The Invasive

by Michael Hodges

  “We need gas,” she said, leaning over to look at the gauge.

  “You’re always like that,” he said.

  “Like what?”

  “Paranoid about gas.”

  “No I’m not. You’re just nonchalant about having the needle on a quarter tank.”

  “A quarter tank gets you a long way.”

  “Not in the apocalypse.”

  “This isn’t just about the apocalypse, though. You were like this before.”

  “Shut up, Bishop.”

  Yutu whimpered from the backseat, and they let out a chuckle. It was good to be heading back to Colbrick.

  Each gravel they encountered led to clusters of cabins. On a cul-de-sac, they found a Nissan sedan parked next to an older, modest cottage. The driver’s door was ajar. Droplets of blood trailed from the driveway to the cottage, and Angela gagged when the trail lead her to the source. On the sandy ground were human remains, although that would be a kind description. Scattered bones lay tentatively connected by sinew and meaty strands, as if drawn and quartered, but stopped right before everything was ripped apart. Most of the meat and organs had been picked clean, and odd, hoofed tracks marked the scene along with foul stool and puddles of urine.

  “Pigras,” she said in a depressed tone.

  Bishop held out his palm to Angela and paused. Chewing came from the dim cottage, just inside the door. Angela pointed her .357 towards the opening, preparing for a nightmare. Bishop followed by pointing the shotgun at the dark doorway.

  Rattling metal, more chewing.

  The chewing stopped, followed by pattering paws.

  Bishop put his finger in the trigger slot.

  The chewing thing darted out of the doorway towards them, clenching a bag of chips in its snout. The creature held low to the ground, trying to hide its narrow face that rounded off to a big rump and bushy tail. It chittered nervously.

  “Jesus,” Angela said. “It’s a freaking raccoon!”

  Bishop removed his finger from the trigger and laughed. Yutu, however, retreated.

  “Go raccoon go!” Angela said as it grew smaller and smaller between the hemlocks.

  “Almost killed a native,” Bishop said.

  “We need to be more careful. That’s a survivor there,” she said, pointing to the last hint of the raccoon’s big rump and the bright, red bag of Doritos it held in its mouth.

  “No different than us,” he said.

  They left the mangled remains and inspected the sedan.

  “They keys are inside,” Angela said.

  “There’s also a full tank of gas,” he said.

  “How would we get past the road dam?”

  “Good question, I don’t think this could make it.”

  “We don’t have a hose to siphon the gas, either.”

  “Wilkin’s Bait and Tackle had rubber tubes for the bait tanks,” Bishop said. “And the minnows sure as hell don’t need them anymore.”

  Angela laughed.

  They rode out to Highway 18. Still no people. Wilkin’s bait shop remained empty, so they borrowed a bait tank tube that stunk of algae and mold. Yutu sniffed the tube, as if it required his approval to enter the vehicle.

  “Back to the car?” Bishop asked.

  Angela put her hand on his and shook her head.

  “No way,” she said. “I was thinking about this last night. No going back to the same spots within twenty-four hours. The cabin was an outlier.”

  “You’re much smarter than me,” Bishop said.

  “If we can randomize our behavior a bit, we can at least fool some of them.”

  Bishop gazed at the tackle store. Although he disliked Wilkins, the emptiness of the old crank’s dream shop saddened him. “Yes, but how do you fool a flier?” he asked.

  “I don’t think it’s possible.”

  They drove towards the center of Elmore, eyeing each and every garage or store for a vehicle. An old Chevy Malibu was parked along Main Street, near Yutu’s smoldering apartment building. The Chevy contained half a tank of gas, and Bishop inserted the moldy hose, then put his lips onto it and sucked. Gasoline belched up from the Chevy, and Bishop inserted the hose into the fuel can he took from Sue’s. When the can filled, he poured it into the truck’s tank. This process was repeated until the Chevy was empty. When the last drop to be gotten was gotten, Bishop stood, wiped the remnants of algae and gasoline from his mouth and looked into the clouds. The heat beat upon him, and he noticed a heavy layer of humidity—unusual for the Rocky Mountains.

  In a moment, they were back on Highway 18, heading away from Elmore.

  “Goodbye, Elmore,” Angela said.

  What had once been a fertile hub of activity was dead and deserted—a Rocky Mountain tourist town flipped on its back like an empty, weathered tortoise shell.

  Yutu looked back at the town and the scents he’d known all his life. He liked the people he was with now, but missed The Man who raised him as a pup. There was nothing Yutu could have done as The Man had locked him in the apartment. He had barked and barked until his throat shredded, but his favorite Man never came back.

  “Look at Yutu,” Angela said. “He’s acting strange.”

  Bishop glanced into the rearview, and sadness filled his heart. “We never found out what happened to his owner,” he said.

  Angela tapped a finger on the window and stared at the passing roadside.

  “You saved him from the fire,” she said. “And for right now, that’s good enough.”

  *

  Elmore disappeared behind them as they rolled past cedar, aspen, and tamarack. Bishop approached the bends at slower speeds, ever aware of obstructions in the road, alive and not. Every few minutes, Angela checked the sky.

  They were getting smarter.

  Yutu stared out the back window, his tail motionless.

  Flight Time

  Dr. Ted Donaldson chomped his gum as he looked out over the rugged Montana landscape. The terrain was far different than the Wisconsin hill country he hiked on occasion. Perhaps most noticeable was the minimal development, how the endless montane forest and meadows lacked the telltale gaps that indicated paved or gravel roads.

  The UH-60 Blackhawk’s blade-vortex interaction thundered the air above him, and he thought of his son, Ben, how he’d hit a homerun last week during his little league game. Ben hadn’t hit the ball over the fence, but he’d hit it far enough so he could reach home plate. His coach told him later that it was the longest home run of the season.

  Yep, Ben definitely got that from his mother’s side, Donaldson thought.

  Four other men were in the aircraft, including the pilot, a co-pilot, a gunner, and some kind of intelligence official. I’ve hit a homerun, too, Donaldson thought. The other biologists would be envious when they found out he was chosen to examine these new species. He’d convinced the official to allow for closer air surveillance of the species than protocol allowed and to hopefully dart a live specimen with a tag to track behavior in the wild. Although Donaldson was certainly used to dangerous situations doing field work, he had always felt envious when attending Society for Conservation Biology meetings and listening to others go on about how they were suspended in the canopy and all the others like them with their adventures. First, his job was to take notes from the air as the helicopter approached various disturbances and nesting areas. He already had considerable knowledge of the Stunners, and how they used the barriers to collect food and raise their young. The primate creatures displayed these same characteristics, also using the dams and even helping build them. The official told him his top priority was to document the Harassers. Homeland Security had placed M2 machine guns, laser-guided SAMs, and M242 Bushmasters around the perimeter to shoot down any Harassers attempting to fly out of the valley. The Avenger platform was in place, as well as shoulder-fired rocket systems for maximum flexibility. Of upmost importance were the FLIR/laser rangefinders, which allowed Army personnel to track fleeing aliens in darkness and target them. Bu
t the fools had given no thought to the thick forested areas in-between. An animal the size of a dog or smaller could easily get out. He was actually hoping for more species. If he could get close, he’d be the first person to discover one or more of them. The thought caused him to squirm in his seat. “We’re passing over Barrier 1 now,” the pilot shouted.

  The pilot maneuvered the Blackhawk closer to Barrier 1, and Donaldson made notes of the intricate layering of aspen, spruce, and ponderosa pine. In a way, he admired the Stunner’s sharp saw-like tails. He wondered about the Stunner’s native habitat and how they used their tails there. Here, they were utilized to take down large trees. There was very little forest litter at this elevation. Not with the fires that frequently cleared out the understory and the fuels reduction work the United States Forest Service engaged in.

  The Blackhawk flew close enough to Barrier 1 that its blades blew away much of the haze and rustled the branches and dying leaves at the top. When Donaldson reached for his binoculars, a horde of Stunners scrambled to the top and clawed at the air. Donaldson felt a buzzing in his head and his thoughts clouded.

  “Whoa…we’re pulling back,” the pilot said. “Feeling them pretty good at this altitude.”

  Their stomachs roiled as the Blackhawk jerked upwards, away from the sonic reach of the Stunners.

  Donaldson looked below at the gathering animals.

  Must be a hundred of them now, he thought. Around the perimeter of the Stunners, a group of primates collected, some groping forward as their babies clung to their chests with six limbs. Donaldson noted the color, hair, and other features in his iPad. Then his gaze turned from the creatures to the surrounding habitat. Numerous trails emanated from Barrier 1 into the Devastation Zone, which lasted for hundreds of yards on either side of the massive structure. The trails disappeared into intact forest at the perimeter, and this caught Donaldson’s eye like a cat that watches a toy disappear around a corner.

  “Can we head west?” he shouted to the pilot.

  The pilot gave a thumbs up and maneuvered the Blackhawk past the Devastation Zone. The spectacular Apex Range loomed ahead of them, the granite peaks chiseled and defined below a deep blue sky.

  Donaldson watched the landscape below, marveling at the outstanding ungulate and ursine habitat. He assumed the invasive species used those game trails, too. After all, why wouldn’t they? It made no sense to create fresh trails except at the barriers. A non-native species can spread itself just fine using the traditional means of the native flora and fauna. Saving energy while expanding was a template for species survival.

  As the Blackhawk thundered on, the forest rose to meet them. The trees changed from lower elevation species to whitebark pine, subalpine fir, subalpine larch, and Engelmann spruce. Huge rock formations split patches of trees, and soon, Donaldson stared into the vast alpine cirques and talus slopes of the high country. He thought of his son again, and his homerun, and how it had boosted Ben’s confidence. Donaldson needed this home run, too. Oh, he had all sorts of theories spinning in his mind, such as how long these things had been here, what could’ve kept them hidden, and what sort of ecosystem shift might have triggered a spread across the landscape. As a biologist, he didn’t have to look too far for surface disturbances responsible for such a move. There were two main types of disturbances in the Rockies the last hundred years, and these were fire and the melting of glaciers. Nothing approached either of these two in terms of impact.

  He’d done a bit of research on the trip over and discovered that no major fires had occurred in the higher elevation forests of the Apex ecosystem in at least two decades. What was occurring was a record-setting melting of glaciers, and now only two glaciers remained, a puny eight percent of their original size. These were on the north side of Kilbrix Peak, and the north side of Onyx Peak. Nowhere else in the lower 48 had the glaciers disappeared so fast. Donaldson thought of the baseball rocketing off Ben’s bat and gliding past the sun, two orbs in the sky, disproportionate. He chomped his grape-flavored Big League Chew and stared at the changing landscape below. He was starting to formulate a theory based on his ark idea that the species had perhaps been carried on vessels with sensors that fixated on planets with water and oxygen-rich atmospheres. He needed evidence of an entire ecosystem being released, even if many or most of the species hadn’t made it on our planet. It made no sense to release only predators, unless they arrived here by accident. Donaldson knew all too well that there were basically two means for invasive species introduction: deliberate, a classic example being the now feral pigs wreaking havoc in Hawaii, and accidental, such as the invasive mussels released in bulge water. Although not impossible, he didn’t really buy the idea of some alien zoo crash-landing here. Human colonists always brought species native to their homelands with them. White Europeans brought the pigs to Hawaii for food. At the time, they didn’t think anything of it. Of course, now we see what they did as reckless and destructive. Did this other civilization consider what would happen to the native species of other planets? Did they care? Or did they think other planets would not have life on them? Did they think that a planet inhabited by an advanced civilization would just shoot their vessel out of the sky or capture it so it wouldn’t be a problem? Donaldson did admit that if a civilization was to go about colonizing the universe, it would be a great idea to see if their native ecosystem took hold before risking coming themselves. For all Donaldson knew, there could be who knows how many probes scattered around the galaxy.

  The country was beautiful, maybe the prettiest he’d ever seen, and without question a rich ecosystem that was far beyond anything in Illinois, invasive species or not.

  The sun warmed his skin and his face itched from mild sunburn. As he went to scratch his cheek, he saw movement below.

  “Nine o’clock” he shouted to the pilot.

  The pilot gave a thumbs up and turned the Blackhawk.

  Donaldson glassed the rocky terrain and couldn’t believe it. Seven eel-like creatures ghosted across the rocks. Their skin was see-through, like the Kryptopterus bicirrhis, or glass catfish he used to have in his aquarium as a child.

  The eel creatures seemed to slow down, and everyone aboard the Blackhawk stared down in disbelief. The blades kicked up sand and dust, and the pilot gained elevation so as not to disturb the creatures.

  When the dust cleared, the eels were gone.

  Donaldson gripped the dart gun and scanned the terrain for the evasive eels. A moment later, an eel darted out from cover with a smaller six-limbed creature in its mouth. That’s it, he thought with a gleam in his eye. Now if he could just tag one of them…

  Through the gun’s sight, he saw a red flashing tag on the eel. That’s really it, he thought. Conclusive evidence of deliberate monitoring. Then Donaldson heard another helicopter. Couldn’t be, he thought.

  Something pummeled the Blackhawk, knocking it to the side. The blades stuttered and whined, and blood sprayed across the windshield.

  “What the fuck!” the pilot shouted.

  The gunner next to Donaldson fired again and again as the helicopter was flung about. The pilot shouted as the windshield darkened, then grew light as whatever had been attached to it blew away in pieces from the blade. The helicopter entered a dangerous pitch and Donaldson spit up his Big League Chew. “For fuck’s sake, fly this thing!” he shouted at the pilot. More Blackhawks thundered around them as the sky darkened and time slowed. When he looked out his observation window, he realized how wrong he was. A cloud of fliers surrounded the Blackhawk, all of them mimicking it. Some of the small fliers were diced by the blades and whipped away. He’d seen this species of bird before. What he hadn’t seen before was the monstrous version at the perimeter of the chopper blades. His first response was to marvel at its impressive form, a true flying machine designed as an elite predator with sensational auditory capabilities. It was a work of art. Deadly art, but art nonetheless. Donaldson fired his dart gun at the beast, but missed wide left in all the commotion
.

  The Blackhawks engines whined and stuttered.

  “We’re going down!” the pilot said.

  “I love you, Ben,” Donaldson said, bracing himself.

  The machine gunner fired wildly as dozens of small fliers swarmed into the cabin.

  “Love you, Sarah,” Donaldson said.

  The inconsistent whirring of blades clashed with the consistent, maddening tone of the mimicry.

  “I love you, Suzy,” he said.

  Sporadic machine-gun fire filled his ears. Dismembered wings and wild eyes illuminated in the muzzle flash. Dozens of deformed and blood-spurting fliers rushed the cockpit, screeching and spraying blood everywhere. And yet more and more came, being forced through the gunfire and whirling blades as if ordered to do so by the vague, monstrous shapes at the blade’s periphery.

  Something enormous gripped the Blackhawk’s skids, and for the first time, Donaldson saw the big flier’s triplicate pupil eyes and deep into its gullet. The enormous flier glared at him and cried out as it twisted the helicopter upside down, careful to avoid the blades.

  Thwap Thwap Thwap.

  A patch of jagged mountain raced towards his observation window as the screaming fliers tore away his face.

  Dry Country

  They maneuvered along the dirt road bypass back through the woods, Angela commanding from the rooftop—an apocalyptic, angelic surfer. Bishop stopped the truck and looked to the west. Far off in an unnatural clearing, he saw a jumble of trees and vegetation sloping to the fern-covered forest floor, and assumed it to be the start of the road dam. Bishop guessed the seals and pigras moved on from the ends of the dam after construction and instead concentrated on feeding, reproduction, and maintenance at the middle structure.

  There were no signs of the wacky bird. Bishop was hoping they’d see it again, and he knew Angela was too. When they reached Highway 18, Angela got back inside the truck.