The Invasive_Pulse

by Michael Hodges

  Robert unfastened his seatbelt, but not before propping himself up with one hand to absorb the fall. He ended up twisting his wrist, then tumbling out the window. The pungent odor of gasoline and engine oil wafted up around him. He ignored the potential for fire, and helped pull Tara free of the wreck. As he helped her up, his head throbbed. His thoughts lay jumbled and erratic, like he wasn’t quite locked in all the way. Tara spoke to him, but her words only came through in distorted waves.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  Robert shook his head, hoping, waiting for everything to make sense again. Behind him, a dog barked. What was the dog’s name again?

  Shit, Robert thought. Get it together, man. You’ve had a concussion. It will go away. It’s science.

  A huge animal appeared on the other side of the flipped truck, just at tree line. It stared at them with triplicate pupil eyes, then raised its tooth-filled snout. Robert wondered if it was some hybrid between a rhinoceros and an elephant.

  No, he thought. To foreign. Too alien. Too violent.

  The creature powered towards the pickup again. The truck’s side caved in, then flipped upright amid the mayhem. A bright orange flame glinted to life just under the lip of the hood.

  “Come on,” Robert said, finally getting his senses about him. He shoved Tara away from the road towards the embankment, making sure to keep the enormous creature on the other side of his battered pickup.

  Robert, Tara, and Vermillion disappeared into the national forest. No one said anything until they were a good hundred yards away from the road. All around them a forest of cedar and pine reached for the night sky, framed by the Milky Way. Stars winked at them from between the boughs of trees.

  “Aliens,” Tara said. “100% aliens.”

  “But not like the movies,” Robert said.

  “How so?” Tara asked as they lurched through the forest, yet further from the road.

  “In the movies, all the aliens are super predators. But here? There are friendly ones, too. Like an ecosystem.”

  “Like the cute one we saw on the road,” Tara said.

  “Yeah,” Robert said. He gently held Tara’s jaw in his hand, and used the collar of his flannel to wipe away blood from her cheekbone.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “You banged your forehead pretty good,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

  “A little dizzy,” she said. “Could use some water. And I’m sorry about your truck, Robert.”

  Robert sighed. “It was getting up there anyway,” he said, ignoring the fact that he was upset. He’d had the truck for years.

  “That’s what I like about you,” Tara said. “You make the best of everything.”

  Robert wished that was true, but stayed quiet. Instead he lead Tara and Vermillion further into the woods. He wasn’t entirely lost, either. His most-frequented hiking trail was only a half mile east of his apartment, and wound its way through here in the national forest. He wished he’d had his flashlight still, or his trusty headlamp. He didn’t care for how loud they all were, crunching on sticks and dry pine needles. And he wasn’t concerned about grizzly bears this close to town. Low odds.

  But then again, having these bizarre new creatures show up was a low-odd situation, too. It seemed the evening was a big giant Halloween bag of freakin low odds.

  Vermillion hurried ahead of them and emitted a low growl.

  Robert held his hand out and blocked Tara. “Hold up,” he said. “Vermillion’s onto something.”

  Twenty feet ahead of them, Vermillion stopped. The pooch stared to the west, ears perked. A red light blinked thirty yards away. The trees around the light lit eerily, then not, then partially-revealed again. Robert counted the beats per minute at twenty-five.

  “The tags are blinking faster,” Tara whispered. “what the fuck is going on?”

  Robert shook his head. “Something, or someone is monitoring them,” he whispered back.

  “But why do they blink faster?” Tara asked.

  “I have no idea,” Robert whispered.

  The blinking red light passed in the night as whatever it was attached to lumbered east.

  Vermillion circled back to them, then stared up at Robert, his ears flattening.

  Robert bent over and gave the pooch a good pat on the head. “It’s okay boy,” he said.

  Robert wished he believed those words.

  4.

  After a few minutes of hiking, Robert, Tara, and Vermillion made it to the continental divide trail Robert was familiar with. They headed west, as the tree canopy reached across the trail, forming an organic tunnel. Down at this elevation the trail was coated with white gravel and ran perfectly straight, allowing for a long sightline.

  This was what Robert feared the most.

  On the horizon, the glow from a few lights on Main Street formed a faint light dome. This was comforting. What wasn’t so comforting was every so often, a blinking red light flashed across the trail, from forest to forest. Some of these lights moved quickly, others much more slow. And sometimes, Robert caught the gleam of an eye in the blinking red, or a patch of fur.

  “Hold up,” Robert whispered to Tara. Vermillion skittered to a stop on his paws. Several red blinking lights arced the trail, heading from east to west.

  Towards town, Robert thought.

  “The tags are beating at thirty beats per minute now,” Tara said.

  Robert stared motionless at the scene. He wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was real, or if his mind was messing with him. Or maybe it was just denial. A certain red light didn’t cross the trail, but rather bloomed, second by second.

  One of them is coming for us, Robert thought.

  He waited a few more seconds. The flashing red tag brightened. For a half second, Robert glimpsed a mad eye in the red penumbra.

  “Go,” Robert said as he shoved Tara into the woods.

  Robert followed her, then Vermillion. The group crashed through dry branches and brush, moving downhill too fast, making way too much noise.

  “We have to stop tromping,” Tara said, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath. “These ferns,” she said, pointing about fifteen yards to the east. “We can hide.”

  A moment later the group lay tucked into the ferns, the only noise for the time being Vermillion’s low growling, and Robert and Tara trying to catch their breath.

  But soon, something else made a noise.

  The thing that had made its way straight down the trail.

  Robert watched with a hardening knot in his stomach as the blinking red light bloomed its way south down the path, the trees illuminated, then not, then illuminated again. The creature made a soft scrape scrape as its claws raked across the gravel.

  “Please don’t stop, please don’t stop,” Tara whispered.

  The creature stopped.

  Its red tag blinked in the night, lighting up the path and surrounding vegetation like a glowing heart.

  For the first time Robert saw what it was, a mix between an ape and a bipedal sloth, with a mangy fur coat. The same species that had killed the woman at Cedar Resort. Its eyes were wide with hunger, each containing triplicate pupils. But these features did not bother Robert the most. That award went to the long claw emanating from each arm. Hooks. Stabbers.

  A moment later, another creature joined the first, but lacked the same red flashing tag. It revealed itself in the light illuminated by the first creature, and appeared somewhat smaller.

  Tara shifted her weight, and snapped a dead branch.

  The creatures looked her way, and slashed down the slope to their hiding position.

  “Go,” Robert shouted.

  Tara slammed through the ferns and tripped over a branch. Robert followed her, falling victim to the same snag. He fell atop her with a whump as the air expunged from his lungs. When he rolled over, the two sloth-like creatures loomed above him, their mouths agape in joy at having tripped up their quarry. Vermillion sprinted behind the closest creature
and tore into its ankle, just as the creature swung back viciously with a giant lone claw. Vermillion dodged the swipe, then sprinted off into the ferns, only to strike once more from a different angle.

  With the creatures distracted, Robert and Tara hurried off through the ferns. A few moments later Vermillion followed, trying to lose the bloody fur that had caught in his muzzle.

  “Good boy,” Robert said as the group sprinted through the forest understory. Robert looked back, thrilled to see they were separating themselves from the creatures at a good clip. When he turned his attention back to Tara, she had a hand to her mouth, muffling a scream.

  Twenty yards ahead, a flashing red tag lit up a patch of ferns. More of the same species.

  “Robert,” Tara whispered.

  “I see them,” Robert said.

  Vermillion launched at the creatures. Robert and Tara bolted straight to the west, into a grove of old-growth cedars.

  Robert took her hand, not wanting to lose her in the dark. Or maybe she was the one leading him. Vermillion growled and barked behind them in the black, but Robert wasn’t worried for his canine friend. Vermillion had been in plenty of scrapes with other wildlife, and was more than capable.

  A few seconds later, Vermillion came running at them from the gloom, his muzzle bloody.

  Robert took him by the collar and reigned him in to check for injuries.

  The pooch seemed okay.

  “I think we lost them,” Tara said.

  Robert wondered about that. An ominous memory came back to him. He’d been twelve at the time, and chased by a local gang in Minneapolis. The gang members had been hanging in an alley, smoking cigarettes when he’d pedaled past on his bike. They’d shouted “nice ride, ours now,” and sprinted after him. Robert had cranked on the bike pedals so hard his right foot slipped, and he’d gouged his ankle on the chain. He’d been able to recover and pull away as the fastest thug gave up, a maniacal grin giving way to a frown. This felt a lot like that. Except he, Tara, and Vermillion were being chased on all sides-and he had no bike to escape on.

  “We need a ride,” Robert said to Tara.

  “We need out of this forest,” she said.

  Again Robert wondered about that. Hell, wondered about everything. They could hide here. Still, he wished they’d never left Tara’s cabin. Vermillion gazed up at Robert and cocked his head.

  Okay, maybe that’s crazy, boy, Robert thought. The cabin was a coffin.

  Out here, they had escape routes. But out here, they also had nothing between them and these…things.

  The kicker in all this was the flashing red tags. As if this was some kind of game. His life was no game. Nor Tara’s. Not at all.

  Robert hunkered down with Tara and Vermillion, listening for the creatures, his head barely above the ferns. The flashing tags were gone, the woods dark as they should be save for the dim light dome above downtown Elmore.

  “Come on,” Robert said. “Almost there.”

  5.

  The group tumbled their way down a forested embankment, and at last stood on Main Street. The lights of Elmore twinkled a good mile away.

  “Dang,” Tara said. “Still in the national forest.”

  The slow hum of a distant car engine penetrated the night. A moment later headlights appeared. Robert waved his arms in the air, trying to flag the driver over.

  But the driver wasn’t stopping. The engine revved wildly as the car caught air on a bump.

  “Holy shit,” Robert said.

  Tara grabbed Robert’s arm and yanked him off the road. The car roared past.

  “How fucking rude,” Tara said. “The DMV should suspend that fucker’s license.”

  Vermillion barked at Robert to get up. Robert did. Another memory came to him as he brushed the gravel from his palms. He remembered getting beat up on the school playground, his friend Adal Sied telling him to stay down, stay down as Bernie Throck pummeled him with his fist. But Robert wasn’t going to stay down this time.

  As Robert stood, a woman’s voice boomed in the night from where the car had raced from. And it wasn’t Tara’s.

  BABY, HIT THE GAS, IT’S COMING FOR US. BABY HIT THE GAS IT’S COMING FOR US. BABY HIT THE GAS ITS. BABY. HIT. THE. GAS. BABY. BABY.

  Robert slammed Tara flat to the embankment, then joined her in an painful flop to the ground.

  “Don’t move, don’t speak,” he whispered.

  Air buffeted his head. A few roadside pebbles skittered in the breeze. Then he slowly allowed himself to raise his head, just to sneak a glance at what had just flown over them.

  He knew what it was, of course.

  In the distance, the dim glow of red taillights. A moment later the flier obscured whatever light the car had been emitting. Robert watched numbly as the car swerved into the forest. It smashed into a pine tree in a grotesque crunch of metal and wood, sending broken plastic and bark flying.

  BABY, HIT THE GAS, IT’S COMING FOR US. BABY. BABY. HIT HIT HIT HIT. IT’S COMING FOR US.

  The flier smashed into the windshield with a single beak jab, its triplicate pupils and angry face illuminated in what was left of the car headlights. As it unfolded its wings against the trees, pine cones and twigs snapped off branches and settled all around.

  The passengers screamed, and the flier screamed back into their faces:

  BABY HIT THE GAS ITS COMING FOR US BABY HIT THE GAS.

  Robert and Tara scrambled down the embankment, then ran south from where the car had come from. The only thing Robert knew at this precise moment, was to get as much space between them and the flier as possible. Vermillion seemed to agree as he bounded at Tara and Robert’s heels, ushering them along.

  6.

  They hiked along the road for a half hour, taking Main Street deeper into the national forest. Eventually they reached the intersection of U.S. Forest Service Road 219 and Main Street (which would soon become Highway 18).

  Robert didn’t care for the expression on Tara’s face. He wondered if panic was starting to settle in. People were tough. He’d seen it often. But people also broke when their mental shock absorbers started to fail.

  “Where the hell are you taking us?” she said. “It better not be near that flier. Shit, Robert. It’s dark as hell out here. We need a flashlight. We need food. We need water. We need to get away from here, fast.”

  “We’re cutting back to town on Foster Road,” Robert said. “For the exact purpose of avoiding that flier.”

  “Shit,” she said. “I need to call my mom and dad I need to call Amy. She was downtown at Schumer’s grabbing a drink with a new guy.”

  Robert reached out to her, and she swatted his hand away. “We don’t have time for that,” she said.

  Robert sighed. It was all starting to feel like a date going sour. He’d had plenty of those. He wasn’t so unaware that maybe he was to blame, too.

  A few minutes later they came across the intersection of Forest Road 219 and Foster. A red tag flashed across the street, connected to one of the small marsupial-like creatures. Vermillion tore after it. Robert whistled him back.

  A feeling of pride arose in Robert. He couldn’t help it. The dog was incredibly smart-much smarter than any dog he’d had before, or encountered overall.

  The group let the harmless marsupial creature disappear into the woods, its tag leaving a dissipating red light trail into the ferns.

  “Thing gives me the creeps,” Tara said.

  “Makes three of us,” Robert said.

  He made sure they all stuck to the embankment, rather than walking straight down the road. If one of the un-tagged creatures was about to ambush them, they’d never know it. And “the date” would have a pathetic end.

  All along the roadway, a mix of cedar and aspens towered over them. The scent of sweet grass wafted through the air, a bittersweet contrast with the morbid events.

  The forest reminded Robert of Northern Minnesota, specifically the area of Brainerd. His father was a spin-fishing enthusiast, and would
rent them a boat. They’d cast for smallmouth bass and northern pike. His father had been in decline even then, drinking so hard that he’d begun to have memory issues, and elevated liver enzymes. His mother had already been long out of the picture, succumbing to breast cancer when he was only fifteen.

  In a way, he’d never recovered from it.

  Martha Jenkins was a warm, wonderful woman. But also a woman who expected emotional maturity in her men-including her son. And so Robert was raised to get to the point, and to soldier on when things got tough.

  She was right, of course. At the time.

  But when his mother died, he’d lost faith in her system, as if what she’d taught him had gone with her.

  And so it was on that last fishing trip to Brainerd with his father, where his father told him he’d loved his mother since they first kissed in college. And that he’d always love her, even if he sometimes admired women that weren’t his dear departed mother.

  Robert had told him that was okay.

  And it was, of course. Just science.

  Up ahead, a cone of light beamed down the road in their direction, followed by the rhythmic purr of a motor engine.

  “A car,” Tara said as he ran out into the road, waving her arms.

  The 90’s Buick braked to a stop. A window rolled down. Two teenage boys stared back at them with hazy eyes.

  “Get the fuck in the car,” the driver said. “NOW.”

  Robert, Tara, and Vermillion piled into the back, just before the driver slammed the gas. Tara struggled with the door for a moment, then slammed it home.

  Robert craned his neck to look out the rear view mirror, but grime coated the glass. He used his shirt sleeve to wipe some of it away. Far behind them, a blinking red light flashed at thirty-five beats per minute.

  “They’re beating faster,” Robert said to Tara over the hum of the accelerating V6 engine.