by Matt Hults
Greg rushed over and searched through the items. He picked up an empty box of Reynolds Plastic Wrap, finding the familiar triple-arrow triangle on the back.
“Son of a bitch,” he gasped. “That’s how they’re doing it!”
Dropping the box, he turned a slow 360 degree circle, his eyes darting around the wrecks, searching the rumble. He started jogging west, excited, afraid, still looking for what he wanted.
A quarter mile down he found it: a scraped and dented red Yamaha motorcycle, possibly the only type of vehicle that could maneuver through this obstacle course of destruction and still give him speed when the conditions allowed. It was on its side, having slid halfway under a pickup truck, and it took Greg a full ten minutes and a gallon of sweat to work it free. As he’d hoped, the key still sat in the ignition, and when he settled himself onto the seat and tried it, the engine revved to life.
Then he was off, weaving his way west.
10.
Greg saw the smoke from four blocks away.
It coiled skyward like an unearthly black serpent, rising over the rooftops of Mia’s apartment complex.
He gunned the motorcycle’s engine, cutting between car wrecks at suicidal speeds and weaving on and off of the sidewalk before skidding to a halt at the entry of the building.
Three stories overhead, a window exploded, showering him with glass.
He dodged the lethal rain without losing any skin and slipped through the broken glass of the main security door, which someone had apparently shattered using a potted plant from the lobby. He took the stairs in great bounds, pushing through the ache that echoed in his thighs after his earlier sprint up the hill. Mia’s apartment waited on the second floor, on the far side of the building—
Through a tunnel of fire.
Greg emerged from the stairwell to find the main hallway leaping with flames.
He flinched backward as the intense heat touched his skin. At the same time, he drew in a sharp breath of smoke that seared the back of his throat and overpowered his olfactory senses with its toxic aroma.
He managed to retreat three steps before stumbling over a scorched bundle of plastic similar to one of the cocoons he’d seen at the Jacobsons’. No sooner had he laid eyes on it when a dripping tentacle of half-melted plastic reached out toward him.
He shuffled out of reach as the stubby appendage slapped down on the floor, immediately adhering to the carpet like a slime-coated worm dropped on a hot griddle. It twitched feebly for a moment, then fell still.
He pushed to his feet and was about to return to the stairs to search for a fire hydrant when he glanced to the heap that the plastic limb had extended from and spotted a black man’s arm protruding from the mass, clutching a fire extinguisher.
Gasping, Greg seized the red metal cylinder and spun to face the flames.
CO2 vapor plumed out ahead of him as he emptied the extinguisher into the blaze, and soon he saw that the entire hallway outside Mia’s apartment was completely covered by fire-charred bags. Melted plastic dripped from the ceiling and walls like sludge from a ruptured oil tanker, coating the floor with a molten pool that billowed stinking black smoke.
He looked from the hot liquid to his bare feet.
Then turned to the dead man.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Not wasting a second, he seized the cadaver with both hands the way a sanitation worker might lift an over-sized garbage bag off a street curb and heaved it into the mass of melted plastic blocking his path.
Steeling himself for what he planned to do next, Greg backed up several paces. He picked up the fire extinguisher—using the act to buy himself another second of mental preparation—then ran forward, leaping onto the corpse’s chest like jumping on a stepping stone.
A horrible crack! issued from beneath his feet as his weight came down on the dead body, and again when he launched himself forward, finally landing on the floor at Mia’s doorstep. A quarter-inch-deep pool of hot plastic welcomed his feet.
Screaming, Greg used the empty extinguisher to knock in the door, calling Mia’s name as he charged inside. The plastic stinging his feet tried to cling to the carpet with each step, tugging at his skin.
He searched the two-bedroom space from front to back, prepared to shred any plastic bags he encounter with his bare hands if need be, but nothing assaulted him as he dashed from room to room.
“Mia!” he shouted through the smoke. “Where are you?”
He found her huddled in the corner of the kitchen closet, a ten-inch butcher knife clutched in her hands.
Greg mewed at the sight of her.
Dressed only in panties and a torn “Vote for Pedro” t-shirt, he saw a frightening number of reddish-purple streaks that crisscrossed her exposed skin. The capillaries in her right eye had burst, changing the previously unblemished white around the iris blood-red, as if that eye had glimpsed a vision of Hell.
Tears blurred Greg’s vision, but suddenly, miraculously, she gasped and uttered his name.
“Greg … Oh, God, Greg!”
He took her in his arms, holding her tight.
“They came at us from everywhere,” she said. “Lucy must’ve got up before me and found them … my roommate … her screams woke me up.”
“Don’t think about it,” Greg told her, still holding her.
“They … they sucked her insides out through her mouth!”
She sagged forward, leaning harder against him. Hot tears soaked through his shirt, heating the skin over his heart.
“But they didn’t get you,” Greg reminded her as he ushered her toward the living room window that accessed the fire escape. “You fought them, and you won. But you have to keep fighting for me, Mia. We have to both keep fighting if we’re going to get through this!”
At that, Mia looked up at him. The hurt was still there in her features, the grief of losing her friend, but it had become a background to the tone of resilience he heard in her voice.
“What the hell is going on?” she asked. “What’s happened to the world?”
“It isn’t the world that’s changed,” Greg answered. “It’s the plastic.”
Once again he thought of the discovery he’d made back at the highway.
“The bags are all new,” he explained. “So far, all the ones I’ve seen have been clean and spotless. No rips, no smears of garbage.”
He told her about the Amoco station and the dumpster outside, how it had been practically overflowing with bags yet none of them had been possessed like those inside the store.
“But why not?” she asked.
“Because they were old,” he replied. “They didn’t come from the same batch of plastic that created these new ones …”
He stooped down and picked up an empty box of kitchen wastebasket liners, as well as a vacated case of storage bags.
“Look,” he said, pointing to the fine print on each package.
—Made with 35% recycled resin—
—25% Post Consumer Content—
“It’s the resin,” Greg said. “Whatever it is, it’s in the recycled resin. That’s why there’s so many of them, why they’ve infected multiple products!”
“So what do we do?” she replied. “How do you fight such a thing?”
A crash boomed from somewhere deeper in the building and the floor vibrated under their feet. A second later, a fresh wave of smoke entered the room.
“First,” Greg answered, “we get the hell out of here.”
11.
Greg climbed to the roof of a four-story brick building using a steel ladder bolted to the outside wall for the purpose of gaining access to the billboards overlooking the street.
He had a pair of binoculars now, as well as a Polaroid camera that he’d looted from a deserted drug store along the way.
He ran across the roof’s surface in a low crouch, feeling like a soldier in enemy territory. At the opposite side of the building, he concealed his profile behind the massive back wall of
the billboard stand.
He peered out, raising the binoculars to his eyes.
The recycling plant across the road looked like a small city or castle, consisting of a massive collection of gray buildings surrounded by a concrete mote of parking lots and roadways. Greg tried to figure out the best way in, looking for the most inconspicuous place to sneak past the fence. He also wondered which structure he should focus on once inside. He was trying to imagine the layout, speculating on where he should go to find the proof he needed to confirm his theory, but it was impossible to decipher the complexity of the place from the outside.
Not that getting in would be easy.
Trucks were coming and going as if it was business as usual, and that only strengthened his belief that this, if not all recycling plants, was the source of the plastic invasion.
The truck drivers had no faces.
Their outgoing cargo was huge spools of sheet plastic.
Greg watched the latest departure, a flatbed semi carrying dozens of brown cardboard barrels—containers probably filled with pellet resin for other plastic making applications—when suddenly he heard something that made his whole body go cold.
An inhuman howl droned out from the recycling plant, originating somewhere within the labyrinthine network of buildings that made up the factory.
It filled the air with a machinelike vibration, and Greg dropped the binoculars as he clamped both hands over his ears to muffle the bone-jarring noise.
After several excruciating seconds the howl died off, replaced by the keen of tearing metal and snapped welds, the sound of damaged aluminum, steel, and iron all crying out in elongated groans and quick gunshot cracks.
Greg saw the roof of one of the larger central buildings suddenly bulge upward and burst open, the steel crossbeams of its frame torn asunder by a quintet of enormous green tentacles. Each had to be over a hundred feet long and the diameter of a tractor tire.
“What the—”
Eight more slimy appendages followed the first group, widening the hole. They fanned out, relaxing across the undamaged portions of the building’s rooftop, dropping limply over the sides. There was a second howl. This one sounded less frenzied than the first, more content, and Greg managed to endure it until all was quiet again. The trucks and workers below never paused in their activity.
Greg staggered away from the edge of the building, almost fell. Trembling, he raised the camera and snapped off as many shots as the film cartridge held, then raced back to the ladder and down to the ground, where Mia waited with the motorcycle.
“What the hell was that?” she pleaded as he slid onto the seat.
But Greg only managed a shake of his head as his mind raced to figure out how to reach the police or the military or whoever could blow up that building and destroy whatever hellish beast was growing inside.
He cranked the engine, opened the throttle, and they sped away.
Behind them, the trucks went on to make their deliveries.
* * *
FEEDING FRENZY
This story can be found in the anthology:
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (Vol. 1)
The restaurant stood less than forty feet away, small and unimpressive in comparison to the encompassing forest landscape, but also the blackest thing in sight on an otherwise bright and sunny day.
Ron parked the rental car just outside the entrance to the parking lot, pulling to a stop amid a small pile of animal bones that crunched beneath the tires.
He switched off the engine. “Not exactly the first impression I was hoping for,” he said.
Beside him, Greg seemed undeterred. Minus his beer-gut and his rapidly receding hairline, the older man looked like a six-year-old kid on a jackpot Christmas morning. “Don’t worry about it,” he replied. “They told me the property was a little messy. Look at the building, though! Are you sure this is the right address?”
Ron nodded to the realty sign standing to the left. “This is the place, all right.”
“Jeez… It’s in great shape!”
Maybe, maybe not, Ron thought, but he decided to hold his tongue. They were already falling into their usual mode of operation, Greg seeking out the sweet deal while Ron remained ever-watchful for the lemon that could sour it.
They got out of the car.
Outside, the smell of dry oak leaves instantly enveloped them. Ron drew in a long breath of it, cleansing the stink of the rental company’s pine-scented air freshener from his sinuses. He glanced behind them, to the dirt lane that tethered the old restaurant to the highway, frowning at the distance. It couldn’t have measured more than fifty yards in length—he spotted traffic blinking between the trees—but the silence here made it seem immeasurably farther than it looked.
“It’s kind of out-of-the-way, don’t you think?” he asked.
Greg had already reached the building and was tugging at the locked doors. He glanced over his shoulder. “Are you kidding? This is a prime location. We’re surrounded by farmland and national forest. We’ll get all the traffic between Brainerd and Clearwater Creek. Cut down some of those trees and we can put up a sign that’ll practically be on the highway!”
Farmland and forest, Ron thought, but again he kept his comments to himself.
“The realtor must be running late, huh?” Greg asked. He cupped both hands over his face and leaned forward, trying to find a chink in the plywood armor that covered the building’s windows.
Ron strolled across the lot. He studied the dimensions of the restaurant, guessing that the original owner had attempted to emulate the layout of a traditional fast-food business but with a slightly higher-scale motif, to set it apart from the larger chains that dominated North America’s roadways.
He’d never seen a fast-food joint with a black slate-shingled roof and widow’s walk. Or wrought iron lampposts shaped to resemble a cluster of entwined tentacles. Still, despite its unorthodox appearance, Ron thought the building looked good and sturdy. That, coupled with the rock-bottom price tag, opened a world of possibilities for improvements. Nevertheless, he didn’t want to get too excited too fast.
Greg joined him as he made his way around the side of the building to get a look at the back.
“You said this was a fixer-upper, right?” Ron asked.
Greg nodded. “The ad mentioned ‘extensive fire-damage’ but this looks a lot better than I imagined.”
Ron stopped walking.
“Oh, hey, a takeout window!” Greg said, pointing. “This is great! That’ll save us even more money on the renovation!”
But Ron wasn’t looking at the takeout window. “What’s that?” he asked.
Focused as he was on the drive-thru, Greg had failed to notice the giant hole in the wall of trees beyond the restaurant, or the enormous four-lane road that extended off the parking lot, stretching to a pinpoint in the far depths of the surrounding forest.
Greg gaped at the sight. “Holy, shit!” he laughed. “And you were worried about being too far from the highway!”
Ron ignored the comment and approached the road. A gust of wind ushered a group of dead leaves across the concrete, but, other than that, the vast avenue appeared as vacant as a desert wasteland.
No cars.
No people.
Just a wide lane of unbroken grey cement that receded into the distant shadows.
“You don’t think this is a bit strange?” he asked.
Greg shrugged. “Could be under construction… Maybe it’s a new expansion to the Interstate?”
“Leading to a restaurant?” Ron replied. “There’s no median, no streetlights—”
The sound of wheels crunching over gravel broke into the conversation, and they both looked toward the parking lot.
“That must be the realtor,” Greg remarked. “We can ask her about it.”
They headed back toward the car. Ron let Greg lead the way, lingering behind just long enough to cast one last glance at the unusual forest road. They’d walked only a short distan
ce, but from his new perspective he noted how the trees shielded it from sight, the branches interlacing overhead, enclosing it like a tunnel.
Greg threw a hand against his chest, halting him in his tracks.
“God bless the locals!” his friend said. Then, before Ron had a chance to get his meaning, the man resumed walking, stealthily adding, “Be a pal and let the single guy do the talking…”
Ron followed his line of sight to where he spotted the realtor exiting her vehicle.
Dwarfed by the SUV she’d arrived in, the petite young woman looked in need of a climbing harness to get from the driver’s seat to the ground. On the contrary, she moved with an athletic grace, seeming to flow from one position to the next. Out in the open, her long blonde hair caught the full radiance of the sun, contrasting with the black material of her pants and jacket, which hugged the trim contours of her body.
He thought of Diane back home, so far away, knowing that if they did indeed buy the restaurant he’d become a local himself for the first several months of operation, overseeing the renovation and training all the staff.
Ahead of him Greg looked back, twitched his eyebrows.
Ron shook his head and followed.
This is business, he opened his mouth to say before the other man was out of earshot, but stopped short when his gaze once again shifted to the girl. She still stood next to the open door of her sport utility, a blatant expression of perplexity creasing the skin across her brow. Her full attention remained focused straight ahead, staring at the restaurant, and she didn’t even notice Greg approaching until he’d closed within the last ten feet of her.
She spun to face him as if suddenly realizing she was in the shadow of a grizzly bear.
“We’ll take it!” Greg declared before she had a chance to say anything.
Ron watched the look of fear mix with another fleeting flash of bewilderment, and then she was laughing with embarrassment. Her voice sounded melodic in the open woodland air.