The World's Last Breaths: Final Winter, Animal Kingdom, and The Peeling

by Iain Rob Wright

  “Huh?”

  “Wine,” said Sal. “I want wine.”

  “I think I have some in my other pants.”

  She sighed. “I suppose we should just turn in. We won’t be able to get breakfast at the resort in the morning, so mum and I will have to find a supermarket while you have the kids.

  Iain groaned. Raising kids was supposed to be a group activity. “Great. Looking forward to it.”

  Grandma went to bed. They watched her go, then Iain patted his knees and got up too. “Okay, I’m going up then. Where’s my Kindle?”

  “In your ass!” Sal chuckled.

  Iain didn’t joke about his Kindle, so he stood there waiting for a proper answer to a serious question.

  Sal sighed when she realised he would not be laughing at her joke. “It’s in the side pocket of my suitcase.”

  “Okay, I’ll see in bed.”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll lock up down here, babe, don’t worry. I’ll bring some water up too. Anything else you would like, honey?”

  “Do we have any muffins?”

  “No.”

  “Then water is fine.” He went to leave, but caught sight of the two lizards again, competing over a mosquito hovering around a wall lamp. He couldn't not look. Sal turned her chair so she was facing him a little more and scratched at her thigh as another bite mark appeared. “Maybe I’ll bring you up something extra special, big boy.”

  “R-really?”

  “Yeah,” she purred. “You’re such a magnificent husband, and a perfect man. I can’t believe I’m married to a best selling author.”

  Iain smiled. “You deserve it, honey. You really do.”

  “Deserve what? Iain, what are you muttering about?”

  Iain blinked and shook his head. “What, oh nothing. See you upstairs.”

  She frowned at him, then turned back towards the pool. His mind was always running away with him. Part of running a business-of-one was constantly being in work-mode. He often found it hard to just clear his mind and think of nothing. Over the last few years, as his success and workload had grown, he'd found himself getting too easily distracted. It was vital he shut off and relaxed this holiday. He risked burning out otherwise. If he wasn't careful, he'd end up a hare-brained lunatic like his old colleague, Matt Shaw. It had been ages since the care home let the poor misfit out in public. Last Iain heard, Matt spent all his time in a padded room stitching teddy bears together.

  Iain headed up the stone steps in the entrance hall and climbed up onto the balcony. He couldn’t help but check in on the kids before her retired for the night. He always loved their peaceful snoring, and he still had that horrible, irrational fear they might pass away in their sleep. When Jack had been first born, and he had learned about Cot Death, he hadn’t slept for six months. That fear had lingered, and even with Molly eight months old and Jack three years, he still woke up in the night panicked sometimes. He had no idea being a parent could be so terrifying.

  When he opened Molly’s door she immediately turned over and farted, making him chuckle. Just like her mother.

  When he tried the next door, he heard only silence. He lingered, head tilted and listening. Every passing second without sound made his heart beat a little faster. Then, a moment away from rushing into the room and shaking Jack awake, he heard a grunt followed by the whistle of a blocked nose. Poor little guy was unwell. Best to leave him be.

  “Love you, Jack,” he whispered as he closed the door.

  Cluck!

  Confusion halted Iain just as he was about to pull the door against the jam. As it was, a shadowy black slither still remained. Had he disturbed Jack? Or was the strange noise just his son clearing his throat. Was he bunged up, feverish? Sal was the expert on the various Pox of the world. He ended up standing there, motionless, not wanting to disturb his son any further, but also not convinced that Jack was okay.

  Cluck!

  Iain opened the door wider again. “Okay, what the heck?”

  Stepping from the light, he was blind in the dark, but Jack’s silhouette disturbed the shadows above the bed. What was we doing awake? Had they been noisy downstairs?

  Something brushed against his foot and made him flinch—although that wasn’t really the truth. What actually happened was he leapt back three feet like a startled cat. When he realised nothing alive was scuttling around his feet, he swept about with his foot, trying to find whatever had touched him. He found something with his toes and, like a monkey, picked it up so he could grab it with his hands. The manoeuvre beat bending over any day. He’d left that shit behind in his twenties. God bless the monkey foot pick up.

  The thing he held in his hands surprised him, not something he expected to find in the bedroom of a luxury Portuguese villa. A huge goddamn feather the size of his own penis—eleven inches at least.

  Cluck!

  Okay, this was getting ridiculous. What was going on? “Jack, are you okay, sweetheart?”

  Bwakirrrrk!

  He fumbled for the light switch on the wall.

  The lights blinked on.

  Jack was gone.

  A chicken perched on the bed. A chicken the size of a frikkin' Dalmatian.

  “Arrrrrrrgh! Shit! Sal, Sal!”

  There was a voice echoing from below, one that got louder as it rose up the stairs. “What? What? What?”

  “Sal Sal Sal.”

  “What? Iain, did you shit the bed again? Because if you did—”

  “Just come in here!”

  She entered the doorway behind him and shut the heck up. Her bottom lip wobbled. “W-w-w…”

  “Yeah,” said Iain. “You see?”

  “That… that…”

  Iain nodded. “I know.”

  “Are you playing a trick on me?”

  “Yes, honey. I genetically engineered a giant chicken over the last ten years so I could prank you one night on a future a holiday. Bazinga!”

  “Where’s Jack?”

  He felt his own lower lip tremble. “I think… I think this thing ate him. It’s revenge of the KFC. Fox News warned us this would happen. They said if Obama got in, genetically altered poultry would rise up and take over the world. They warned us and we didn’t listen.”

  Sal didn’t respond, just nodded slowly. “If that thing ate Jack, then why is it wearing his Paw Patrol pyjamas?”

  Iain covered his mouth at the sight of the little green shorts covering the chicken’s ass. “Oh my God. It ate our son and then stole his jammys. Noooooo!”

  “Cluck! Swimming Pool. Airplane. Cluck!”

  Sal and Iain stared at each other. Iain opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

  “Did that chicken just say what I think it said?” asked Sal.

  “I… I think it just...”

  The chicken flapped about on the bed, spinning a circle and bobbing its head. “Jack play now. Armbands. Swimming pool.”

  Sal ran forward and threw her arms around the huge bird. “Oh, Jack. It’s you. I thought we’d lost you.”

  “Eh… honey? I still think this qualifies as ‘losing him’. He’s a chicken.”

  She whirled on him. “He’s our son!”

  “Granted. But our son is a chicken. I’m not sure I signed on for that.”

  Sal covered her mouth and gasped. “I can’t believe you just said that!”

  Shame washed over him. They always said they would love their kids no matter what, that if Jack or Molly had been born with Downs or Autism or whatever, it wouldn’t matter. This… this was no different, right? So Jack was a chicken. He was still their precious little boy.

  He shook his head. “Christ, I’m going to have to become a vegetarian, aren’t I?”

  Chapter 4

  Grandma agreed they needed to call a doctor, so after speaking to reception on the phone, the resort manager arranged for a local English doctor to come over. The middle-aged ex-pat now stood in the villa’s sitting room, watching with interest as Jack pecked at a cushion on the sofa. Ironi
cally, goose feathers spilled out.

  “Has anything like this ever happened before?” asked the doctor.

  They shook their heads.

  “Any family history?”

  Iain frowned. “Of turning into chickens?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “There’s been an outbreak of Chicken Pox at his nursery,” said Sal. “He broke out in spots earlier today.”

  The doctor tapped his stethoscope against his chin and seemed to think. Jack clucked periodically and tried several times to squeeze through the French doors to get to the swimming pool. At one point he laid an egg, which confused all of them as it made sense that Jack would be a male chicken—a rooster or whatever.

  “I think we should all sit down,” said the doctor, still watching Jack with interest and tapping his chin.

  “Okay,” said Sal. “Should we… feed him or anything? There’s some cereal in the kitchen.”

  “I saw that,” said Iain. “That was pretty cool of the resort.”

  “Please, sit down,” the doctor urged.

  They did as they were asked, except for Grandma who went over to Jack and stroked his feathery back. The doctor leant forward so that both parents could hear him well. “I think what has happened is that your son has turned into a chicken.”

  Iain and Sal looked at each other. Sal spoke up. “We know! What can we do about it?”

  “Have either of you ever kept chickens before?”

  “What? No. We want our son back to normal. You must know how to treat this.”

  “I'm just a semi-retired doctor. I came to Portugal to play golf, not cure Chicken Disease.”

  Iain put his arm around his wife who was in danger of taking off. Her voice had altered, and she was assuming the identity she always did before she kicked ass. Once he had seen her chase a builder down the street for blocking their driveway. He made it two miles before she caught him and tore an apology from him. Now, Iain looked at the doctor pleadingly. “Kids don’t just turn into chickens.”

  “Not normally, no.”

  “Not ever. Doctor, please, what should we do?”

  The doctor straightened up and sighed. “I will arrange for a specialist team to visit, but in the meantime, you must confine yourself to this house. If this thing is contagious… Did you ever see that Fox News report?”

  Iain looked at his wife. “I told you!”

  “Just leave,” said Sal to the doctor. “Send your specialist team or anybody else who will actually help, but I would like you to leave right now.”

  The doctor stood up, glancing sideways at Jack one last time, then nodded. It seemed like leaving was all he wanted to do. It was just 2AM, but he stifled yawns as if he'd been up for days. Playing golf all day must be exhausting.

  The doctor scooted out the door and Sal slammed it behind him. Then she looked at Iain and let her mask slip. He held her as she sobbed into his shoulder. “We’ll figure this out, honey.”

  “What if we can’t?”

  “We’ll cross that road if we come to it.” He chuckled. “Like the chicken, yeah? You get it? I said cross the road-”

  “Shut up, honey.”

  “Okay.”

  Grandma appeared with two cups of tea, handed them over, and went back to Jack who was in the process of pooping up the curtains. Iain wondered if that was the chicken or the three-year-old in him. The resort would charge them for that.

  “Cluck! Telly.”

  Sal wiped her eyes and smiled at her chicken boy. “You want to watch TV, honey?”

  Jack flapped his wings and almost took off. Iain retrieved the remote from the table and switched on the modest flat screen on the wall. He knew his son would demand YouTube be on, so he quickly switched it on and selected some weird ass crap where people dressed up like Spiderman and Elsa. It was Jack’s favourite. The video he selected was about Spiderman pooping out jelly beans. Oscar worthy stuff.

  Jack hopped up on the sofa and nestled down, tucking his spindly legs beneath him and pulling in his feathery wings. For the first time since they had led Jack downstairs, he finally settled still, as mesmerised by the TV as a chicken as he was as a boy.

  With things straightforwarda little calmer, Iain and Sal joined Grandma in the kitchen. They sipped their tea and stared at the ground for a while.

  “What if Molly gets it?” asked Sal.

  Iain rubbed at his eyes. “We checked on her. She’s fine, sleeping, and Grandma has the baby monitor if anything happens. I think it has something to do with that chicken that scratched Jack back at Birmingham airport.”

  “You think it was infected with something?”

  “What was it even doing alone in that corridor?”

  “Maybe it was terrorists?”

  “You think they want to turn us all into chickens?”

  Sal chewed at her lip, then said, “Maybe we should check the news. You have your phone?”

  “Hell yes. Stephen King is going to hit me up any day now and I can’t afford to miss his call.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his Samsung Galaxy Pro 9-3x4 Edge+S and handed it to his wife. She placed her thumb against the reader and unlocked it. Then she rolled her eyes and grunted.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “You have a message. Guillermo Del Toro wants you to let him make a movie of one of your books again.”

  “Jeez, that guy doesn’t take no for an answer. I already told him he can offer me all the millions in the world, but I won’t sell out the integrity of my work. I’m a serious author. I won’t let the Final Winter be butchered by an avaricious filmmaker. Can you believe he wants to relocate the story to Hong Kong, and instead of a pub he wants to set it in a noodle bar. Hollywood, man…”

  “Honey, I love you, but I really don’t care. How do I get to Google?”

  “Sorry, yeah. You just press that icon there that says Google.”

  He waited while his wife did a quick search. Whatever she found engrossed her because she scrolled quickly with the phone right in front of her nose. Her skin turned alabaster, and she tilted the phone so he could see it.

  “Oh fuck!” Iain swallowed a lump in his throat as he read the article's headline.

  BBC NEWS: Birmingham International Airport locked down after attempted terrorist plot. Former author and escape mental patient Matt Shaw held for questioning.

  “They don’t mention what the attack was,” added Sal, but people are saying the whole thing is being suppressed. Whatever it is, they don’t want anybody knowing.

  Iain took back his phone and had a thought. Bringing up his contacts, he scrolled through the list until he reached the Ms:

  Matthew McConaughey

  Matt Shaw

  Michal Bray

  Mike Myers (don’t answer!)

  Mitch Pileggi

  He hit ‘Matt Shaw’ and waited for it to connect. The roaming charges would hurt, but he could always beg his Patrons for more money to pay the bill if he had to.

  Somebody answered. It wasn't Matt. “Who is this?”

  “Iain Rob Wright.”

  “Who?”

  “The best selling author…”

  “Sir, the phone you are calling has been seized in connection to a crime. How do you know the owner?”

  “He used to be a colleague, but a few years ago he broke in and stole all my clothes, so I teamed up with his wife, Marie, and had him committed. Is Matt okay? I mean, like his normal level of okay?”

  “I cannot discuss an ongoing investigation. Have you had any recent contact with Matt Shaw?”

  “He sends me love letters now and then, but I haven’t seen him in person in years. Did he… Did he turn anyone into a chicken?”

  The man on the other end paused for several seconds, then: “Sir, I need you meet with you right away. If you have information-”

  Iain ended the call. He looked at Sal and shook his head. “I think Matt went full Tyler Durden.”

  Sal frowned at the reference.
“What?”

  “I think he released a chicken virus.”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “Come on, Sal. We both know the guy is capable of anything. He’s an evil genius, and after he won that Bram Stoke award he went right off the deep end.”

  “You think he was targeting us specifically?”

  Iain shrugged. “He sent me a pair of his underwear last month, so I’m obviously on his mind. I bet he has a crazy fan at the airport that helped him. All that guy’s fans are whackos. Anyone with an ounce of sanity reads my books over his.”

  Sal shook her head. “No, I met Matt before. He’s a little odd, and strangely handsome, but I don’t think he would want to hurt us. In his own weird way, I think he loves you, Iain.”

  Iain sighed, but had to agree. “You’re right. I’ve always known he had feelings for me ever since he snuck into my bed in Cardiff, but I tried to play it off as a joke. Maybe he didn’t mean to turn Jack into a chicken. Maybe it was just one of his pranks.”

  “Either way,” said Sal. “If he is behind this, I'll kill him.”

  “Me too.”

  Grandma left the kitchen, but returned soon after, clutching her pearls anxiously. She motioned for them to follow her, and they did so quickly, tea sloshing in their unsteady mugs. It was now 3AM and Iain’s eyes were getting fuzzy, but he was pretty clear about what he saw in the sitting room. Jack still nestled on the sofa, a giant chicken in Paw Patrol shorts, but there was something different this time.

  “His feet!” said Sal.

  Grandma nodded.

  Iain grinned. Jack was still a chicken, but tucked beneath his plump breast were the beautiful little feet they were all used to.

  Sal turned to Iain and matched his grin. “It’s wearing off.”

  “It’s his immune system, honey. I always told you the men in my family have superior genes.”

  “Iain, I've seen you try to eat a prawn with the shell on. And a chestnut. And you left the wax on a cheese wheel once before eating the whole thing. In fact, you have a problem with all foods that aren’t straightforward. Superior genes might be a bit of an exaggeration.”