by J. W. Vohs
David caught up with the trio, and he was the first to spot Jack slowly walking across the battlefield, punching through not-quite-dead hunter brains with the business end of his halberd. Carter led his friends to a relatively clear spot where one of the bombs had flattened a wide patch of the berm, and they waited several minutes for Jack to pick his way through the carnage and join them. There were no intact corpses in the vicinity, only pieces of the hunters that had experienced a blast first-hand.
Jack was grinning from ear to ear when he reached Carter and the others. “I do believe we pulled it off,” he bragged, “not that I ever doubted it.”
David groaned. “Even though the last thing you need is something to make your head even bigger, I’ve got more good news. And it is good news. It’s incredible news, and it can’t wait another minute.”
“We all know yer wife’s expectin.’ Are ya havin’ twins or somethin’?” Carter slapped David’s back. “I gotta tell ya though, baby news ain’t all that excitin’.”
David stumbled a bit from the force of Carter’s friendly blow and tripped over a piece of a hunter partially buried in the dirt. He steadied himself and grinned mischievously. “It is if the baby is my brother’s seventeen-year-old son.”
Jack grabbed his brother, “Are you talking about Maggie’s baby?”
“Maggie, Margaret, Cleveland Art School pacifist, in a way she actually did lose you to the war—“
Luke wasn’t sure what he was hearing, “Are you talking about my mother?”
David turned to Luke and gently explained, “Before she was your mother, she was Jack’s high school sweetheart. She never told him she was pregnant. He never knew about you.”
Luke was speechless, and Jack’s mouth hung open in disbelief until Carter spoke up. “He does look like ya.”
“You both even have those weird double-jointed thumbs,” David added. “Check it out.”
Jack and Luke eyed each other cautiously, keeping their emotional confusion in check as they tried to process David’s revelation. Without speaking, Jack and Luke discarded their gloves and compared hands. Sure enough, they both could bend their thumbs completely backward.
“I don’t know what to say—“ Luke began as he leaned down to pick up one of the gloves he’d dropped. The next few seconds seemed to unfold in slow motion as a small patch of ground shifted near Luke’s feet. What at first looked like a hard clump of debris rose to the surface, then instantly rotated and came alive. As the hunter’s head snapped out from under the dirt, it instinctively sought the nearest human target. The creature’s teeth sunk into the soft flesh of Luke’s hand as Gracie screamed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.W. Vohs is a former soldier and high school history teacher. He lives in northeast Indiana with his wife and children.