Frenzy

by Robert Lettrick

  “Have you ever seen a car after it hits a deer?” Will asked. “They’re heavy animals and can do some major damage. Marshall would tell you, if he hadn’t just been steamrolled by one.”

  “That was a heartless thing to say,” one of the Ems scolded from the darkness.

  Will ignored her.

  “Can someone turn on the light?” Sylvester asked. His request was followed by the sound of several feet shuffling against the concrete floor as campers began groping their way along the walls, hunting for the switch.

  “No, don’t!” a girl panicked. “The animals will see the lights come on and know we’re in here!”

  Several kids murmured in agreement.

  “Everyone needs to relax. We’re safe for now,” Will assured them. “We need light so we can see what we have in here to work with.”

  Heath assumed Will meant food and other supplies in case they were holed up in the livery for any stretch of time. They wouldn’t be going outside in the foreseeable future, that was for sure, and the livery, with its cinder block walls, was undoubtedly the safest place on the campgrounds to hunker down during the attack. He and the others had been right to follow Will. Heath felt a surge of gratefulness toward his abrasive cabinmate, even if he still didn’t trust him completely.

  Someone found the switch and dusty fluorescent bulbs above hummed to life, filling the livery with a pallid yellow glow. Two dozen canoes and kayaks rested on racks bolted to the concrete floor on the west side of the building. The livery housed more than just watercraft. It acted as the supply depot, too. The north half was full of camping supplies and maintenance equipment organized on several aisles of shelving.

  Heath was surprised to see more kids than he expected—maybe double his guess in the dark.

  “Shouldn’t we do a head count?” Dunbar asked, attempting to be productive.

  “Dumb idea,” Will scoffed. “What’s the point?”

  Dunbar was taken aback. “What’s the point? We’re all in this together, right?”

  “We’re all in this building together,” Will replied icily. He turned his back on Dunbar.

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” Dunbar asked Heath.

  Heath shrugged. He agreed with Dunbar, a head count couldn’t hurt. He took a mental tally: twenty-three campers, give or take. He might have counted a few kids twice; it was hard to be sure as everyone was either breaking into loose groups, hugging, huddling, or milling around the room. The only one who seemed to be moving with any purpose was Will, who was obviously more interested in what was in the building than who was in the building. Heath tagged along.

  “What are you doing?” he asked quietly so as not to attract attention.

  “Taking inventory. Most of this stuff is junk. And there doesn’t seem to be any food. Not even marshmallows. That’s bad.”

  “Do you really think it’ll matter? I’m sure help will arrive soon.”

  Will gave Heath a considering look. “Who do you suppose is coming for us?”

  “I don’t know. People from the Forest Service? The army?”

  “Doubtful,” Will replied, then he busied himself with a bin of old generator parts. Heath felt like Will was ­keeping something to himself but decided not to press him. He didn’t need another dose of attitude.

  They continued taking inventory together, moving about the building, Heath following behind Will when the aisles narrowed. Occasionally Heath held up something he thought might be of value, and Will would either nod or ignore him. They found tents, tire pumps, coolers, deflated basketballs, bags of charcoal, checkered tablecloths, hammocks, cans of bug repellant, lanterns, a big box of party supplies, and a lot more stuff that Heath didn’t see as very useful to their predicament. Will was right—there was nothing that could be used as food. Nothing at all.

  “Here,” Will said, tearing open a box of drinking straws, the wide, bendy type that someone could easily suck a shake through. He drew one out and handed it to Heath. “Hang on to it.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Heath said. “What am I supposed to do with—?”

  “Remember what I said about chess? About predicting moves?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When the situation comes, if you need it, you’ll understand then.”

  Will grabbed a handful more from the box and slipped them into his pocket. Heath did the same with his.

  After they’d carefully searched the room they rejoined the others. Most of the kids had since clustered around the tiny window to watch the sick animals outside. A red fox stopped in front of them, shook its head spastically as if trying to shake off a blow, then fell on the ground and twitched violently. After several seconds of this bizarre behavior, the fox regained control of its body and took off, unfazed, trotting in the direction of the main lodge.

  They’re in terrible pain, Heath thought, feeling empathy toward the fox and all of the rabid mammals. They hadn’t asked to be invaded by the virus. Who’d ask for something like that? The disease was the villain. He decided then to hate the disease and only the disease.

  “Check this out,” Dunbar said, holding up a dusty, laminated placard. “It was hanging on the wall behind one of the shelves.” He wiped it clean with the blade-edge of his hand. Printed at the top right corner was a block of text that said the placard had been created by the NATIONAL PARK SERVICE: THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR. It was a list of every mammal known to live in the Cascade Mountain region. The group looked it over.

  Heath felt the sun-bleached hairs on the nape of his neck rise. There were so many mammals, some large, like deer and wolves, others much smaller like weasels, squirrels, and voles. All of them, potential killers. He’d seen maybe eight or nine of them personally, but that was all. Two of those were roadkill, a groundhog and a possum, that he’d passed during the drive to camp. There were at least a ­hundred ­species on the list.

  “I didn’t know there were mountain lions here,” Cricket said with a worried frown.

  “And bears,” noted Emma with dread.

  “Black bears and grizzlies.” Sylvester tapped the word Ursidae on the placard. “Big bears.”

  “But they’re all up in the mountains, right?” Dunbar said. “I’ve never seen a bear this close to the valley before. Why would they come down into camp?”

  “The wolves did,” Will reminded them.

  He was right, of course. The wolves had descended into Camp Harmony, killing at least two kids. Heath knew they would have killed him, too, if Emily hadn’t inadvertently spoiled his suicidal attempt at heroism.

  “The horses smelled the wolves coming,” Emily said sadly, her eyes pink and watery. She was still mourning Onyx and the other camp horses. “That’s what spooked them. Mr. Soucandi made us dismount and sent us away from the arena. If they hadn’t smelled the wolves, Emma and I would have been there when they arrived. We’d be dead now. The horses gave us a head start.”

  “Huh,” Floaties grunted. “I didn’t think horses had a good sense of smell.”

  “Are you kidding?” Emma shot back, offended on behalf of horses everywhere. “Have you seen the size of their nostrils? They have the keenest noses in the world!”

  “That’s not true,” Will interjected. “There are several animals with a stronger sense of smell: sharks, moths, snakes, the albatross….”

  And bears, Heath thought, but he kept that fact to ­himself. There was a joke he’d always found amusing up until now. How does a bear smell? The punch line was: really bad and really well. Bears could smell the carcass of a dead deer twenty miles away. Their noses were seven times more powerful than a bloodhound’s, and two thousand times more powerful than a human’s—more tidbits he learned by watching nature shows in the hospital. He thought it was entirely possible that somewhere up in the mountains the bears could smell them, even through the locked livery door. He tried to put it out of h
is mind.

  “Whatever,” Emma huffed. “The horse has always been a prey animal, so it had to evolve a keen sense of smell to keep ahead of predators, especially wolves.”

  “The camp’s horses aren’t prey anymore,” Sylvester noted somberly.

  “Yeah,” Cricket agreed. “We are.”

  There it was, Heath thought, a blunt summation of the crisis. The campers were prey now, and everything outside the livery’s door had become the predator. Even the tiniest mouse could kill them, and worse, wanted to kill them.

  Over by a rack of lanterns, two girls started fighting. Heath didn’t know them, or he probably would have told them to shut up. Apparently they’d both had a crush on the same boy, a Brad from the Barn Owl Cabin. They were arguing over who’d miss him more if he was dead. You really couldn’t call it fighting. They were just tugging on each other’s clothing and pulling each other around in an awkward waltz. He thought they looked silly. The added tension was annoying, but the skirmish was short-lived as the girls were quickly wrenched apart by the closest campers. Heath didn’t have to be a psychologist to understand why they were acting out. They were terrified. Fear made people react in all kinds of dumb, petty ways. The longer they were stuck in the livery without food, the more tension there would be, and that meant more fights and more stupidity. It was natural to be scared. Heath was scared, too, but he was trying not to show it. Will was the only one in the room who, on the surface at least, seemed genuinely calm and in control, and that made Heath even more nervous for reasons he couldn’t explain.

  “Let’s talk about what’s happening out there and what we can do to stay alive,” Sylvester said. Because it was Sylvester, everyone listened up. “First, we should ask ourselves the possible reasons behind the attacks. Hundreds of animals just came out of the woods, killed dozens of campers for no good reason. It’s like they’re working together to exterminate us.”

  “If this is rabies, then how’d it spread so fast?” Dunbar wondered. “Are they out there in the woods biting one another, passing the virus from animal to animal? It’s ­freakin’ weird, right?”

  “They’re not biting one another,” Will stated matter-of-factly.

  “What are you talking about? They have to be!” Sylvester asserted. “That’s how animals get rabies!”

  Will thrust his chin out, gesturing toward the window. “Do you see them biting one another? You said it yourself, Sylvester, they’re working together.”

  “All right, genius,” Sylvester put it to Will. “Then why don’t you enlighten us?”

  “The squirrels are the key,” Will said. “The squirrels and the chipmunks—all of the little mammals.”

  “They’re everywhere,” Emma noted, and as if on cue, a dirty, wild-eyed squirrel scampered across the outside sill of the building’s small window causing some of the younger girls to start crying again.

  “And more will come,” Will assured them. “The camp is bordered by thousand acres of forest. I doubt it’ll be long before there’s an army of squirrels outside this door.”

  “You said the squirrels are the key,” Emma said. “What did you mean by that?”

  Will explained. “They almost never get rabies. I mean, they can get rabies, practically every mammal can, but it rarely happens to the really small ones, like squirrels and chipmunks.”

  “How come?” Heath asked.

  “Think about it,” Will said.

  Heath mulled it over. He tried to imagine a ­squirrel being attacked by a rabid fox or a dog, and the same gruesome end came to mind in every scenario. “They’re too small! My pet cat, Sammy, used to bring home mice as presents for our family. They were barely recognizable lying on the carpet by his cat flap, all bloody and mangled from being carried in Sammy’s mouth. If a squirrel was bitten by anything ­bigger than another squirrel, it’d probably have broken bones, crushed organs, missing limbs—”

  “Exactly,” Will said. “The squirrels on the lawn don’t have a mark on them.”

  “Neither did the porcupine,” Cricket piped up. “So if the squirrels out there weren’t bitten, then how’d they get—”

  “It’s in the air!” Heath said excitedly. “The rabies virus is airborne!”

  The room filled with murmuring.

  “That’s right. It’s airborne,” Will confirmed. “This has to be a new kind of rabies. A mutated version of the virus.”

  “No way,” Emma said. “If it was in the air, we’d have it, too, then, right? We’re mammals.”

  “Yeah,” Will said. “I’m still trying to figure that one out.”

  It was the first time Heath had witnessed Will looking frustrated, pained almost by his inability to see every angle of the situation.

  “No way,” said Sylvester. “Rabies has been around ­forever, and it’s always been transmitted one way, through the bite of an animal. That’s it.”

  “True,” Heath said. “But I think Will has a point, too. It’s gotta be some new form of rabies.”

  “Maybe that’s why people are dying after one bite,” Dunbar added.

  “Or why the animals aren’t going nutso on one another, just us,” said Cricket.

  “It’s our smell,” Will theorized. “It’s gotta be what’s drawing them to us, like it’s irresistible.”

  “Great,” said Cricket. “So there’s a virus in the air that makes animals go crazier than Justin Bieber fans. What do we do now?” He looked to Sylvester. “Well?”

  Sylvester stiffened and hopped back from the group like a threatened bird, hugging his bow to his chest. “What? Why are you asking me?”

  “I don’t know,” said Cricket. “You are the oldest. Plus your dad runs a big company, right? You’re probably gonna take his place some day. I just thought you’d be the best choice for leader here.”

  “That’s right, Sylvester,” said a girl Heath recognized from the Thrush Cabin. “Just yesterday you were bragging about how your dad lets you sit in on board meetings. Didn’t you learn anything? Or was that all just a bunch of garbage?”

  Sylvester panicked. “Look, my dad’s company manufactures prosthetic limbs. Yeah, I sat in on a few meetings, but they were pretty boring, and not once were we ever attacked by rabid animals. I’m just as freaked out as the rest of you. How should I know what to do?”

  A glum silence fell over the group. They needed leadership and the natural born leader had declined. Heath was glad. Although he wasn’t sure how he felt about it, he suspected there was only one person in the livery calculating enough to outsmart nature. “Will?” he said hopefully.

  Will looked around the room for objections but found none. “Fine,” he said, accepting Heath’s nomination. “Here’s our first and only order of business. We have to leave the livery. As soon as possible.”

  “What!? You’re out of your mind!” Floaties railed. “There’s no way I’m walking out that door. You’re crazy!”

  Almost everyone sided with Floaties.

  “Why would we leave the livery?” Emma asked. “It’s probably the only place for miles that is safe!”

  Will shook his head. “It’s not. See those drainage pipes?” He pointed up at a highway of gray tubes running across the ceiling and up through to the roof. “They’re made of lead. Squirrels chew through lead. They can tear off chunks at a time with their teeth. I’ve seen it. If they want in here, which we know they do, they’ll get in eventually. Same with those louvers.” Will pointed to rectangle grates imbedded in the walls. “They’ll chew through those, too. And that door may have stopped the deer from following us in, but anything bigger or more determined—like that buck that killed Marshall—might be able to break it down. They can smell us in here, and the longer we stay, the riper we’ll get. You know that delicious aroma when your neighbor is having a barbecue, and it makes you want to hop the fence? Well, someone pass the A.1. Steak Sauce, because tha
t’s how good we must smell to them. Plus there’s no food or water. If we don’t leave today, we’re only going to grow weaker and weaker. We need to escape while we’re strong enough to run fast.”

  “Escape to where?” Emma said, pointing at the window. “Look at the lodge. It’s crawling with animals. I bet some have already gotten inside. Look at the lawn! If you think—”

  “We’re not going to the lodge,” Will said. “We’re going to the river.”

  (Sung to the tune of “Home on the Range”)

  Camp, camp on the Dray,

  Where the deer and the porcupine prey.

  They run in a herd, all sick, fanged, and furred.

  We’re inside, and that’s where we’ll stay.

  THE RIVER. AS soon as he heard Will’s plan, Heath knew he was right. It was the only logical course of action. But going to the Dray River meant leaving the livery, and the animals were out there, waiting for them to emerge. Waiting to kill every last one of them. And yet he knew there was no other choice if they wanted to survive.

  “Will’s right,” Heath said. “We have to get into the water.”

  Floaties snorted. “Are you sure you and Will don’t have rabies, too? Because that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Forget it,” Emma said. “We’re staying inside this building until help comes. Right, Emily?”

  Emily stayed quiet. Heath watched her shift uneasily in her equestrian boots. She looked conflicted. He wondered if she’d choose to stay with Emma in the livery, or follow Will and him down the sloping lawn, across the sliver of stony beach, and into the Dray River. He doubted she would leave her twin, so his task would be to convince Emma and the others that while leaving the livery would be incredibly dangerous, staying meant certain death.

  “We know the animals are literally scared to death of water—big time hydrophobia. I don’t think they’ll follow us into the river,” Heath campaigned.

  “It’s a hundred yards or more to the Dray,” Sylvester said. “Even with a head start, do you really think you can outrun”—he jabbed a thumb toward the window—“them?” Two deer ran past, bounding on powerful legs.