Rotten Little Animals

by Kevin Shamel

  “No! Roadblock!” shouted the bear. He pressed his foot to the gas. “Put the mask on me, Fumy! I’m goin’ through!”

  Ahead of them, on a curve in the road just before a bridge crossing a wide, shallow river, two Idaho State Police cars were parked nose-to-nose blocking the highway. Troopers stood behind the cars, and two more troopers stood behind two more cruisers parked on either side of the road.

  The skunk shoved the mask on the bear, yelling, “Get a camera up here and film this action!”

  “Everybody get down!” Happy shouted, shifting gears.

  The bus accelerated.

  Mark awoke and they filled him in by screaming to shut up and get down. Then from The Fumigator, “Get up here and film this!”

  Most everyone but Mark got on the floor or ducked behind seats. The bats running the camera perched on a seat back, balancing with their flapping wings. Mark duck-walked down the aisle and held his camera up with his wingtips, hoping that it was pointed straight at the action. He slid behind the driver’s seat.

  Bullets began clinking into the bus. A star of broken glass appeared on the windshield.

  “Happy?” screamed The Fumigator.

  “I’m good!” yelled the bear through clenched jaws as more bullets spattered into the bus.

  The troopers unloaded as many rounds as they could as the bus bore down on them, but neither they nor their cars were a match for the speeding monster and its maniacal bear driver. The cops behind the blockade dove out of the way just as the bus tore into the cars, ripping each cruiser nearly in half.

  The troopers on the sides of the highway shot at the retreating bus before jumping into their cars and attempting to maneuver past the burning wreckage of the roadblock cruisers. The location of the roadblock and the position of the wreckage made crossing the bridge on the highway impossible.

  The burning cruisers exploded as the bus chugged slowly up the highway just past the river, headed over a mountain pass. The animals watched the cops hop around trying to figure out a way around their flaming roadblock as the bus whined its bullet-ridden way up the mountain.

  The ants cheered.

  The bats took to the air.

  “Is everyone okay?” asked The Fumigator. “Anyone shot?”

  The bus made it to the top of the mountain, and Happy eased back in his seat as they started down the other side. “I am,” he answered. “Just a little.” He pointed to his neck.

  The skunk climbed his seat and gently peeled off the Bob mask. She found the wound. Gingerly, she pulled the bear’s coarse hair out of the way. He shifted gears and grunted.

  “Happy?” asked the skunk.

  “Yes?”

  “How far to Yellowstone?” She ruffed the fur around the wound.

  He grunted and looked at the odometer. “About thirty—yeeeeoowch!”

  The Fumigator pulled the chunk of windshield from the bear’s neck. “No bullet,” she told him, holding up the glass.

  Happy smiled. “We’re almost there,” he said.

  Fifteen minutes later, Happy swung the bus off the highway at an old rest area. He drove behind the decrepit toilets and onto a crumbling old road that slid off into the trees—the secret back entrance to Yellowstone.

  “Are we really going to Old Faithful?” Mark asked Happy.

  The bear turned to the camera. “No, you dumbass.”

  “But we’re going to a geyser.”

  The bear sighed and rolled his eyes. He cranked the steering wheel to round a sharp corner. “Yes, we’re going to a geyser.”

  “Cool,” said Mark. “What’s it called?”

  Happy growled, “For Gaia’s sake! It’s called Devil Whale’s Blow Hole. It’s a secret geyser that mostly only animals know about. The bison and eagles guard it from humans as best they can. Now get that camera out of my face! I’m trying to drive!”

  Mark turned off the camera and strode to the back of the bus.

  Cage watched the tall white bird walk past. The boy was having flashbacks from his time with the first film crew. He sat in his seat and watched the back of the bear’s furry brown head. He cried silently, remembering Filthy Pig and Itsy and the toilet room.

  Like most everyone else, Cage soon drifted into a sleeping sort of daze as trees whipped past dark windows and the flapping of shredded tires against the wheel-wells beat a throbbing rhythm through the sides of the bullet-puckered bus.

  Just as Cage was falling asleep, a voice whispered in his ear suggesting that he visit the toilet. He stood and surveyed the surrounding seats. All the animals were sleeping or staring out the windows. Even the bats hung from the rails of the luggage racks, bobbing with the bus in their sleep. He couldn’t tell who’d spoken to him.

  Cage went to the toilet. When he did, he found a note taped to the mirror. It pointed him to a package under the sink.

  Half an hour later, Happy called over his shoulder, “We’re almost there! I’m going to pull over and we’ll walk the rest of the way.”

  Once the animals were unloaded with minimal filming equipment, Happy led them through the trees on a barely visible trail toward a gently sloping ridge.

  As they started off, The Fumigator said to the boy, “Don’t try and escape. You’re surrounded by animals. Wild animals. And they hate you more than we do.”

  Cage glared down at the skunk. He thought about kicking her, but stayed his kicking foot with all his will. Instead he said, “Whatever you say, stinky. If you hate me so much, why go through all this trouble to save me?”

  “Because you’re our meal ticket, kid. You’re our way into the big Big Time.”

  “But there are a thousand boys like me.”

  “Millions,” said the skunk, “but only one you.”

  “Here we are,” announced the bear.

  The animals and boy walked into a clearing in the forest. A mound of colorful mud rose twenty feet from the forest floor in step-like bubbled formations. Steaming water poured down the sides of the geyser-built mud tower.

  “We meet your friends here?” The Crab Formerly Known as King sidled over to the stream of geyser water surrounding the formation like a moat. He dipped a claw and the tip turned bright red. “Yeowch!” he screamed.

  “We meet my friends here,” Happy answered, shaking his big bear head.

  Just then, a ground squirrel appeared on the first step of the formation. He yelled, “Send the boy up here. We want to be sure he’s real. And that he is who you say he is.”

  “Noah? Is that you?” Happy took a step toward the geyser.

  “It’s me,” said the ground squirrel. “Now send up the kid.”

  Happy turned and snatched the boy by his arms. He swung Cage toward the mud tower. “Go up there,” he said.

  The bats flew a circle above the boy, and then shot off in the opposite direction, chasing after a swarm of grasshoppers. The ants stood in formation behind the crab and the skunk.

  Cage went up the side of the mud tower, slipping and crying out about it being hot.

  “Follow me,” said the ground squirrel when Cage reached the top.

  The boy turned and looked back at the gathered animals.

  “Go on!” yelled the bear.

  Cage walked over the mound and out of sight.

  Happy said to The Fumigator, “He’ll be right back. Those guys are above-board, fair, square and their word is good. They just want to be sure he is who we say he is.”

  “Why do they care?” asked the skunk.

  “What?”

  “Why do they care who he is? Aren’t they just supposed to get us and our equipment across the border and set us up on the other side? Didn’t we pay them to not ask questions? Why do they even have to know about—”

  A rumbling, rushing sound cut her off.

  The crab skittered up the bear’s leg, “What’s that?!” he yelled.

  Water shot from behind the mud tower. A great gush of boiling water. It blasted thirty feet into the air—a fountain as thick as six bears
the size of Happy. The animals scattered as magma-hot water poured down on them.

  Even over their squeals, roars, chitters and swearing of surprise, every animal could hear the shrieking of a human boy.

  The boiled bodies of ground squirrels thumped down around the actors. The steaming water stopped shooting from the mound before them, but continued to burn as it rained down. The animals heard a horrible keening from the other side of the mud tower.

  The bats came flying back and landed in the trees facing the geyser.

  The Crab Formerly Known as King was dead. His claws held him fast to the back of Happy’s hind leg, but he was gone—boiled red. Happy shucked him off.

  The ants were boiled, drowned little dams in the rivulets of geyser water that ran toward lower ground, or buried.

  Cage came clamoring over the mound of mud.

  The burning rain subsided.

  Even from as far away as they were, the animals could see their boy-star was ruined. Skin hung off his face and arms in strips. His shirt was in tattered wet shreds at his waist. The boy’s chest was burned open. Bones in his ribcage were visible. He was missing the hair from the front of his head.

  As he stumbled closer, the shocked animals could see that his eyelids were gone and his wide blue eyes darted back and forth as he howled in agony through his melted lips.

  Another rumbling sound came from the mound.

  The surviving animals went berserk in the steaming aftermath of the geyser’s eruption—especially with the prospect of another coming. They turned away from the mound of mud and fled.

  Mark dropped his camera at his feet and flew over the trees toward the bus. The bats followed.

  The Fumigator sprayed her scent across Happy’s chest in panic as she ran and rammed herself into a snapped-off tree branch. It went straight through her eye and into her little skunk brain. She died shooting her stinky juice in an arc during her death spasm. It squirted into Happy’s eyes as he turned from the horrifying scene and fled.

  The burning-eyed bear charged through the forest, bouncing around like a huge stinky pinball. He finally made it out of the trees and ran straight into the bus that Mark was driving crazily down the secret road. Mark crashed the bus into the trees, pinning the bear between the bus and an ancient white pine. The bird got out and walked around to the front of the bus to investigate.

  The angry bear was crushed.

  With his dying breath, Happy said, “Fucking skunk blinded me with her stink juice.”

  Since the bus was still running, Mark dug around until he found a siphoning hose in the luggage compartment. He attached it to the exhaust pipe and fed it into the vent for the restroom. He’d convinced the bats to hide in there, and he’d locked them all in.

  Mark had to smash a few bats who tried to wiggle out of the vent, but their bodies made it easier to stuff the vent closed and tape it shut. The rest of the bats went to sleep and never woke up. Which is an okay way for a bat to die. Except for being in the bus restroom. You shouldn’t wish that sort of death on your worst enemy, really.

  With the bats dead or dying, Mark flew back to the geyser.

  He found Cage sitting beside a rat he knew only by reputation and a Steller’s Jay he knew too well. The boy was stripping latex makeup off his face.

  “It stinks around here,” Mark said upon landing.

  “What a bitch, huh?” said Dirty Bird, hooking a wing toward the skewered skunk.

  “You said it.” Mark hugged his cousin.

  The egret turned to Cage. “I’m sorry for what we put you through. I was on your side all along, thanks to my cousin Dirty and his mad texting skills.” He held up his phone.

  Cage smiled, tossing latex into a bag. He pulled on his dry shirt. “Thank you, Mark,” he answered. “And thank you, Dirty Bird. And you, Julio, thank you for your pyrotechnics. And for saving me. It made me feel good to know you trusted me when I found that note.”

  The rat looked up at the kid and smiled, “Technically that was hydrotechnics. Would have been even better if we’d had more time to set up, but the bear kept his mouth shut about the exact location ‘til nearly too late. It was a bitch heating all that water on time—not to mention rounding up all those fucking ground squirrels. Aw, you’re welcome, kid. Of course I trust you. I told you the biggest secret on Earth, and you kept it. You are a rare animal, Cage. And now you’re an actor.”

  Dirty Bird bounced on one foot, “Don’t forget the dead ground squirrel puppet show! I play a pretty mean ground squirrel!”

  Mark looked around at the dead animals littering the clearing. “What are we going to do now?” he asked.

  Dirty Bird looked at Julio and Cage. “Well, first things first. Martini party!” He put a wing around the rat and one around the egret’s leg.

  The jay cocked his head at Cage, “At my new nearby cabin, of course. Don’t worry Cage, the closest animals are pirates, hermits and religious nuts. None of them will have ever even heard of you. We’ll live the simple life. For a while, anyway.”

  Cage asked, “But what about the bus? Won’t there be an investigation? Won’t the police come looking for us?”

  “We’re all dead!” answered Dirty. “I’ve been dead since you and your dad shot up the Opera House—there were so many bodies in there, a third of them were never identified. They went by invitations and who turned up missing. Julio was declared dead after the zombie massacre, because Stinkin’ didn’t want to admit that he’d left. Mark just died in a geyser accident with you and the rest of the crew.”

  Mark added, “Let me go unhook the asphyxiation tube from out of the bathroom vent and they’ll blame Steven for smashing the bus into the bear and locking the bats in the bathroom—his little overdosed body is somewhere in there. Be right back.” He flew off.

  The two animals and the boy stood in silence for a few minutes. Dirty Bird pulled his flask out from under his wing and passed it to Julio.

  Julio took a drink and said, “I’m really glad I came back.” He passed the flask to Cage.

  Dirty Bird nodded.

  “Me, too. But where are our bodies?” the boy asked, taking a pull from the flask.

  Dirty took the flask and tucked it back under his wing. “This is Yellowstone, Cage. There’s wolves, coyotes, eagles, ravens, bears, bigfoot—you name it. Your bodies are eaten. Now follow us, walkers!” Dirty flew into the sky.

  Mark joined him, rising from the ruins of the bus.

  Cage made his way through the forest toward Dirty Bird’s secret cabin with Julio at his side—following the birds to his first animal martini party.

  Kevin Shamel writes bizarro fiction for Eraserhead Press. If you liked this book, check out his next one: Island of the Super People. Kevin loves animals, even when they’re being rotten. He’d like to be a bird some day, and then a tree.