Fetal Bait Apocalypse: 3 Collections in 1

by Joel Arnold

  Brent watched as Chuck reached into the water and pulled Blackie up next to him.

  “Aw, sheesh,” Chuck wheezed. “Aw, God.”

  The dog’s eyes had been pecked out. One ear hung by a mere thread of cartilage. Chuck had to let go of him in order to stay afloat.

  “Come on back,” John called, waiting at the shore, one hand held out for Chuck, even though he was still twenty-five feet away. Chuck dog-paddled slowly back, spitting the lake water out of his mouth that kept splashing in. “Come on, buddy,” John called. “You can do it.”

  Brent dropped his bow and quiver to the ground. He was about to drop out of the tree when something caught his eyes. It was the cornfield he had been looking at earlier. It appeared to waver.

  “You can do it,” John called again.

  The cornfield seemed to rise up, the stalks lifting into the sky. Brent realized they weren’t corn stalks at all, but more ducks. Hundreds of ducks. Thousands of them. They all rose into the sky as if in answer to some ethereal signal.

  Brent dropped quickly out of the tree. He stood next to John.

  “You can do it!” he yelled to Chuck. “Come on, man. Keep kicking!”

  At twenty feet, Chuck stopped. He stayed in the same place, treading water. “I just have to rest a moment,” he gasped.

  “No,” Brent yelled. “You gotta keep moving toward the shore. You don’t have far to go.” He began to look for a long branch, but froze when the sound of quacking thundered out of the sky like the screech of a dozen tires.

  Ten ducks swarmed out of the sky and landed on Chuck in a shroud of undulating feathers.

  “Christ!” John yelled. He raised his rifle to his shoulder and aimed.

  Brent yelled at John, “No!” He ran toward him. “Don’t fire!”

  “They’re drowning him.”

  Brent began to kick off his sneakers. He’d have to go in.

  John fired into the air. The ducks didn’t move.

  Brent took off his jacket. Started taking in deep breaths.

  John lowered his gun. Aimed at the mass of ducks.

  “No!” Brent yelled.

  John pulled the trigger. The crack of the rifle could barely be heard above the terrible squawking.

  The ducks rose into the air.

  A bullet hole appeared where Chuck’s nose used to be. Blood poured out in a fountain just before he was swallowed up in the lake’s blackness. Feathers floated in an expanding circle around the spot.

  John lowered his rifle. “What the hell? What the hell was that?” He threw the rifle to the ground as if it had burned him. “Just what the hell was that?”

  He stepped to the edge of the pebble-covered shore, the toes of his waders breaking the green slime on the water’s surface. His jaw quivered, his Adam’s apple jumped up and down. He pointed to the center of the lake and looked at Brent. “Did you see that?” he said. “My God, I shot him right in the face. Did you see that?” His eyes darted between the sky and the lake. “What the hell am I gonna tell his wife?”

  Brent watched the surface of the lake, part of him expecting Chuck to come sputtering to the surface at any moment. But the lake remained deep, black, and impenetrable. He looked up at the sky. It was clear.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said. Chuck was gone.

  “What do you mean?” John asked. “Just leave?”

  “Do you want to go out there and get him?”

  John’s mouth fell open. He looked up at the lake and back at Brent. “But what am I gonna tell his wife,” he asked, shaking his head.

  “C’mon. Let’s go. We’ll call the police. Come back for our stuff later.”

  “The police?”

  “Yeah. Come on.”

  John seemed to accept this. He picked up his rifle carefully with the tips of his fingers, as if he were picking up a poisonous snake.

  Brent put his shoes back on and grabbed his bow and arrows. He picked up Chuck’s vest and dug out the keys.

  “Come on,” he said, putting an arm around John’s shoulders.

  “Yeah, Chief. Yeah.”

  They walked back over the narrow trail, John with his eyes to the ground in a daze, his mouth open, snot collecting on his upper lip. Brent kept his eyes trained on the sky. It remained clear. Suffocating.

  As they got closer to the truck, Brent thought he could hear something. A soothing sound. The sound of vibration.

  The sound of warbling.

  Hundreds of ducks stood between them and the truck.

  John slowly looked up, comprehending. Brent could feel him shaking.

  “Just take it easy,” Brent said.

  Their feathers and wings were tight against their inert bodies. They looked as motionless as decoys, yet all of their eyes were fixated on the two hunters.

  “What do they want?” John asked.

  “Hell if I know.”

  John stopped.

  “Come on, man,” Brent said.

  “I’m not moving an inch.”

  “We’ll have to get past them, get to the truck.”

  “No,” John said. “No way.”

  “They’re just ducks, John.”

  John shook his head. “Are you nuts? Did you see what they did to Chuck? To the damn dog?”

  “They were in water. We’re on land.”

  “But—”

  “They got beaks, not teeth. They can peck at us, but that’s not going to kill us.”

  The eyes of the ducks remained on them. The sound of the warbling continued hypnotically.

  “You go first,” John said.

  Brent nodded. “Okay.” They were just ducks, after all.

  He walked forward. The ducks calmly parted, quacking lightly as he stepped past them. He kept his eyes trained on the truck, but could feel his ankles and calves brushing against the birds.

  The pickup was covered with duck shit. Brent slowly pulled the pickup’s keys from his pocket and slid them into the lock. He turned the key gently and winced at the sound of the lock popping up on the other side of the glass. He pulled up on the handle. Turned around slowly to face John.

  “Come on, John,” he said as evenly as possible. “It’s cool.”

  John pulled his duck call out from under his shirt. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Come on, John. Let’s go.”

  John shook his head. Brought the duck call to his lips.

  Brent said calmly, “Hey, don’t do that.”

  John said around the call, “It’s magic, man. It’s magic.” He blew on it. Two loud honks.

  Waaahhh! Waaahhh!

  There was a sudden whirlwind of wings and beaks. Brent covered his face, felt the rush of wings and webbed feet against his body. The quacks were deafening. But they flew away from him. He lowered his arm.

  They covered John, beating him with their wings, pummeling him with their beaks. It was a mass of ducks, completely shrouding him.

  The mass fell over.

  The wings continued to beat, the beaks continued to pummel. Brent opened the pickup’s door and slid in, watching, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

  When the ducks flew off of John’s body, John lay still. His face was bruised. It was blue.

  The leather strap of his duck call protruded from his mouth. He had swallowed it.

  Brent fumbled with the keys in the ignition. He managed to turn them. The truck started with a roar.

  The ducks turned toward him.

  Brent floored the gas pedal, backing up and turning one hundred and eighty degrees, then shot forward. He made it the short distance to the highway, blindly turning onto it. He heard a screech of tires and the honk of a car horn, but it missed him. He started accelerating.

  Ten ducks dropped from the sky like kamikazes and smashed into the windshield. Brent swerved, slamming on the brakes. He turned on the windshield wipers. The wipers couldn’t lift the corpses off the glass. He couldn’t see. He slowed the truck to a crawl. A mist of blood started spra
ying out of the air vents. Brent closed them and pulled over to the side of the highway and stopped. He stared at the dead ducks on the windshield, the feathers of their smashed, broken bodies.

  Brent shook his head.

  What would they tell Sheila when they found him?

  The ducks on the windshield seemed to stare at him. They seemed to wait. Patient.

  Brent closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. He could taste the molecules of duck blood that hung in the atmosphere of the pickup’s cab.

  He opened his eyes and opened the door.

  What will they tell Sheila, was all he could think. What will they tell her?

  He stepped out of the truck. Didn’t look up, instead looked at the gravel at his feet. The ground turned dark. The sound of the warbling was like the cooing of a mother soothing her child. He raised his arms, spreading them out like wings.

  What will they tell Sheila? he wondered one last time.

  They poured out of the sky.

  Mississippi Pearl

  Some of you might remember my sister, Kelly Holmsted. At fourteen, she made the papers when she pried open an American pearly freshwater mussel from Lake Pepin and pulled out a perfect white sphere nearly the size of a cherry; the largest Mississippi pearl ever found. A dealer offered her five thousand dollars for it, but she refused. He offered seven thousand, and again, she refused.

  “Think of the tuition it would cover,” our father said.

  “You can save it for your wedding,” Mom said. “Think of the honeymoon you could have. You could fly somewhere.”

  I was only eight at the time, and the answer seemed simple. “I’ve got marbles bigger than that,” I said. “Take the money.”

  But Kelly wouldn’t part with it. She brushed a lock of light auburn hair from her eyes. “How can I sell something so beautiful? So perfect?”

  She kept the pearl secure in a small black velvet pouch attached to a silver necklace Mom had given her for her thirteenth birthday. Although the chain never left her neck, she often lifted the pouch from her deepening cleavage and carefully plucked the pearl from its folds to feel the cool, smooth hardness in the palm of her hand. She’d stare at it, mouth slightly parted, eyes filled with the pearl’s reflection. I’d have to shout to get her attention.

  She let me hold it only once, watching my every move, as if I might try to steal it if she so much as blinked. I tossed it in the air just to see how it felt to catch something so valuable.

  She nearly choked on her own gasp. “You’re done,” she said and pried the pearl from my sweaty palm.

  But as careful as she was, vigilant to a fault, she lost it only five weeks later.

  She stood outside the screen door crying, both hands pressed against the wire mesh, her khaki shorts and white blouse muddied and soaked with rain. Several of her fingernails were broken, and her forearms and knees were scraped and bleeding. “It’s gone,” she said through the screen.

  Mom hesitated only a moment, looking her daughter over and swallowing back a look of anguish that frightened me. She yanked open the door and took Kelly’s hand. “Oh, honey — what happened?”

  My big sister didn’t seem so big anymore as she stepped across the threshold and collapsed into Mom’s arms. Dad and I watched stupidly while she bawled, until Mom finally coaxed her into the bathroom and shut the door. Running bath water muffled any words that were said.

  Later, this is what Mom told me;

  Kelly dropped the pearl while walking home. A rush of rainwater swept it into the gutter and washed it down a storm-drain. Kelly bloodied her skin by lying on gravel and broken glass trying to reach through the rusty grate for it. And she’s very upset about it, Michael, so don’t you dare bring it up to her. Understand?

  I nodded. I’d wanted to ask about the small bruises on Kelly’s neck, but Mom’s eyes insisted that the subject was closed.

  And it was.

  But that was over thirty years ago.

  * * *

  It’s early March and I’m ready for winter to be over, especially after the white-knuckle drive to my parents’ new house on Lake Krenshaw. I’m surprised at how big the place is, surprised they could afford a lake home like this, but I guess that’s what you get for being thrifty your whole life. My wife Corinne and daughter Amanda are home with the flu, and a big part of me wishes I stayed with them. But Kelly’s visiting from Nebraska, and it’s rare that I get to see her.

  Mom’s got peppermint tea on. Dad and I munch on homemade chocolate chip cookies. Kelly’s husband Bruce stands at the bay window scratching his neck and draining a glass of bourbon.

  “Nice view,” he says, staring at the snow swirling in the darkness.

  His sarcasm grows more pronounced with each drink that slides past his well-oiled tongue. I’ve only been here thirty minutes, and I’m already sick to death of him. But instead of giving into the urge to tell him to shut the hell up, I ignore him and divert my parents’ attention.

  “Am I crazy, or does anyone else recall a junked up Cadillac sitting out on Lake Pepin when I was a kid? Folks took bets on when it would fall through the ice?”

  “You’re crazy,” Dad says around a mouthful of cookie.

  “I remember that,” says Mom. “You’d buy a ticket and write down the date and time you thought it would fall through the ice. Sure I remember that.”

  “You think a car could still drive out there?” Kelly asks.

  Bruce grimaces. “Are you nuts? You’d fall through in a second.” He swirls the melting ice in his glass. “I could use another drink, Kel.”

  Her shaking is worse than ever. It’s mainly her head, and we’d feared Parkinson’s, but her doctor insists it’s just stress.

  She starts to stand, but I wave her down. “I’ll get it.” I pour his drink and set it on the table with a loud thunk.

  Stress.

  “Russian Park,” Dad says.

  My mind back-pedals. “What?”

  “That’s where they put the cars in at. Russian Park. Drained the oil and gas so they wouldn’t leak. Attached a chain to the axle so once they broke through they could winch them back in.”

  Cars on the ice. Back to that again.

  “They stopped doing it once kids started spray-painting cuss words on the exterior. Ken Olson said they found used condoms in the seats. Remember Ken Olson?” he asks.

  Mom nods. Her and Dad’s hair have turned the same shade of silver, and it’s already hard to remember it any other way.

  Bruce finishes his drink with a loud slurp and comes back for another.

  When I arrived that day, the ice out on Lake Krenshaw looked rippled and distressed. The fishing shanties had been hauled off, except for one that broke through two weeks ago and refroze half in and half out of the lake.

  “I bet you could drive out there,” Kelly says. “As cold as it’s been lately.”

  “Take the goddamn truck out there and try it, then,” Bruce says. “But when you break through the ice, I’m going after the truck before I try saving your sorry ass.”

  “Bruce,” Kelly says. It’s just the one word, but we all catch the inflection she gives it.

  Bruce’s eyes harden. He’s a piece of work, all right; a blustering, unkempt, alcohol slurping piece of work. “What?”

  Kelly ignores him. The shaking of her head seems like an attempt to hold in her anger.

  But Bruce won’t let it go. His lips twitch. “What?”

  Kelly nods at his drink. “Take it easy.”

  He grunts and pours himself another.

  The intensity of Dad’s breathing increases through his nose. Mom searches the cupboard and pulls down a container of Tylenol, pops two in her mouth and follows it with a swig of tea.

  “Enough, already,” Kelly says.

  “Enough what?”

  All five-foot-three of Kelly stands and grabs the drink from his hand. She dumps the contents into the sink. “Stop embarrassing me.”

  Bruce grabs another glass, slams it on the c
ounter and fills it to the top. “Me embarrass you?”

  Funny thing is, now I want a stiff drink. I want to numb the shit I’m hearing. I want to make it easier to deal with this stress.

  Huh — stress.

  Listen, stress is driving behind a semi spewing slush on your windshield. Stress is your baby burning with fever. What makes Kelly’s head shake, doctor, isn’t stress.

  “Bruce,” Kelly says.

  “What?”

  How many times have I imagined my arm uncoiling like a snake, my fist connecting with the bridge of Bruce’s nose, the feel of his cartilage and bone crumbling beneath my knuckles?

  “Bruce!”

  How many times?

  But tonight, his hand flies out. Connects with Kelly’s cheek and nose. Makes a sound so awful, the sound of skin hitting skin, and damn it, I could sure use a drink, I could sure use permission to cover my ears, close my eyes and chant “nah nah nah” loud enough to take away that sound, that sickening sound that no one should ever have to hear.

  Kelly’s face turns bright red. Blood trickles from her nose. Her eyes grow wide and wet.

  The rage, the anger I feel, immobilizes me. I look at my mother. My father. Mom’s frozen, too. Dad says, “Hey,” and starts to stand, but he stops. Frozen. It’s so foreign to us. So unreal. See, this isn’t our world, this isn’t our life.

  We sit and watch like deer caught in headlights. Why can’t I speak? Why can’t I do something?

  Then Mom, God bless her, rolls her shoulders back, sears Bruce with her eyes, and says, “We do not hit in this house.” In her voice are forty-some years of teaching crowded elementary school classrooms.

  Bruce grunts, grabs a pack of Camels off the kitchen counter and walks out the front door into the cold, slamming the door behind him. We let out a collective breath.

  Stress, huh?

  Mom wets a washcloth and hands it to Kelly. Dad drops onto the sofa. His eyes find refuge in a basketball game. Kelly wipes the blood off her nose and tears from the corners of her eyes. Mom takes the washcloth from her and rinses it out in the sink. I wonder if Dad sees the game, or does he still see Bruce’s hand striking his daughter?

  “C’mon, Kel,” I finally say. “Let’s go watch the snow.”