Ferocious

by Jeff Strand

  Rusty grabbed her by the back of the pants and pulled her back up.

  He smacked the closest porcupines away from her, giving her the chance to retrieve her board. The two porcupines that had been under the board were twitching but not walking around, especially the one whose guts were on the outside. Rusty and Mia went back to trying to clear themselves a path forward.

  A quill protruded from the back of Mia's foot. It was just going to have to stay there until the road cleared up enough for her to get a chance to reach down and pluck it out.

  Rusty noticed that Mia was smacking the porcupines with more hostility than she'd been showing before. He didn't blame her. Rusty kept knocking the little shits out of his way. There were now several quills imbedded in his board, so hopefully those were doing an extra bit of damage.

  His arms had already been aching. Now they felt like they were going to pop free with each swing of the board. At least they kept moving forward, so it wouldn't be much longer before...

  He cursed for the several hundredth time that day. Yes, they were moving forward, but the mass of porcupines was moving along with them. They weren't making any progress toward escaping them. The truck was still far away; they couldn't just keep smacking porcupines the entire way there. Rusty would be lucky to keep it going all the way to the curve up ahead.

  "We'll have to run," he told Mia.

  "You can't run."

  "I'll find a hidden reserve of strength somewhere. What we're doing now isn't working."

  "What if you fall?"

  "I probably will. And then I'll die a horrible fucking death. But that's how this is going to play out anyway, so we might as well go for it."

  Mia nodded, causing a couple flecks of blood to come off her eye. "Count of three?"

  "No, you go first."

  "You're not sacrificing yourself, are you?"

  "No, I'm not," Rusty said. "I might get to that point later but I'm not there yet. I just want to see how fast they follow you and see if it's even possible for me to outrun them."

  "You'd better not be sacrificing yourself."

  "I swear I'm not."

  "All right. I'm trusting you."

  Mia hurried forward. She wasn't able to break into a full run, but she vigorously swung the board back and forth and moved much faster than they'd been going. Faster than the porcupines. If she didn't step in the wrong spot, she was going to make it.

  Rusty realized that he was paying more attention to his niece than his own predicament, and he knocked a few porcupines out of the way, adding to the collection of quills lodged in his board. If God was a porcupine, Rusty was going to have a lot to answer for in the afterlife.

  The quill remained stuck in Mia's foot, but it didn't seem to be affecting her stride. Soon there were only a couple of porcupines near her, and she was able to knock both of them away.

  That didn't look so hard.

  Rusty could do this.

  It would be fine.

  It would be easy.

  It might be slightly uncomfortable for a few moments, but nothing a guy like him couldn't handle. He wouldn't fall over. Not a chance. This was going to be very, very easy.

  "C'mon!" said Mia.

  Rusty moved, imagining himself a professional hockey player knocking other players out of the way on the way to the winning goal. This mental image lasted about a second before being replaced by thoughts of him as an exhausted middle-aged man with burnt legs. The pain was staggering. He swung the board as quickly as he could, praying that he wouldn't trip or simply pass out from the agony.

  He accidentally stepped on a porcupine's leg, somehow not getting jabbed by any quills in the process. He kicked the animal out of the way.

  Rusty was getting past the worst of them.

  It was looking as if he might get out of this without falling and dying by being stabbed by a thousand quills.

  He wasn't wobbling. He wasn't even losing his balance.

  Yes, his legs felt like they'd been set on fire again, but he was going to make it out of this particular mess without a disaster.

  Almost there.

  A porcupine's head practically exploded as he smashed the end of the board into it.

  And then...

  ...he made it. All of the porcupines were behind him. If they kept up this pace for just a short while longer, they'd leave those spiny bastards in the dust.

  "Good work, Uncle Rusty," said Mia. She grinned at him. He would never tell her that the grin, accented by blood that had trickled all the way down her face, was extremely creepy.

  They kept moving. Yes, every step felt like a sadistic interrogator was taking a blowtorch to his skin, but pain was temporary. (Unless the pain from the burns was, in fact, quite permanent. He wouldn't worry about that now.) As long as his legs didn't break off at the knees, things were looking good for escaping this situation—by which he meant only the undead porcupines. He had no idea what other crap awaited them.

  Before too long, they'd gone around a curve and the porcupines were no longer visible nor likely to catch up to them. Mia plucked the quill out of her foot, then resumed walking. Rusty decided to leave the quills in his board, which kind of made him feel like a badass.

  "That wasn't so bad," Rusty noted.

  "Certainly could've gone worse. They didn't poke out my other eye."

  "Nope. They sure didn't."

  "Could've happened."

  "Yep."

  "I think it's going to be easy from now on," said Mia. "I think we're just going to stroll on over to the truck. I bet we won't even need the boards—we'll just start the engine and it'll back right out of the mud. Then we'll drive into town, get my bionic eye installed, and have a nice lunch." She sounded like she was on the verge of a hysterical cackle while she spoke, but Rusty was impressed by her ability to keep it together after all they'd been through.

  "Yeah. It's all fine from now on," said Rusty.

  It took about three minutes for his comment to be proven as a lie—long enough that it didn't count as a goofy moment of irony. The pack of wolves, having presumably finished tearing the poor deer to shreds, was back for more prey.

  Rusty and Mia dropped the boards and ran.

  They had no expectations that they could outrun a pack of wolves. Instead, they ran off the road, heading for the nearest large tree. Rusty was amazed by what a sudden surge of adrenaline could do; he couldn't even feel his legs. Minutes ago he could barely move his arms, but they sure as hell worked now, as he and Mia frantically climbed up the same tree.

  A wolf's jaws bit down upon his leg, hitting wood instead of flesh. They climbed a few more feet, getting themselves out of reach as long as these wolves didn't suddenly acquire the ability to scale trees, which didn't seem one hundred percent out of the question.

  Eight wolves. The one whose neck Rusty had broken earlier wasn't with them. They walked around the tree, snarling.

  "So," said Mia, "I guess we get to starve to death."

  "We'd die of dehydration first."

  "We've got bottled water."

  "Not enough to outlast dying of starvation."

  "So, I guess we get to die of dehydration."

  Rusty didn't want to succumb to nihilism, but that did sound reasonable.

  He hoped Mia didn't notice that there were birds circling above them.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Mia did indeed notice the birds circling overhead. She cringed and placed a hand over her injured eye.

  "It'll be okay," Rusty assured her.

  The branches they were on seemed pretty sturdy, so they didn't have to worry about them snapping and sending them plunging down into the eight slavering wolf mouths below. Aside from the whole food and water situation, and the knowledge that no help was on its way, they could stay here in relative comfort for quite some time.

  Mia removed her hand from her face and brushed something off her leg.

  "What?" Rusty asked.

  "Ants."

  Yep. Ther
e were ants on his branch, too. He brushed off as many as he could, doing it quickly in an effort not to get stung. They spent a couple of productive minutes getting rid of the insects, sending many of them hurtling to their deaths. Just out of curiosity, Rusty squished one's head underneath his thumb. The rest of the ant did not continue to move. That was nice.

  Then one of the birds dive-bombed them.

  Rusty and Mia both covered their faces. The bird flew right past them, then did it again. Rusty wanted to knock it out of the sky, but he didn't want to leave an eye uncovered with which to see the bird, so they settled for keeping their faces covered and hoping that the bird would go away.

  The bird landed on Rusty's hand and pecked at his wrist.

  He smashed it against the tree.

  He dropped the squished bird to the ground. The wolves left it alone.

  Rusty wiped the bird's guts off on his jeans. Since much of these pants were burned away, he doubted he would be wearing them again, so some smeared goo didn't really matter.

  The other birds stayed away. Rusty hoped that they'd witnessed what happened to their friend and would spread the word that these two treed humans were not to be messed with.

  He brushed away more ants.

  "They're good protein if we can't get down," Mia noted.

  "We can't drink them, though."

  "Right, right. Dehydration. Joy."

  "The wolves might leave and they might not. Personally, I'm less concerned about dying of thirst than falling asleep—no way will I balance myself well enough not to drop right out of this tree. And if they don't leave until nightfall, we're stuck trying to walk to the truck in the dark, which is why we stayed so long in the cabin in the first place."

  "So what's your point?" asked Mia. Rusty didn't take it personally that she sounded pissy.

  "My point is that, as far as I'm concerned, we're just resting. After we catch our breath, it's time to start dismembering some wolves."

  "How?"

  "It's no different than what we did on the front porch, except that it's harder to maneuver and we don't have a cabin burning behind us. As long as we can reach further with the axe than they can reach with their claws, we'll eventually win. And maybe I'll get the chainsaw started again."

  "If you get the chainsaw started again, one of us will probably lop off the branch we're sitting on."

  "That sounds exactly right. Still, I think we can do it."

  "What about jumping from tree to tree?"

  "I won't be jumping from tree to tree, sorry. It's just not gonna happen. I won't stop you from trying, but your Uncle Rusty knows his limits."

  Mia looked over at the nearest tree. "Yeah, we'd break a few bones trying it. And I'd miss completely. It was a stupid idea."

  "The only stupid ideas are the ones you don't share."

  "What?"

  "No, I was thinking of 'the only stupid questions are the ones you don't ask.' It's something teachers say to make kids feel better about asking stupid questions. There are lots of stupid ideas that you should keep to yourself. Yours wasn't one of them, though—if we can't get rid of the wolves, we may very well have to jump from tree to tree."

  "The wolves would just follow us."

  "Yes, they would. It'll be a really bad time in our lives."

  "How long do you need to rest?" Mia asked.

  "If no more birds attack, I'll be good in a couple of minutes."

  "Do you want me not to talk during that time?"

  "Yeah, let's just sit here. I mean, call out a warning if you need to, obviously."

  "Okay."

  They sat silently on their branches. Rusty thought he might have heard a slight cracking sound beneath him, but decided that he'd imagined it.

  A couple of minutes later, he didn't feel particularly rested, but the aches and pains weren't going to go away before nightfall, so it was time to act. Now the trick was to get the chainsaw out of his backpack without dropping it or falling off the branch.

  Mia took out the axe.

  Rusty successfully got the chainsaw out of his backpack without a moment of bumbling incompetence. He placed it on his lap, intelligently pointing the blade away from him instead of toward him. He unscrewed the gas cap and peered inside.

  "Is it out?" Mia asked.

  "No. There's plenty."

  "Why won't it start?"

  "I don't know. Maybe it's clogged with wolf fur."

  The blade was looking pretty nasty. Rusty used his index finger to try to get as much gook off of it as he could. As he did so, he had an irrational fear that the chainsaw motor would roar to life, slicing his finger right off, but that wasn't how chainsaws worked and consciously he knew he'd be fine.

  "Let's see how this goes," he said, tugging the cord. The chainsaw did not start. He tried again. Still no luck. So it wasn't that anything was clogged, it was that the chainsaw was a piece of crap and he should've bought a new one much sooner, but he was a cheap bastard and didn't like to replace things until they were irreparably broken.

  He continued to tug the cord, being as careful as possible not to lose his balance in the process. "Death by deer" would've been a humiliating way to go, but it couldn't compare to "death by slipping while tugging a chainsaw cord." The chainsaw would make the wolf-dismembering process go much more efficiently, and he didn't want to give up until he was positive that the chainsaw was good for nothing but dropping on a wolf's head.

  He'd lost track of how many times he pulled the cord when the engine sputtered.

  That was good. He could work with a sputter. A sputter meant there was still hope.

  He kept tugging. Mia obviously thought it was time to accept the harsh reality of the chainsaw's demise, but she didn't say anything, and Rusty was determined to keep going. He wasn't at the point of whispering sweet nothings to the chainsaw to encourage it to start, but he was getting close.

  During this time, they discussed their plan. It was very straightforward: climb down as low as they could get while remaining out of reach of the wolves, then fuck up the wolves as much as possible from there. It would take a while, but as long as they didn't misjudge the distance or tumble from the branch, they should be okay, unless the branch broke or another bird attacked them or zombie squirrels emerged from higher branches or the tree caught fire.

  The chainsaw started.

  Rusty wondered why neither of them had suggested that they should start the chainsaw after climbing down to the proper branch. Then he remembered: they were exhausted and stressed out and not inclined to make wise decisions.

  They climbed down a couple of branches. It was tricky with a roaring chainsaw but Rusty made it without a mishap.

  Three of the wolves stretched up to their full heights and swiped their claws at them.

  A swing of the chainsaw and one of the paws was gone.

  The process of awkwardly taking out eight wolves with an axe and a chainsaw while staying out of their reach was not a speedy one. There was a great deal of missing involved. And more than one close call, including one where Rusty would have pitched forward and fallen onto the wolves had Mia not grabbed and steadied him in time.

  But they had nowhere else to be. And the pile of moving wolf parts grew larger and larger.

  Their greatest asset was the wolves' lack of fear. If the wolves had thought to themselves, "Shit, this is working out poorly for us, let's move back out of the way of those weapons and wait for our victims to fall out of the tree," Rusty and Mia would've been screwed. Instead, they continued to claw at them, even amidst severed paws, limbs, and parts of heads. Eventually only seven wolves were actively mobile, then six, then five, and so on until Rusty finally got the last one in the front left shoulder, slicing off its leg and causing it to topple to the ground, thrashing around but unable to walk.

  Rusty and Mia each breathed a sigh of relief. Rusty shut off the chainsaw.

  The problem now was that the bottom of the tree was piled high with writhing wolf parts. The wolves co
uldn't come up after them, or follow them along the road, but Rusty wasn't sure how they were going to get down without having to wade through them. There were plenty of snapping jaws and swiping claws down there.

  They might have to consider jumping to the next tree.

  "No," said Mia.

  "What?"

  "I see the way you're looking at the other tree."

  "We need a way out."

  "One of us could break a leg."

  "It was your idea in the first place."

  "And now I've had time to think about it. If we jump to the next tree, at least one of us will break a leg. Probably you—no offense."

  "None taken."

  "So we need to figure out something else."

  "You mean like jumping down into the wolf parts pile and hoping for the best?"

  "I was thinking more about being smart about it and prepared."

  Rusty glanced down. Some of the wolves were still thrashing around pretty vigorously. Rusty would feel perfectly safe if he were standing twenty feet away, but jumping down amidst those bodies seemed really freaking dangerous.

  But, yeah, he'd break his leg for sure if he tried to leap to the other tree. And then Mia would have to shoot him like a horse.

  Instead of leaping to another tree, they could try to jump as far out as possible, hoping to make it past the worst of the wolf remnants. But Rusty could see that turning out very badly. He'd jump, his knee would pop, and he'd fall face-first into the open mouth of a severed wolf head. He'd be chewed up and swallowed without even the consolation prize of knowing that he provided nutrition.

  The other option was: climb down. That made them the most vulnerable to the dismembered wolves, but was the least likely to leave them with broken legs, and thus utterly boned.

  That was basically it, unless they counted "Hang out in the tree awaiting the merciful release of a slow agonizing death" or "See if a helicopter shows up" as options.

  "We just have to climb down there," said Rusty.

  "Yeah."

  This was going to suck, but they'd done a great many things over the past few hours that sucked, and this was going to suck less than a couple of them. "One at a time, or both at the same time?"