindly provided for looters. Nothing uncanned was worth stealing, so they ignored the deli case, which was filled with a swarm of black flies, creating a constant manic hum in the background.

  Terry looked through the glass at the maelstrom of flies and saw a stack of green pork chops, alive with maggots. Tasting bile and thinking he might actually go the distance and puke up his guts, he quickly turned away.

  Bobby was rolling the cart toward the rectangle of daylight that marked the front door. The cart was heavy and had a wobbly wheel and didn’t want to roll, filled as it was to the brim with a pretty good assortment of canned stuff that would keep them from starving for a while if things got rough.

  Terry hurried to catch up, glad to leave the store behind. Outside, he spotted Bruce peeing on the Jeep’s back tire, then turning to watch his masters exit the store, his little tail going a mile a minute in greeting.

  Terry clapped his hands and sang out, “Back inside, boy!” and Bruce clambered up through the open Jeep door and hopped onto the back seat. He stared with serious fascination while the two humans unloaded the cart of canned goods, dumping everything into the storage space behind the seat.

  Finished, Terry pushed the cart out of the way, and climbed up into the passenger seat. Bobby planted himself behind the steering wheel a moment later, slamming the door shut behind him.

  Bobby rolled his side window down, and just then they heard a young voice cry out from beside the store. Looking, they saw a group of three kids, boys, not more than twelve years old. They were barefoot, dressed in rags, and their faces were smeared with dirt.

  “Fucking thieves!” one of the kids screamed at the top of his lungs.

  Bobby reached for his door handle, as if he thought he might step outside and try to talk to the boys, but Terry grabbed his arm, holding him back.

  “Let it go,” Terry whispered. “Just drive. Let’s get out of here.”

  Reluctantly, Bobby obeyed. And in the last peaceful moment they would ever share together, Terry and Bobby saw all three boys gather up fistfuls of rocks from the ground and start flinging them at the Jeep.

  The stones clanged off the metal hood and door panels, thudded dully on the canvas top. In the back seat, Bruce went ballistic, setting off a panicked round of barking.

  “Hurry!” Terry pleaded. “Drive!”

  But before Bobby could turn the key in the ignition, a stone flew through the driver’s window and struck him above the left eye.

  Bobby’s head jerked back, and with an astonished expression, more surprise than pain, Bobby brought his hand up to his forehead and wiped away a smear of blood.

  Both Terry and Bobby stared at the blood on his fingertips. Stunned.

  “No,” Terry muttered. A fraction of a second later, he heard the beat of distant wings on the air. Fleshy and meatlike. A ragged shadow passed over the Jeep, and the same word spilled from Terry’s mouth again, but this time it came from the depths of a terrified scream, louder than any sound he had ever made in his life.

  “No-o-o-o!”

  And with his scream still echoing in his ears, Terry watched Bobby turn to him and open his mouth to speak, to say, Terry thought, “I’m sorry,” but the words were never spoken.

  In a flurry of battering wings and rending claws, one of the creatures exploded through the driver’s side window, snatching at Bobby’s face, Bobby’s hair. An instant later, an entire swarm of the creatures tore through the Jeep’s canvas roof like it wasn’t there. This close, Terry could hear, for the first time, the noises the creatures made. A keening, high-pitched scream, so thin and reedy as to be barely audible, even from only inches away.

  Terry lurched sideways, clawing at his door handle to escape. He fell backward off the seat and landed on his ass on the gravel drive, hitting so hard the breath was knocked from his body. Looking up into the interior of the Jeep, he saw Bobby batting his arms, trying to fend the creatures off. The creatures attracted to the tiny smear of blood on Bobby’s forehead.

  The battle, of course, was hopeless.

  Bobby screamed an agonized wail as dozens of razor-sharp teeth tore into him. Face, arms, chest. He had less than seconds to focus his pain-addled eyes on Terry, lying sprawled in the gravel, looking up in horror, his mouth splayed open in a silent scream.

  Beyond all hope, Bobby raised his arm. With a bloody hand, he reached out for Terry one last time. But as Terry extended his own arm to make contact with Bobby’s trembling, blood-spattered
fingers, the creatures covered Bobby completely. In an instant, Bobby was gone, buried beneath a frantic, tearing mass of flesh and wings and snapping jaws.

  Batlike, they were, but more terrible than bats. Serrated teeth. Long curving talons. Insane, beady eyes, as black and shiny as onyx, with no compassion in their depths, only hunger. They were unlike any other creatures on the planet that Terry had ever seen. With three-foot wingspans, too large for bats. Too terrible for bats. Too—bloodthirsty and insanely violent for bats.

  Terry had never been this close to the beasts before. They carried the predator’s reek of rotten flesh and putrid blood from past kills lodged in their talons and teeth. Their leathery wings were coated with blood, old and new. Their plump, hairy bodies were drenched in it. Terry gagged at the smell.

  At that moment, when the creatures covered Bobby’s flailing body completely, with a horrendous squeal of terror and agony, Bobby simply—rose up. He was pulled from the seat, lifted high, and torn through the roof. Already in pieces, Bobby’s individual shreds of flesh and bone were plucked from the air by grasping claws and snarling jaws and carried off skyward. As he sailed high, still being pulled apart by more than a dozen of the creatures, a last deluge of Bobby’s blood sprayed down over Terry’s face, spattering his clothes, blinding his eyes. He gasped, blinked hard to clear his vision, and finally closed his mouth, biting back his own scream when he tasted Bobby’s blood filling his mouth.

  “No,” he gasped one last time, choking for air, frantically scooting backward in the gravel, trying to get as far from the Jeep as he could. Far from the blood. Far from the memory of Bobby’s screams.

  He stared upward, tears mixed with blood streaming down his face. The sky was already empty. Bobby and the beasts were gone. It was as if they had never been there at all.

  On trembling legs, Terry pulled himself to his feet and gaped at the carnage inside the Jeep. The interior was coated with blood. The canvas roof hung in tatters where the creatures had clawed their way inside, then pulled Bobby through. Bruce, still cowering, trembled in the back seat. He was covered with blood, his bulging pug eyes wide and terrified. He sat there panicked but miraculously untouched.

  “Baby,” Terry breathed, tears filling his eyes. Reaching through, he scraped Bruce into his arms and clung to him tight. His little body was slick with Bobby’s blood and still trembling with horror.

  “He’s gone, boy,” Terry whispered, still not quite believing what had happened. “Bobby’s gone.”

  Then the anger struck him. He whirled toward the side of the store where the boys had appeared. The boys who threw the rocks. The boys who killed Bobby. He knew it was his turn to kill now. He would rip the little fuckers to pieces, like the creatures had shredded Bobby.

  But the boys were already gone.

  At that moment, like air from a leaky balloon, the strength and the anger spilled out of him. Terry collapsed to his knees, suddenly too weak to stand. Deflated. A thundering grief settled over him. He clung to Bruce and wept like a child. Slobber and snot dripped off his chin. His breath caught in sobs so powerful it actually hurt to let them go.

  Feeling more alone than he had ever felt in his life, Terry slammed the passenger door closed, and clutching the sides of the Jeep so he wouldn’t fall on his face, he worked his way around to the other door on legs made of rubber.

  The driver’s seat was saturated with blood. Bobby’s blood. The blood-soaked key was still in the ignition.

  He carefully set the bloody dog on the seat beside him and, ignoring the gore as best he could, positioned himself behind the steering wheel and cranked up the engine.

  “It’s only us now,” Terry whispered. “It’s only us now, boy.”

  With a jarring emptiness eating away at his heart, Terry slipped the Jeep into gear. The tires crunched over gravel painted red with Bobby’s blood. Dazed, Terry steered the Jeep onto the road and set off once again toward the cabin.

  But this time—with the road a teary blur in front of him and with the tattered and bloody canvas roof flapping in the wind above his head—Terry set off alone.

  Chapter Four

  THE MEMORIES poured over him like an evil, noisome flood. Shaken, as he always was when he failed to stave off thoughts of what had happened, Terry stood in the middle of the bedroom floor, stunned by the power of the images tearing through him. A sheen of sweat lay clammy on his forehead. He collapsed to the edge of the bed and buried his face in his hands until the feelings passed.

  A warm tongue licked his ear, and he turned his head to see Bruce’s puggy face sniffing at his neck.

  Terry swallowed a shuddery breath and dredged up a smile. “Let me guess. If I don’t take you outside right this minute, you’re going to poop in my slippers and piss on the kitchen table.”

  Bruce wagged his tail.

  “Terrorist,” Terry mumbled and pulled himself to his feet.

  With Bruce hot on his heels, snorting in anticipatory bliss as always when he was going outside, Terry led the pooch down the stairs and out the front door. Still dressed for the day in gloves and leather and heavy jeans, only Terry’s face was left exposed, and the bottom half of that was covered with thick red beard. Happily the weather was cooler now, so the layers of clothing weren’t nearly the hardship they might have been.

  The air blew briskly, the ground soaked with dew underfoot. A squirrel chittered from a pine branch overhead. Terry was still wrung out from his miserable little trip down memory lane, but he inhaled a great dollop of clean mountain air and tried to put it all behind him, as he had done a thousand—no, a million—times before.

  He waited for Bruce to do his business, and when everything was copacetic, they piled into the Jeep and headed off down the mountain lane toward civilization. Or as close to civilization as they planned to get.

  The cool morning air washed over them. Terry closed his eyes as much as he could to enjoy it without running into a tree or driving off a cliff. He had kept the Jeep’s mangled canvas roof after Bobby’s death. It was shredded and offered little or no protection, but psychologically it was a comfort. Even stained as it was with Bobby’s dried blood. The Jeep’s interior—the seats and floorboards and dash—he had been able to clean, to a point.

  Terry still battled with himself now and then about whether or not he should leave the quarantine zone. But somehow his decision always remained the same. He simply couldn’t bring himself to confront a world of new faces, strange voices, and unfamiliar smells. Nor did he want to completely abandon his cabin on the mountain. It held too much of his and Bobby’s past. He had only agreed to leave their house in town because Bobby had still been with him then. Now that he was alone, Terry’s attachment to the cabin had grown exponentially. He was almost desperate to remain secluded within its walls. He knew if his fear of confronting the creatures on his own couldn’t shake his determination to stay, then nothing could. Even if he was lonely, even if he was one bloody scratch away from annihilation himself, it would still be his home as long as there were remnants of Bobby’s love to be found there, clinging to every surface.

  If their roles had been reversed, if Terry was the one who had been killed, Bobby would never have left the cabin either. Terry believed that beyond a shadow of a doubt. He would have been as determined to stay in their mountain hideaway as Terry. Let the world fall apart around them. Let the beasts devour the whole damned planet if they wanted. He and Bobby would have been content to be together, in each other’s company, in each other’s arms, right there in the tiny cabin until their time ran out.

  And now, with Bobby gone and with every action he took still controlled by Bobby’s memory, Terry would do no different. And yes, he knew he was being stubborn and maybe even suicidal, but he didn’t care.

  Bruce didn’t appear to care either. He was standing on the passenger seat with his front paws on the Jeep’s dash, his fawn-colored ears flapping in the wind, staring out through the windshield at the forest sweeping past. The lane was rou
gh, washboarded and potholed. It was all Bruce could do to keep from tumbling off the seat every time the Jeep hit a particularly nasty bump. Terry took pity on the little guy and slowed down. When a tree limb smacked the rearview mirror on Bruce’s side of the Jeep, scattering wet leaves across the interior, the pug gave a furious yip as if mortally offended. Terry grinned and slowed down a little more.

  It had been three weeks since he had gone down off the mountain. He was getting low on supplies, and he needed to stock up on firewood now that the weather was growing colder. He could chop his own wood from the deadfall around the cabin, but why risk wielding an ax? Chop off a toe and the beasts would come swarming. Besides, there were lots of supplies to be had if one knew where to look. By now, all of Spangle’s businesses were closed, their owners run off to stay with relatives in the city. Or wherever it was people went when the lives they had always known were snatched out from under them and the only choice they had left was to either flee or be eaten.

  Wherever they’d retreated to, Terry was pretty sure they wouldn’t care if he helped himself to some of the stuff they’d left behind. If they did care, well, they would just have to get over it. Or they could bill him if they thought that would get them anywhere.

  That idea was so ridiculous it made Terry snort back a laugh. He couldn’t remember the last time he had handled money. Or, God forbid, a credit card. Funny how the Spangle monetary system had petered out really fast when the town started crumbling. It was pretty much the first semblance of society to bite the dust. Poor old skinflint Amos Steinman, the banker, must be depressed as hell about that.

  And that thought made Terry grin again.

  Halfway down the mountain, he spotted a ragged smear of shadow welling up on the horizon, moving east against the wind, heading straight for him. He braked the Jeep hard, lurching to a stop, and sat holding his breath as the stream of creatures drew closer and closer before slicing across the sky directly above his head. When he was certain they weren’t doubling back and coming for him, Terry exhaled and continued to watch them retreat in the distance.