by Jeff Strand
She kicked it in the head, pretty much in the same spot as the first dent. It didn’t let go. She kicked it again, hoping that her ability to kick meant that her spine was okay. The creature didn’t let go, though it was now foaming from three different spots.
Missy pointed the gun at its head and pulled the trigger.
Nothing much happened.
She pulled the trigger a couple more times before she remembered that she’d taken the remaining bullets out of the gun after Kevin started acting crazy. They weren’t hard to find—she’d put them in a different drawer—and under circumstances where there wasn’t an oozing creature holding on to her foot she would have been able to retrieve them with very little inconvenience on her part.
So she grabbed one of the knives.
* * *
“Check out my new knife,” Kevin had said, proudly holding up a brown pocketknife. “Dad said I was supposed to get it for my tenth birthday, but he gave it to me a couple of days early.”
“Why would he give you your birthday present early?” Missy asked.
Kevin shrugged. “I dunno. Probably to make my mom even madder. She didn’t want me to have it.”
“I don’t want you to have it, either. Don’t hold it by the blade, dummy. What are you going to do with it, anyway?”
“Cut stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Dunno.”
“Bison?”
“No, not bison!”
“Well, you said you didn’t know!”
“I’m not going to kill anything with it.”
“What about bugs?”
“No.”
“What about cutting a worm in half?”
“Worms are bugs, dummy.”
“I know, dummy, but if you cut a worm in half, it becomes two worms. You’d be helping worms rule the earth.”
“You’re a lot less smart than other people,” Kevin said.
“Do you want me to find you a tennis ball to stab?”
“I think I’m going to stab a grapefruit.”
“We’ve got grapefruit at my house.”
“Can I stab it?”
“Sure.”
They went back to Missy’s house. There was a bowl of apples, oranges, and grapefruit on the dining room table. Missy took a grapefruit from the top and set it on the table. “Let’s see you do it.”
“Will your mom get mad?”
“She will if she comes home and sees you stabbing a grapefruit on our table.”
“Maybe I won’t, then.”
“Don’t be such a baby.”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“You have to be a pretty big chicken to be scared of a grapefruit. Maybe it will come alive and eat you in your sleep!” Missy picked up the grapefruit and waved it at Kevin in a frightening manner. “Oooooh, it’s the Grapefruit of Death! Fear it! Feeeeeear it!”
“We should put a face and fangs on it.”
A few minutes later, thanks to her mother’s lipstick, the grapefruit bore a demonic face. “Okay, time to kill the Grapefruit of Death. Stab it good.”
Kevin held the knife above the fruit, but hesitated. “They’re pretty acidy. I don’t want to mess up my knife.”
“Oh, give me that,” said Missy, taking the knife from him. “Time to die, Grapefruit of Death!” she announced, and then she plunged the knife into the grapefruit again and again and again…
* * *
Stabbing the creature was much worse than stabbing the grapefruit.
Missy slammed the knife right in the top of its head, wrenched out the weapon, then stabbed it again. Green foamy slime dripped from the blade. She stabbed it twice more, thankful that she’d retained enough of her civilized behavior not to scream “Die! Die! Die!”
The creature let go of her ankle.
Kevin began to climb down the ladder. “I’m sorry!” he said. “He lunged at me and—oh, I guess you’ve taken care of it.”
Missy left the blade imbedded in the creature’s head. It was no longer moving, if you excluded the ooze.
“Are you okay?” Kevin asked, crouching down next to her.
“I think so. Help me up.”
Kevin helped her to her feet. Missy took a wobbly step forward, and then nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Why didn’t you use the gun?”
Missy considered lying, then thought better of it. Kevin could handle the truth. “I’d moved the bullets.”
“Oh. Okay. Fair enough. But assuming that what happened was real and not a hallucination, I’m sane now. You don’t have to worry about me doing anything crazy.”
“I’m very relieved.” She gestured to the creature with her foot. “Mutant, huh?”
“Maybe. I don’t know what it is. Do you think we need to be scared of radiation? Should we draw straws for Uncle Jake’s suit?”
“I’m not putting that thing on.”
“Let’s not worry about it right now. We’re not going to lock ourselves back down here until we find out what happened. Do you agree?”
“Absolutely.”
“So let’s load up the gun, just in case, grab some food and water, and we’ll—”
The mutant, knife still protruding from the top of its head, sat up.
Missy and Kevin each said, “Shit!”
Kevin grabbed the second knife off the floor and slammed it into the mutant’s face, right below its left eye. The mutant bit down on Kevin’s thumb. He cried out in pain and pulled away. Missy saw blood, but at least his thumb did not stay behind in the mutant’s mouth.
“Why isn’t it dead?” Kevin demanded. “It’s got two knives in its head! Things are supposed to die when they’ve got two knives in their heads!”
Missy ran to the closest shelf and picked up a can of beans. She flung it at the mutant, hitting it directly in the forehead and making another big dent. The knife under its eye popped out.
Kevin joined her at the shelf. Together, they threw can after can at the mutant, sending spurts of green slime into the air with each hit. After about the twentieth hit the mutant stopped moving again, and Missy felt like kind of a jerk for continuing to pummel it, but they bashed it with cans until almost nothing of it could be seen under the slime and foam.
They stood there, gazing in a daze at their handiwork.
“Is it dead?” Missy asked.
“It’s got to be close.”
“What do we do with it?”
“I say we just leave it. It’s not going to hurt anything down here without a skeletal structure.”
After Missy climbed out of the shelter, Kevin passed up several non-stained cans of food, the can opener, and some bottles of water. They closed the hatch and locked it.
“Do you think that’s whose footsteps we heard?” Missy asked, as they went through Uncle Jake’s bedroom, trying to find a backpack or something to carry their supplies.
“That was a month ago.”
“I know, but why did it just happen to be there when we came out?”
“Wouldn’t it have to eat?”
“I’m not saying that it sat up there staring the entire time, but it must have known somebody was down there. There’s no way we escaped just as it happened to be passing through.”
“You’re right. Jeez, that’s creepy. But for now, we’re not going to assume that all of humanity is like that. That thing is the exception that proves the rule.”
“What does that mean?”
“What?”
“‘The exception that proves the rule.’ I always thought that was a stupid saying.”
Kevin considered that. “You’re right. If we do have to rebuild society, we’ll leave that one out.” He glanced around the bedroom. “So…where do you think Uncle Jake kept his condoms?”
Missy couldn’t help but smile. “Smartass.”
They found a ratty backpack and filled it with the food and water, then walked out of the house. No additional mutants leapt out to attack them.
Kevin turned on his phone and they watched for several intense moments, waiting to see if they had any bars. No signal. “That doesn’t mean anything,” Kevin said, shutting off the phone and slipping it into his pocket.
“Okay,” said Missy. “Let’s go see how the world has changed.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Had they not just been attacked by an oozing mutant, Kevin and Missy might have been able to convince themselves that the world was fine. Birds were chirping. White clouds were in the sky. A squirrel scurried around in some tree branches and offered no evidence that it was a zombie squirrel.
Kevin and Missy walked hand in hand down the dirt road.
“The road isn’t littered with corpses,” Kevin noted. “That’s a good sign.” He hoped that Missy wouldn’t make a comment about how you generally needed to be in a populated area for the road to be littered with corpses.
“Yep,” said Missy. She was probably thinking the “populated area” thing but didn’t say it.
Kevin had never imagined that he could appreciate sunlight and fresh air so much. All these years, he’d looked up at the sun and went “Eh. Whatever.” Never again. The sun was freaking awesome. And fresh air? Equally awesome. If not for the need to learn the fate of humanity, he would have been perfectly content to just sit in the sunshine and breathe a lot.
“What’s the first thing you’re going to eat when we get to town?” he asked.
“I’m trying not to think about it.”
“It’s okay to think about it. We’re not trapped in the bunker anymore. It’s not like we’re torturing ourselves.”
“What if we get to town and it’s just a great big crater? A giant smoking foodless crater. I don’t want to get myself worked up over the idea of having cookies and then have my hopes crushed.” Missy sighed. “But now I’m all worked up over the idea of having cookies.”
“Chocolate chip?”
“Oatmeal raisin.”
“Since when do you prefer oatmeal raisin over chocolate chip?”
“These past months have changed all of us.”
“I’m warning you right now, if we find a burger place, you are going to bear witness to one of the most horrifying sights in human history. I am going to destroy that burger. I may even rub special sauce all over my body. It will appall you on every possible…” Kevin trailed off.
“What?”
Kevin pointed ahead. Off in the distance, maybe half a mile away, some bushes were rustling.
“I think that’s a person,” Kevin said.
“Where? I don’t see anything.”
“Look close.”
Missy squinted her eyes. Then she opened her eyes wide as somebody stepped out of the woods onto the dirt road.
It was definitely a human. But it was too far away to tell if it was a normal human or a mutant.
“He’s walking kind of weird,” said Missy.
“He could just be tired.”
“No, he’s definitely not moving like a regular person.”
“He could be injured or shell-shocked. We don’t know that he’s an oozer.”
“Don’t call them oozers,” said Missy. “It’s disrespectful.”
“Sorry.”
“Should we call out to it?”
Kevin shook his head. “If it’s a mutant and it’s hostile like the other one, we don’t want to attract its attention.”
“We’re right here in the middle of the road. It’s seen us. Which, incidentally, is another good indication that it’s a mutant, because wouldn’t a real person wave or shout or something?”
“Maybe he thinks we’re mutants.”
“So what do we do?” Missy asked.
“Just keep walking until we know for sure.”
“What if we went into the woods? We could try to go around it.”
“Nah. If there are other mutants out there, it’ll be harder to fight them in the woods. We’ll have plenty of notice if this one decides to give us trouble.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll just walk casually like we were doing before. No reason to panic. We killed one of these up-close without a loaded gun, so we’re not in any danger.”
They continued walking, though admittedly at a slower pace than before. Kevin was tempted to whistle to further emphasize their nonchalance, but didn’t think Missy would respond well.
As they got closer, it became less easy for Kevin to tell himself that the person was not a mutant. Until finally—
“Okay, he’s definitely leaking,” said Kevin.
“Crap.”
“We can’t just turn around. Should we shoot him?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“It seems like the right thing to do.”
“What if the gunshot attracts the attention of more of them?”
“What if the gunshot scares others away?”
“Do we have the right to decide that this thing should die?” asked Missy.
“I think so, yeah.”
“What if they still have feelings and families and stuff?”
“The other one tried to kill us.”
“But this one isn’t.”
“Not yet.”
“I’m just not convinced that the other one attacking us gives us license to shoot them left and right.”
“Are you kidding me?” Kevin asked.
“I’m not saying we can’t kill them. But shouldn’t we have a larger representative sample before we turn to genocide?”
“Yeah, probably. But I don’t want to get killed just because we were trying to retain our humanity.”
“We won’t.”
The guy was definitely a mutant. He had the same green tinge to his skin and was frothing from the mouth.
Still, they should at least try to communicate.
“Hello,” Kevin called out, waving his hand in a friendly manner. “We come in peace.”
“Don’t say that,” Missy whispered. “It sounds condescending.”
“I’m Kevin and this is Missy. We’re friends with benefits. What’s your name?”
The mutant did not acknowledge them.
“How close do we let it get before we shoot it?” Kevin asked.
“Not too much closer.” Missy gave the same friendly wave. “Excuse me,” she called out. “Can you hear me?”
They weren’t close enough to hear for sure, but Kevin thought that it growled.
“Did you hear it growl?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s not good, right?”
“No.”
“Can we please shoot it?”
The mutant began to walk more quickly, upgrading from a growl to a snarl, stretching out its arms like Frankenstein’s monster.
“Yeah, shoot it,” said Missy.
Kevin held up the gun, took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger.
He wasn’t sure if he missed by millimeters or several feet (hopefully millimeters), but it was a definite miss. The mutant did not react to the fired gun.
“Shoot again!” Missy said.
Kevin shot again. Another miss. If it turned out that they really were in a post-apocalyptic, mutant-filled world, he was going to have to get a lot better at this.
“Aim for the mutant,” Missy suggested.
“I am.”
“I thought maybe you missed on purpose because you were just trying to scare it off.”
“No.”
“Then shoot more accurately.”
“Do you want to shoot it?” Kevin asked.
“No, I just want you to hit it.
“I’d shoot more accurately if you stopped talking.”
Missy stopped talking. The mutant was now about two hundred feet away, close enough to make Kevin extremely nervous. He took careful aim, tried to keep his hands from shaking, and then squeezed the trigger.
Green ooze spurted from its right arm.
“Don’t aim for its arm,” said Missy.
Kevin held the gun
out toward her. “Here you go.”
“No, that’s all right.”
“Take it. You’ve apparently got a brilliant strategy all figured out, so we might as well not waste any more bullets.”
Missy took the gun from him. She pointed it at the mutant, then spent several seconds taking aim.
“We’d better back up a little,” said Kevin.
“Yeah, you’re right.” They backed up about fifty feet so that the mutant wouldn’t reach them before Missy shot it.
Missy spent a few more seconds taking aim, then fired.
Green ooze spurted out of its left arm.
“Don’t say anything,” said Missy.
“I didn’t.”
“You were going to.”
“We’re in extreme danger. I wouldn’t put our lives at risk just to make a smart-ass comment. I’m rooting for you.”
“All right. Fair enough.”
Missy fired again. This time she hit the mutant in the eye. Far more ooze sprayed out than she would have expected (apparently their eyes were particularly juicy), and then the mutant dropped to the ground. It squirmed around but didn’t get back up.
“Nice work,” said Kevin.
“Thank you.”
“I’m man enough to admit that you’re a better shot than me. We would’ve been totally screwed if I were the only one responsible for the gun.”
“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.”
“Completely sincere.”
About ten feet ahead of where the mutant lay, the bushes rustled. A moment later, another mutant stepped out of the woods.
“This is bullshit,” said Missy.
“Shoot it.”
Missy took aim.
Another mutant stepped out of the woods on the other side of the road.
“I don’t think we have enough bullets to deal with this,” said Kevin.
Two more mutants stepped into the road. They were too far ahead to pose an immediate threat, but they were certainly going to be a problem if Kevin and Missy wanted to keep walking toward civilization.
“What are they doing out here?” asked Missy.
“Maybe they have a heightened sense of smell, so they knew there was a fresh meal in the area. Or maybe the sunlight hurts their skin, so they stay under cover of forest as much as possible. Or maybe…actually, I have no idea.”
