Coyote (19 page)

So anyhow, the thing came at us, stomping through the forest, knocking over trees like toothpicks, and we basically all scattered and hid. Nothing to do against something like that, right? But then all of a sudden I see Coyote and this huge guy, with the dog, of course, actually going after the thing. It was so crazy that at first I couldn’t even understand what they were doing, running around it, yelling, darting in and out. Then when I got that they were fighting the thing, I was just stunned. I had to go help, no choice about it, but really, I figured this might be one of the last things I do on this earth. But we did it, though. We killed it. It was tiring, and it sucked, but we brought it down. And you know what? It felt pretty damned good.

The happiness was short-lived, though. It killed Medic. We found her, crushed by the thing, I guess, in a patch of trampled bushes. It was more weird than sad, for me. I know that sounds crass, like I’m a cold fish, but I’d only known her for about two days, and we’d never really chatted much. I should feel worse, I guess. Maybe I’ve seen too many dead people.

But the biggest feeling I got was kind of an “uh-oh,” a slap in the face, like “hey, we’re not as immortal as we think.” I know that sounds stupid, right? We know we’re not immortal. We’re people. But since we all met Coyote, I don’t know. It’s felt different. Better. Not so much like I’m just waiting for something nasty to find me and each hour might be my last.

The dog helps us avoid things with its nose and its ears. And what we can’t avoid, we’ve done OK at defending ourselves against a couple of times now.

I guess I was feeling like we were charmed or something, and maybe there wouldn’t be so much dying any more. I think I was wrong about that.

We met this other dude, a huge black dude. (Is that racist? Is there even still racism if there are so few of us left?) This dude had been tracking the giant thing we killed for a while, I guess. He’s all buffed out and tattooed—even talks about being in prison. He’s the kind of guy I guess I knew existed, but I’ve never seen his sort outside of a TV show before now. I know back before the Fall, my parents would have called the police if he knocked on the door of our house in our little suburban neighborhood. Maybe a lot of the walls that used to divide us have been taken down. That’s probably a good thing, in some ways.

This guy says he’s been killing the monsters that are out there. He has little bits and pieces of proof dangling from necklaces around his neck, too. With the way he talks about killing them, I don’t doubt what he says. The dude scares me, though. Is it middle-class white-boy scared, or is it me being scared of something that’s actually dangerous? I don’t know. Seems like he’s sticking around, so I guess I’ll find out.

One more thing before I turn in. It seems like forever ago, though it was just this morning, that we left that kid back in the town, hiding in his house. The Professor, and especially Medic, were sure we should bring him along. The others, led by Coyote and including me, were more on the side of letting the kid make his own choice. He decided to stay, and we walked away.

I just thought of it now, but why didn’t a few of us at least get some of the food from the neighboring houses and give it to him? Crap. Now I feel even more guilty.

I guess he might have been dead now, if he was with us. I have to assume he would have hid with Medic in those same bushes, and died along with her in the forest. Now I suppose he’s probably still in his house, waiting for his parents to come home.

Still. Maybe he wouldn’t have died with us. Maybe he would have hid someplace else. Maybe he would have even ended up making Medic hide someplace else. Who knows? I suppose we can’t dwell on what might have happened. We have to deal with what did happen and what is happening.

Medic is dead. We’re here in this house, tired but mostly safe at the moment. The kid’s still in his house. Probably safe. Probably alone. Probably going to die back there in his own time.

I think leaving him was the wrong thing to do.

The group slept late the next morning. They were all tired from a long night, and even the sun peering through the dirty windows of the house could not push them to their feet.

Eventually, though, even sleep becomes tiring. One by one, they stood, stretched and went outside to relieve themselves, knowing that things like the running water needed to make a toilet flush had gone the way of the electricity used to pump water from a town’s reservoir and the maintenance crews needed to maintain such infrastructure.

As they each scavenged something to eat and began to pack their things, she noticed the wary silence that had settled in after last night’s argument. She could actually see Bait struggling to hold himself back and keep quiet. But the silence was fine with her—it was what she preferred.

She was stuffing the last of her meager possessions into her pack when Bait lost his battle.

“So,” he began, looking at Beast. “What’s your story?”

He looked over at Bait, the expression his face something between annoyed and amused. Amusement seemed to win, and he answered with a soft chuckle.

“What, you didn’t hear enough last night?”

“No, not the prison stuff or whatever,” said Bait, waving his hands as if to push the very thought away. “I mean the Fall. The day it all happened. What’s your story that day? You know, who you were with, what happened, and so on.”

Now Beast frowned, not looking angry, but remembering things he’d rather forget.

“Not sure I really want to talk about that,” he replied.

“Hey, I get that, and we don’t tend to dwell on what’s in the past. Nobody has a happy story, you know? But it’s something we’ve been doing. Everybody new that comes along, they tell us their story, just of that one day, really. Think of it as a tradition, kind of.”

“Medic never told hers,” she put in. She had no interest in spending time this way.

“Yeah, but,” and here he made an apologetic gesture to the Professor, “she died. And well, maybe she didn’t have the luck of the rest of us, you know? Maybe she should have told us.”

“Oh, please,” said the Professor, rolling his eyes. “Is that what we’re relying on now? Luck? Superstition? Soon we’ll be reading our futures in chicken-guts.”

Beast considered the request, and it looked like the Professor’s objections might have actually swayed him the other way.

“A tradition?” asked the big man.

“Yeah.”

“Kind of like the nicknames?”

“Sure, yeah.”

“Well, I got nothin’ against a good superstition,” this last with a glance at the Professor, “but what if I ain’t comin’ along?” There was a challenge in his voice now, and she could see it was making Bait nervous.

“Hey, whatever, man. I just kind of assumed, I guess…” He trailed off, and she thought the subject was dropped.

Then the Mule spoke up.

“Why wouldn’t you come along?”

The man stared at him for a moment, but the Mule was unfazed by his less-than-friendly look.

“What, like you’ve got something better to do? Someplace better to go? You want to kill these things, right? We helped you kill the one back there. And we’ve killed a few others too, and kept ourselves alive while doing it.”

As the last sentence came out of the Mule’s mouth, you could see him realize the incongruity of what he had just said compared to the events of the previous day.

“Well, mostly,” he added. “You know what I mean.”

Beast looked thoughtful now.

“Yeah, I guess I do. And I was thinking of comin’ along, if that’s all right. I was kind of pushin’ yer buttons there. Just somethin’ I do. So, I suppose I should—”

“You should not follow her,” she said, not looking up from the last of her packing.

“Huh?”

Now she looked up, into his eyes. “You should not follow her. She will never be anything to you, and you will most likely die.”

Beast just laughed.

“Honey, none a’ y’all mean much to me. Just met you yesterday. And yeah, I’ll likely die. You too,” he ended with a smile.

She frowned, turning away. She had warned him, and it was his choice now.

But now the rest of the group was sitting back down, even the Professor, preparing for their newest member to tell his tale.

The Professor looked at her. “Come on. Ten minutes, it can’t hurt. And you know the rest of us, at least, are kind of starved for some decent conversation.”

She said nothing, but leaned against a nearby wall, sighing inwardly. It was enough to indicate she wasn’t about to walk out the door on them.

With that settled, they all turned their attention to their newest member.

Well, shit let’s see. I ain’t much for stories.

I ain’t from around here. Grew up mostly in Georgia, some in Alabama and Texas, and a bit of time in Indiana, too. But I came out to Oregon maybe six years ago. Kind of a forcible relocation, if you know what I mean. Let me tell you, you have some fine jails out in these parts. Not like some of the other shitholes.

Anyhow, the Man said I had to stick around Portland for a while after my release, while they did some paperwork or some shit, and I kind of just stayed, after that.

First I knew something was wrong that day, was when I was at my cousin’s house. He lived in Northeast, Portland, over off of Killingsworth. Same house he’d been born in, and about the only thing he owned. We were watchin’ some TV. Me, him, and a buddy of his that I didn’t know too well. Had a game on. I can’t even remember who was playing, but I guess it was the last game for a while, huh?

So we’re watching the game, and then suddenly the TV goes out, along with all the lights. It was about maybe ten in the morning, but my cousin and his buddies, they’re drinkers, and they were already pretty well lit’ up. So after some cursin’ they’re just on the couch, waiting for the power to come back, complainin’ about how probably some white fucker down the street blew out the neighborhood when he plugged in his Jacuzzi or some shit.

Sorry, man, but you wanted my story, and that’s what they were sayin’. My cousin was pretty ticked that the neighborhood he’d grown up in was gettin’ filled up with white folks over the last several years, buyin’ the houses cheap from broke black folk, fixin’ ‘em up, and then sellin’ ‘em on to other white folk who spent their time complaining about how loud my cousin’s parties were, or how they didn’t like him parkin’ his old car on the front lawn.

Whatever, though. Guess that’s a problem from a different day, because that neighborhood’s mostly not there no more.

First thing we knew that somethin’ bigger might be wrong is when we heard what must have been one hell of an explosion off in the distance. Kind of sounded like thunder to us, but the skies were clear that day. Then we heard some other, smaller explosions, probably closer but still not too close, and what sounded like screaming off in the distance.

Well in the old neighborhood, a bit of screaming might not have been noticed too much, but the neighborhood was different now. We all headed out to the porch, to take a look around.

At first we didn’t see anything, but we could hear it though. It was off to our left, all the yellin’, and it sounded like there was a lot more little explosions happening, and maybe even sometimes a bit of gunfire, too.

We looked at each other and wondered aloud a bit about what was happening, but none of us could think of a thing to do. We saw smoke rising into the air, but it seemed far away, at least a couple of blocks.

Then people started running by. That’s when we knew somethin’ freaky was happening. The street we were on was a quiet one, a side-street with not much traffic, but Sean, that was my cousin’s name, Sean, he noticed that there were two cars, both in the middle of the block, that looked like they had broken down. At first I thought that maybe they’d hit each other, and that’s where the noise was coming from, but that wasn’t right. They weren’t paying any attention at all to each other, and nobody here was screaming.

One car had the driver in it, looking like he was turning the key, hoping it would start back up. One had a whole big family in it, with the dad already out of the car and staring around the neighborhood like he didn’t know what to do, and the mom and a bunch of kids starting to pile out of the car and look around, too.

Right then’s when the first explosion happened nearby. Only it wasn’t an explosion, more of a “Whoosh!” I was looking down the street, past the family getting out of the car, and suddenly there’s this whooshing sound and a tree on the next block sort of bursts into flames. The flames just seemed to jump out of it, about half-way up the trunk, all of a sudden. The fire started climbing up the tree, but spreading down it as well, all in just a few seconds. Then the tree broke in half, and fell over, half on a lawn and half leaning up against a house.

Well my cousin Sean, his buddy, and me were all still up on the porch watchin’ this. We were all looking at each other like “what the fuck, man,” right? And I could see the family by their broken-down car lookin’ at each other with that same kind of expression on their faces.

Then we start hearing these ticks, and little thumping kinds of sounds, some louder and some quieter, and all around us. Not regular, like a clock, but like somethin’ droppin’ on the ground. And that’s what it was, really.

Suddenly this beetle comes droppin’ out of the sky, and lands on my cousin’s porch railing, right there in the middle of the wood. It was black, and solid-looking, kind of a fat thing. Mother fucker must have been heavy, too, cause he left a dent in the wood where he hit, and he hit with a sound like a baseball hittin’ the porch, instead of a bug. I know now that it wasn’t no regular beetle, but that’s what it looked like at the time.

I looked up, and I could see more of these bugs, kind of falling all over the place, and that’s the thumping we’ve been hearing. Some go click on the sidewalk or the pavement, or make a loud thunk as they crash onto the hoods or roofs of cars. It’s not like it was raining bugs or anything, but I can see maybe ten or twelve of em’ when I look out from the porch. I can hear a few thumps as the things land on the roof of the house, too.

Then all of a sudden I see this bloom of light out of the corner of my eye, and the second broken down car, the one with the dude still trying to start it, it’s on fire now. The fire looks like it starts right in the middle of the car, in the back seat. The dude in there must have felt the heat, because he turned around and his eyes got big, and he whipped back around and started yanking on his seatbelt and openin’ the door. It was too late though.

Just like the tree, the fire in the car spread so quick there was nothing the dude could do. It moved to the front of the car, and back towards the trunk. The dude let out a few short screams as the fire started to eat at him, but they were cut off when the car just went all up in a ball of flame. That’s when I guess the fire got to the gas tank.

Down the street, we could see more fires starting, all over the place. There were people running and screaming, too, down there. It was like everything was turning to fire, and it was coming our way.

Then Sean spoke up for the first time. He said “For the lord will execute judgment by fire and by His sword on all of us, and those slain by the Lord will be many,” or at least, it was something like that. I don’t know the bible well. A lot of folks got religion in prison, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I did, too, but I was never much for reading. But Sean was a preacher’s son and his daddy made him memorize just about the whole thing.

I looked back at him like “what the fuck?” but he wasn’t even looking at me. He was just staring out at the street at what was coming. I think right then he knew it was over for him. Me, I was just stuck trying to understand what I was seeing.

By now the kids are sreamin’ their heads off and runnin’ around, ‘cause this car just went up like ten feet from them, and the mom’s trying to gather them all together and get them moving away from the flames at the same time, when one… one of the kids suddenly catches fire, going up in flames, right in the middle of the family.

That was the worst. That… Shit.

One of the kids catches fire, they’re all screaming, and I can see the fire starting to spread onto the mom as she rushes at the kid, hoping to put him out or something.

Shit, I don’t want to remember this.

He looked out at the group, all spell-bound, waiting for what came next—waiting for the inevitable horror. It was plain on each of their faces: each of them had witnessed scenes like this. No story was exactly the same in the details, but all followed the same general storyline. Shock, horror, death.

No one spoke.

Shit. OK, man. I’m almost done.

So the kid’s on fire, and the mom’s frantic, with fire catching on to her clothes, too, and the rest of the family’s in an absolute panic. I started to turn aside, thinking I was gonna run inside and grab some blankets or something. Just as I turn, though, I see movement up close to me, and it’s that beetle on the porch rail. It somehow launches itself, straight as a bullet, and hits Sean right in the shoulder.

He lets out kind of a grunt, like he’s just surprised, and then his eyes go big and he starts to scream, cause at that same time the spot the beetle hit glows with this bright orange light and then there’s flames shooting out of the wound, and I can tell their shooting right into Sean, too. He’s burning up just like the tree, the car, and the kid, and he’s screaming and starts to take a step. I don’t know where he was goin’, but then he collapses, and the screaming stops, because his lungs, most of his chest, is just gone. The fire’s not like anything I’ve seen before. It’s not burning up his clothes or his skin first, but it’s
inside
him, burning him up from the inside, out.