As a variety of animals emerged from various places, doorways and cars, Caroline did just that. By the time she stopped breathing she wondered if she might well have been the last person left to die.
THE NIGHT OF THE SQUIRRELS
by Eric S Brown
Shivering in the wind, Scott pulled his coat tighter around him. The rain wasn’t helping matters. This cold snap couldn’t come at a worse time. Freezing to death was the least of his worries though. Scott kept his eyes on the tree limbs above him as he ran, his shoes splashing through the mud of the forest floor. A .357 Magnum he’d taken from his dad’s gun collection rested in the right pocket of his coat. He wished he hadn’t made a run for it. Boarding himself in the house would have been the better choice but there was so much blood and so many of them. . . His dad’s gargling cries as the fastest of the squirrels gnawed into the soft skin of his neck would haunt Scott for the rest of his days, assuming he lived through the night. He had to get somewhere safe, if there was such a place left in the world. The news said all the animals on the planet had suddenly gone crazy, attacking humans wherever they could find people still alive. The military was mobilizing but the animals had the advantage both from their numbers and the shock factor of their unexpected declaration of war on the human species. Only time would tell if humanity’s technological edge and firepower would be enough to see them through this nightmare. No one wanted to believe something like this could happen in real life. It was like some kind of sicko seventies horror film come alive. Denial only took you so far though when the neighbor’s dog showed up in your yard carrying your neighbor’s hand in its jaws and eying you like a side of fresh beef.
Scott paused, leaning against the trunk of a tree, trying to catch his breath. He and his dad had been getting ready to seal up the house when the window of the study exploded inward and the squirrels swarmed inside. For all his dad’s weapons, they never had a chance. Dad was dead before he could get off a single shot. The only thing that saved Scott was the fact that his father had shoved him through the door into the hallway and slammed the door as he died. Scott had barely had time to grab the .357 from the table of weapons they had been loading. Yelling for his mom, he had sprinted through the house only to find her lying in on the kitchen floor in a pool of warm blood with a half dozen squirrels gnawing at her corpse. Their little heads had risen up, staring at him with hungry eyes. He darted passed them for the backdoor. One of them managed to jump onto him as he tore the backdoor open and stumbled into the yard. Scott had reached over his shoulder, grabbing the small animal by the fur of its neck and flung it off of him to the ground. His .357 thundered, turning the critter into a red patch in the grass. The others were bounding out of the house after him as he ran for the woods. Only the arrival of a sheriff’s car, which had likely come to evacuate his family, saved his life. The squirrels whirled about, going after the man in uniform instead of him. He’d heard gunshots and screams behind him but didn’t dare stop. Some part of his brain told him the woods might be safe since the animals were coming out of them to hunt mankind into extinction.
Now that he was here, he wasn’t so sure that choice had been a good idea. There were so many animals and so many kinds of them. Maybe not all of them had left. Who knew what was still lurking here just waiting on him to wonder into its path?
Breath came in ragged gasps as Scott tried to calm down. The only advantage he had was his brain. His best hope of surviving the night was to outthink the creatures hunting him. Well, that and his pistol. There were five rounds left in its chamber. Against something like squirrels, it was next to useless. It didn’t have the rate of fire to face anything that came at him in a pack, especially something that small and that fast. If he could just make it another mile or so old man Worley’s farm was on the other side of the woods. Worley and his dad had been friends for years. The old man was even tougher than his dad and was ex-military. He might be alive and fighting back. Worley would take him in, help him, if he could just get there.
Yanking his .357 from the pocket of his coat, Scott kept it out and ready as he took off running again. His chest hurt and his legs ached but the movement made the cold more bearable. It didn’t seem as bad as long as he kept moving. Something roared through the dark sky above him. Scott almost screamed, expecting some kind of monster bird to swoop down and kill him but then he saw that the noise was a helicopter, moving fast and low. It was headed south in the same direction he was going. He was determined not to die tonight and that helicopter gave him hope. Perhaps it would land somewhere nearby, or with a bit of luck he could figure out a way to signal it without shooting at it. Scott picked up his pace, pushing his exhausted body even harder.
***
Aboard the helicopter, Lieutenant William Gunter stared out the window. He sat up front beside the pilot and was grateful that they were flying above the woods now. The town they’d passed over a few minutes before had been a war zone. People running about wildly in the streets, chased by cats, dogs, rats . . . Hell, he thought he’d seen a pig tearing into a little old lady in a soiled Sunday dress. The power had been out but the fires burning up and down the main street had provided more than enough light for him to witness the horrors below. Here and there, patches of rednecks were trying to make a stand. One guy in a red flannel jacket stood in the parking lot of a gas station at the edge of town, spraying a pack of dogs that were closing in on him with a full auto. The bodies of several dogs lay twitching around the good old boy. That guy might have made it for a while longer if a hulking grizzly bear hadn’t emerged from the nearby trees and took his head off with a single swipe of one of its massive paws.
Gunter shook his head, chasing away the horrible, lingering images of what he had seen and tried to focus on his objective. His orders were to locate and extract Colonel Worley from the middle of all this madness. Only it wasn’t really the middle was it? The war between mankind and the animal kingdom was taking place everywhere. Sure, there were several safe zones and numerous secure bunkers but overall humanity wasn’t faring very well from what he had heard on the military bands so far. Maybe that would change now that the animals were beginning to lose the element of surprise. He supposed Colonel Worley must be a really important man for the brass to send a personal rescue party after him like this. Maybe he had saved some senator’s son once or taken a bullet for a former president. Gunter didn’t care. He just wanted this over with so he could get into the fight.
A large, secluded farm came into view. The bodies of more than a dozen horses covered the ground inside of the farm’s corral. It looked like the Colonel had put them all down before they’d had a chance to come after him.
“Take us in,” Gunter ordered the pilot. He glanced over his shoulder into the rear of the helicopter where Riley and Kier sat. He nodded at them and they began to check over and ready the M-16s in their laps. Gunter’s plan was to go in, hard and fast, with the copter’s blades still spinning, grab the colonel, and get the Hades out.
The helicopter touched down in front of the house. Gunter and his two men burst from it, making a bee line for the house’s front door. It was caved in and barely hanging on its frame, held up by one stubborn hinge that refused to yield. It was a bad sign. Gunter entered the living room. He skidded to a halt surrounded by dead chickens and staring into the barrel of a P-90 submachine gun, aimed at his face.
“Sir?” Gunter gasped.
“At ease lieutenant,” the old man in front of him smirked, lowering his weapon. “Took you boys long enough to get here. It must be really bad out there.”
Gunter looked around at the blood splattered walls. “It’s about the same as here, Colonel.”
Colonel Worley grunted. “Best we get moving then. Those woods are full of squirrels. We do not want to be here if they decide to come calling.”
“Squirrels?” Gunter repeated the word.
“You deaf, boy?” Worley asked then kept right on talking without giving him a chance to answer. “Yeah
, squirrels. They’re nasty critters. Small, fast, and deadly. They’re hunting in packs. I saw about three dozen of them tear apart the mailman at the end of my drive when all this crap started. I boarded myself up in here and I’ve been under siege by my own animals ever since. Thank God the squirrels have stayed away so far, but you can be assured they’re coming.”
Riley and Kier were holding defensive positions outside the door, their eyes focused on the surrounding tree line just like he had ordered them to do as Gunter followed Worley through it.
***
Scott could hear the helicopter on the ground or hovering somewhere really close by up ahead as he continued to run for Worley’s farm. He nearly wet himself as the monster stepped into his path. The beast stood ten feet tall and walked on two legs like a man. It stunk to high heavens and blood, not its own, soaked the long, brown hair covering its chest. Its yellow, feral eyes stared at him full of hunger and open hatred. Scott’s mind screamed the name “Bigfoot!” There could be no other explanation for what the thing was. Scoot was running too fast to stop or take a shot at the beast with his Magnum. He gave it a wide berth, zagging to the left and hoping to put some trees between himself and the creature. With a snarl, it leaped at him as he screamed and came tearing out of the woods into the clearing around old man Worley’s farm. The last thing Scott saw were the muzzle flashes of two M-16 rifles. Six bullets slammed into him, knocking the breath from his body. Two of them punctured his heart in an explosion of hot blood.
***
“Holy . . .” Gunter heard Riley wail over the comm in his helmet. Gunter and Colonel Worley were almost to the helicopter, Riley and Kier flanking them. Gunter’s head snapped around towards the area of the woods his men had opened fire on. A kid’s body flopped into the mud. Riley was freaking out big time.
“I didn’t . . . He just came running out!” Riley cried.
Kier was quiet, his eyes locked onto the kid’s corpse with a sad look on his face. Gunter wanted to beat the crap out of Riley for making such a mistake but there was no time for it. Trigger happy or not, Riley was only doing his job. The Colonel’s safety trumped all else according to the brass.
“Pull it together!” Gunter shouted at Riley over the roar of the helicopter’s blades through the comm link. Before he could say anything else his eyes went wide and he stopped in his tracks as he saw it. The huge beast came lumbering from the trees. It jerked the boy’s body up from the ground and tore it in half with two massive, human-like hands.
Something snapped in Gunter at the sight of such pointless and unneeded carnage. “Take it down!” he ordered the others. He raised his M-16 to his shoulder and took aim at the beast. Colonel Worley kept on running towards the copter as Gunter and his men opened fire. Their M-16s chattered, spitting empty to the ground at their feet. The beast roared, a sound so loud it could be heard over the helicopter’s blades. Bullet after bullet struck the beast but it was like trying to stop a rhino with a BB gun. Gunter could see the rounds weren’t getting any real penetration. The thing’s muscles were so thick and dense, he realized that they were only ticking it off more than it already was. With a snarl, it came running towards them at an impossible speed. Despite its size, the beast moved with the speed of a cheetah. Riley didn’t even have time to scream. The beast punched one of its hands completely through his chest. A rain of blood splashed over Gunter and Kier as the thing’s fist emerged from Riley’s back. The beast jerked its arm free as Kier fired a series of three round bursts into it at point blank range. Howling in rage, it backhanded Kier. Gunter saw the man’s ribs fold inward as Kier went flying through the air from the force of the blow. Gunter turned to run for the copter knowing he wasn’t going to be able to stop the beast easily if at all with his M-16. It was better to live and fight another die than to die here tonight. As he did so, his heart skipped a beat at what he saw. The Colonel lay rolling about in the grass near the helicopter. Dozens of squirrels covered him, tearing at his flesh with their tiny teeth. Gunter could see even more of the viscous, little critters inside the copter. The pilot was dead, slumped over against the copter’s controls. Squirrels danced and climbed over his mutilated form.
Cursing loudly, Gunter yanked a grenade off of his combat vest, popped it, and tossed it at the copter before the squirrels could swarm him. He sprinted for the Colonel’s house as the beast charged after him and the grenade detonated. The copter erupted into a giant ball of fire, the grenade’s blast igniting its fuel tanks. The whirring blades zipped above his head and shot into the woods, bisecting trees. Gunter was knocked from his feet by the shockwave. He rolled through the mud and grass, his left arm breaking under his own weight as he landed on it awkwardly. His M-16 bounced away from him as he lost his hold on it. He came to a stop, yanking his sidearm free from its holster on his hip with his right hand as struggled to get to his feet.
The beast was still standing, staring down at a large, jagged piece of shrapnel that protruded from its stomach. Strands of its intestines poked out of the wound around the metal. Its burning yellow eyes met his. Gunter took advantage of the beast’s shock, raising his pistol. He forced his trembling hand to hold steady just long enough to put a round into the beast’s right eye. Its head snapped backwards the bullet reduced its eyeball to pulp and entered its brain. With a pained noise somewhere between a grunt and a whine, the beast stood erect a moment more then toppled, face first, into the mud.
Gunter breathed a sigh of relief. The immediate danger was over. He staggered towards the house’s front door. When he reached it, he slumped against the wall beside it, cradling his broken arm to his chest. Colonel Worley had managed to survive in the house and Gunter figured there was still plenty of supplies and weapons to be found inside. He hoped he could hole up here and make a go of it because he sure couldn’t walk back to one of the safe zones. Calling for help wasn’t an option either. There was no way the brass would send a rescue mission after him like that had the colonel. He was just a low grade grunt and expendable.
For a moment, he allowed himself to believe he might actually have a chance of surviving, of finding his way home to hold his wife in his arms again. Until he heard the chorus of roars behind him. Gunter turned slowly to see four more of the monstrous beasts come lumbering out of the trees. The anger on their faces lit up by the light of the burning wreckage of the helicopter. Behind them, blood-thirsty squirrels chittered and hopped about like cheerleaders. He didn’t even bother to try to raise his pistol as the family of massive beasts advanced on him. What point was there in doing so? Gunter only laughed at the cruel hand fate had dealt him and hoped his death would be a quick one.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Published author, Iain Rob Wright, was born in 1984 and lives in Redditch, a small town in the UK, with his loopy cocker spaniels, Daisy and Oscar, his fat old cat, Jess, his many tropical fish, and the love of his life, Sally. Writing is the passion that fills his life during the small periods of time when he isn’t cleaning up after his pets. His favourite things are Chinese food, good white wine, Family Guy, and Disneyworld...
Horror is his beloved genre and his many inspirations range from the twisted minds of Brian Keene, Stephen King, and Richard Laymon, to Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.
His official website contains free short stories, book reviews, and much much more. Check it out at:
www.iainrobwright.com
Animal Kingdom: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel Page 22