Sparrow Rock

by Nate Kenyon

“Jay,” she said, “I don’t think—”

  “But what really worries me,” he said, ignoring her, “based on what’s happened here, is the botfly.”

  “Bot…” Dan shook his head. “Jesus Christ, Jay, you’re off the deep end, you know that? What the hell’s a botfly?”

  “They lay their eggs in human flesh,” he said. “The larvae eat their way through from the inside.”

  I heard my father’s ghostly voice, from so many years ago: Life ain’t civilized. That’s a human creation, rules and order and compassion. Things kill, they eat, or they die.

  You could have heard a pin drop in that room. I don’t know what the others were thinking, but that one got to me. Giant hornets and ants with vicious stingers were bad, sure, but a worm that eats its way through human flesh? Maybe it had something to do with what I’d just witnessed in the other room, but that one, I couldn’t stomach.

  And then, suddenly, it all came together for me.

  “Biological weapons,” I said. “You don’t mean a virus. You mean those ants we saw in there are genetically engineered insects.”

  “That’s what I’m saying, yes. Taking the worst of different species and blending them together. They’d be natural killers, and smart too. Probably able to be controlled in some way, that would be built in. Wanderers with highly developed social patterns. There might even be different kinds of them. At least some of them the burrowing kind.”

  I imagined a world ravaged by a swarm of killer insects, the devastation of the nuclear attack giving way to something else. Anything left alive would be unable to fight back and consumed. Or worse.

  “They all disappeared,” Tessa said. “Anyone notice that? They were crawling everywhere one moment, and then the next, they were gone. Like they knew exactly what they were doing.”

  “Let’s say I buy what you’re saying,” Dan said. “Let’s say there are armies of highly trained, murderous, designer bugs on the loose, ready to overthrow the world. It’s plain crazy, but whatever. Why haven’t they attacked all of us by now?”

  “I don’t know,” Jay said. “But Jimmie was bitten. Ants have a highly developed sense of smell. Maybe there’s a marker of some kind, or maybe they just smell infection.”

  We all looked at each other. “They’re going to come back for him,” I said.

  “Maybe they never really left,” Jay said.

  Dan and I went back into the darkened bedroom and flipped on the lights. It was shocking to see the carnage in this way, blood splattered across the bed and floor, even up on the walls above Jimmie’s head and the bottom of the upper bunk.

  We were both jittery as hell, choosing our steps carefully, ready to run at the sign of any movement. Jimmie was still sleeping and hadn’t moved. I watched the rise and fall of his chest to make sure he was breathing.

  I held my nose against the stench and picked up the bloody blanket from the floor and shook it. No little black armored bodies fell out.

  Together we looked around the bed, on the floor, the walls. There was no sign of any ants. The shelter looked airtight. I started to wonder if we had all hallucinated it. Maybe something had gotten into the air in here, some kind of odorless gas from the generator or seeping in from outside, and made us all high enough to see such crazy things. It made about as much sense as anything else.

  Finally I lifted Jimmie’s shirt. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but the hives looked a little less angry to me, and I didn’t see a sign of anything moving under his skin.

  I swallowed hard. “We should probably change him or something,” I said. “Clean this place up. I think someone puked in here.”

  Dan chuckled. “You are something else, you know that, Pete?”

  I smiled through the lump in my throat. I was so goddamned tired, I felt like my muscles might just turn to mush and I’d collapse where I stood.

  Dan got down on his hands and knees, poking under the bed. “Hand me that lantern,” he said, his voice muffled. “I want to see better under here.”

  I set it on the floor next to him. “You think Jay’s lost it?” he asked, head still halfway under the bed.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Killer ants seem like a pretty crazy scenario.” I didn’t say anything about what Sue told me about his meds, although I have to admit it was damned hard. Dan deserved to know the details. But I wanted a chance to talk to Jay alone first.

  “But we saw them, didn’t we?” Dan said, echoing my own thoughts of a moment earlier. “We all saw them.” He got back up and stood there a moment, then turned to the other beds and pulled off the blanket and sheets from the top bunk, stripping it down to the mattress. Then he did the same for the rest of them, and gathered the sheets into his arms before stuffing them into the closet.

  “Just want to make it easier to watch for them,” he said. “Just in case.”

  “Don’t you ever question yourself?” I asked. “You always seem so sure. Except when you decided to cut into Jimmie’s leg, but even then, you did it. Don’t you ever wonder if you can do something, if you’ve made the right decision, if you are strong enough or good enough or smart enough?”

  I didn’t think he’d answer me, but he did. “Sure,” he said. “All the time. But successful people make a decision and have the confidence to trust in it.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  “Then I make it right.”

  Unless it’s too late, I thought, but I didn’t say it. What good would it do to point that out? Right now, for better or worse, Dan was our rock. We needed him more than he needed us.

  For some reason I couldn’t see very well anymore. Things were broken into a thousand different prisms of color.

  “We’re going to die down here, aren’t we?” I said.

  Plenty of people have written about the point in your life when you realize that someday, maybe sooner, maybe later, you will cease to exist. Not when you’re a kid and you get the general concept of death, but later on, when you’re old enough to really grasp that life is finite. You can finally see your life as a complete package, the beginning, middle and the coming end. You realize how random life is—who is chosen, and when—and question why you have been chosen to survive. This realization gives you a new perspective, a sense of appreciation for the time you have, and a sense of inevitability as time races on, faster and faster.

  I was feeling that right now.

  “No,” Dan said. “We’re going to make it. I promise you that.”

  “I don’t feel so good,” I said. “I think maybe I better lie down.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Dan said. “We’ll take shifts, to watch out for each other. We should all get some rest. Things will make more sense if we sleep on it.”

  I seriously doubted that, but I nodded. I left it to him to tell the others, flipped off the overhead lights and crawled onto the adjacent mattress, and, bugs be damned, was almost instantly asleep.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I woke up sometime later disoriented and cold, clutching at a blanket that wasn’t there. My dreams had been bad, but I remembered very little. Something about bumble-bees the size of footballs chasing my mother down a dark tunnel. I strained to remember what had happened to her in the dream, but I could not. It seemed important somehow, as evidenced by the ache in my chest.

  I miss you, Mom. I’m so sorry.

  My eyes were wet and I had to use the bathroom very badly.

  The room was bathed in a soft, dim light from the lantern on its lowest setting. The smell had gotten worse. I could hear someone snoring lightly in the bunk above me, and figured it was Sue.

  I lay there for a minute as my mind cleared, thinking about what Jay had said. Some kind of terrorist group experimenting with the genetic code of insects. Creating something that the world has never seen before. You’re fucking kidding me. Nuclear warheads don’t do enough damage?

  It meant the possibility of facing things that would make radiation poisoning look like a bad case of the herpes. I remembered r
eading a Web article a while back about bioengineered weapons and nanotechnology, and rumors that the military was conducting experiments to combine the two and create machines that could rearrange human or animal cells at the molecular level; carry and disperse genetic codes of different species, create mutations, horrible pain, or simply cause the body to dissolve into itself until there was nothing left.

  Hell, Jay might have even been the one who sent the link to me. It was probably just the rantings of one of those fringe conspiracy groups he always loved to talk about, but it did make me wonder. A few weeks ago, we would have all laughed it off as Jay just being Jay. But now, it didn’t seem quite so crazy after all.

  I sensed movement from the bunk next to me. When I looked over, Jimmie’s eyes were open and he was blinking rapidly at me.

  “Water,” he said in a croaking voice. “Please.” Then, as if suddenly remembering what had happened, he lifted his head enough to look down at his bandaged leg. “Are they gone?”

  “I think so.”

  His head fell back to the pillow and he closed his eyes. “Thank God.”

  “I’ll get you a drink.”

  I got up and walked through the other room. Dan was sitting at the table, head nodding toward his chest. He jerked awake as I passed, looking guilty. I wondered how long we’d all been sleeping, and whether he’d woken up anyone else for a shift. Probably not.

  “Did you see anything?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I’ve been checking the bedroom every few minutes. Nothing.”

  “Jimmie’s up,” I said. “I’m getting him some water, and then I’ll sit up a while so you can sleep, okay?”

  He nodded. I continued into the kitchen, poured the water and found an antibiotic pill, and brought it back into the bedroom.

  Dan had climbed into a bunk and was already fast asleep. I helped Jimmie sit up slightly and put a pillow under his back, then helped him take the water. He tried to gulp it down, choked, and then took a slower, longer sip, and swallowed the pill too. His lips were cracked and bleeding. I tried not to stare at his scalp, which was showing through in patches. I don’t think he’d noticed yet, and I wasn’t about to point it out.

  I felt his forehead and sat down on the end of the mattress, ducking my head slightly to keep from hitting the top bunk, where Tessa was sleeping. “Fever’s broke,” I said, my voice low to avoid disturbing the others. “How do you feel?”

  “Like a truck parked on my chest,” he said. “And then a meteor landed on the truck.” He tried to smile and only managed a grimace of pain. “My leg hurts so bad. You guys…cut me?”

  “Yep. Tied you up too. Sorry, we had no choice. You were pretty out of it.”

  “Thanks.” He closed his eyes and for a moment, I thought he’d fallen back asleep. But then he spoke again. “Those things…I could feel them inside me. Chewing.” He shivered and opened his eyes again, and searched my own as if he might be able to see the truth in there. “How do you know you got them all out?”

  I wondered how to answer that. The honest answer was, I didn’t know. “Can you still feel them?”

  He thought about it for a moment. “No,” he said. “I can’t.” He sighed. “What a fucked-up world, eh, Pete?” Then he tried to sit up some more, groaned, and lay back.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You could say that.”

  I looked around the room. The light was dim enough that I could almost imagine movement in the corners. Little black lines of something crawling. When I blinked, they were gone.

  Insects could get in anywhere. They could be anywhere. How could we possibly stay safe from something like that?

  Again, I thought Jimmie might have drifted off to sleep, and I was startled when he spoke up. “We have to try to see what’s outside that hatch,” he said.

  “I don’t think that’s a very good idea. It’s too early. The fallout could still be deadly—”

  “We don’t know that,” he said. “We don’t know anything about what’s happening out there.”

  “Still, it’s too dangerous. We can’t risk it.”

  He shook his head. “I could go.”

  “Jimmie, that’s crazy. It’s suicide.”

  “I’m…infected. That rat gave me something. Look at me.” He gestured down at his legs, which were blotchy with the hives. “If anyone goes, it should be me.”

  “It’s probably just a virus. Your fever’s down already. You’re going to be okay.”

  He shook his head again, and squeezed his eyes shut, hard. There was a catch in his voice. “I’m sorry I’m such a fuckup. I’m sorry about what I did in that tunnel. I don’t know what I was thinking.” He sighed and wiped tears away from his eyes. “I didn’t mean to hurt anybody, least of all you, Pete. You’re my best friend, you know that? We’ve been together ever since we were kids, and now, down here, I’ve just been acting like a spoiled brat, getting into that fight the first night, then the tunnel…” He was crying hard now, tears streaming down his face, his nose running. “I’m just so scared, man. That’s it. I’m so scared. Ah, God.” He wiped his nose with his hand. “I’m such a pussy.” He laughed. “I can’t even cry right.”

  I remembered the day when we were ten years old and we’d gone sledding on the hill outside our elementary school. It was a brutally cold day, and it hadn’t snowed in a while. The hill had gotten so packed down it had nearly turned to ice. I took my first run, my teeth snapping together over the bumps, my face aching from the wind, then another. On the way back up the hill, another larger boy lost control of his sled and ran full speed into my legs, flipping me over so I landed on my shoulder. I could feel the bones crack, the pain like an electric shock running down the entire side of my body.

  Jimmie told the other boy to get help. He stayed with me until the teacher came, and then he rode with me in my mother’s car to the hospital. He insisted on staying there until I went in to get my bone set, and then he was at my house when I got home.

  I was going to do what I could to be there for him now.

  I got up from the bed and I hugged him, and it was a real hug, no quick patting of the backs or whatever, guy code out the window. Jimmie was an only child, like me, and for better or worse, I think that can tend to make you a more selfish person if you’re not careful. It depends on how you’re raised, and knowing his mom and dad, it was no wonder he acted the way he did. They doted on him, the kind of parents who insisted he wear a helmet and pads when he rode his bike even when he was twelve years old, the kind who walked him across every street and made sure he had his vitamins and called him “our special boy.” I always got the sense he was embarrassed by it, especially around me, since he knew the way my father was; but sometimes I thought it was more than that. Sometimes I wondered if he secretly envied some part of my life, as crazy as that sounds. I was forced to prove myself, again and again, while Jimmie was coddled to the point of distraction.

  When I pulled away from the hug we were both uncomfortable. “Maybe we should, I don’t know, make out or something,” I said.

  Jimmie laughed, then winced. “You always could make an awkward situation worse,” he said.

  “It’s a rare talent.”

  “Does Dan still want to kill me?”

  “I think he’s coming around. Just don’t lock him in with a bunch of killer rats again anytime soon.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Jimmie touched the bandage over his leg. “What were those things, Pete?”

  “We don’t know for sure. They looked like ants. Jay has a few theories…” I shrugged. “Pretty crazy, to tell you the truth. I think they were going after the infection, and what with the situation aboveground, they’re being more aggressive than usual. Let’s face it, you’re ant bait, man.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Yeah, well, join the club.” I stood up from the bunk. “Listen, you rest a bit more. I’m going to make some coffee and something to eat. You up for that?”

  He nodded, leaned
back and closed his eyes. “Sure, sounds good. Thanks.”

  I left him lying there in the semidark, his eyes still wet, or maybe he’d never quite stopped the tears. Either way, I had the funny feeling that Jimmie was never going to be the same, that the Jimmie I’d known was gone. Maybe that was the same for all of us.

  I also had the feeling that something terrible was coming, something that would tear us all apart and would make what happened so far look like a day at the beach. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake it.

  As it turned out, I wasn’t even close. It was far worse.

  PART THREE:

  THE INFECTED

  “The world began without man, and it will end without him.”

  —Claude Levi-Strauss

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  My mother was my protector. She got real good at sensing one of my father’s moods, and did her best to keep me out of the path of the storm. His drinking wouldn’t always deteriorate into violence; sometimes he would just get mellow, even a little nostalgic. Other times he’d just sit and stare out the window at the trees. I knew he’d survived the terrible events that had turned White Falls into a ghost town a few years back, although I was too young to remember much of it, and maybe that had something to do with his moods. But then again, if I’m to be consistent here, I suppose I have to acknowledge that the darkness was hardwired into him, and it wouldn’t have mattered much where he lived or what kind of life he led. And if I’m honest with myself, I’d have to admit that maybe I’d inherited some of it from him.

  When the drink turned the dark against him, it was like someone had dialed down the thermostat and the air held a charge. Violence was like an unwelcome house-guest who wouldn’t leave. I guess I got pretty good at sensing it too. If he was yelling, that was a good sign; it was when he was quiet and still that you had to watch out.

  The problem (and it was a big one) was that my mother’s way of protecting me was to take the brunt of my father’s wrath. Distraction, as it were. It usually worked, but she would be the worse for it. There were plenty of bruises and finger marks and black eyes, and she’d suffered multiple broken bones over the years.