Ferocious

by Jeff Strand

  "I think it's coming from behind it," said Mia.

  Rusty listened carefully.

  Yep, she was right. It was coming from behind the outhouse.

  This did not make him happy.

  That said, it was also clear that whatever was behind there was relatively small. It wasn't as if a grizzly bear was going to claw his face off as soon as he shined the flashlight in its eyes. The mangled deer and this were quite clearly unrelated, so there was no reason not to just walk back there and see what it was.

  It was a squirrel. It was thrashing around because its front paw was caught in a crack in the wood near the bottom. Had it been trying to dig its way through?

  No. That was stupid. Squirrels didn't try to dig through walls. It had been scurrying across the wall and gotten stuck, that's all. Its front leg was in there pretty deep, but it could've gotten wedged in there more tightly while it was trying to escape.

  He stepped away from the cabin and called back to Mia. "Just a squirrel."

  She hurried over to take a look. "Poor thing."

  "Yeah."

  "What do we do?"

  The harshest option was to inform the squirrel that life was tough, and that sometimes there was nobody to solve your problems for you. Let the squirrel figure out its own solution. This meant that in the morning they'd probably have to remove a dead squirrel, or at least the chewed-off leg of one. Rusty didn't care much about the welfare of the squirrels in the woods, but this seemed rather cruel.

  Another option was to put the squirrel out of its misery before it died a lingering death overnight. Grab a plank of plywood and splatter the poor bastard. It wouldn't be the first time Rusty had done a mercy killing of a forest dweller, but this option also held little appeal. It wasn't as if he'd be haunted, waking up screaming every night with visions of a tiny squirrel head caving in, but still, it would be extremely unpleasant.

  Which left trying to free it. This was the most humane, kind-hearted option, the one where he could lay his head on the pillow with a smile on his face at the thought of a job well done. It was also the option where he could get injured by a crazed squirrel. He didn't want to lose an eye to that thing.

  "We're gonna get it free," Rusty said.

  "You mean pry the wood apart?"

  "I was thinking more of just pulling it out of there."

  "Do you think it's rabid?"

  Rusty aimed the flashlight beam at the creature, looking for signs of foam on its mouth. (Did rabid squirrels foam at the mouth? He wasn't sure. It seemed like something he should know.)

  The beam caught its eyes, which were...odd.

  "What's wrong with its eyes?" asked Mia.

  "I don't know." Squirrels had black beady eyes. This one's eyes weren't red, exactly, but they were bloodshot. At least it seemed that way. It was thrashing around too much to be sure.

  "I'll go get a blanket," said Mia.

  "Make sure it's a thick one," Rusty told her. "And my gloves. And the machete."

  "The machete?"

  "In case I have to kill it."

  "Maybe we should let it die."

  "No, no, it'll be fine. Just being extra cautious. And, actually, get two blankets."

  While Mia went to retrieve their squirrel-rescuing supplies, Rusty kept trying to get a good look at its eyes. Bloodshot eyes on a squirrel were damned unnerving, but it made sense that it might have popped a few vessels during its struggle.

  "We're going to get you out of there," he informed it. "Just hang in there a little bit longer."

  The squirrel continued to freak out. Rusty couldn't say that he blamed it. It was thrashing around a lot more now, as if it knew that Rusty had briefly considered the "splatter it with a plank of wood" option, and if they were lucky it might knock itself unconscious.

  Mia returned with the blankets, machete, and his leather work gloves that were hopefully resistant to being punctured by squirrel teeth. Rusty took the gloves from her and put them on.

  "What do you want me to do?" she asked.

  "Just hold the flashlight on it, and be ready to run if things go wrong."

  "I'm not running away from a squirrel."

  "You are if it gets loose and goes berserk."

  "You will make fun of me literally forever if I run away from a berserk squirrel."

  Rusty shook his head. "I won't. I promise."

  "Bullshit. If I run back to the cabin and fall on my ass, you'll laugh yourself into a hernia."

  "Nobody's asking you to fall on your ass."

  "If I'm running away from a psycho rodent, it could happen."

  "Seriously, Mia, there could be something wrong with it. If I tell you to run, you run, okay?"

  Mia nodded.

  Rusty took the machete from her and leaned it against the outhouse, within reach if necessary. He supposed that he could trust Mia to hold it, but in the unlikely event that the squirrel did leap out at her he didn't want her flailing around in a panic with a bladed weapon. That was a good way for him to lose an arm or a head.

  "All I'm going to do is wrap it in the blanket and pull," he said.

  "Try not to tear its arm off."

  "I'll be gentle." He took the blankets from her. "Step back."

  Mia backed away, keeping the light aimed at the squirrel.

  Rusty wondered if this was the dumbest thing he'd ever done. He was, in general, not a guy who was prone to bumbling antics. He wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but if he went back and reviewed each decision he'd made during the course of his life, he genuinely believed that there would be more marks on the "smart" side than the "jaw-droppingly stupid" side. But now he was about to yank a squirrel out of a crack in his outhouse wall. That might be enough to balance out a couple hundred of his intelligent decisions.

  There was no reason to wait any longer. The squirrel wasn't going any less insane.

  Rusty got as close as he could without putting himself in claw range, then covered the animal in the blanket. It did not appear to like this. He quickly wrapped it up as tightly as he could, then very gently lifted the bundle.

  It didn't come loose.

  "Is it coming loose?" Mia asked.

  Rusty didn't answer. He wanted to maintain his full concentration on the task at hand. He was grateful to Mia for not laughing; this was the kind of stuff that people living normal lives would record and post online to be ridiculed by millions.

  He tugged again, continuing to do it gently.

  It still didn't come loose. The squirrel was going absolutely ballistic in there. Rusty was kind of surprised that it hadn't broken its own leg in the struggle. At least it wasn't ripping through the blanket.

  He yanked once more, a little harder than the first two times, but hopefully not hard enough to make the squirrel's leg pop off.

  It came free.

  Rusty immediately set the blanket on the ground. The squirrel continued thrashing around inside of it. Rusty glanced at the outhouse and was relieved to note that there wasn't a bloody squirrel leg wedged in the crack.

  He shook out the blanket a bit then stepped out of the way. The lump of the squirrel moved to the edge, then switched direction and moved to the upper right corner. Then it switched direction again and moved back to the center.

  He wanted to help it, but he also didn't want to get rabies just to make things a little easier for the squirrel to make its escape. The squirrel moved around underneath the blanket for nearly a minute until finally it emerged, looking unharmed. It scampered up the nearest tree.

  "You're welcome, asshole," Rusty called up after it.

  "Well, that was interesting," said Mia, walking over to him. "I can't believe you want me to leave and miss that kind of excitement."

  "I don't want you to leave."

  "I know."

  The branches rustled above.

  Mia shined the flashlight beam on the back of the outhouse. "If I were a squirrel, and I were trying to dig through a wall, that's not the wall I would choose
."

  "I don't think it was trying to dig through anything."

  "Either way, I hope it's learned a valuable lesson."

  The branches rustled again. Mia shined the light up there.

  The squirrel leapt out of the tree at them.

  Rusty had just enough time to hold up his arm, so the squirrel struck that instead of his head. It scurried up his arm and onto his shoulder. He frantically batted at it with his other hand as the squirrel ran across the back of his neck.

  "Holy shit!" said Mia, swinging the flashlight at it.

  The squirrel nuzzled its face against Rusty's collar as if trying to get inside of his shirt, then ran halfway down his back. Rusty swatted at it but it was like an itch he couldn't reach.

  "Hold still!" Mia told him.

  Rusty didn't want to hold still. He hurried over to the outhouse and slammed his back against it, hoping to crush the wretched rodent. Too slow. The squirrel ran around to his chest, and Mia's attempt to smack it with the flashlight missed.

  It ran across his arm. He vigorously tried to shake it off, but the squirrel had a firm grip with its claws and wouldn't go anywhere. Then he tried to grab its tail so that he could fling it away. Still no luck. The damn thing was too fast.

  Mia struck it with the flashlight. It wasn't a skull-crushing blow, though; it hit the squirrel on the side but seemed to have no effect on its behavior.

  The squirrel bit down on Rusty's index finger. It hurt, but thank God he was wearing the gloves. He still couldn't shake it off. He tried to clap his hands together but it scurried back up his arm and across the back of his neck again.

  He desperately hoped he didn't get bit in a way that broke the skin. As long as he didn't catch a disease, they'd be able to look back on this and laugh. They wouldn't be laughing if he were rabid.

  "Stop moving," Mia told him. "I mean it, stop moving."

  Rusty realized that she was now holding the machete. He stopped moving.

  Mia lunged with the weapon and missed. She lunged again, and the squirrel let out a high-pitched, agonized shriek. She swung the machete out of the way, and Rusty turned around to see the still-thrashing squirrel skewered on it.

  She slammed the blade into the dirt, deep enough for it to stand up on its own. They watched as the squirrel slowly slid down, moving less and less frantically, and finally reached the ground.

  "That," Mia said, "was fucked up."

  Rusty couldn't catch his breath yet, so he just nodded.

  The squirrel slowly reached its front leg out at them, as if making a final dying effort to attack its prey, and then went still.

  Mia pulled the machete out. They both spent a long moment just staring at its dead body.

  "I don't think we'll be throwing that one on the grill," said Mia.

  Rusty still wasn't recovered enough to acknowledge her witticism. He took off the gloves and ran his fingers over the back of his neck.

  "Here, let me check," Mia said. She looked him over. "The scratches aren't bad. Do they hurt?"

  "No, not really. I was lucky."

  "What was wrong with that thing?"

  "I have no idea. It was scratching for quite a while. Maybe it was so panicked from the experience that it went mentally ill."

  "Aren't all squirrels mentally ill?"

  "That wasn't a scientific theory. I really don't know what happened. I've gotta say, I was happier with the outcome before you had to impale that thing with a machete."

  "Me too." Mia looked at the machete blade. "That's really weird."

  "What?"

  She leaned the machete against the outhouse and shined the flashlight on it. She ran the beam up the length of the blade.

  "That is weird," said Rusty.

  There were traces of brown fur and skin on the machete, but absolutely no blood.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  They went back to the cabin and got a plastic bag. When they returned to the outhouse, the dead squirrel was still where they'd left it, which should not have been a surprise. Rusty didn't want to pick it up, even with gloved hands, or even move it with his foot, so he held the bag open while Mia pushed it in there with the machete. It would've been easier to just stab it, like somebody picking up litter in a park, but that seemed oddly disrespectful, even though the squirrel already had a hole in it.

  Rusty tied up the bag and tried to decide where to store the squirrel. Sometime—not necessarily tomorrow, but soon—he'd take it into town and track down a veterinarian to satisfy his curiosity about what was wrong with it. It had to be some kind of disease that would make it act that way and also coagulate its blood so thick that it didn't spill out when it was stabbed. Rusty had never heard of this sort of thing. Though he was no biologist, he was pretty sure that mammals needed their blood to circulate for them to stay alive.

  He didn't want it inside the cabin. And he didn't want it adding a dead animal smell to the already unfragrant outhouse. Other wild animals probably wouldn't dig a dead squirrel out of a garbage bag, so he tossed it into the back of his pickup truck.

  This was one of the very rare times that Rusty wished he had more technology at his fingertips. He had a pretty large selection of books in the cabin, but nothing that would provide research material on squirrel diseases. A vet might say, "Oh, yeah, Mad Squirrel Disease. It's all over the news. Where have you been?"

  He also wished he drank alcohol. He could use a beer.

  He'd settle for a shower. "Do you want to get in there first?" he asked Mia after they were back in the cabin. "Because I'm going to use up all of the hot water."

  "It's all yours," she said. "You've earned it."

  Rusty didn't realize how much he'd been perspiring until his shirt stuck to him while he peeled it off. Pre-teenaged Mia, he'd had a small hot water tank and went with quick, efficient, no-frills showers, but now they had a huge tank and it was rare for a shower to end just because the water was cold. He stood under the wonderfully refreshing spray, thankful to be here instead of outside fighting that goddamn squirrel.

  As he squirted the shampoo into his palm, he realized that his hands were quivering.

  Okay, that was stupid. Yes, it had been a bizarre encounter, but still, it was just a squirrel. It hadn't clawed his eyes out. The bite hadn't punctured his skin. He hadn't almost died. Rusty was a man of nature, and squirrels were pretty low on the list of threats. Thinking, "Wow, that was messed up!" was acceptable. Treating it like post-traumatic stress disorder was not.

  He washed his hair, lathered himself up with a bar of soap, rinsed himself off, and then stood under the water with his eyes closed. It felt wonderful. Perhaps his anxiety didn't simply wash away, but he did grow less and less tense, and by the time the water transitioned from hot to lukewarm he was feeling relatively back to normal.

  He'd assumed that Mia would've gone to bed, but when he emerged from the bathroom she was still awake. She was sitting on the couch in the living room. She didn't have a book or anything, so apparently she'd just been sitting there, waiting.

  "You should get some sleep," he told her.

  "Just wanted to make sure you were okay."

  "I'm totally fine."

  "When do we get to laugh about it?"

  "Four o'clock tomorrow afternoon."

  Mia got up off the couch, walked over, and gave him a tight hug. Mia was a hugger, but they didn't usually linger like this.

  "I'm fine!" Rusty insisted. "It was a stupid squirrel! A rat with a bushy tail!"

  "Calling it a rat with a bushy tail doesn't help," she said, releasing the hug.

  "It's not a big deal at all. It's an amusing anecdote for the next time we go into town. Nothing for either of us to be concerned about. An unusual occurrence, that's all."

  "Along with the dead deer," said Mia.

  "Okay, yes, the dead deer is also an unusual occurrence."

  "On the same day."

  "Yes, we've had two very strange animal-related incidents on the same day. I won't lose my shit if yo
u don't."

  "They have to be connected, don't they?"

  "Not necessarily," said Rusty, although it was one hell of a coincidence to have two completely out of the ordinary things like this happen so close together. "I don't care how psycho that squirrel was, and I don't care how many of them were working in a group, they couldn't tear a deer in half."

  "Maybe it's not just squirrels," said Mia.

  Rusty wished she hadn't expressed that thought out loud. Now they had no choice but to confront the possibility, instead of simply dismissing it as ridiculous. It was ridiculous, but so was a squirrel that didn't bleed when you impaled it with a machete.

  "You know what," said Rusty, "it's better to be overly cautious and be embarrassed by it later than to die in a really stupid way. So from now on, neither of us goes outside alone. That includes me. I'm not trying to be a hero. And if we do go out, it's only during the daytime. Just until we get this figured out. And, actually, we don't need to worry about only going out in the daytime because we'll take the squirrel corpse into town first thing tomorrow morning, so we'll have it figured out before we have to worry about going outside in the dark. Sound like a plan?"

  "Works for me."

  "Good. Everything's going to be fine." He gave her a hug. "Now we need to get some sleep. If you want, I'll sleep on the couch and you can drag your mattress out here."

  Mia grinned. "I'm not scared. Weirded out, but not scared." The grin faded. "Though I guess we could at least keep our doors open."

  * * *

  This time, Rusty had to count to seven hundred and thirty to fall asleep, though he did start over when he realized he was counting rabid squirrels.

  * * *

  He woke up at sunrise, as usual. Rusty almost never remembered his dreams (and when he did, they were of the "Oh no, it's finals week and I haven't been to class all semester!" variety), but he felt like he'd been plagued by horrific nightmares. He sure hoped he hadn't whimpered or screamed in his sleep.

  He wanted to go out and check on the squirrel, to see if maybe it had bled overnight. Of course, he couldn't do that right after making the rule that they didn't go outside alone. The truck was only parked about fifty feet away, so not being able to walk over to it in daylight was silly, but rules were rules. Though he rarely had to play the role of disciplinarian, and Mia was practically an adult now, he still didn't want to set a poor precedent.