The first shockwave hit. They were blasted with small bits of debris and dirt. The second wave rolled over them, hot and screaming. It too passed, leaving the men breathless, but relatively unscathed. They sat up and stared at one another.
Roy picked a clump of soil from his nostril. “Why? Why the hell are they hitting Winnipeg again?”
“The ticks,” Louie wailed. “This isn’t about the war, it isn’t country versus fucking country anymore! They know what’s been unleashed. They know about LDV3!”
He was going to say more, but a third bomb dropped. And then a forth. And then a fifth.
“Look at it, Sergeant… just look at it.”
Fartel couldn’t recall the last time any of the other soldiers had addressed him by rank without the slightest hint of condescension. Perhaps they never had.
They stared in awe, side by side, as the six mushrooms continued their ascent into the dark heavens. The first three weren’t as defined; the following blasts had knocked them askew, like massive trees in a forest, dying, and making way for new arrivals.
“It is a forest,” Fartel spoke his thoughts aloud. “A cancerous grove of power, light, and death.”
“Huh? When did you become a poet?”
Fartel looked at the man wearing only underwear and socks. “I wouldn’t say I was being poetic, but you have to admit a sight like that can leave you kind of… inspired.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that.” Fred pointed to the south. “I do know those missile contrails originated from that direction. It wasn’t the Russians or North Koreans this time. Why would our own allies attack us? Why would they waste half a dozen nukes on Winnipeg?”
The sergeant shrugged. “No idea.”
A dozen black dots appeared at the center of the cloud closest to them. They grew in size and developed wings. “Look there,” Fartel said. “Birds!”
Fred had to block away the majority of yellow clouds with the palms of his hands, it was still that bright, but he saw the crows flying in a few seconds later. They swooped down and started circling the men less than twenty feet overhead. The birds didn’t caw. The only sound they made came from the flapping of their black wings. “That is fucking weird.”
Their flight paths were erratic, flying right side up and upside down. They crashed into one another, and feathers spun lazily down to the ground. One of the birds stopped flapping its wings all together and plummeted like a rock. It thumped onto the pavement at Fred’s feet.
He squatted down for a closer look. “It’s dead.” He poked at it with his finger. “Look how fat the thing is.”
“Don’t touch it. The things could be irradiated.”
“Aren’t we all?” Fred picked it up in one hand. “It’s as heavy as a brick.” He threw it down suddenly and jumped back up. He shook his hand frantically.
“What is it? Did it peck you?”
“No! I said it was dead… Goddamn, that hurts!” He wiped his fingers along the only part of cloth available—the front of his underwear. Fartel thought he saw something gray disappear into the seams, but it was hard to tell with all the jumping and screaming.
Fred clutched at his crotch with both hands. “No! No! No! It Stings! Oh God, it hurts so bad!”
Another crow thumped down into the ditch. A third one fell next to Sergeant Jeffrey and erupted a gush of black across the highway. He backed away from it and instinctively covered his mouth and nose. Something in the air was killing these crows, and it had infected Fred Walleyes. Fartel wasn’t going to let any of the dying birds near him. The rest dropped down, like fat, black raindrops. He danced between the corpses, stepping around puddles of moving grey innards.
Fred was on his back now, convulsing and twitching on the ground. A mound was growing in his underwear, pressing up and out to the sides. “Fred?” Fartel asked quietly. “Fred, are you getting a hard-on?”
There was a popping sound and the bulge started to deflate. Fred’s white underwear turned dark red. Slime leaked out and settled on the ground in a puddle under the dead man’s buttocks. It began to spread out and move towards Fartel. The sergeant backed away. He stepped on one of the crows and it exploded under his heel. He made it three more steps before falling on his ass.
Fred was rising up.
He isn’t dead. He’s just sick… Really, really sick.
He was on the sergeant seconds later. Fartel was too stunned and horrified to fight back. Fred’s skin was grey and moving. Veins were bulging across his stomach, chest, throat, and face. He raked his finger nails down Jeffrey’s ribcage and the sergeant cried out. Fred went in and bit his tongue out.
Fartel stopped struggling moments later. A dozen puddles of grey swarmed over his body and began entering the inside of him. Fred took a hold of Fartel’s lower jaw and ripped it away from the rest of his face. He stuck his lips against the opening it left and sucked the gushing blood as it rushed out.
Fartel came back to life thirty seconds later. He pushed Fred away and stood back up. They were standing side by side once again, but the dying mushroom clouds at their backs no longer held their interest. They lurched westward.
Somewhere in the back of brains they no longer possessed were memories. The ticks clustered there and fed on the stored information. There was food that way. Fresh hosts.
Thousands of them.
Chapter 33
This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t possibly be happening. Hayden considered slamming the steering wheel with both fists as Caitlan had done less than twelve hours earlier. He didn’t bother. Hayden didn’t swear at the old Buick either. It hadn’t done Caitlan any good with the Audi, and it certainly wouldn’t help him out of the jam he was in now.
He was half a mile from Brayburne, and the car he’d stolen from the two soldiers wouldn’t start. Hayden had physically assaulted both of those soldiers, an attack that may have even left one of them dead. He had then marched into Brayburne and picked a fight with one of the volunteer recruits—a cock-sucking horse murderer—and broken every bone in his face.
He hadn’t regretted his actions, and he would do it all over again given the chance. The only thing Hayden wished he’d planned better was his escape. But there had been no escape plan; Hayden had sent his son off with the others fully expecting to never see them again. The bombs going off for a second time had made escape possible—the same kind of bombs that had taken almost everything away from him weeks before, had saved his life. It was ironic as hell, but Hayden saw no humor in it. Another car had died in the post-apocalyptic nightmare of his life, and when night turned back to day in a few more short hours, Hayden would likely be discovered and taken into custody.
Half a dozen nuclear detonations had lit the evening sky. When the sixth one’s terrible flame had finally extinguished, evening gave way instantly to full night. The only light Hayden could see now was coming from the fires in Brayburne. They’ll be searching for me now. Surprised they haven’t found me yet. He grabbed the military binoculars he’d found in the glove box and trained it on the closest fire. He clicked a button on top and the unit made a faint electric whistling sound. Everything lit up green. Night vision. Non-obtrusive digital displays targeted objects and told him distances. He settled in on the iron barrel that he’d kicked over hours earlier. It had been set back up, and the fire burning inside was a shimmering white ball surrounded in green wisps. A few more whitish-green blobs surrounded it—people huddled around the flames, warming themselves in the cold night. Hayden moved the binoculars slowly left, and then slowly right. No one was approaching his way from town. If he set out now, if he started walking north, he could likely put five or six miles between him and Brayburne before it started getting light.