Nasty Little F___ers-Kindle

by McAfee, David

  Harper’s scream shut off all thoughts of what to do with Jared’s body.

  ***

  Janice stepped out of the hot shower and into the warm, humid air of the woods, which felt cool after standing in the steamy water for twenty minutes. She wrapped a towel around her body and another around her hair, grabbed her clothes from the stoop outside the stall, and walked back to the camp. She was tired, but she wouldn’t go to bed yet. She still had some work to do before the night was over, and she still held out hope that Colby might return early. Her exercise in the shower was nice, but it was no substitute for the real thing.

  And Colby was, without a doubt, the real thing.

  She sighed and ducked into her tent, trying to keep her mind off her new lover. They’d only known each other for the two weeks they’d been on site together, but already she was thinking of reasons to stay in New England after the survey. After all, some of the best universities were in the area, and it’s not like she had tenure back in Arizona. Would it be that big a deal to shift locales and continue to work around here? She had enough money saved up to sustain her for a while, if necessary, but ideally she’d be able to land a new position at one of the colleges in Maine or Massachusetts before she left Phoenix.

  Slow down, Janice, she told herself. You are out of control.

  True, they’d had some nice nights together, but would Colby even want her sticking around after the survey? It was possible his attraction was due to the fact that she was, quite literally, the only woman for miles and miles.

  No, she realized. I’ve seen the way he looks at me. There’s something there.

  Something. Definitely. Just what that something was, she still wasn’t sure. But would it really be so bad to find out? She looked around at the woods, trying to picture how they would look under a blanket of pure white snow. Would it be like the postcards she saw in the Hallmark store at Christmas time? Beautiful, hushed, and somehow reverent, as if the whole world was sleeping peacefully? What would Colby look like with a winter growth of beard and wearing a flannel coat? Something plaid, maybe, with a matching toboggan and some fur-lined boots…

  Janice snapped herself to attention. It wasn’t like her to daydream so much when there was work to be done. She shook her head again, laughing inside at her own schoolgirl nonsense. Whatever happened with Colby, she would find out when they finished the survey, and not before.

  All the same, when they got back to Bangor, she intended to check some of the local universities for openings.

  She towel-dried her hair, then the rest of her body. When she finished, she put on a fresh set of clothes. But as she put her soiled laundry in the Hefty bag she kept in the tent for that very purpose, she noticed something odd.

  The panties she’d worn all day were missing.

  Chapter Four

  Bock and Colby ran through the trees, looking for Harper. They followed the sound of Harper’s scream until it cut off abruptly, at which time they had to resort to looking for visual clues. After five long minutes following a trail of broken twigs and shifted pine needles the two men found the spot where Harper relieved himself; his piss showed up shiny and wet in the moonlight on the southernmost side of a pale birch trunk, but other than the fresh urine there was no sign of Harper himself. Colby circled the tree, checking the ground around it for signs of a struggle. Nothing. Like Jared the night before, he seemed to have just disappeared.

  Colby sniffed the air. There was something mixed in with the smell of Harper’s piss and the earthen, woodsy smell of the forest, but he couldn’t make it out. Something musky, like an animal, but he couldn’t tell what. Also mixed into the smells was something else, something copper. Something almost like.

  “Blood,” he said. “I smell blood.”

  “Something extremely fucked up is going on,” Bock noted.

  “Really? What was your first clue?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “Do all biologists use such bad language?”

  “Are all Marines such dickheads?” Bock retorted.

  “Ex-marine.”

  “Yeah, well...biologists are people too, you know.” Bock harrumphed, and returned to examining the area around the tree. Colby could have told him it was useless; but decided to let him figure it out on his own. He turned away from the tree and started back toward their camp.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Bock asked.

  “I’m going back to camp,” Colby replied. “Whatever happened to Harper, I sure as Hell ain’t waiting around until it happens to me. Besides, it’s too dark for us to see anything, but there are plenty of other things in the woods that can see just fine at night. Big things. Hungry things, you get me? I don’t want to run into one, do you?”

  Bock looked thoughtful for a second. “Wait up.”

  They walked back through the woods toward camp, a distance of about thirty yards or so. Colby took the lead, holding his pistol down and toward the horizon. Bock held the rifle, pointing the business end of the AR-15 toward the treetops. Colby couldn’t help but wonder at the distance Harper had gone to relieve himself. Apparently the man didn’t want to be disturbed while he took a leak. Colby had a feeling that if the man had been about twenty yards less modest he might not have vanished. He determined then and there that if he had to piss, he was going to do it right at the edge of camp with his .45 in one hand and his dick in the other. Fuck Bock if he didn’t like it, although truth be told Bock would probably do the same thing. The man had some common sense and some mettle, unlike the rest of the group.

  When they got back within the light of the campfire, Bock walked over to the tent and opened the flap, then stepped inside.

  “You don’t seriously think we’re staying here tonight, do you?” Colby asked.

  “Why not?” Bock asked. “Whatever’s out there already knows we’re here.”

  “My point exactly.”

  “But if we go out into the woods, especially in the dark, how are we going to see it before it takes us, too?”

  Colby had to admit, Bock had a point. In addition, the campfire would deter more animals than it would attract. For one thing, it would destroy the night vision of any predator used to hunting by moonlight, just as it did his own. “Fine, but only one of us sleeps at a time.”

  “Suits me,” Bock replied. “I’ll go first.”

  Before Colby had the chance to argue, especially since he’d been up keeping an eye on the camp long before the other two awoke, Bock looked at the ground by the front of the tent and froze.

  “Wait a second,” he said, his eyes wide as oranges. “Where’s Jared?”

  Then Colby noticed it, too, and swore under his breath. How could he have missed something so obvious? He should have seen it the moment he walked into camp. Jared’s body was gone. Just…fucking gone. A few puddles of grubs were all that remained in the spot where Jared fell. The little bastards were spreading out from the impression of Jared’s body, probably looking for more food. Colby raised his leg and stomped on a pile of them. Then he stomped again, and again, and again. Soon he was jumping up and down on the piles of larvae and swearing at them.

  “Mother fucking little Bastards! Cock gobbling bitches! Take that you little fucks!” When he couldn’t think of anymore swears or curses he just grunted and continued to stomp his feet, pulverizing the grubs under his boots.

  Bock reached over from beside the tent and grabbed his arm. “All right, Sarge,” he said as he pulled Colby toward the tent. “Dude, they’re dead. You got them.”

  Colby shook his head, trying to clear away the images of Jared’s grub-covered body walking into the clearing. He looked up at Bock, nodded, and took a deep breath. He held it in for a count of ten and let it out slow, like a yoga instructor.

  “Sorry, Bock,” he said. “The shit with Jared’s body walking around…I guess it just got to me.”

  Bock nodded. “I’d be worried if it didn’t.”

  Colby nodded. He had killed men in the militar
y. Plenty of them. But never anything like that, and never a civilian. Never mind the fact that the civilian in question had chewed off his own hand and probably didn’t have much longer to live, anyway. Never mind that the guy was trying to get to the men under his protection. He’d shot someone in the head. A geek. A small, slight computer geek who probably couldn’t have beaten him arm wrestling if Colby let him use both arms and a leg, to boot. That shit was messed up.

  “Maybe I should take the first watch,” Bock said.

  Colby handed him the .45, not about to disagree, and clambered into the tent. He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep, guessing that every time he closed his eyes he’d see Jared, covered in insect larvae and happily munching away at his own wrist. Or Jared’s head expanding in a cloud of scarlet goop. Nope, no way he’d get to sleep after that shit.

  He was wrong, though.

  ***

  Moretz sat in his tent with the light off, preferring to be in the dark so everyone else might think he was asleep. While he sat, he ran the soft panties through his fingers. Cotton, he noted disdainfully. He would have preferred she wear her satin panties, the bright pink ones he’d seen in her bag the last time he was in her tent. The time she and Colby went for a walk in the woods and stayed gone for three hours. He’d almost taken the silk underwear then, but they were too clean… too fresh. Sterile. He wanted something she’d worn, something that didn’t smell like laundry soap.

  He held the cotton fabric under his nose and inhaled, breathing her scent deep into him. His erection was back, and throbbing painfully under the tight fabric of his khakis. He unbuckled his belt, unzipped his pants, and pulled his cock out into the open air, marveling at how good it felt to free it from the confines of his pants.

  He should go to her. Right now. This minute, and confess. He’d tell her everything; how he followed her, couldn’t take his eyes off her, and how he thought about only her while he masturbated. He should go.

  But she was working. She’d left her own tent and went back to the large computer tent to pound out some more data. He couldn’t walk out there with his dick hanging out; the rest of the team would know. And he didn’t want to share what he and Janice had with the rest of the team. Not yet. For now, it was just he and Janice. The way it should be.

  He took another deep breath, inhaling the scent of Janice’s panties, allowing the fabric to brush his cheeks. Just like a lover’s touch. He ran his tongue up and down the inside of the crotch, tasting where she had been and imagining what it would feel like to put his face between her legs. Would she be soft? Wet? Would she smell like lilacs? How long would it take her to come?

  Moretz shuddered at the image, then reached down and began to stoke himself for the second time that day. He kept one hand on his shaft and the other on the panties, holding them under his nose and breathing deep as he stroked faster and faster.

  Chapter Five

  Bock was supposed to wake him up two hours before sunrise so he could take another shift, but the next morning when Colby woke up, the biologist was nowhere to be seen. Colby glanced at his watch. 6:15 AM. Almost an hour past sunrise. He stepped out of the tent and checked the big rock where Bock pulled guard duty, then checked behind the tent. Finding nothing, he checked inside the tent to make sure Bock hadn’t snuck in last night and gone to sleep when he was supposed to be taking watch. In his hurry to get out of the tent, he could have missed him lying there. Unlikely, but not impossible. Yet there was no sign of him anywhere.

  “Bock!” he yelled. “Bock, you there?”

  “Yeah,” Bock’s voice came from the trees to the right. “Just had to take a leak.”

  “You could have said something.”

  “Sheesh, cut the umbilical, would you?”

  “That’s not funny.”

  Bock stepped through the brush and into the small clearing, zipping as he went. “I know, sorry. I’m just tired.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me for my shift?”

  Bock looked at his shoes, and didn’t answer right away.

  “You fell asleep, didn’t you?” Colby asked.

  Bock nodded.

  “Damn it, what if Harper came back while you were out cold? Or worse, Jared?”

  “I couldn’t help it. I was tired.”

  “Shit.” Colby looked around the clearing. There wasn’t a grub in sight. In the firepit, some of the coals still glowed in the early morning light. “We were damn lucky. At least the fire didn’t go completely out.”

  He looked back to the spot where Jared died, then out in the direction where Harper went to pee. Both gone, now. Men under his protection. One dead, the other…who knows? Colby looked at his boots, which still held bits of dried bug guts. His mind went back to Kuwait, to another time when he failed to protect people who counted on him. The constricting pain in his chest, which had mostly left him alone for the last five years or so, was back, and all too familiar. Two men gone, now. Not just one. God damn it, Anzer was going to shit a brick.

  “Fuck him,” Colby said.

  “Fuck who?” Bock asked.

  Colby looked up, surprised to realize he’d spoken aloud. “Nothing. Let’s just get back to the others.”

  “We’re not going to look for Harper?”

  “You can look for him if you want, but I’m getting the hell out of here.” He started packing up the camp, wanting to move out as soon as possible.

  “What about breakfast?” Bock asked.

  Colby started to tell him where to stick breakfast, but a rumble from his belly reminded him that he hadn’t eaten yet, either. Not good. The first order of survival is sustenance. “All right,” he said. “Let’s have a quick bite and then get going.”

  Bock nodded and sat in front of the fire. When he turned toward the fire and started poking the coals, Colby noticed something moving around on the man’s neck. He leaned over to get a better look and swore under his breath. A fucking grub!

  “Hang on, Bock,” he said.

  “What? What is it?”

  Colby reached over and plucked the thing from Bock’s neck. Like before, it took a small piece of flesh with it.

  “Hey,” Bock said. “What the hell was that?”

  Colby showed him the grub, then squished it between his fingers. “This thing was chewing on your neck.”

  Bock stared at the flatted grub. “Weird,” he said. “I didn’t feel a thing. They must have some sort of anesthetic properties in their saliva.”

  “Must have.” At the time, it didn’t occur to Colby that one of those same grubs had bitten him the night before, and he certainly felt it. It hurt! Just one more little detail he probably shouldn’t have missed.

  ***

  Janice crawled out of her tent, her bladder screaming. The travel clock next to her pillow read 5:45 AM. She’d just woken from a dream in which she and Colby were running for their lives, but she hadn’t known from what. All she could tell was in the dream, Colby’s bare chest looked huge and strong, like two steel plates over a washboard.

  Even in my dreams, that man is hot, she thought, smiling.

  She walked to the temporary “bathroom,” which wasn’t much more than a Porta-Potty, in a bit of a hurry. Her need to pee had reached an almost painful level, and by the time she got in, slammed the door, and sat down she thought she would piss in her pants.

  Now that’s sexy, she thought. Nothing like coming home to a woman with piss in her pants. At least she made it out of the tent. They didn’t have the equipment to wash the sleeping bags out here, so she’d have had to either live with the smell of her own urine or drag the thing out to the stream and wash it by hand, which would of course have required some explaining.

  Yeah, guys...I peed the bed. Oh, that would go over well. Edison would never let her forget it.

  She finished her business and opened the door to the potty. A dark figure stood in the doorway, looming over the entrance. Janice took in a breath, ready to scream, when the figure shifted and she saw it was Moretz.
She let the breath out in one long, relieved sigh. Then she stomped forward and put her face right in front of his.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Moretz? You scared the shit out of mppph!”

  Her tirade was interrupted by Moretz’s lips as they pressed against her own. For a moment her mind went blank. What was going on? Was Moretz really sticking his tongue in her mouth? Then she felt his hand on her breast and it snapped her out of her stupor. She slapped his hand away and pulled back.

  “What the hell? What are you doing?”

  “Shhhh,” he said. “It’s all right. The others are still asleep. It’s just you and me, there’s no need to pretend anymore.” He approached her again, reaching for her waist.

  She stepped back. “Listen, Moretz, I don’t know what the hell you’re on, but you need to back off.”

  Moretz smiled. “Oh, I get it. You like the game. Okay, then. If you insist.” he approached again, this time much faster, and she was not able to twist aside in time. Moretz wrapped his arms around her upper body, pinning her arms to her sides, and started to kiss her neck.

  “Moretz,” Janice said. “This isn’t funny.” She struggled to break free, but he held on like a demon.

  “Shhhhh,” he replied, and kissed her throat again. “You don’t want to wake the others.”

  “I’m warning you, Moretz.”

  “It’s okay, Janice. I know you want me.” He ran his tongue along the nape of her neck. “I want you, too. But we’ll play any game you want.” He nibbled her earlobe.

  That does it. She brought her knee up, hard into Moretz’s groin.

  His grip tightened for a split second, then went slack. She shoved away from him, breaking his hold on her and stepping away, her leg ready for another shot if he came at her again. She needn’t have worried. Moretz didn’t come after her.

  Groaning, his eyes clenched shut, Moretz slid to his knees, then toppled sideways into the dirt. His hands clutched his groin, and the veins on his neck stood out in sharp relief. He moaned and she thought she saw tears squeezing out of his eyes.