by Jeff Strand
The board slipped out from under Mia and she fell to the ground. Rusty helped her up and they continued walking.
"I don't know if my eye or my leg is worse," said Mia.
"Your eye."
"I'm going to need surgery on both. Who do you think will have a longer hospital stay? You'll have skin grafts."
"I don't want to talk about hospitals," said Rusty.
"All right. What do you want to talk about?"
"Nothing, if at all possible."
"It's not. If I don't talk, I'm going to stay inside my own head, and it's not a pretty place right now."
"Let's talk about food."
"Okay."
* * *
Progress was shitty.
Mia fell three more times, once really badly, but each time she got right up and forced herself to continue onward. Rusty wasn't entirely convinced that she hadn't broken anything, and that each step was ruining her leg even more, but she insisted that she wanted to go on. He really didn't want to leave her behind. If he got the truck, came back, and found her half-devoured by the wildlife, he wasn't sure that he wouldn't just rev up the chainsaw and slam his face into the blade.
Still, it was starting to feel like they might never reach the truck.
They hadn't discussed what they'd do if they couldn't get the truck out of the mud. Walking the rest of the way to town wasn't within any realm of possibility. They'd simply have to wait inside the vehicle for help that would almost certainly never arrive. A slow, horrible death, unless they made a pact to hasten the process.
That was two suicide scenarios in a row. Rusty needed to think about something else, though talking about delicious food with Mia was honestly making him kind of miserable.
The bobcat that went after him was in worse shape than any of the animals they'd encountered thus far, so rotted away that in one spot Rusty could actually see a pinpoint of sunlight shining through its side.
It pounced at him, knocking him to the ground.
It tore its claws across his chest, pulling several of the strips of wood loose. They'd held on admirably well, but the combination of perspiration and animals clawing at them was finally too much.
The bobcat's severed head dropped onto him. Pain exploded in Rusty's face as its front teeth smashed into his nose. He batted the head away before it could start chewing on him. Mia fell next to him.
Rusty ran his hand across his nose and looked at his bloody palm. "Goddamn it," he said, slightly muffled.
"I'm sorry."
"Not your fault. I should've chainsawed it before it knocked me down." The rest of the bobcat had flopped over on its side, but its claws were still dangerous, so Rusty started up the chainsaw and removed them. He shut off the chainsaw as Mia returned the axe to her backpack and replaced the board crutch.
"Your nose is bleeding bad," she said.
Rusty wiped some blood away. "Yeah, that's what happens when a bobcat head falls on it."
* * *
The next half hour was far from effortless, but they did not break any bones, lose any limbs, or bleed to death. That was Rusty's bar for success now. If they weren't dragging themselves along the dirt road by their teeth, they were doing okay.
They were approaching a very familiar curve. Unless Rusty was mistaken, which was entirely possible, when they rounded this curve they'd be in sight of the truck.
They rounded the curve. The truck was just where they'd left it.
"Are those—?" Mia started to ask.
"No," said Rusty, even though, yeah, it looked like the mud around the truck was swarming with snakes.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In the grand scheme of things, there were far worse things that could be "guarding" the truck than snakes, even zombie snakes. Rusty wasn't inclined to run down a mental list at the moment, but without a doubt, snakes were a minor concern. Neither he nor Mia had an irrational paralyzing fear of the reptiles, they wouldn't withstand a good whacking with the boards, and they'd simply make it a point to be extremely careful and not get bit. It wasn't as good as there being nothing dangerous around the truck, but ultimately it wasn't all that bad.
As they walked forward, Rusty heard rustling in the back of the truck.
Lots of rustling.
He suspected that this wasn't good rustling.
"Hold on," he told Mia. "I don't think it's just the snakes."
They stood there, listening closely.
"Did you hear a snort?" asked Mia.
"No."
"I thought I heard a snort."
"I hear something moving in the back of the truck."
A squirrel peeked its head over the edge of the cargo bed.
And then another.
And another.
"No," said Mia. "No, this is not okay with me."
The first squirrel jumped out of the truck and scurried toward Rusty and Mia, followed by the second. And then there was a whole flood of squirrels pouring out of the back of the truck—dozens of bloodshot eyes headed toward them.
Mia readied her board while Rusty started the chainsaw.
There were so many of them. This was insane. Had they just been sleeping in the back of the truck this whole time, hoping somebody would stop by? Did they smell the scent of the first squirrel and hope to avenge his gruesome death?
The squirrels reached them.
Mia swung the board, bashing the closest squirrel's brains out but not stopping it from scampering back at her. She immediately lost her balance, but used the board to brace herself just in time. If she fell, she'd be engulfed by squirrels. They'd skeletonize her like piranha skeletonizing a cow.
Rusty waved the chainsaw around his legs, sending squirrel limbs flying into the air. At first he was doing a fine job of keeping them away, but there were too many of them. One scampered up his left leg while another scampered up his right. He successfully grabbed one of them by the tail and tossed it onto the chainsaw blade, cutting the squirrel in half, but the other one ran up his back and into his hair.
He jabbed the chainsaw blade at it, making sure not to press the blade into his scalp. Part of a squirrel slid down the side of his face.
Mia crushed three squirrels in rapid succession. Splat! Splat! Splat! That left plenty more.
Two more squirrels ran up Rusty's leg. Then three. Then one was gnawing on his ear in the least sensual manner imaginable.
Rusty waved the chainsaw around like a slasher movie psychopath, lopping off at least two squirrel pieces with each swing. They just kept coming, as if the back of the truck was a portal to another dimension in which an infinite number of squirrels resided. (Rusty was sure this wasn't really the case—he was just a bit overwhelmed at the moment.)
He added violent stomping to the mix, crushing one's skull and breaking another's back.
Squirrels were no longer pouring out of the back of the truck, so it wasn't a dimensional portal. There were still a fuckload of them.
Rusty continued to swing the chainsaw blade at squirrels that were currently crawling on him. It was insanely risky, but he didn't really have another choice. He had thus far managed to avoid slicing off one of his own body parts, and he wasn't inclined to put down the chainsaw right now. It had served him well thus far.
Mia got in a really good hit that sent a porcupine quill all the way through a squirrel's head. They'd have to pluck the quills out before they used the boards to get the truck out of the mud, so this saved some time.
Rusty cut off a squirrel's tail, which wasn't his intent. The tail spun around on the ground like a battery powered cat toy.
Mia bashed a squirrel to mush. Another squirrel crawled onto the splatter, and became mush along with it.
In a single wide sweep of the chainsaw, Rusty bisected five different squirrels. Mia's head was turned when he did this, so she missed this astounding accomplishment. It didn't really matter, and of course he had far more important things to worry about than whether or not his niece witnessed the quintuple dismemb
erment, but it was still a bit frustrating.
Mia lost her balance again. This time the board didn't stop her fall.
She landed face-first. At least ten squirrels pounced upon her at once, their tiny claws and teeth ripping at the back of her shirt.
Rusty went into action with the chainsaw. He couldn't tell her not to move over the sound of the motor, but he was pretty sure she'd get the message. He waved the chainsaw to and fro, slicing squirrels while being incredibly careful not to cut his niece. The pieces, of course, continued to move, but most of them would fall off when she stood back up. A couple of the squirrels were kind enough to run into the blade on their own, while others required more effort. During this process, Rusty had squirrels crawling on him as well, but Mia was his top priority right now.
Finally he'd gotten them all except for one asshole squirrel that was particularly agile. Mia could handle that one. He moved away and she stood up, frantically brushing moving squirrel parts off of her.
Rusty resumed work on his own problems. Mutilating squirrels on his own body with a chainsaw was much trickier than mutilating squirrels on somebody else's body with a chainsaw, and one of them had wrapped itself in his thinning hair so tightly that it stayed in place even when the top half of its body fell away.
They were biting the hell out of him. The squirrel bite from before had been a nagging source of stress in the back of his mind since it happened, but now he had several dozen bites to go along with it. He wouldn't worry about that right now. He couldn't. He needed to stay sane until they got to town.
A squirrel managed a particularly deep bite on his leg, pressing its mouth against his skin as if it was trying to burrow its entire head in there. He jabbed the chainsaw blade at it. The squirrel leapt off his leg, and the chainsaw blade grazed his thigh.
It wasn't as if a huge spray of blood jettisoned from the limb, but there was blood.
He managed to keep his hold on the chainsaw, grit his teeth, and resume the process of squirrel destruction. If anything, he was even angrier at them now.
Mia smashed the corner of the board into that wretched squirrel. Both of its bloodshot eyes popped out of their sockets. She smashed it several more times—there was clearly an element of vengeance involved. By the time she was done, the squirrel would never again leap from somebody's leg at an inopportune time.
They were running out of squirrels to massacre.
None of them fled, so Rusty and Mia didn't have to chase any of them down. They just stood where they were and the squirrels came to them. And a few minutes later, the ground was littered with writhing squirrel parts, along with various moist but not bleeding splotches that used to be functioning rodents.
Rusty shut off the chainsaw. There was a lot of goo on the blade.
"How's your leg?" Mia asked.
"It's fine," Rusty said, as several trickles of blood ran down from the wound.
"Can you walk?"
"I can walk to the truck. That's all we need to do."
Something snorted.
"Did you hear it that time?" Mia asked.
"Yeah. Zombie wild hog? I think we should get the truck out of the mud and get out of here."
"I agree with that plan."
Something moved behind the truck.
"If I can get rid of eight million squirrels, I can handle a pig," said Rusty, pulling the chainsaw cord. It roared to life, sputtered, and died. He pulled the cord a couple more times and nothing happened. He unscrewed the gas cap and looked inside.
"Is it empty?" Mia asked.
"Yeah. That's pretty disappointing." He set the chainsaw on the ground.
"Do you want the axe?"
"That's probably a good idea."
Mia took the axe out of her backpack and handed it over.
Another snort.
"Here, piggy, piggy, piggy," Rusty called out. "Come on out or I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in."
"You really got yourself good," said Mia, pointing to Rusty's bleeding leg.
"I know. It's okay. I'll still be able to drive, no problem. The more I bleed now, the less blood I'll get all over the truck."
The hog emerged from behind the truck.
That is, the hogs emerged.
That is, the...what the fuck was that?
From a purely technical sense, you could say that three wild hogs and two red foxes walked out from behind the truck. But they were fused together, covered with an unidentified clear viscous liquid. So instead of five separate animals, it was one nightmare animal with five heads and twenty legs. Had they all died at the same time and gotten stuck when they returned? Were they...actually, Rusty had no other theories for the origin of this creature that stood before them. It was there and Rusty was about to shit his pants and nothing else was important.
"Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" asked Mia.
"Yes."
"Because I've only got one working eye, so I may just be seeing it wrong."
"Nope, you're seeing a giant pig/fox monster."
"Maybe it's blood loss. We're both bleeding pretty bad. Eventually we'd start to have visions, right?"
"I don't think we'd be having visions of the same monster. We live together and we've shared a lot of the same experiences, but I don't see us both having visions of a three-pig two-fox mutant zombie."
"You're probably right."
"Yeah, I am. It's real."
"Shit."
The abomination against God began to move toward them. Since it was trying to coordinate five sets of legs, its movements were somewhat awkward, though not bumbling enough to provide any measure of comic relief.
All three of the hog heads began to snort. Rusty did not speak pig but these were clearly hostile snorts. The red foxes made no noise, but they opened and closed their mouths, apparently to show off their impressively sharp teeth.
Rusty and Mia each took a step back.
"It's kind of slow," said Rusty. "Maybe we can lead it away from the truck instead of fighting it."
They kept backing up. The monstrosity followed.
It was picking up speed, as if the five bodies were quickly learning how to work together. Since neither Rusty nor Mia were in any condition to run away, the "lead it away from the truck" plan quickly disappeared as a viable strategy.
Could it even hurt them? Regular zombie red foxes could pounce on you and slash at you with their paws and bite your throat out. Rusty wasn't sure this thing could even bend any of its heads down that far. Perhaps its greatest danger came from the possibility that you'd just stand there, paralyzed, going "What the fuck is that?"
"The boards aren't gonna do it," Mia said, right before her bad leg twisted beneath her and she fell over.
Rusty thought of another potential origin story for the creature. A farmer with too much time on his hands captured three pigs and two foxes and glued them together. This was not a credible origin, but Rusty liked it better than the thought that the ground had split open, spewing lava, and a demon crawled out from the pits of hell.
Rusty reached down, intending to help Mia up, but there was no time. He was going to have to take the offensive on his own.
He raised the axe and walked forward.
Hogs had always creeped him out, just a little. Even if he ignored the fact that they were part of a five-headed demon, they were way creepier than normal hog heads because of the bloodshot eyes.
He had nothing clever to say, and didn't care. He wasn't sure if he should start chopping at the middle head, or pick one on the end and work his way down the line. He decided to start with the hog on the left.
He swung the axe at its neck. It was enough to make a huge dent, but not enough to sever the head. Blackish yellow goo sprayed from the wound—apparently the mutant version of the zombie animals had extra liquid inside. The hog let out an ear-piercing squeal.
Rusty yanked the axe out of its neck and slammed it down again. It was an equally strong hit, but he was off by a few inches, so the ho
g's head remained attached. It's squealing got even louder, making Rusty cringe.
The parts of the animal on the right side began to move, while the hog on the left remained standing where it was. Rusty struck it with the axe a third time. This hit landed in the gap created by the first blow, but it still wasn't enough to decapitate the hog. The other two hog heads also began to squeal, a sound that was worse than scraping fingernails along a chalkboard until the nails snapped off and the jagged edges continued to scrape along the chalkboard for eternity.
By the time Rusty realized what the rest of the creature was doing, it was too late for him to move his slow injured ass out of the way.
It was surrounding him.
He was now in the middle of a circle-shaped five-headed beast. Not a great place to be. He wished he'd massacred fewer squirrels and saved some chainsaw fuel for this thing.
The hog heads kept squealing.
He chopped the head on what used to be the left once more. Another solid hit, and another hit that didn't quite do the trick. The head was now dangling by strands of pork, but it hadn't yet fallen off.
Rusty raised the axe over his head, preparing to deliver a mighty blow that would downgrade this five-headed monster to a four-headed monster.
The blade of the axe popped off, flying into the air behind him and landing outside the circle of the beast.
Son of a bitch.
They'd asked a lot of the axe today, but couldn't it have lasted for just four more heads?
Rusty decided not to lose his shit quite yet. He grabbed the mostly severed hog head by the ears and ripped it off its neck. Like the deer head, it was heavier than expected, and it fell out of his hands. A massive gout of the blackish yellow goo sprayed from the stump, drenching Rusty. It reeked of pure rot. The head kept moving but at least it wasn't squealing any more, though the other two hogs were contributing plenty to the noise level.
He still had the wooden axe handle. Given a few uninterrupted hours to work, he could probably splatter the remaining heads.
"What can I do?" asked Mia, sounding frantic.