by Rob Heinze
She went into the house, locked the doors and windows, took a kitchen knife and went to sit on the living room couch. She turned on the TV. It was a Channel 2 News Special with the words Bay Isle City, New Jersey printed in the tag-line box. Stunned, she turned the volume up and listened to the news anchor, who was a Spanish (are you a spic? He had asked) woman she’d never seen before. She was talking about a strange occurrence in Bay Isle.
“The residents of Bay Isle City appear to be victims of a…a terrorist attack or biological warfare…”
Angelica covered her mouth.
“The reports indicate that the entirety of the population of the three mile island is headed towards the beach as part of some mass copulation event. Access to and from the island has been prohibited as authorities attempt to determine the cause of this strange phenomenon. We have a video sent by a Mr. Colin Redman, a resident of Bay Isle…and one of the only people apparently not part of this event.”
The screen changed and a shaky, stretched video of the beach on the south side of the island showed what Colin Redman had recorded. The network had done its best to censor out the nudity and obscenity, but the act was apparent. No faces were visible, but it was clear that the people on the beach—the people of Bay Isle—were in a fastidious trance.
“We are not sure what is causing this, but we will post updates as we receive them. The National Guard is en route. There is fear of a mass drowning, but I repeat there appears to be no intention of suicide. The US Government is being cautious. We’ll have more later. Once again—“
The door-bell rang, startling Angelica out of concentration.
Thank God! Joey had finally come. She got up and went to the door. She had listened—listened—to the newscaster say that access to and from the island had been stopped, but she had not heard. All she thought was of the comforting presence of big Old Joey, twice Robert’s size and ten years young…he had played football in high school and she would feel safe with him. She opened the door.
The man from the convenience store was there, having watched the street onto which she had turned and then having found her car in the driveway.
She couldn’t move, didn’t understand what she saw. The man burst into her house, yanking the storm door open. Angelica screamed, dropping the kitchen knife, and ran towards the back, sliding door, but she couldn’t get it open. The man had come with a bat, and now he leapt at Angelica and pulled the bat through the air with passionate intensity. It struck Angelica in the neck-space between her shoulder and head. The pain was dull and powerful. She fell to the ground.
“Lo, and the wretched shall be cast into the pits of the Dark One, forever in want of Light, and there they shall be laid waste by his denizens.”
The wild, red face of the man loomed over Angelica. He raised the bat and pulled it down. It struck brutally on her skull.
“The meek and Holy shall come to rise above the Scourge and be the Pillars of God.”
He struck again, and again, until there was no movement left in the creature. Then, huffing, he knelt on the floor as if in genuflect.
Breathing it now, he said: “And as the blood-dimmed tide recedes, so too do the impurities that have poisoned the Earth.”
Suddenly and inexplicitly, the man rose and stood above Angelica Rodriquez’s body.
“Lo! I give unto you, O Lord, the Impure and Unholy, as a Testament to my Good Will and Love, for You have chosen me to stand apart from The Swarm!”
The man, who was called Reagan, left the house and never came back.
The cleansing had begun.
Chapter 5
Chief Ruggiero stood stunned on the sand. Dawn Thompson, huffing, came to stand next to him.
“Did they stop? Did they go into the oce—”
They saw the mass orgy across the beach. They watched as people shed their clothes in mid-walk. The men’s arousal was blatant and pure lunacy. Gaped mouthed, the Chief felt his grip on the shotgun slacken. He had expected all The Swarm to walk into the ocean and drown, but had not—in all his imaginative mental power—expected to see this.
“Stop them.”
He heard the two words spoken, but they didn’t register in his mind.
“Stop them! Chief, stop them!”
He turned to Dawn, who was white-faced and horrified next to him. “How?”
“Your gun. Shoot it. Into the air.”
The Chief felt slow, a bumbler, and his clumsy, numb fingers grappled with shotgun. The sound of the slapping skin smacking, smacking at regular intervals was maddening. The Chief raised the shotgun, unlatched the safety, and fired into the air. The shot roared through the dull day for a blissful moment blocking out the sounds of rancid reproduction, and then the report echoed away and died.
Nothing happened.
The Swarm continued their massive sex effort.
“What now?” The Chief asked.
Dawn then had a realization that in her confusion hadn’t crossed her mind: Paul was a part of this. Paul, her husband, was a part of this mess. All of a sudden she wanted to cry. All of a sudden she wanted to grab the Chief and start punching him. But then she remembered that he had mentioned a wife…and sons. That meant they were a part of this too. The Chief saw exhausted men emerge from the writhing, teaming mass…there was something on their faces…what was it? Dawn saw it too. As the event continued, as more seed was injected, more and more men (and some women) were emerging from the mass. They were…confused. There was a glimpse of humanity again on their faces.
“They’re coming back,” Dawn said. “Can you see it?”
The Chief nodded. The incidents of single intercourse were slowly ending. There was a terrible, horrendous odor of sex rising and spreading through the air. More and more people broke from The Swarm, staggering or walking away. A few held hands to their heads. What both the Chief and Dawn Thompson found odd were that none of them—none of them—seemed to realize what they had been doing, for they made no effort to conceal their nudity.
That came later, when the realization of their position settled upon them.
“Shoot your gun again,” Dawn said.
“What?”
“Shoot it again.”
“Why?”
“See if the ones coming out respond.”
The Chief raised the gun and fired. The shot tore through the air, the bang of the exploding ammunition ripping into the quiet like an arrow through gossamer. This time there was a reaction, and Dawn was right: it was from the people now detached from The Swarm. All of them flinched, or ducked instinctively, and most of them—the ones with the most composure—turned back to the source of the shot. They saw Chief Ruggerio and Dawn Thompson standing there, fully clothed, and for the first time they appeared to be aware of their nudity: the men cupped their genitals, the women shielded their breasts.
“They’re awake,” Dawn said. “They’re waking up.”
“Now what?” The Chief asked no one in particular.
###
Derrick Clinton, 16, had seen plenty of naked people thanks to the convenience of the Internet. He had even lost his virginity. Lynn Rice had not. One time at a friend’s house, someone had shown her a video online of this kid jerking off towards the camera. She had been startled and disgusted by the in-your-faceness of the video. She had never seen a boner before, not outside of clothes, and she had never seen ejaculation. There had been two other girls there, and they, too, had shouted ewwww! as the young man on the camera finished his act. That had been two years ago, but the image would stay with her for the rest of her life. She had never watched anything like that again.
She was less prepared than Derrick, and Derrick was not prepared at all to see The Swarm.
They should have stopped half-way up the access when they heard the skin-slapping, but their fear and curiosity drove them up the walk and onto the beach.
Lynn screamed. Derrick, head appearing to somehow hang forward off his neck, gaped.
“No fucking way,”
he breathed.
Lynn kept screaming and in another world the humans in The Swarm might have broken free and gone to her rescue, but they were busy, intent. Up the beach, there was a crash of a gun. Lynn screamed again.
“They’re shooting! God, they’re shooting !”
Derrick couldn’t place who would be shooting whom, and why. He scanned the bloated snake of human bodies procreating, his eyes moving quickly amongst it, hoping that they, his eyes, were going fast enough so that no single image would brand itself on his mind’s motherboard. Lynn had turned away, weeping, and falling to her knees. It had become too much for her, far too much: she just wanted to go home and get into bed. With her mommy—
“Oh, Mommy!”
Like Dawn Thompson, Lynn realized then that her mother was somewhere within that obscene mob.
“Mother-fucker!” Derrick suddenly shouted, unaware of the God-awful pun he had made.
Lynn, barely hearing him, turned to see him running onto the beach, kicking up sand in his wake.
“Derrick, no!”
He was moving towards The Swarm. As he was moving at The Swarm, people began to emerge from it like lost sheep. Derrick had seen his mother being raped by a man—a man who was not his father. Rage, like liquid magna, exploded into his arteries. He ran a straight, determined path towards the two. He was certain that he would kill the man—or at least stop him. His mother was looking at him, right at him, eyes wide open as the man desecrated her and Derrick knew it was not her, not his mother—it was vacant shell.
That didn’t staunch his rage.
He leapt at the man, throwing his arms around the man’s throat. The man was bigger, probably about 190-pounds and six feet, but Derrick tugged, pulled, bending the man’s back…
The man would not disengage. He wouldn’t fucking stop! Why wouldn’t he stop!
Derrick grunted and yelled, trying to muster his strength. He could feel the man’s Adam’s apple sickly bobbing up and down on his arm, could feel the man’s sweaty nakedness. Derrick was losing strength when the man finally came away from his mother, but it was nothing of Derrick’s doing: he had simply finished with his intention. Derrick jerked his arms around and stuck his leg behind the man’s knees, causing the man to fall to the sand, where he laid still. Someone knocked into Derrick, and he stumbled, falling onto the man and his still-erect penis and he, Derrick, screaming, screaming, rolling and leaping to his feet, fumbling manically with his diseased T-shirt that had become contaminated with pure filth. He yanked it off and let it fall to the sand as if something living had been trapped inside. He turned to his mother, not wanting to see her body, not wanting to see her humanity exposed—and he didn’t, for another man had attached himself to her rear.
Derrick sank to the ground, his knees bending him forward. He started to cry. He didn’t understand it. There was no God at work here. He could see Lynn in his haze: she was standing half-way from The Swarm, screaming his name and begging for him to come out. She was in another world, outside The Swarm. He couldn’t hear her. And he wasn’t going to move. He would stay here. Maybe he would die here, trampled to death, and he didn’t think that would be so bad. Not after what he had seen…
Hands, suddenly and inexplicitly, fell on his shoulders and back, hoisting him to his feet. He looked around to see that men had grabbed him—men from The Swarm. He started to scream like a child, his thoughts rushing immediately to rape. He bucked, fought, but it was no use…there were too many and they were too powerful. What would later occur to him was that The Swarm had consisted of no homosexual activity: there had been no lust or desire, just function and purpose.
He had been lifted out of The Swarm, but he could still not stop fighting, for he was aware of his carriers’ nakedness.
“Relax, kid, relax! We’re not going to hurt you!”
He fought a bit longer, and then his carriers let him free. He staggered forward and fell to the sand, scrambling to his feet. He faced them. There were five males, older males, and two women cautiously behind them. They had come from The Swarm, and they had spoken.
“Stay away from me!” Derrick said, backing away.
“Derrick, you shouldn’t have gone in there!” Lynn was now next to him. She put a hand on his bare back.
“My mom…”
He started crying again. Lynn was crying too, but they were slow tears with no sobs. She looked up at the people who had carried Derrick out of The Swarm. Beyond them she could see more people emerging from The Swarm like mimes just coming off a shift. The Chief’s second gunshot exploded up the beach, and she yelped. The five men and two women who had saved Derrick glanced nervously up the beach. The women moaned. One of the men, who was a business owner in town, stepped towards Derrick and Lynn.
“What happened to us?” He asked.
Derrick stopped crying, and all eyes fell upon him and Lynn. They were looking for answers, but the two teenagers had none to give.
“We don’t know.”
That was when the helicopter came soaring up the beach, and all eyes turned to watch it pass.
###
The Coast Guard was the first to arrive. They went up the coast-line. They had never seen anything like it. They were searching for signs of danger, of people drowning, but the water was empty.
From above The Swarm stretched the entire run of Bay Isle Beach, the densest of which was in the center of the island. On that Summer day, in mid-season, the number of people on the island was around 12,000, which was four-times the off-season amount. They had no idea how many of those 12,000 people were on the beach that morning, but it looked like all of them. The crew in the helicopter thought the thin band of human bodies looked like a parade of sorts, with the movement therein creating the illusion that the mass was indeed part of the ocean tide with an ebb and flow.
They went up and down, twice, and saw no evidence of human fatalities, which they thought was nothing short of a miracle.
###
Rex Torres drove his vomit-scented Beamer towards the Medi-Merge, which was a gray and blue eye-sore among the soft pastel colors of the Bay Isle houses. They had swerved around the idling, abandoned cars along the way. They had not noticed the children staring at them from hidden windows. They had seen a body on the street, trying to move, and Linda had screamed. She was still not feeling too good, and the sight of more gore, more pain…
Rex pulled into the Medi-Merge and stopped the car. He knew no one was inside, but he hoped they would come back soon.
“Can you stay with her? I have to go back and help that man moving on the road.”
“He doesn’t need to,” Linda said. “He can go help you.”
Calvin looked to her, then back to Rex. He could see by the young man’s eyes that he, Rex, thought Calvin should stay with her.
“I’m going to bring him back,” Rex said. Then added: “If there’s a way.”
“Where should we go?” Calvin asked.
“Inside, right into the waiting room. Just stay with her. Ready, Linda?”
She nodded and they got out of the car. Linda started to walk towards the sliding door entrance to the Medi-Merge. Rex touched Calvin’s shoulder and motioned him towards the trunk. He popped it, reached into the ER bag, and produced another vial of smelling salts. He only had two more left, and something told him he would need it today.
“Crack this here, and then pass it under her nose, if she goes down again.”
Calvin took the vial. “How long am I supposed to stay with her? I mean, my wife is home by herself.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Rex said. “Do what you feel is right.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
Rex nodded then closed the trunk, got into the car, and sped back towards the man on the road. Calvin watched him go, then went inside to the dim, empty lobby of Medi-Merge. All the signs of humanity were there and working: lights on, computer screens, phones ringing, machines dinging and chiming—but the place was a ghost-town. No one was the
re. Linda sat neatly in one of the hard folding chairs. Calvin thought she looked pretty bad. Poor lady. If she had only come a minute later, that guy would have been across the road and on to whatever destination called to him.
“Okay?”
She looked up at him and shrugged. She had her purse held on her lap like a small animal she had to protect. She looked absurd to Calvin, for some reason. A comical caricature of some prim and proper lady, who had just left someone’s brain on the asphalt.
“Mind if I call my wife?”
“I called my husband but no answer. He’s in meetings all day.”
“Okay,” Calvin said awkwardly. “I’ll just be outside.”
He went outside and called Helena. She picked up on the second ring, her breathing quick.
“Calvin, are you okay?”
“Yes, are you?”
“I don’t know. They’re showing…on the news. They’re showing where everyone went.”
“Where’d they go?”
“To the beach. They’re…they’re…having sex.”
“What?”
“They’re having sex.”
“Who?”
“Everyone. All of them. Up and down the beach.”
Calvin was silent for a long time. Having sex! Ha! He almost wanted to laugh. Hell, how many times had he come at Helena in their younger days with that blank, testosterone-laced look? Of course that man whom Linda Davis had killed was after the lady-box! It made perfect sense now! The whole town suddenly got a little randy, that was all. Happens to the best of us, right Calvin?
“I don’t understand.”
“No one does,” Helena said. “The news is speculating about biochemical attack, mind-altering chemicals. The drinking water. Calvin, are…are you okay?”