The fairies looked up from dining on the corpses of the girls when Diana climbed out of the car, but then resumed feeding – either content with their kills or deciding she was more trouble than she was worth.
Diana walked over to the pickup truck. She considered bypassing it and going straight to the good stuff in Orchard Hardware, but there was no sense in taking chances between the truck and there. The door was unlocked. She helped herself to the Remington twelve gauge inside and jammed in seven shells from the box behind the back seat.
The nine feeding fairies glanced at her again, hardly pausing between mouthfuls, but as Diana strode up the sidewalk toward them, the shotgun rising in her hands, they did stop eating and rose into a wary crouch, chittering with apparent concern to each other. Twenty feet away, Diane blew a hole through the nearest fairy's chest. The creatures jumped a little, but surprisingly, didn't scatter. So they didn't understand guns. Well, education could be a bitch.
Diana shot two more in quick succession before they scattered. One buzzed/leaped up to a roof, and she nailed it just before it reached the ledge. It toppled and hit the sidewalk with a satisfying splat. Another launched into the air toward a rooftop across the street, wings emitting a powerful weedeater buzz, but as Diana drew a bead on the creature it flew headlong into what looked a giant bat that had landed suddenly on the rooftop. The creature, which Diana recognized as the "winged wolf" from the cylinder, held the struggling fairy by the throat in one large, taloned hand. Then, as if slicing open a melon, it stuck one claw into the creature's forehead and drew it downward, its long tongue lapping up the blood. The fairy ceased its struggles. The giant bat-wolf held the smaller creature aloft toward Diana as if saluting her with its body, before tossing it off the rooftop like it was last week's garbage. Diana lowered the shotgun. Was she supposed to believe she'd found an ally among these freakish creatures?
The wolf-creature leaped into the air, unfurling huge, segmented wings with the snap of a sail catching wind. It banked to the east, flapping its wings leisurely, gaining height a few meters at a time. Diana stared after it. The thing had demonstrated a near-human level of intelligence. What theory did it fit into? A human-wolf-bat hybrid – a DARPA genetics experiment involving technology and science far beyond what was publicly known? She shook her head. It didn't add up. Nothing added up.
Diana couldn't think of anything better than to go home. The only real friend they had in the area was their next-door neighbor, Dick Larsen. He ran a small farm operation with his son and daughter-in-law, who had a house of their own on his property. A lot cozier than she'd ever wished to be with her own parents, who lived in a retirement community in Arizona. She supposed she should call them as soon as she got her cell powered up and found reception somewhere. After calling the authorities, of course.
Speaking of the authorities, where were they? By now, surely someone – some law enforcement or government agency – would've noticed the murder of an entire downtown, even in Bum Fuck Minnesota? Something big enough to knock out cell and car batteries couldn't escape the all-seeing eyes of the NSA. Yet nearly a day had passed, and no National Guard, no police, no military. The implications were chilling.
Arriving at Orchard Hardware at long last, Diana pushed through the unlocked front doors and made her way through darkened aisles to the even darker back of the store. She cracked the backdoor to shed some light on the display cases and walls lined with rifles, shotguns, handguns, knives, ammunition, and pretty much any paraphernalia related to hunting or self-defense. For a small town store, this place was pretty bodacious.
Diana decided to keep the Remington. About as good as it got when it came to self-defense shotguns. She laid out rifles and pistols and knives on one counter, selecting a Smith and Wesson M&P10 – the rifle was lightweight for a .308 and packed plenty of punch – and a Glock 20SF. Fifteen rounds of decent 10mm stopping power. A favorite backup for hunters, she'd read somewhere. Since she needed a belt for the handguns, she added a Ka-Bar Marine combat knife with a sheath to the martial mix. A deadly, working knife. Dean had owned one himself. Perhaps overkill, but as her husband had often pointed out, you could never be too prepared for a combat situation. A small backpack with special sleeves for clips and space for ammunition balanced out her walking armory.
What I would give to have you here with me now. She had a flash of him giving her his regulation rogue grin, and for a second or two had the strong sense that in some way he was there with her now. Maybe it was all the war and spycraft wisdom he'd instilled in her over the years and the missions they shared. Maybe she just needed right now to believe it wasn't her alone against the world.
Diana jogged out of town and then to the north on a rural road toward their – her – property, ten acres that included a renovated farmhouse, an outbuilding, and the usual dilapidated barn that Dean had always threatened to restore. The guns bouncing awkwardly on her back slowed her jog to a brisk march. She was only two miles out. The world wouldn't end before she got there. She winced at the many times her husband had tried to comfort her with, "Honey, the world won't end if such and such doesn't happen." Perhaps that was a moot point now.
She passed the eastern fringes of the residential area without seeing signs of people or any clue about what was happening in there. Presumably there were survivors besides the unfortunate girls, and she would check for them, but first, she needed to get home, try to contact someone. She could use Dean's ham radio with its hand-cranked generator if nothing else worked.
A mass of crows covered a corpse a short distance from a UPS truck a half-mile outside town. They flapped away, noisily cawing, as Diana approached. She tried not to look at the driver – a young, cheerful guy who often wore shorts in the dead of winter when making deliveries – but she couldn't avoid a glance at his shredded, eyeless face or at the gore-lined cavity the crows or some other creature had torn in his abdomen. She took some minute comfort in believing he'd been dead before that damage was done.
But Diana had the feeling she was missing something – something significant beyond the grotesque. And it hit her: the crows are alive. Whatever had killed the people had spared the crows, and – as if to confirm her suspicion, a doe and fawn bounded across the road – other non-human animals. Or had the crows and deer come from beyond the "kill radius"?
Diana's relief to be home mixed with apprehension when she turned into her driveway and approached her custom log house with its shiny green metal roof. Inside, after dead-bolting the front door, she quickly confirmed the phone line was dead and the electricity off. She tried a Husky flashlight hanging in the entryway. Also dead. She checked to make sure the batteries hadn't gone missing, but they were still there, and she'd used the 1000-lumen flashlight less than a week ago to blind a raccoon prying at one of the outside garbage cans. She noted a battery operated wall clock was stuck at 2:35. She doubted it was much past ten – eleven at the latest – in the morning.
That left Dean's radio. She lit a candle from the table – power outages were not rare out here – half-surprised that the match worked, and descended into the basement. She set the candle on the work table, flipped the switch to auxiliary power, and started cranking on the small generator attached to the side of the table. After a minute, she stopped cranking and flipped on the power switch. The radio lit up dimly for maybe two seconds and went dark. Diana cranked some more – this time closer to two minutes. The radio again lit up a little for two or three seconds. The batteries and the capacitor didn't appear to be holding a charge.
Diana undid the wires from the generator to the capacitor and car batteries and hooked them directly into the radio. More cranking generated a constant pale yellow gleam to the radio controls, but no matter how furiously she cranked the dull lights refused to brighten. The radio or the generator had been compromised. She had trouble imagining what could cause that or even what was happening, but then she was far from being an electrical engineer.
Next stop, her neighbors: D
ick Larson, his son and wife, and two young children. Dick was their best and only true friend in the area. Diana wasn't looking forward to that at all.
She walked across the road, still carrying all her Orchard Hardware weapons, and entered a long driveway between tall pine trees leading toward a large, sprawling two-story white farmhouse and a grey single floor ranch house.
First, Dick Larson's farmhouse. She opened the door and called his name. No answer. She searched through the house, bracing herself to encounter Dick's pale corpse, and breathed out in relief when she didn't find him. Maybe he had gone somewhere out of the area. One could always hope.
Jimmy and Dana Larson's A-frame was nestled in the trees on the far end of the looping driveway next to a horse pasture and barn. A large animal was huddled back in the shadows at the edge of the woods which Diana assumed was their big grey stallion, one of two quarter horses. But when the animal raised its head and shifted partly out of the shadows, it was no horse. Not unless the grey stallion had sprouted horns and long, red-stained fangs. A ruffling along its side drew her stunned gaze to what appeared to be a wing.
The creature moved further out of the shadows, sunlight glinting in its eyes which shone a startling deep purple, wings unfolding from its sides, legs coiling with sinew and muscle. Two or three-inch talons curled from its feet. It stood about the height of a medium-sized horse, but its muscular density and shape suggested a super-sized lion. Diana raised her M&P 10 and centered the steel sights on its horn-festooned head.
A dragon. There was simply no other word to describe it. I can now count my mind as fully blown.
The "dragon" regarded her with what struck her as an intense but not particularly predatory interest. Diana then noticed the corpse of the horse behind it. Two corpses. The big grey stallion and the palomino mare. Two of the Larsens' favorites. Diana's finger curled tighter around the trigger.
The dragon made a bugling elk sound and stuck one of its wings at her as if in accusation. Strange.
Footfalls crunched in the driveway behind her. Diana spun around, her hope that Dick or one of the Larsens was alive dashed in one brutal instant by the cluster of ape-like beings gathered less than twenty feet from her. With a gasp, she snapped her rifle to her shoulder, aiming at the middle of the mass of fifteen to twenty creatures. One of the largest simian creatures, who had a gash on his forehead that looked fresh, made a lowering gesture with one hand as if cautioning her or its companions. Most of them were six feet or over and roughly the dimension of a large, powerful man, but with disproportionately long arms and legs the thickness of medium-sized tree limbs and packed with ropy muscle. Their faces combined chimpanzee and baboon features: extra-long baboon fangs, claws on all four feet/hands, and haunting red-brown eyes.
Diana had the sinking realization that if they charged she could at most kill a few of them. But perhaps they had no intention of harming her? The one with the scar on his head who'd gestured – their leader? – was assessing her with hard but cool deliberation, she thought, assuming she had any chance of reading its baboon-chimp face. A glance back showed the horse-sized dragon gazing past her at the simian creatures with what also seemed cold deliberation. Could it be that the dragon had been warning her of the baboon-chimp creatures at her back?
The apparent simian leader pointed to two of its confederates and made a sweeping motion to Diana. The two shuffled forward, glancing back at their leader as if for reassurance. The leader motioned again. Diana's rifle twitched between the two advancing simians. Do or die. She made her decision. No closer.
She shot the one approaching on her left in the chest where she guessed its heart might be. The second one received a .308 round between the eyes. It crumpled with a soft murmur. Its companion examined the bleeding hole in its chest with what struck Diana as wide-eyed wonder – a look that held a plea, she thought, as it turned from her to the leader and sank slowly to its knees.
Diana placed her sights on the leader's chest. Their eyes met. She was tempted to squeeze the trigger, but couldn't be sure they wouldn't all rush her if she killed it.
The leader raised its hands in what she took to be a calming gesture before motioning backward, initiating a general retreat. Diana lowered her rifle a few inches to acknowledge the leader's gesture. They obviously hadn't known about guns, but they definitely understood the basic concept of a weapon. And now they knew what hers could do. With any luck, they'd keep their distance. Fighting off a determined attack from a group of those things would be next to impossible, regardless of how well-armed she was.
Diana watched the simians cross the road and melt into the woods that ringed her property. She turned back to the dragon. It had returned to the shadows and to chowing down on the horses. Experimentally, she aimed her rifle at it. The dragon retreated swiftly into the woods. She slung her rifle over her left shoulder, where it hung beside the shotgun. The dragon inched back into view.
So it understands. Like the simian leader had understood. It appeared that someone or something had dropped a number of high IQ animals on them. Why? And why kill off most everyone in the area beforehand?
A tiny light bulb flicked on in her head. The attack on the people was preparation for the landing of the animals. The whys of that weren't apparent, but she didn't need to solve the entire mystery to see the obvious connection. Mass-killing followed by these creatures being dropped on them. One inference was that if large numbers of people hadn't been cleared away, they would've killed the animals. The native non-human animals, on the other hand, would not present any threat as far as she could see. So whoever was behind this attack had engineered a lethal toxin that affected only humans? She didn't see how that was possible. People were too closely related biologically to other creatures. But then she wasn't a geneticist any more than she was a wildlife biologist. Who knew what brilliant geeks in some DARPA lab might've dreamed up?
Yet if keeping these animals safe was a priority, it wouldn't do to simply kill off people in one area, since people would quickly arrive from outside a disaster area to deal with the threat. And since no had quickly arrived...
Diana refused to let that unthinkable implication play out in her brain. Better to stay focused on the mind-blowing dangers surrounding her. Survive now to ponder the unthinkable later.
Diana skirted the dining dragon on her way to Dick's son and daughter-in-law's house, hoping they wouldn't be home. But the cars out front suggested she wouldn't get her wish – seconded by the smell when she opened the front door. Oh, God. Diana cupped a hand over her mouth and nose.
Dick, his son, and wife lay sprawled around the kitchen table. Plates filled with food – chicken, judging from the slightly rotten-food smell melding with the rotting corpses. They'd sat down to eat, Diana thought, when the airborne death struck. The young son and daughter were missing.
A crunching sound drew Diana's eyes to the hallway beyond the living room. Pricking her ears, she heard soft grunts and slurping sounds accompanying the crunching. Damn. An animal got in here and is feeding. And not a local animal, she was sure. She unslung her shotgun, trading it for her rifle for close-range effectiveness, and crossed the living room into the hallway.
The feeding sounds seemed to be coming from the bedroom at the end of the hallway. Funny that the front and backdoor were closed. Had the animal entered through a window? Not that it mattered much. Whatever was feeding in the back bedroom was about to die. Assuming a 12 gauge shotgun with magnum shells filled with buckshot could kill it.
Pointing the shotgun ahead of her, Diana advanced to the bedroom's open door. She pressed against the wall, peeking into the room. All she could see was a bed and a bunch of posters of pop figures hanging on the lavender walls. The crunching and slurping sounds were coming from the opposite side of the room. Diana edged around to view the other side.
Penny Larsen perched on a loveseat, a smear of what Diana first thought was ketchup ringing her mouth as if she'd taken a giant bite out of a juicy burger. But the
burger she was clutching in her hands was a small human arm chewed down to the bone. At her feet lay other body parts eaten to various degrees: legs, another arm, a torso, a head missing its lips and nose. The face belonged to Mike Larsen, Penny's younger brother.
Penny was so occupied with her feast that she didn't notice Diana standing there, slack-jawed, pointing the shotgun at her head. The girl smiled. Slivers of flesh clung to her teeth, which now appeared far pointier than before. Her face and skin were oddly flushed and covered with dry skin that resembled scales, as if she'd spent too much time in the sun.
"Hello, Mrs. Mann," she said.
"Penny..." Diana struggled to find her voice. "What are you doing?"
"Eating."
"But that's your brother!"
"I know." Penny shrugged. "He was sick anyway and I was really hungry when I woke up."
Diana felt completely at a loss. Penny was autistic – her family called her "high functioning" – with exceptional skills in math, science, and mechanical things but struggling with normal social skills. Still, Diana remembered her always being quite tender and affectionate with her younger brother. Perhaps her autism had protected her from the airborne agent, but not without side effects. Penny had been autistic, not psychotic. Now what the hell am I supposed to do?
"You know your parents and your grandfather are dead?" Diana asked.
"Yes."
"You're not upset?"
"I'm not sure." Penny thought for a moment and shrugged again. "I guess not too much. I am kinda worried about what to do now, though. A lot of weird animals are running around out there. I saw a dragon kill our horses this morning. And some giant wolves that the dragon scared off. I have been wondering where they all came from and why they're here."
ZooFall Page 3
