“Do you think, well, is Scab okay? A germ like that couldn’t jump from a fish to a person, right?”
“I don’t know. If it was hearty enough to survive in that crap, it could adapt to almost anything.”
Joel stopped baiting his hook for a moment. “Look, Barry. Sorry I’ve given you some much shit for being a college boy.”
Barry shrugged. “I’m not sure I know what the hell I’m talking about.”
Both men turned around as Allen stumbled from the brush. Allen smiled briefly, but his grin drooped into a frown as he glanced beyond his friends. “Hey, what the hell is that.” He pointed with barrel of his gun.
On the muddy bank only ten feet from where they gathered, a group of gray, flopping things crawled toward them, using their fins as makeshift legs. Joel thought they were too big for the bullhead that used to live in the pond; these creatures, drained of color like the fish Scab caught a few days prior, were the length of a man’s forearm.
Barry picked up the net and took a few steps toward the pale, writhing lumps. “Maybe we don’t have to catch that big one after all.”
Allen raised his gun halfway, but Joel caught the barrel in his hand.
“Careful there General Custer.”
“Looks like Gavin’s catch contaminated the pond.” With a swift motion of the net, Barry scooped a few of the fish-things from the mud. He reached into the net, careful not to catch his hand on the sharp spines poking from their pectoral fins, and lifted one out. “They’ve learned to crawl out of the water,” Barry said, his voice tinted with awe. “This thing isn’t breathing — it’s not alive, but…”
“We caught some healthy fish out of the river. How’d the whole pond go bad so fast?” Joel asked.
Barry held the gray mass in front of his eyes, studying it as its gaping mouth flapped open and shut — not for breath, but trying to bite Barry’s fingers. “The pond is stagnant. The river kept a little clean because of the running water.”
“Watch out.” Allen stepped back toward the path, unable to keep his eyes from the squirming thing in Barry’s grip. Having crawled through the mud, it looked more like a giant slug or worm, and less like a fish.
At Barry’s feet, a few more inched from the water. He stumbled over one. “Shit…they’re everywhere.” As Barry glanced down and tried to regain his balance, the thing he held lunged forward, squirting out of his hand. One spine raked across his throat before the creature flopped on the ground. Barry dropped to his knees and immediately pressed his hand against his neck. A crimson stain, almost black in the twilight near the pond, throbbed from between his fingers. A thick moan squeezed from his mouth as more of the things leapt toward him, lancing him with the spines on their pectoral fins.
Allen ran. Joel took one step toward Barry, but it was too late. Within moments, Barry’s body was covered with what seemed like hundreds of the flopping aberrations. Joel’s eyes caught more crawling from the murk at his feet. The edge of the water boiled with them. He kicked one away, launching it into the pond with a plop. Lifting his right foot, he ground another into the soft mud. There were too many. Retreating slowly at first, he remembered the afternoons in junior high when they would catch dozens in just a few hours. He hurried after Allen, crashing through the trees, hesitating only slightly as branches snapped and caught him in the face.
Clearing the edge of the path, he tried to hurdle the fence, but the top of his trailing boot caught, and he tumbled to the ground. Pushing off with both hands, he staggered to his knees and glanced behind him. The ground under the trees seemed to be alive, a moving shadow, shambling toward the fence as hundreds of undead fish struggled toward him.
Joel scrambled to his feet and rushed to the truck. Allen was twenty yards away and still running. Without looking inside first, Joel opened his door, and the reeking thing that had been his friend lunged for him.
The living and undead crashed on the ground. All trace of Gavin Hullinger’s humanity was gone. Its face, ashen and wasted with visible, black veins beneath the translucent surface, twisted into a snarl with bared teeth. A fishy stench of rot and decay spilled out.
“Allen!” Joel cried, kicking against the ghoul. He dug his fingers into the dead grass, pulling out little tufts as he struggled to free himself. “Allen, you son-of-a-bitch!”
Allen skidded to a stop. Now nearly forty yards from the truck, he looked back to see two bodies on the ground. Scab looked to be hugging Joel around the lower legs, and Joel fought to get away. Allen clicked the safety off on his gun. “Too far to shoot.” Shame more than courage forced him closer; he ran back another fifteen yards and raised the gun again.
“Do it!” Joel shouted.
Allen, never a good aim under the best circumstances, cracked off a shot.
Joel howled.
Instead of hitting the undead Scab, Allen missed his mark and peppered the meaty part of Joel’s upper thigh. Spatters of his own blood caught Joel across the face. Wincing with pain, he stopped struggling just long enough for the ghoul to sink its teeth into his calf. Joel managed to work his pocketknife from his jeans, snapped it open, and plunged it into Scab’s eye socket.
Allen began to cry, and through his tears, he saw the undead fish undulating toward him.
“Oh god,” he muttered. With a few backward steps, he turned to run, but collided into a headstone, wrenching his ankle and toppling to the ground. The shotgun skidded from his hands.
“No…no…no,” he sobbed through the pain. The gun had landed a few yards away, and Allen began to crawl toward it. His spindly fingers dragged the rest of his body, but the things were close. Flopping and writhing, twisting through the brittle brown grass, they worked their way to him. Allen’s fingertips touched the end of the shotgun’s stock, but he already felt their sharp spines and nibbling sandpaper mouths at his ankles. Abandoning the gun, he dragged his body upright against a granite cross. He shook a few of the putrefied fish-things from his feet, and began a slow, but panicked limp toward the gates of the cemetery and away from Joel’s fading cries.
The fat, gray former-fish crawled after him, slowly at first, but as they adapted to the land, their awkward movement became rhythmic. They gained momentum, hundreds of tainted and ravenous undead fish, following Allen in his terror, as he inadvertently led them, pied-piper like, to the rest of Springdale.
8: Bait Worms
Albert stood in his kitchen with a warm mug of coffee, peering through the window into the driveway and the street beyond, looking for the boys. The morning sun had burned away a thin layer of fog, revealing a pristine, blue sky. It was a perfect Saturday for two boys on bikes; a perfect day for mischief.
He took a small sip of his coffee, turned to his wife, and asked, “Where did they say they were going?”
“I don’t remember,” Meghan said. She tucked her light hair behind her ears and pushed away a bowl of soggy corn flakes. “I’m not sure they told me. They’re twelve now, Albert. Old enough.”
He set his mug on the counter and leaned down with elbows resting on either side. “Old enough for trouble.” He glanced to the window again. “Did they take anything with them? Fishing poles, or a ball?”
“Owen asked for my old garden spade, and I think Lonnie was carrying something, too.” She stood and stretched, flashing a sliver of her pale stomach where her t-shirt and pajama trousers usually met. “He’s not a baby anymore, bub.”
Later that morning, Albert squatted on his driveway in front of his side-turned push mower, scraping the bottom of the cutting deck with an old paint knife. As the knife blade scraped against metal, thick clumps of grass clippings dropped to the ground. He wore shorts and an old, ragged t-shirt despite the early October chill. He turned at the sound of rubber skidding to a halt behind him.