by Ted Hill
“What are you doing, Billy?”
“I’m about to have dinner.”
“Who are you?”
“I was Billy.” His awful smile spread wider, showing off the red maw. “The plague was the start. Now there will be famine and those of us who deserve to live will eat the fattened cattle of this world, and none are fatter than the inhabitants here.” Billy stepped closer to Jimmy. “I’m told we have you to thank for that.”
Jimmy floated back a step and Billy chuckled, cold and unconcerned. Mark made a retching sound from the back of the house.
“Ah, my roommate has been discovered. Too bad Preston’s flesh has already turned. At least now I have fresh meat to satisfy my hunger.”
Billy returned to the sofa and looked down on the unconscious Catherine. A red bruise covered her forehead that would be purple by morning if she was still alive. Her chest rose with a breath and Jimmy felt grateful for a brief moment.
“I guess I should rip her throat out before she wakes up.” Billy almost looked sad when he said it. “Otherwise she might get the upper hand since I don’t have any more surprises left. I really wanted to take my time with this one. Well, that’s the way little saints crumble.”
Jimmy reached out. His hand slowly passed into Billy’s shoulder with a cold shock so intense that Jimmy thought he was back among the living again.
Billy arched his body and jumped away from Jimmy’s touch. He stared in horror. “What did you do to me?”
Mark charged into the room with a baseball bat and swung for the fences. The aluminum ripped across Jimmy’s chest, sending his ethereal body into motion. Billy ducked the swing and came up with one of his own, catching Mark on the back of his rotation. Mark screamed and kept spinning, but missed him for the second strike. Billy clawed Mark again and then shoved the unbalanced kid in the back. Mark sprawled on the floor and the bat flew out of his grip. Billy pounced on top of him.
Without another thought, Jimmy dropped into Billy. It was like sinking into a frozen pond after breaking through the ice. The uninviting experience left him numb and shivering.
Jimmy blinked and found himself staring down through Billy’s eyes at the back of Mark’s neck. He tasted the warm saltiness of Mark’s blood in his mouth. His stomach rolled and he threw up, emptying the contents on the worn carpet in the living room. He tried not to think about the ingredients as the room began to spin faster and faster.
Mark bucked him off, throwing Jimmy face first into the floor. His nose burst in bright sparkles of pain. He hoped Mark wouldn’t smash the baseball bat into his skull as his thoughts switched off and his mind blanked out.
Twenty-Three
Hunter
Tommy the Cannibal Perv watched them on their way out of Cozad. He stood at the edge of town, waving goodbye while the kids in the school bus shut their windows and buried themselves below the seats. Hunter stopped his motorbike a safe distance away and shot Tommy a good double-dose of middle fingers before revving his engine and speeding after the yellow bus.
The ride back to Independents was slow. Hunter led the way on his bike as the stationary sun hung in the sky. He felt sorry for the poor kids riding in that bouncing metal can because the roads they would follow were buckled in stretches or pocked with potholes. Buses weren’t designed for off-roading, and whenever Hunter traveled too far ahead he would stop and watch the kids being jostled like dried beans in a maraca. He tried to find a smooth path for Henry to follow, but every once in a while they just had to suffer or be stuck. No one wanted to be stuck when nighttime arrived.
Hunter tried to outride the stench of horror covering him as he sped across the land. His mind kept playing the scenes from the fight in the jail. The lamp’s light going out. The sounds of cannibals moving in for the kill. The smell of the white gas on the floor. The knife stabbing into a little kid and the flick of his Zippo. Heat from the bright orange fire, and the screams that followed.
There was no other way to put it. Hunter just murdered a bunch of kids. No matter how twisted they had become, Hunter killed them. Now he was going to have to live with that.
Part of him wanted to return to Cozad and take care of Tommy once and for all, but his first priority was these kids in the bouncing yellow bus. They required a good meal and a decent night’s rest in a warm bed without the nightmares of cannibal children gazing through their windows. Hunter gripped his handlebar tighter. He would deliver those kids to safety, and then he would return and finish Tommy.
He slowed to another stop and waited for the bus to close the gap. A couple miles farther and they would be near a clean water source he often used. The afternoon sun brought down bright, stifling heat. Even with the bus windows open, the kids had to be melting in there. The air conditioning was inoperable. Brandon had been lucky just to turn over the engine.
Behind the lumbering bus, a dark cloud of smoke rose into the sky. Hunter’s fire was probably burning all of Cozad to the ground. He felt two ways about that. First, it reminded him of the horrible events and second, at least the tragic evidence of Cozad’s previous inhabitants would be destroyed along with his part in it.
Normally Hunter would have headed southeast by now, but the bus wouldn’t make his usual route, so following I-80 was the best option. They refueled the bus at one of the gigantic truck stops that dotted the interstate. The founders of Independents may not have considered the availability of gasoline when they chose to settle in Nebraska, but they lucked out because of all the truck stops. They hadn’t even touched the reserves left in this state, not to mention the farmers who kept their own supply tucked away to operate their tractors and combines.
Hunter led them off the interstate to the pond near a farmhouse and barn. All the kids unloaded from the bus, carrying their water bottles or plastic jugs to refill them along the shore. Hunter tapped drops of iodine in every bottle and, after a good shake to kill lingering parasites, they gulped their water down and the process was repeated.
A silver tail splashed upon the surface, and excitement rippled through everyone in a wave of pointing fingers and shouts. Quickly Hunter retrieved his fishing supplies out of his backpack and huddled the group together.
“I’ve got four hooks, so I need four of you to cut some branches for fishing poles. You can use the saw on my army knife. Make sure the branch is green inside so the pole will bend a little without snapping.”
Four kids took off at a trot toward a stand of trees on the other side of the pond.
“I need a couple more of you to find some bait.” He noticed a boy quivering with untapped energy. He handed the kid his small plastic spade. “See if you can dig us up some worms.”
The boy glowed. “Where should I dig?”
Hunter smiled and pointed down. “Start at your feet and work outwards.”
Two girls wearing identical pink shirts stepped up expectantly. “What can we do?” they asked, as if they shared a brain.
“Do you guys know how to catch grasshoppers?”
Their eyes lit up. “We sure do.”
“Good! Catch a lot of them, okay?”
They sprinted for the high grass and the hunt was on.
“The rest of you guys gather wood and build a fire.” Hunter handed Brandon his Zippo. A brief image of the last time it was struck threatened to destroy his rising spirits, but he swallowed it down. “Make sure I get this back.”
Brandon nodded and led another group of wood gatherers toward the trees as the first four returned with their fishing poles. Hunter helped string up their lines with hooks and a sinker. He broke up one of the extra sticks to use for bobbers.
“I found one! I found one!” the boy with the shovel hollered, pulling a fat wiggling earthworm out of a hole.
Hunter received the slimy invertebrate. “Great job! Keep digging.”
The boy dropped where he stood and made another hole.
Hunter pinched off a segment of the worm and handed it to one of the girls. She gave the piece of worm
a puzzled look.
“Just run the hook through the middle of the worm.”
She made a yucky face, but did a good job hooking the worm. Hunter dumped the other half of the worm in one of the boys’s hands and the two baited hooks plunked and settled into the water. The boy and the girl watched the floating sticks intently for bobbing action.
One of the two girls ran over with a couple grasshoppers. The agitated bugs stirred in Hunter’s grip. He told the girl to catch more and she scampered off after her hunting buddy, who was still busy in the field.
Hunter showed the other boy and girl how to hook the hoppers, and then four lines were in the water. Nervous chatter rose on the bank, but Hunter shushed them all.
“We have to be quiet or we’ll scare the fish away.”
Everyone looked at him and nodded in agreement.
When the first stick bobbed under the water, the boy holding the line almost dropped his fishing pole. He quickly regrouped and hauled the fighting crappie to shore. All the Cozad kids huddled around the flopping silver-green fish like it was a miracle from Heaven.
“All right, all right,” Hunter said, using his best ‘settle-down’ voice. “That’s one. I’ll clean it and we’ll keep fishing. How’s the fire coming, Brandon?”
Brandon smiled by the growing flames and smoke. “It’s getting hotter, sir.”
Hunter shook his head with embarrassment. “Please don’t call me, sir. My name’s Hunter. I’m just a kid like you.”
“Yes, sir,” Brandon said, and continued feeding sticks into the fire.
With a resigned sigh, Hunter retrieved the panicky fish from the ground. He unhooked it, whacked its head on a rock, and flipped open his lock blade.
Hunter stopped cold. Dried red flakes stained the blade. He closed his eye to block out the tainted blade. After several deep breaths, Hunter opened his eye and stepped to the pond’s edge to wash his knife. He uncapped his iodine, dousing the cleansing red liquid over the knife, and returned to the unconscious fish.
Holding the crappie, he looked at the multitude of expressions on the faces around him—ranging from horrified to hungry. He grinned and gutted the fish.
* * *
A full belly later, Hunter sat on the grass at the edge of the pond, feeling amazingly better. Eight different kids caught over twenty fish, from white bass, to crappie, to sunfish, and three nice sized catfish. Everyone was happy, evident from the smiles and the pile of fish bones.
The brutal sun left its perch high in the sky, heading toward late afternoon. Gentler rays warmed Hunter’s skin and danced along the water. Bees dipped into the surrounding wildflowers and he came close to believing that everything would be all right. His shoulder had other ideas, as the numbness coursed down his bicep and back inside to his shoulder blade. He hunched and tried to pop muscles loose or stretch ligaments without success.
Barbie dropped to her knees behind him. She placed firm hands on his shoulders and started rubbing.
Hunter ducked his head and groaned with relief.
“Is that doing any good?” Barbie asked.
“You have no idea.” A string of drool dropped into his lap. He quickly sucked in the excess before looking like an idiot.
Barbie rubbed deeper, tougher, with her grip as more of the tightness in Hunter’s shoulder released its hold. “You keep a lot in here.”
Hunter moaned as his eye closed. “I got beat up pretty bad five months ago. The pain’s been there ever since, probably always will be, just like I’ll never see out of this eye again.”
“Losing the sight in your eye and the pain in your shoulder are different things.” Barbie sat and hooked her legs around him. The shoulder massage continued. “You’re keeping this pain in your shoulder. It’s up to you to let it go.”
“That’s bullshit.”
Barbie dug her nails in and squeezed. Hunter winced and cried out, trying to scoot away from her grasp, but she held on. He stopped squirming and she wrapped her arms around his chest and pulled him back—pressing her soft body against him. All of his concerns melted away in an instant.
“You’re blaming yourself for something and you’re too important to let it weigh you down. We have a lot to do before the fight is finished.”
Hunter shook his head like he was waking from a dream. “What are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you to hang on. Don’t be discouraged. I’m here for you.”
“But… I have a girlfriend.” He moved her arms from around him and stood. The guilt he felt replaced the pain in his shoulder. He turned and regarded her smiling up at him, but it wasn’t a mocking smile. The sadness in her eyes made the smile sincere.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be. I’m not.” Barbie stood and wiped the grass from her jeans. She headed towards the shore of the pond.
Hunter watched her walk away, wondering why she kept hitting on him.
A loud buzzing broke his thoughts. The cloud of smoke from Cozad now filled the sky, moving in impossible, swarming patterns. Then the first grasshopper hit his face. Startled, he brushed his cheek. He looked up and a hundred more rained down on him.
This was not smoke.
Twenty-Four
Hunter
The enormous cloud filling the eerie sky transformed into a buzzing roar, thrumming with billions and billions of insects. From a distance, the long tendrils that fell from above could have been mistaken for rain, but they raked at the ground. Vegetation was reduced to chaff where the insects touched. With haunting realization, Hunter scanned the area for cover. The bus had all those windows and the size of the swarm made Hunter believe they needed something more solid. The farmhouse or barn that lay beyond the windbreak of giant evergreens was their best option. They would have to run for it.
The grasshoppers crashed from above like a hailstorm. Kids batted at their hair and the sky as insects pelted them. Henry sheltered his little sister, waving his arms with his eyes closed.
“Everyone run to the barn!” Hunter pointed in that direction and a group of kids broke ahead of the crowd. Others were more preoccupied, struggling under the assault. Hunter ran to where he was needed. He stomped and slapped his way to two kids that swatted the air.
“You have to run to the barn.”
“They’re all over me,” the girl said.
The boy pinched his face tight with his eyes barely open to keep the bugs out.
“It’s going to get worse,” Hunter said. “There’s a lot more coming. You have to follow the others to the barn.” He grabbed their hands and put them together. The boy chanced a look in the direction everyone was running. Hunter squeezed his shoulder. “You have to get her there.”
The boy nodded and dragged the girl. They picked up speed as they broke into a grasshopper-free pocket. Hunter searched for more stragglers.
Barbie prodded and pushed other kids toward the barn. Hunter locked eyes with her, seeing they shared similar fears, and then they rounded the rest of the kids together and trailed the group while the thunderous buzz from the swarming cloud bore down. Running for their lives through the eerie darkness made everything that much bleaker.
“What’s going on, Barbie? This isn’t natural is it?”
Barbie narrowed her eyes, mouth pressed in a firm line. She kept her legs and arms churning in the direction of supposed safety. “Are you always the master of understatement?”
“Why? Does that turn you on?”
“Now? You want to flirt with me now? You have terrible timing.”
“I like to think of it as a rhythm.”
One of the boys they were following tripped and took out two other kids on his way down. Barely slowing, Hunter grabbed two of the skinny kids as Barbie scooped up the third. Everybody regained their feet and continued running. Hunter took a second to check the cloud’s progress and his stomach dropped. The black mass crested like an enormous crashing wave.
They hit the windbreak and Hunter cut through, breathing
hard. He paused to help the others between the heavy boughs. The swarm rose in a crescendo of incessant humming as billions of wings strummed together. The final five kids broke through the giant hedge, showing scratches for their efforts. Barbie was the last one when the swarm bounded into the evergreens. For an instant they had shelter from the storm, and then the insects broke over the top and tumbled down.
“Run for it!” Hunter urged them on, waving his hands to herd them along. Something bit his back underneath his shirt and he swiped at a grasshopper, squishing it in his palm and throwing it to the ground. Dozens of insects twitched in his hair and more fell onto him. The others had their share of grasshoppers going for the same ride, but at least everyone still moved towards the barn.
Another fifty feet and they slid into the giant doors. Hunter pulled on the handles, but they wouldn’t open because the others had locked them out. He pounded on the wooden boards. “Open the door!” He hoped that someone inside could hear him over the swarm. He pounded harder and the others joined in. Panic showed in their wide eyes and more of the bugs rained down on them. One boy turned to fight, slapping and stomping everything around him. One of his wild slaps caught Barbie in the side of the head and knocked her to the ground. Hunter threw the kid against the door where he fell next to Barbie, struggling to regain her feet. The barn door opened and Hunter hurled kids inside. Barbie slipped in next and then he pulled the door shut and slammed the board down to keep it locked.
The smell of smoke caught Hunter’s boggled senses first. Someone had decided to light a fire inside a steel drum filled with trash. It provided some light, but that wouldn’t last long. The smoke had nowhere to go except for small cracks in the walls and roof of the barn. Hopefully they wouldn’t asphyxiate waiting for the killer bug storm to blow over.
Hunter turned on the kids huddled around the burning barrel in the middle of the barn and erupted. “What dumb ass locked the door? You nearly got us killed!”
