“Unnnnh,” the man groaned. “Just lost my balance—fell into some of that devil grass.”
“We’ve got a car—”
The man’s arm shot out and snatched the hiking pole from Ben’s hand. Before Barry could move, the stranger knocked Ben to the ground and perched on his chest, holding the aluminum bar across Ben’s throat while his knees pinned Ben’s arms to the ground on the trail.
“Who the hell are you?” White, foamy spittle trailed out of the stranger’s mouth.
Barry stepped away with his hands in front, palms forward. “Hey—I don’t want any trouble.” Ben’s face swelled red like a steamed beet. He kicked his legs and tried to free his arms from under the stranger’s weight.
“Who the hell are you?” the man repeated.
Hoarse, choking sounds eked out of Ben’s mouth.
“Just a couple of hikers…checking out the trails…” Barry’s eyes darted between the stranger’s face and Ben’s. “You’re killing him.”
“Fucked.” The stranger leaned back, releasing the pressure from Ben’s throat. “You bastards are fucked, too.”
Now free, Ben rolled away, grasping at his neck. He coughed, and the color of his face gradually returned to normal. “What…the…hell…was…that about?” he rasped.
The man’s eyes narrowed. “Can’t be too careful.” He scratched his beard. “Out here.”
“Look man, we’re just tying to get back to the car, get Ben here some help.” Barry knelt next to Ben and helped his friend to his feet. “Sprained his ankle.”
“Huh. That’s how it got Andrea.”
“Who?” Ben asked, leaning on his knees as he panted for breath.
“My girlfriend. Six days ago.” The stranger stood, glancing to his left and right. “It got her ankle, then…she tried to cut across a open patch…get back to the car faster…” His chest shuddered and he covered his face with one hand. “God. God…it took her.”
“Took her?”
“The grass.” He reached out and grabbed the lose collar of Barry’s shirt and tugged him closer. “It devoured her. Smothered her.” The stranger looked at his hand, then Barry’s shirt and face, and released his grip. “The birds got what was left. Sorry…sorry…oh God. Do you have some water? I’m dying…”
Barry slipped off his pack and rummaged around until he found an aluminum bottle. He passed it to the stranger.
“What’s your name?” Ben asked.
“Nick. My name’s Nick. Andrea and I…we were just gone for an afternoon.” Nick tilted his head back and poured the water into his open mouth; droplets meandered through his stubble to the tip of his chin. He swallowed, and pulled back one shirtsleeve. “I know you think I’m nuts. I’d think I was fucking crazy, too, but look.” His voice shook as he extended his arm toward the others. Tiny scars marred his flesh, each puffed and pink.
“How’d you get all those cuts?”
Nick glared at Barry. “It’s hungry again.”
Ben shifted the hiking pole to his other hand, allowing his weight to shift. “We better get to the car.”
Nick wheeled, his eyes blazing. His tongue seeped out of his mouth, past chapped and peeling lips. “That’s just it, isn’t it? There is no more car. When are you—” He broke off, eyes open and alert. “Listen.”
The grass answered with a swish-swish.
“That sound?” Ben turned and looked behind him. “What is it?”
The waist high blades to the south bent toward them. The swishing grew louder. Closer.
“It’s coming again. For fuck’s sake, run!” Nick pushed Barry out of the way, and the big man tumbled into the grass toward the oncoming mystery, dropping his heavy pack next to the trail.
Ben lifted the pole in his fist, raising it above his head like a club despite the pain in his left ankle. The action was instinctual, without thought. He limped toward the matted grass where Barry went down. Barry howled and groaned. Green-gold stems folded across his body.
“Barry?”
Barry shot up, shaking like a seizure, with fresh wounds oozing on his face and one arm. He roared and flung his arms. The grass waved in the distance, a game of pantomime working against the breeze. “Jesus,” he cried. “It fucking cut me. Bit me.” He stumbled backward, found the path, and turned to follow Nick’s flight up the hill toward the highway.
Pole held aloft, Ben watched in disbelief as the stand of Switch Grass near the path stretched toward him. Barry’s staggering footfalls sounded up the hill, but the sound of whispering blades swallowed the world. The grass moved. Swish-swish. Its roots wove into the dark soil of the trail. The sun caught a glint from the aluminum pole as Ben swung like a reaper with a scythe, striking at the advancing blades. The pole whooshed through the grass, but still the roots crept toward him.
Ben turned and started toward the hill, staggering as well as he could against the incline. Ahead, Barry and Nick squatted near a rocky outcropping, both facing away from the trail.
“What the hell was that—what’s going on?” Ben felt the fear in his stomach, cold and heavy.
“The grass. It’s alive,” Nick muttered. “And hungry.”
Ben rubbed his face with his free hand. “Bullshit…grass doesn’t eat people.” He said it aloud as much to cool his own fear as he did because he believed it to be true.
“God, Ben. What got me?” Barry’s face was ashen, drawn. He lifted his right arm, blood oozing from fresh wounds, and pointed toward in the direction of the road, only there wasn’t a road. “Something fucking cut me. And…and we’re lost.”
Nick coughed and spat a dark mix of blood and mucus on the ground. “You aren’t lost…you’re trapped.”
Ben shook his head. “Bullshit. Barry, try your phone again.”
A moment passed in which none of the men moved. The air sagged around them, humid and thick, the sun waiting directly overhead. Barry slowly pushed his hand into a pocket and fished out the phone. He flipped it open.
“Nothing. Still nothing.”
“It’ll come back, you know.” Nick nodded in the direction they’d fled. “It will keep coming until we’re all dead.”
Ben turned and started down the opposite slope. He did so without a word, without warning, with only the broken rhythm of his shuffling gait in his ears. There was something in the valley below, something dark, shaped like a car, obscured by a mound of grass.
“Wait!”
Ben stopped and turned to see Barry waving his arms above his head.
Barry cupped his hand to the side of his mouth. “I’ll come with you. I have to grab my pack. I dropped it. I’ll run. Make it quick.” His voice trembled as he spoke. He vanished over the crest of the hill. Nick melted into a black lump at the top of the ridge.
“Jesus, Barry,” Ben muttered, and forced himself back toward the rocks. Clouds, fluffy like stretched bits of poly-fill from a torn teddy bear, encroached on the western horizon. Ben allowed his eyes to circle the rim of the sky in all directions. Nothing but hills, grass, and the distant dark blot of a cluster of trees. He pulled in a breath of hot air. Barry was below, jogging down the slope along the path.
“You coming with me, too?” Ben asked Nick.
“Strength in numbers?”
Ben shook his head. “No, to get out of here.”
“I told you, man. There isn’t any ‘getting out’. It’s a trap.”
The word trap resonated in Ben’s ears as he watched the scene unfold in the valley below. A breeze sent the waves rippling from the southwest, but a large cluster of prairie grass—defied the wind. Ben’s throat tightened.
“It’s coming for him…the tops of the hills are the safest bet…too rocky up here for it to have a good foothold.”