Genesis Virus

by Pinto, Daniel

  David says. “BOLO.”

  Ava says. “Always.”

  David’s standing and leaning against the backdoor frame with his arms crossed watching Lou and Youngblood walk out the front of the barn and into the field to his right. The Chief and Coop are propelling themselves onto their respective horses. David finally sees Ava walking into the grass with her large knife in her hand and up in the air. He sees her lips moving and then she is gone in the corn-jungle. Delilah would of liked this place.

  After a moment, a locust crashes on David’s hand as he talks to Coop. “Maybe we should just kill the walking dead like Lou said.” David flicks the insect away, it tumbles and nosedives in the air. “This place is so relaxing.” Coop adjusts his black ten-gallon cowboy hat on his head, tightens the hat string under his chin, looks up, and says. “I would, but this is what happens when you travel with children.” David grins pointing at himself, he has the pastel colors of the setting sun in his eyes. “You know what Coop, I’m tired of saving you.”

  Coop says. “You owe me many times over since the city.”

  David says. “I don’t recall that.”

  The Chief guides his horse to face David and genteelly exits the back of the barn with his head bent forward. Talking to no one in particular. “Perhaps we can find shelter past this farm.” The rest of the horses march behind their Chief.

  Ava shuts and stomps out of the cornfield. “Man. I hate grasshoppers.”

  David yells at her. “Did you wash your hands?”

  She hollers back. “Why is everyone waiting around like a couple of old ladies? Lets ¡vamos!”

  5

  On the opposite side of the barn and countryside, Lou has an ear of corn between his teeth as he tries to bend a cornstalk downward for his young friend. Lou twists and yanks on the enclosed corns closest to him. Youngblood has his pack opened while Lou tosses a dozen into the bag.

  Lou’s being facetious. “I’m going to have popcorn and watch the stars tonight, if I don’t die before then.”

  Youngblood looks around. “Some of these corns have been picked clean.” Lou zips up the bag “Everything loves to eat, shocker.”

  Youngblood takes in the incoming clouds. “I’ve always imagined I would move to the country, I love the quiet and solitude like Uncle, does that make me a weirdo?” Lou says. “Weird? Nah, maybe a shy murderer though.” Lou smiles and takes a chunk out of the corn, but quickly spits it all out. “Shit, I think this one is a dud.”

  Youngblood turns his back to Lou and says. “Do you think Ava is cute?”

  Lou stands up and places both hands on Youngblood’s shoulders from behind, shifting his weight. “I guess if her type rocks your boat and pecker, maybe after we finished everything, you and her can live happily ever after on this farm.” Lou strides back. “Personally I like, less of this.” He makes a talking gesture with his hand. I’m relieved to find out he’s not a Two-Spirit Native. He’s been around old men and women for years, it’s the excitement of someone new. I’m surprised he hasn’t fallen in love with her, like David with Delilah. Even their names are similar, it’s as if he’s a narcissist falling in love with his twin.

  Youngblood says. “If we’re alive next month, I’ll think about it.”

  Lou shoves the bag of corn into Youngblood’s stomach. “Let’s get going before they start crying and bitching.”

  6

  Suddenly, there’s a low humming sound in every direction, each person becomes a paralyzed pillar of salt looking for a familiar face, the humming rapidly gets rowdier and louder. The group’s still in different sections of the farm.

  Bombination punches holes in the clouds. The noise creates a phantom pressure in people’s chests. David cups his mouth with both hands, sucks in air to scream. However, before he can do so, millions of locusts simultaneously all pull up in harmony into the air as if by the magnetic sun.

  Insects blot out the sun in an instant like a volley of a million arrows about to land. David steps outside the barn, views up in awe then quickly spins back into the barn and firmly presses his back against the wall; a swarm follows him, it’s a battering ram, the width of the barn doorways, it blasts through the barn past David’s face. Velocity of the locusts entering the barn cut David’s cheek and pushes him face first into the hay. Within the barn it sounds like a million tiny anger fists knocking on every square inch of the vicinity. The wooden beams begin to creak and moan in pain. Legions of locusts kill themselves flying into the walls. The furious storm of bugs obfuscates the dead and the living.

  Bewildered zombies race into the locusts and the team of travellers desperately want out, unsure which way that is.

  7

  Up in the air the locusts make an infinity symbol then a Mobius strip and drown out the world.

  On horseback, the Chief races past Ava’s last sighting and after the fleeting horses, Coop pulls on the reins and gallops forward with his head laying flat against the horse’s tight neck, gently petting his horse. Packs of locusts float above, groggy and hungry. Coop’s horse flicks its braided tail hair like a circus whip, its tail and thighs disappear under gangs of locusts and the locusts enjoy the ride on the dirt street. Coop does not even try to look back; he follows his friend up ahead.

  Underneath him, the horse buckles. “Ahhh.” Tossing Coop into the bed of corn-needles. His horse regains its footing and sprints after its friends, leaving Coop. Locust orgies with an insatiable appetite cover the horse like tar and feathers, it cuts into the corn to scrape the nuisances off.

  8

  Ava blindly swings both of her arms like a madwoman in the air, creating mountains of dead locusts on the field around her. Locusts are crawling inside her jeans and some are digging into her armpits. She bends down to one knee to catch her breath; she desperately fights the urge to scream in disgust at the sight of her arms completely buried in insects. She then drops her knife and slaps her body continually as if she’s on fire. Swearing in her head.

  She covers both ears, breathing heavily again, and squints in pain because the cacophony generated by the horde of locusts is reminiscent of a rock concert and she’s in the center of the mosh pit. Still on one knee, she covers her mouth with the inside of her left arm and continues to swing away once again. Gallons of guts have loosened her grip and with her next swing, her favorite knife is flung into oblivion. Ava lays flat on her back on the layers and layers of dead locusts in the crop-circle she just created and covers her face with both hands.

  The locusts have now become a second skin for her and form a breathing sarcophagus over her. Cornstalks over six feet tall are in every direction, standing like guards protecting her final resting place.

  Ava turns over, crawls on hands and knees looking for the way out, suddenly a zombie breaks through the cornstalks, stopping her in her tracks, and dives teeth first for her ribs. Ava rotates her hips and stiff legs the zombie’s jaw clean off. The reanimated flesh struggles backwards before abruptly freezing still when its head falls back, though still attached. Thousands upon thousands of amped up locusts kamikaze into its throat, the force brings the zombie onto its knees. Ava’s on ground viewing the zombie convulse and shake, its belly begins to inflate like an old tire. Next, all the locust within the zombie blast out like a cannon, green bile and excrement sludge spews out of the zombie’s guts with locusts now soaked in different bodily fluids. The insect flock flutters towards Ava, she rolls out of the way and onto to her stomach, those locusts blend in with the crowd over her, she eventually makes eye contact with the zombie in the exact same position as her.

  Ava inches her way up to the zombie by crunching and sliding on the fallen locusts. Eager locusts are using her back as a trampoline and are munching on her hair. At the zombie, she tears its shirt off, takes in a big breath, and wraps her head with it, leaving only a space for her eyes. The riotous stridulating of insects is a never-ending fire alarm to the senses.

  Ava links her fingers together creating a bigger fist and sw
ings at another zombie’s head, locust fly through its stomach and into her eyes.

  Exiting the corn maze and out on the road. She bumps into something. Stands and kicks at it; a hand pierces and scatters the locusts in front of her and clasps her throat. She pulls her body back, stretching her head even farther back to avoid whatever might come next. The veins in her apple red face began to fill with more blood and her eyes drift. She twists her torso to face away from the attacker; she then elbows them in the chest.

  With her back on the road, she yanks her gun from the holster and fires up and in front of her.

  Coop, her attacker, does the same towards Ava until his bullets run out. The locusts ripple like vibrations in liquid with each gunshot. A zombie close by walks for the sound until its head explodes with locusts.

  9

  Youngblood clutches someone’s arm from behind. “Lou this way.” The famished zombie turns and tears its neck skin in anticipation, it sounds like copy paper ripping. Youngblood thrusts the zombie into the darkness of the swarm. He quickly shields his face like a boxer, picks a direction and runs. He crashes straight into the front corner of the barn, the impact knocks him over, and the locusts splash up and down on his dizzy body.

  He gets more and more splinters in his fingertips as runs alongside the barn, hastily feeling on the wall. His movements are restricted to walking side-to-side like a crab and moving up and down like a blind man in the hopes of getting inside. He can feel something cold pressed against his shin and swings at it with his blade. It bounces on the grass. Next, he picks both arms up and shields his face with his forearms, glimpsing the ladder between the space of his arms, he leans over and pulls it towards him like a rope, hand over hand.

  Positioned horizontally, the ladder is securely in his grasp; he pauses, trying to focus on the silhouettes in the distance. Are they mirages, the enemy, or my friends? Escaping the center of hell is his primary concern. Meanwhile, he tightly tucks his chin inwards and his fingernails prod into his palms. Ears clogged with locusts and with one eye scarcely opened Youngblood rides the wave of momentum and does not stop running. Locust clouds part for a millisecond before creating a tornado of confusion behind Youngblood, stabbing into his back.

  He slams into floundering zombies, he hopes. There’s a resounding vibration in the ladder; he bites his lip after each contact. Youngblood drops the ladder down after his forty-yard dash, ending up in the cornfield again.

  His arms are jelly and he feels something heavy on his groin, his eyes widen as he reactively cold-cocks the creep in the face. It has no legs and only the one arm that’s wrapping itself around his leg like a boa constrictor. The zombie’s nail-less fingers remain hanging on for dear life after the punching ceases. Youngblood double-checks his groin as icy hands dig into his shoulders, skips looking back and darts into the cornfield farther away from the barn and the stranger, to the middle of nowhere.

  10

  Locusts buzz into Lou’s mouth and ooze drizzles from the corners of his lips. He swiftly covers his mouth and runs forward.

  Thousands of locusts have made a statue of an idle zombie. Lou spears that zombie in the back and the irate locusts surge at his eyes. He tumbles forward, catching himself; a zombie emerges from the hurricane of locusts. Lou wraps his big hands around the zombie’s neck. Lou can’t hear himself, let alone the dead growls from the thing in his hands. The zombie hyperextends his jaw to taste Lou’s fleshy fingers, it’s grey cankerous tongue licks Lou’s wrists like an ice cream cone. “Aah.”

  Lou bends his legs and pushes upward, driving the zombie off its feet; both men suspend in the air until Lou’s body weight explodes the zombie’s limbs off. The zombie is squirming underneath Lou’s body like a slimy slug. The fall tore off a chunk of the zombie’s skull as well. Dark bile drips from the zombie’s mouth like a scared grasshopper. With one secure hand on its throat, Lou punches through the hole in the zombie’s head and rips out a fistful of brains, squeezes it, then shoves it downward into the zombie’s mouth, the wriggling ceases.

  11

  “Yah.” David throws a pitchfork like a javelin into a zombie. Nailed to the wall, the zombie’s shoulder blades are flushed with the aged wood; the pitchfork blades lodged in its throat.

  David runs under a swinging dead limb, gets a hold of another pitchfork and stabs a different zombie in the ass and rushes her to the opposite wall, nose first, one of the zombie’s legs drags and snaps off like a toothpick. David impales the zombie to the wall as well. Slams his elbow into the back of its skull, his elbow bounces off the wall, turning its saggy face into lumps and goo that rolls down the wall like a child’s slinky. David runs up to the first zombie in the wall, stakes it by screwing a piece of wood clockwise into the zombie’s face. The head remains mounted to the wall like an animal trophy, but its torso slithers into the bed of hay. David tugs off the zombie’s shirt and ties the plaid scarf around his neck. He tries to dry-heave the stench away.

  Eyeing for his pack in the locust safe zombie-barn, but settles for someone else’s, finding and splitting a shirt in half that he ties around his mouth and with the other half he wraps around a broken plank of timber.

  Established in the doorway, he first fires a couple of gunshots into the air like flares to help his friends get their bearings and to attract all the dead. Then he waves his newly constructed torch in the doorway like an airliner runway guide. Continuing to signal, he steps into the locust curtain that looks and sways like flying sawdust, but he can’t spot the chrome ladder to get on the roof like Ava did.

  After a handful of minutes of pacing and self-debating, David runs again into the cloud of locusts with his arms crossed. The locusts part like a river when David lifts his glowing staff.

  On Ava’s motorcycle, he drives the way he arrived steering with one hand and repeatedly honking the horn with the tip of his elbow. Stopping at the start of the pathway, beholding the locusts’ transformative havoc. Verdant Spring has turned back to dead Winter. Sections of the cornfield are eaten clean and are now thin poles rolling in the dirt, it looks like giants walked through the field, crushing everything in their wake.

  David spins three hundred and sixty degrees like a discus athlete, holding onto his Olympic torch with both hands then propels it into the cornfield meters away. Nothing happens, so he takes the wrap from his mouth and drags it down to his lighter. Youngblood comes running out of the cornstalks; David drops the cloth and snaps his hand over his gun.

  Down below the fire is skipping in every direction. The locust cloud comes together, churns and writhes like ocean waves. Dead locusts rain down and washes over the land until the cloud of locusts lifts up higher, and like a magic carpet it’s carried away by the wind. Low sunlight is back and the eclipse of the locusts has passed.

  Youngblood shakes his clothes and says. “Is everyone okay?”

  David pulls tiny legs from his nostrils and ears. “Lets go see.”

  Youngblood gets on the bike and the two of them race with the heat on their faces and the fires spiraling for the heavens at their backs.

  12

  Down the straight-away in front of David, Coop has one arm around Ava’s neck as she helps him walk for the barn. Coop has the other hand over his heart. “I think you cracked my ribs, Ava.”

  She says. “You’ll live. Are you a Shaman?”

  He looks at her. “I wish.” Then walks on his own.

  Lou walks out of the barn to greet David and Youngblood pulling over.

  Lou coughs and brushes away the black smoke; his face looks like a coal worker with soot all over it. “Is everyone still with us?” He turns and glances in the region.

  Youngblood wipes some ash from his face and says to him. “Where’s my uncle?”

  Lou says. “I’ll find him.” David pushes the bike towards Lou.

  At the pop of dusk, the wind is slowing down, and the air smells like blown-out candles melting within the blacken earth. David has both palms against the anterior of the bar
n and looks like he’s trying to push it over, to complete the tragedy of loss. Lou figures since the horses are gone, their guardian, the Chief is fine.

  David resumes to look at the soil, covered in dried soot and blood from different people. Lou strolls to the weary group with a handful of crispy locusts, tossing one at a time like baked chips into his mouth. A few locusts buzz in the cracks of the interior roof.

  David says to the wall. “I wonder, whose fault this is, the dead, the locusts, or ours. Everything is destroyed now because we stopped…We’re leaving a everlasting trail of death.” He taps the wall with his foot as he continues to shove the wall and cough up phlegm.

  Lou says. “It’s just plants, they’ll grow back.”

  Ava says to Lou. “Don’t be daft.”

  Youngblood lifts the bottle of water to his grey lips. “Even when we win, we lose.”

  David says. “I guess.” He turns for the house on the hill and treads across the sully and smoky ground with his tired head low. The fire is still raging on in the outskirts of the farmland.

  Ava swipes locust limbs from her hair and says to the guys. “I guess we’re staying here tonight.” Lou scrapes his tongue with the heel of his hand and says. “Fuck it, we earned it.”

  With all the bags in his hand, Lou says. “Us guys we’ll camp in the barn tonight, someone has to watch the belongings.”

  Walking up, Ava says with her bag slung over a shoulder. “I’ll do the same.”

  Lou says. “What, you don’t trust us?” He stands in the middle of Coop and Youngblood and hugs both from behind. Coop squints in pain and Youngblood merely walks away.