All across the greenery fronting Bay Beach, pandemonium erupted. Dog walkers tried to tame their animals, opening themselves up to attack, or inadvertently loosening their hold on the animals, leaving them to attack others. A pit bull broke free, making a beeline for a baby stroller, the mother screaming and unable to do anything to stop it. A Labrador barreling into a team of volleyballers, jumping on the bare back of a college-aged man and sinking its teeth into the man’s scalp, clawing at his shoulders and neck.
Even the ducks and gulls were rebelling against the natural order, presenting a united front against the beachgoers and park walkers. A mallard dove at one woman’s head, webbed feet and furiously flapping wings beating at her face. The seagulls dive-bombed and gouged bare skin.
Scott watched as an angry robin leapt at a small boy’s head, thrashing him with its wings. Feathers flew, and through the fog of the attack he caught a spray of gore, heard the child’s inhuman wail, and saw the bird’s head retract with an eyeball caught in its beak. It flew away, leaving the kid to kneel in the sand, an empty crater in his face, the tissue pulped and inflamed, mouth open in a breathless, prolonged cry of agony.
He yelled to the other officers that were trying to get traffic unsnarled and turned around, waving them toward the park. “Get those people out of there!”
Tires screeched as another siren approached and bumped off the sidewalk and back onto US 31. The sheriff department’s second K-9 unit arriving on scene. Scott was ahead of Hendrix, torn on which way to go. Thankfully, she heard the noise and darted back to the SUV as it ground to a halt. She was waving her arm in the air, shouting at the officer.
“Keep your dog contained! Keep him contained!”
There was too much cacophony, and Deputy Barrents opened the door. Jupiter, already plainly agitated, leapt free, jaws snapping.
Scott saw the geyser of arterial blood as Jupiter clamped down on his partner’s neck, and rushed toward the scene.
Gun in hand, he strode up alongside Hendrix, and both officers raised their weapons and fired. His stomach tugged painfully, as if it were attached to a barbed cord that had just been yanked hard to the side of his belly.
Barrents screamed, his heels kicking uselessly at the ground. One hand was pressed to his neck, blood welling between his fingers, his face deathly pale. A crimson pool spread around his head, staining the road in a growing sheet of blood. Even as Hendrix rushed for the first aid kit in Barrents’s vehicle, Scott knew it was too late. The deputy was bleeding out, and fast.
Never in his entire career had Scott felt so surrounded and indecisive, so torn and drained. The deputies were trying to get people out of the park and off the beach, but their attackers were unrelenting and far too numerous. There was a mess of gore, feathers, and fur. Dead birds and dead dogs littered the park, and the officers’ uniforms were tattered, shredded, their exposed skin scratched all to hell.
A Rottweiler—maybe even the same one that had torn apart the rollerblading girl—bounded toward him, mouth frothing. His jowls shook crazily as it ran. Without even thinking, Scott leveled his gun and pulled the trigger, killing the stubby-tailed mutt instantly. The dog collapsed at his feet, nearly cartwheeling over its own head.
“Dad?”
He turned, and there was Lauren. Barefoot and bloody, a number of scratches marring her skin, her hair a ratty nest, brown hair shooting up at odd angles.
His stomach did that funny lurch thing again, and then an amassing shadow fell across his daughter as a flock of blackbirds honed in on her, squawking angrily.
“Get down!”
7
LAUREN WAS FLANKED BY her father and Deputy Hendrix, their bodies partially shielding her as they broke into a run.
Blackbirds swarmed them, wings beating violently against their bodies, talons tearing at their flesh. She kept moving forward, lost in the maelstrom of feathers and flashes of snapping yellow beaks. A hundred sharp jabs darted across her back, her arms and legs, and she kept her hands raised to protect her face.
Scott’s grip tightened around her upper arm, pulling her.
A gunshot rang out close to her ear and she could smell the smoky discharge through the stink of the birds. The attack lessened, ever so briefly, and then the blackbirds resumed their assault with renewed vigor.
Feathers stuck to her skin. Small pricks jabbed at her belly as beaks and claws dug into her stomach and nipped her through the tank top, the birds swirling between her legs and scoring her thighs and calves. She tried waving them off with one hand, but that was even more useless than Hendrix’s gun. All it earned her were bit fingers and a slashed palm.
They were in her hair, talons poking at her scalp, beaks jabbing into her skull. She could feel blood welling and matting her locks to her head, a fresh current of gore pasting it to the sides of her face.
“Get off!” she screamed, panic rising in her. If not for her father, she’d be completely lost in the swirling, unending black vortex. The birds encircling her, blotted out the sun, leaving only a world of darkness and poking, prodding pain.
Scott pulled her in a different direction, the noise of her bare heels slapping the ground lost in the shrill screams of the birds’ squawking.
She caught a flash of pale movement as Hendrix tried to shoo them away from her own face, Scott doing the same.
Scott yanked Lauren’s arm again, hard this time, as if frightened.
She wasn’t ready for it and she fell, the concrete skinning her knees and palms. She hit hard, the air knocked out of her. The birds seized the opening, battering her immediately and pecking at her back through the thin cotton fabric of her shirt.
Hands pushed through the squirming mass, fighting to grab for her and hoist her back to her feet, pulling her away from the assaulting flock.
“No!” she yelled.
Angry barking broke through the birds’ shrieking and she saw, through a flash of flapping wings, a pair of pit bulls charging toward them, their muzzles caked in gore.
“Oh shit,” she said, hating the high-pitched whine in her tone.
We’re dead. We’re fucking dead.
Wings smacked her face, stinging her like a thousand paper cuts, and then—
Clarity.
The birds swarmed the dogs, encircling them with a fury of swift-moving viciousness. Barks and yelps and snapping sounds filled the air. A cry of pain rang out from one of the mutts, but she had no time to take in the scene as the predators fought over their claims to the three humans.
Her knees burned as she ran, her whole body aching and sticky. She kept close to Scott, Hendrix nearly right on top of her as they rushed toward his patrol car.
Scott pulled open the passenger door, then shoved Lauren inside, who scooted across the seat to make room for Hendrix. The seat leather stuck her skin, her whole body sticky with blood and bird shit, errant feathers clinging to her. Then Scott piled into the driver’s seat, slamming the key into the ignition but not starting it just yet. He looked through the window, taking in the scene around them.
Outside the SUV, Lauren realized how badly life around them had degenerated.
The birds had blinded the pit bulls and were savagely gouging away at their flanks and faces, but the dogs were still putting up a good fight, snatching birds from the thick morass surrounding them.
Across the way, other dogs fed on the remains of the humans they had managed to bring down. A rich coffee-colored Labrador tore into the belly of an overweight woman wearing a one-piece bathing suit; she’d clearly run up from the beach, her feet coated in thick clumps of sand. The Lab tore free a stringy rope of innards, jaws snapping.
A number of dogs lay dead, the street covered in a detritus of still birds and ducks and geese, the beach stained a dark, ruddy red that bordered on black.
Gunshots cut through the air. A large swan felled one of the deputies, close enough to the SUV that Lauren heard his surprised shout over the cacophony. When he screamed, his open mouth invited the long bea
k of the swan to enter and Lauren had to turn away, but not quickly enough. The scream was cut short, but the sight of the man’s tongue being ripped from his mouth stained her vision.
Ahead, fires raged through downtown, but there were no sign of the firefighters. The truck was abandoned, its hose left limp in the street, trickling water. Fire feasted on the structures lining either side of the street, devouring the bookstore, a coffee shop, one of the many tourist-oriented t-shirt companies, and stores carrying handcrafted goods, flames licking at the marquee of the theater.
The movie theater had special Friday midnight revivals, and this week they were scheduled to show Jaws to help kick off their summer movie season. She and Jacob had planned on going. Had planned, in fact, on making those Friday showings their “thing”. The calendar that had been released was marked up with a host of classics, from Ghoul to Critters I and II, and Big Trouble in Little China, which had become one of her all-time favorites after her father introduced her to it. That flick was one of his favorites, and she had fond memories of rainy Saturdays curled up on the couch with him beside her, watching Kurt Russell make an ass out of himself. No more Jaws, and she felt the tears welling as her throat burned, thinking, No more Jacob either. Thinking that, yes, she really did love him, and she didn’t care if she was too young to know anything about love at all, but damn it she knew.
“It looks like the apocalypse out there,” Hendrix said, echoing Lauren’s own thoughts.
Scott looked at the women, his eyes soft as he took a deep breath. Then, he turned the ignition and got the SUV turned around.
Lauren noticed how oddly quiet it was without Hex, but her body and mind could only take so much heartache, and she felt awfully numb right now.
The stalled traffic had transformed into abandoned cars as drivers gave up trying to free their way from the snarl and grew panicked by the suddenly violent animals around them. A smattering of confused drivers still remained, their knuckles white from the death grip they maintained on the steering wheel, eyes wide in shock and panic and disbelief, not knowing at all what to do or where to go.
“Wait, stop,” she said, putting her arm on her father’s hand.
She waved to the driver of the Saturn, still sitting where she had left it. Christ, that felt like hours ago. Days ago. A week. She motioned for Dec to join them.
“Open the back door,” she said.
She saw a faint glimmer of recognition in Scott’s eyes. He rolled down the window, and Dec did the same, their faces parallel.
“Howdy, neighbor,” Dec said.
Scott couldn’t help but grin. “Get in, man. You’ll be sitting out here all day otherwise. There’s no getting through.”
“What happened?” Dec asked, getting out and going to the back of his car to free Sarah from the car seat.
“It’s a long story,” Scott said. “There’s no seat there, sorry. Hope you don’t mind taking the floor.”
Dec pushed Sarah’s carrier ahead of himself, then sat beside her. The canine bed wasn’t meant for human ride-alongs, but Dec wasn’t complaining.
“Thanks for stopping,” he said. “I need to get Sarah to the hospital.”
“Not through downtown, you won’t. It’s a disaster.”
Dec’s face scrunched up in confusion. “The hospital?”
“Downtown,” Scott said. “It’s gone. Everything’s burning, out of control. Everything’s gone tits up.” He shot an apologetic look at his daughter and Deputy Hendrix, cheeks burning, and mouthed a quiet, “Sorry.”
Lauren twisted in her seat, at least as much as she could. There wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver. She checked on the baby and Dec through the air holes separating the front cabin from the canine bed. “She’s quieted down.”
“Wore herself out. Eventually cried herself to sleep.”
Lauren nodded, suddenly feeling ashamed for ditching them on the highway. Maybe she should have stayed, or told him to come with, to bring Sarah, but…no. That could have been an even bigger disaster. Sarah would have been bird food, so maybe temporarily ditching them had been the best choice.
Hendrix tried radioing dispatch, but there was no response. Frustrated, she gave up.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
Scott scratched at his face, globs of bird shit and streaks of blood smeared down his forearm, crusting the hair along his arm and hand. “We’re getting Dec and Sarah to the ER. After that…I don’t know.”
8
THE EMERGENCY ROOM RECEIVING area was packed—the seating area outside triage was filled to capacity, turning the area into standing room only. The check-in desk was slowly working through the line of people, but the staff were stretched to their limit.
Scott had taken them on a circuitous route to the hospital, avoiding downtown by cutting through the residential areas and taking a parallel path that brought them to the rear parking lot. Traffic had still been plentiful as people worked their way off US 31 or Michigan Avenue, or aimed to avoid both altogether.
Triage was a mass of confusion, moaning, and swearing. People had their arms wrapped in soiled t-shirts or towels, hunched forward and groaning, some of them pale, others clutching their bellies with their faces scrunched in a perpetual wince. There were seeping wounds and the stink of burned flesh.
Having worked the area as a deputy for more than twenty years, Scott recognized a number of faces.
There was Fred McCaskill, who had the bison farm up on the peninsula. A couple dozen day laborers who worked the vineyards, cherry orchards, and apple farms along Old Mission Peninsula, each bore signs of an attack, with long stretches of skin gouged open. Scott wondered if maybe the hawks or owls had gotten to them since they didn’t seem to have bite marks. A lot of their injuries looked more like what Lauren had suffered from the blackbirds.
Derrick Thompson, a veterinarian, and Shirley Fields, who manned the front desk and scheduled appointments for him, both bore signs of an animal mauling. Their faces were scratched, and he had a thick towel wrapped tightly around his forearm, gauze around his leg, and a bandage on his neck that looked to be the least of his troubles. Fields wasn’t much better off.
Familiar faces, a lot of them, even if he didn’t know all their names. Enough, too, that he didn’t recognize and chalked up as tourists.
“We should have somebody look at your arm,” Hendrix said.
“Sarah’s the priority here. Lauren, too.”
“You need stitches.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said.
“Dad, you should listen to her.”
He scowled at his daughter, knowing both women were right but damned if he wanted to sit around in a hospital waiting all day to be seen. The place was packed tighter than a sardine can, and he was getting antsy at being so thoroughly surrounded. Scott didn’t like crowds, but he’d never thought of himself as claustrophobic before. Maybe just more of a homebody. But as all these bodies jostled around him, he realized that he couldn’t stand here much longer. He needed to escape, get out, get some fresh air—anything. If he stayed, it wouldn’t be long before they were buried under all these people.
“Stay here with them,” he told Hendrix. “I need to get ahold of dispatch.”
His throat was tight and forcing the words out had been difficult. A cold sweat brewed atop his forehead as he pushed his way through the crowd and back to the security desk near the entrance. This area was less congested and he felt himself relax slightly.
“Use your phone?” he asked the hospital guard.
“You’re welcome to try. Lines are jammed. No calls getting in or out.”
Scott nodded, but dialed the direct line to the dispatch center anyway.
“I’m sorry. Your call cannot be completed at this time,” a recorded voice told him. He scowled at the intercept message, hung up, and dialed again.
Still nothing.
He checked his cell phone again, but there was no change there, either. The display still showed a No Network
symbol.
“Your cell phone working?” he asked.
The guard shook his head. “Nah, man. All the phone are down, looks like. The way this place is hopping, the grid’s probably overloaded. What the hell’s going on out there?”
Scott snorted out a humorless laugh, unsure how to explain it. Plane crash, animals gone berserk and attacking anything and everyone. How do you even begin to relay that?
“A Boeing went down along the main drag,” he said, keeping it simple. “You guys are going to have your hands full for a while.”
The population of the region was low enough that this lone hospital was the primary care facility. There were a handful of doctors’ offices, urgent care centers, and walk-in clinics, but for emergencies this was the one and only. Clearly it wasn’t going to be enough, the way things were heading.
Pushing his way back through the crowd, he found that their group had barely moved. Lauren was looking at her iPhone, impatiently checking it every few seconds.
“Lines are down,” he said. “Mine’s useless, too.”
Hendrix checked her cell, confirming that she, too, had a No Network error.
Scott put his arm around Lauren’s shoulder, pulling her close. She leaned into the hug and squeezed his middle. After a minute, she broke away to check her phone once more. She looked utterly defeated.
“Maybe we should go check on Mom,” she said. The suggestion was offered softly, tentatively, as if she regretted the words but felt compelled to say them nonetheless.
“You need to get checked out,” he said.
“I’m fine, Dad, really.”
“Your mom’s okay,” he said.
“How do you know?”
He let out a windy exhale and shrugged. “I don’t,” he said. “I just figure she’s all right.”
“We don’t know that, though. After what’s been happening today…”
On any other day, Lauren would never have mentioned her mother, let alone make her the focus of conversation. Like his daughter, Scott was not in any great hurry to see, or even discuss, Melisa, but both were bound by some weird sense of necessity.
Mass Hysteria Page 5
