by Doug Goodman
They handed off cuts of butchered meat to Alyssa and Peter and Colt, who set the meat on gathered firewood to cook.
“What we should do, though, is smoke this meat so we can carry it,” Jax suggested. “Too bad we don’t have any salt. This meat won’t last two days, even in a cooler. Maybe we can scavenge some salt when we go into New Mexico. Most people hoarded food and bypassed spice. I think there was a town not far from here. Maybe we can get some there.”
“Maybe. Sounds good,” Aidan said, shrugging.
The meat, once cooked, was special. It wasn’t MREs or beans or Raman. It was fresh meat straight from the deer. The taste was almost overwhelming. As afternoon settled into evening, they sat around grinning and gorging themselves until they began to fall into a protein-rich stupor. As person after person began to pass out, Colt walked away from camp to go pee.
“Thanks for helping me watch over him, man,” Aidan said to Peter.
“Hey, it’s what you’d do. We’re family, right? Besides, I’ve got to stop screwing up eventually.”
“Peter, I…” Aidan started to say, but then Colt screamed.
The footprint sat fat and deep in the sandy plains soil.
“Warg footprint, and it’s fresh,” Jax said.
“How fresh?” Val asked.
“Do I look like a professional tracker to you? I don’t know. But it’s deep and there’s no soil disturbance. That’s new.”
“Okay, fan out and let’s see if there are any more. Maybe it’s just a lone wolf.”
A few seconds more of flashlights arching back and forth in the cool twilight, and most of the lost boys had found more footprints. How they had missed all the signs while in camp was unbelievable and could only be blamed on their attention to the deer.
“They’re all over the place,” Riley said. “And this looks like one was stepping on our gear. We’ve gotta go.”
“Looks like it’s going to be a long night,” Aidan said. “Let’s pack it up and move out.”
They were geared up in less than three minutes and ready to travel.
Before they climbed back into the truck, Aidan said, “Head back the way we came earlier today. We can head north into Oklahoma and then cross into Colorado.”
“Don’t pull that bullshit, Aidan,” Jax said. “They are looking for us up north. We gotta do the unexpected and go west.”
“North takes us to the cold and less chance of encountering animals. You go west, and every monstercized coyote and cougar will be after you.”
“And if we go north, it’s bears and wolves. Don’t be stupid, Aidan.”
“Just as I thought we were starting to get along, Jax.”
“Guys, c’mon,” Peter said. “Let’s stop fighting and get moving.”
“I’m heading north,” Aidan said.
“You don’t have the rifle to boss us around anymore, Aidan. Now I have the weapon. We’re going west.”
“It’s not about rifles and swords and who has the biggest dick. This isn’t high school anymore, Jax. You’re not the handsome rich kid, and I’m not a geeky journalism student. You can walk that gauntlet west if you want to, but I’m going north. And I’m taking the truck.”
“Cut it out, boys,” Alyssa said, as she moved between them. It was too late, though. Aidan and Jax were already closing in on each other.
“You want the truck, then you go west with me,” Jax said.
“It’s my truck, Jax. I found it.”
“Look at you. If it weren’t for me, you’d be dead. I saved your ass. And this is how you repay me?” Jax swung at him.
Aidan dodged his swing clumsily, and then struck back. Aidan was no match for the trained fighter. By the time he threw a punch, Jax had already hit him hard in the kidneys. Pain erupted in his sides. As he fell forward, Jax kicked him in the chin so powerfully that Aidan flew backwards and landed in the dirt. New pain in his bloody mouth and bruised sides met the old pains in his back and collided like to two trains going opposite directions on the same track, and it left him unable to stand.
Jax moved to strike Aidan again, but Peter reached out and grabbed his leg and tossed it back effortlessly. When Jax regained his balance, he found Peter and Alyssa and Colt standing between him and Aidan.
“You’re right,” Aidan said from the ground as he spit blood in the dirt. “You did save my ass. And I am nowhere near the fighter you are, Jax. But it’s going to take more than some fancy foot moves to survive the winter. And you don’t have that.”
Jax walked forward, and Peter grabbed his shirt. Jax moved through them, then reached down and dug the keys out of Aidan’s pocket. Aidan wanted to stop him, but he didn’t have the strength.
“Anybody else coming with me?” Jax said. “Now’s your chance.”
Nobody moved.
“Fine, but I want to remind everyone staying with the invalid here that there are wargs about, and I’m taking the truck.”
Still, nobody moved. Jax climbed into the fire truck and fired it up.
“Wait!” Riley said, as she ran after him, her pack in hand. She opened the door and said, “This changes nothing between us,” and got in.
Peter walked towards the truck.
“Peter?” Aidan gasped. His younger brother, who was defending him from Jax, was walking away? It made no sense.
Peter started to say one thing, and then blurted out, “You can search north for Mom and Dad, and I can search west. We can cover more ground this way.” But the way he said it, Aidan knew Peter didn’t believe they were alive anymore.
As the fire truck left, Aidan looked at who was left and sighed.
“I know,” Alyssa said. “You got left with nothing but a kid, an intersex, and a chick with palsy. You have less fingers than you had a month ago, a back that won’t stop aching, and no food, no water, and no transportation. But trust me. It will get better. You just have to believe in it.”
Part Three: The Black Tooth
Chapter Nine – Thrifty
They had to be thrifty with how much space they used in their backpacks so that they would have enough room to store any food they scrounged off the land. Out on the plains of Oklahoma and Kansas, food was scarce, water scarcer. Between Val, Aidan, and Alyssa, they figured out that barrel cactus had some water, and yucca did, too. A couple of times they caught ground squirrels. (Not having vorpal teeth like the squirrels back home helped.) The uneaten squirrels hung from cords roped to the lashing points and tool loops on their packs.
Colt was always tired. Everybody was. The wind was constant and pushed against them no matter which direction they turned, as if the gods of the winds were also mad at them, and wanted to make life miserable for them. The wind pierced through the clothes they salvaged off a dead family that was trying to hike north. Colts’ clothes were rolled up because they were two sizes too big for him, and Alyssa was worse than the others because the dead teen daughter was wearing nothing but flimsy boy band t-shirts and tiny denim shorts. She completely discarded the denim shorts after the first hour of hiking and put on a pair of the father’s hiking pants, which were way too big and long for her, but at least they kept her a little bit warmer.
In the distance that morning, they saw a car on the road. They spent most of the morning walking to it. Colt was the first one to the car. It was an old Chevy Bellaire that looked more like an archaeological find than a good scavenge. Aidan traced his remaining fingers along the car’s sharp lines. Colt opened the door, pushed the mummified carcass aside, and started the engine. The car didn’t turn over.
“Anybody know how to fix a car?” Aidan asked. He wasn’t looking for a response. None of them were mechanics, and that was the problem. Except for Alyssa, they were middle-class kids. The skills they learned growing up, like making waffles in the waffle maker, upgrading iTunes, conquering video games, or anything relevant to pop culture, were no longer applicable to the world they lived in. They had no clue how to fix a car. You want your phone set up, they were your guys.
You want to fix a car, call someone else.
On the other side of the car lay a giant dead cow. Its head had been ripped off.
Cautiously they circled the cow. It was completely brown and large.
“I think it’s a Hereford,” Aidan said.
Its underbelly had been ripped open and gutted. Whatever had been disemboweling the cow had not been able to finish, because most of the meat had been left. Flies buzzed around the carcass, and the stench was unbearable except to those who had been around death as much as they had.
They looked around, trying to figure out what happened. Val looked off to the side of the road, and his eyes narrowed with understanding.
Aidan was about to ask him when suddenly, a massive spike of pain erupted behind his temple. It was so sudden and painful he could barely open his eyes. He felt like when he used to visit the eye doctor, who would shine a bright white light into his eyes. Aidan’s eyes began to water, and he kneeled down.
Val and Alyssa stooped down to check on him. Colt pointed to the sky. “I think a roc is coming.”
Val said, “Quick, get inside the cow! We gotta get cover before that roc sees us.”
This was the life they had lived for the past six months of fleeing or hiding or both. They fled in cars, they fled in numbers, they fled quietly so as not to be seen, or they hid in abandoned homes, downed planes, derailed trains, forgotten restaurants, and animal carcasses. The rocs could see them, the bats could hear them, and most animals could smell them better than they smelled themselves. They had been more lucky than good for six months, and they were lucky then that the roc was not searching for them. They had yet to find a way to kill one of the monstrous abominations easily. Head-on encounters had always led to one of them injured or dead, either directly or indirectly.
This winged beast was the largest roc they had ever seen. Easily, it was twice as large as most rocs. And this one wasn’t an eagle. They weren’t sure what it was, or rather what it had been, but now it was a black-as-night monster with a thick black beak and eyes dark as coals. Maybe it had been a raven or a vulture. It had four wings. On its back rode a warg. The beast was straddling the roc and sitting upright. It used small kicks and nips to keep the creature moving how it wanted. The creature brought fear with it, and it dispensed fear like a biplane spreading pesticide across fields of crops. It was heading straight for them. Colt started to tear up as it approached, and then he suddenly ran outside, crying, “Don’t let it get me!” Val scooped him up and plopped him back into the meat sack. He looked back up. The roc and its rider had turned west. As the roc flew overhead, it turned in the air currents and curved away from them. As it disappeared, they walked out of the carcass.
“What the hell was that?” Alyssa asked without requiring an answer.
“It’s the scariest thing I’ve seen,” Colt said, rubbing his eyes.
Val looked back at Aidan. “They are continuing to evolve,” he said.
Aidan looked up. Seeing the others, he stood up as if whatever had overcome him was gone.
“What’s that?” he asked, and pointed to a mound in the ditch.
Val had seen the mound right before the roc appeared. “They are the remains of people who attacked and killed monsters.”
“The monsters struck back?” Colt asked.
“Any human who attacks one of the monsters is killed and skinned. I thought you knew. That’s partly why they’re after all the survivors from Bridgetown. We killed creatures. We attacked Malifax.”
“Did we kill him?”
“Hard to say. The monsters only give the information they want us to know, and they are usually images rather than concrete thoughts the way you or I would think of them. It is sometimes difficult to infer what they want.”
“So what happened here?” Aidan asked. “I haven’t seen anything like this before. Some people tried to make hamburgers, and wargs got to them?”
“Probably. They skinned them and dropped the bodies in the ditch.” Val stopped and scanned the roads. Then he pointed. “See up ahead there? It looks like someone hung flags from the telephone poles, but it isn’t. Those are human skins. They are a reminder of what happens to people who break the natural order. If they ever catch us, they will do the same to us.”
“Man, it sucks not being the apex predator anymore,” Aidan said.
For three hundred yards, they crawled on their bellies like snakes in the grass. They came around the far side of the herd so as not to be downwind of the cattle. All four had binoculars spying on the cattle.
“What do you think?” Val asked.
“I think they’re just cows, but it’s hard to tell. I’ve seen longhorns that went monster. Then there were the bats. The bats seemed like normal bats, but clearly they weren’t.”
“That’s what I was thinking, too.”
“Are you picking up anything from them?” Aidan asked.
Val shook his head. “No, but then again, what do cows think about? Your head hurting?”
“No. Why?”
“Testing a theory. I think they’re just cows, man.”
“If you’re wrong, it’s not like you’re wrong on a test. You’re like, really wrong. Kill us all wrong.”
“Well, if it helps, I was a GT kid.”
Aidan looked to Alyssa for support, but she was still watching what they were after, a Ford Taurus.
“The Taurus looks in good shape,” she said. “There’s no way to be one hundred percent sure, but I think it will work. The tires haven’t been slashed, the engine hood isn’t propped open, no major dents in the body. I think this is the one.”
“Usually when one car is left behind, it’s because that’s the car everyone took gas from,” Aidan said.
“Gas tank lid closed, Captain,” Alyssa said.
“Well, we going to watch from the benches or we going to dance with the ladies?” Val asked.
“I wish there was a way to know for sure about these cows,” Aidan said.
“You could see if they stampede,” Val offered. “I don’t think the changed cows would stampede. They’re too smart for that. Or at least they’d react somehow.”
“Okay, but how do we do it? We’ll need a loud noise or something to make a disturbance.”
“I can help with that,” Colt said, and he scrunched his face up and groaned.
“A fart joke now? Really?” Alyssa asked, disgusted.
All the boys started to giggle, but then Colt pulled out a smoke bomb from his backpack.
“Look at you, Mr. deux ex machina,” Val said. “Where did you get that?”
Colt shrugged. “Back at that convenience store when y’all were looking for food, I was looking for something useful. It seemed like something Peter would take, so I grabbed them.”
“Good job,” Aidan said.
“All we need now is a way to launch them,” Val said.
“Easy,” Aidan said, “We stuff it up Colt’s butt then let him launch one across the fields.”
“Another fart joke? It hasn’t been ten seconds,” Alyssa groaned. “I swear, you’d think that after the apocalypse you guys would have deeper conversations. I bet if you could find porn, you’d sit around jerking off until the wargs came to get you.”
Aidan and Val nodded in agreement.
“Hey, guys,” Colt said as he pulled a rubber slingshot out of his backpack. “I got one of these, too. I thought we could launch water balloons like we used to back home, but then I realized we didn’t have much water out here.”
Aidan rubbed his head. “Now that’s a Fannin!”
They decided to shoot it into an open part of the field. At first, they looked for easy targets that Colt could shoot at. That left the watering hole and a tree, which were both likely to either put out the fuse or at least catch up all the smoke. So they found an open space between the cows to aim for.
Aidan took one side and Val the other. Colt placed the smoke bomb into the cup and pulled it back. Like he had learned from their ti
me at the house, he leaned way back spread-eagled until he was almost on the floor. Alyssa lit the fuse and kissed him on the cheek. “Good luck.”
“Watch your aim,” Aidan advised, “and keep the open grass in view.”
“Got it,” Colt said. He closed one eye, took careful aim, and released the smoke bomb just as it was starting to release smoke.
The bomb arched through the blue sky and landed in the dead wintry grass exactly where they had wanted it to go.
“That was awesome!” Aidan said.
“You, sir, know how to shoot a slingshot,” Val said, and high-fived Colt.
Plumes of orange smoke billowed upward. Then the wind caught it and dragged the smoke towards one side of the herd. A cow looked towards it. Flicked its ears and licked its lips. Then it returned to eating the grass.
“Good enough,” Aidan said.
They crawled the rest of the distance towards the Taurus, each of them expecting at any moment for a demonic hoof to stomp on them, but it never did. They climbed into the car. The keys had fallen out. They looked around, still waiting for some monster cow to go berserk on them. Nothing.
They picked up the keys and started the engine. It whirred to life with an almost electric hum in that way characterized by so many modern cars.
Nothing.
“I guess some animals didn’t turn into monsters,” Aidan said as Val drove them up the road. They stopped a mile down the road to put their packs into the trunk. The Taurus was a good car, but not roomy enough for four people and their packs. Now Colt was checking the stations without success, and Aidan was trying to find a comfortable way to sit. Nothing seemed to fit his back well, not even car seats.
“I have a theory about that,” Val said. “Only some animals evolved into these demonic versions of the animals we are used to. And then, only a small percentage of the ‘evolved’ creatures became megafauna.”
“You mean like mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers,” Aidan said for clarification.
“Right. Some animals are still just animals. It makes sense to me. You can’t heavily populate that many large creatures all at once. There aren’t enough resources for them.”