The Invasive_Pulse Read online

“Yeah you like that shit?” the driver said to his new occupants.

  Both teenagers wore flannel bandanas and emitted the skunky odor of marijuana. The passenger was tall and skinny, the driver beefy, and dark-skinned.

  “Say hello to our little friend back there,” the passenger said. “Been seeing those fuckers all night.” The teenager regarded them with wild eyes. Maybe nervous eyes, too. “Name’s Tim, by the way.”

  “I’m Robert, and this is Tara. And my rescue pup Vermillion.”

  The driver nodded. “Cool.”

  “That’s Raul,” Tim said, pointing at the driver. “He thinks everything’s cool, but it’s not. Especially tonight.”

  Robert looked back through the grimy glass. The blinking red tag disappeared.

  “One of the spider things,” Tim said. “Way faster than you’d think.”

  Tara sighed. “Great,” she said. “Also, where are you taking us?”

  “Trout Bridge, then to the interstate,” Tim said. “It’s the only way out. And make no mistake, we all need to get the fuck out of here. Now.”

  Tim gripped the wheel with both hands and held back a surge of emotion.

  Robert cleared his throat. He felt bad for the kind. “No disagreement here,” he said. “Have you tried calling the police?”

  Tim nodded. “All of them. Local wasn’t answering. Got ahold of the state. They’re on it.”

  “I hope so,” Tara said. She thumbed on her phone and tried to make a call. “It’s dead,” she said. “No service.”

  Robert tried his phone. Same results.

  Tim glanced back at them. “When we made the calls, weird frequencies were distorting the service. We were lucky to get through when we did.”

  Robert checked their rear again, staring through the viewing area he’d wiped free of grime. No red tags in sight. He sighed in relief.

  “What happened back in town?” Tara asked.

  “You don’t want to know,” Tim said as the Buick’s V6 purred down Highway 18.

  “No, I do actually,” Tara said.

  “A hole shitload of those things came from the woods while we were in Schumers,” Tim said.

  “How’d they get past the bouncer?” Robert joked.

  No one laughed.

  “Wait,” Tara said. “Did you see a tall blonde there, in a red skirt?”

  Raul and Tim nodded in unison. “Uh, yeah.”

  “What happened to everyone?” Tara asked.

  “Some of those things busted through the windows, and everyone went running,” Raul said. “Then a bunch of guys started shooting, creating total chaos. Total shit show. We bolted.”

  “We have to go back,” Tara said. “That was my friend Amy.”

  Tim and Raul shook their heads.

  “You don’t want to go back there,” Tim said. “We were lucky to escape. And you saw what was chasing us down the road.”

  Tara turned to Robert. “I can’t just let me friend die back there,” she said.

  Robert wished he could say something, or behave in a way that soothed her. But he seemed to have the opposite effect on her. “The state police are on it,” Robert said instead. “Right guys?”

  “Yep,” Tim said. “They have shit like grenades, helicopters and machine guns, which is exactly what those things require.”

  The Buick dipped and wound its way into a canyon, the air cooling, the sound of rushing water in the night.

  A moment later Trout Bridge loomed before them amongst a stand of pine, but something had gone terribly wrong.

  A semi-truck fuel tanker had jack knifed between the guard rails on the bridge. A red Subaru Outback, a pickup truck, and a Cadillac had crashed into each other behind the semi. The pungent odor of gasoline filled the air.

  “Woah,” Raul said.

  The group remained in the Buick as it idled as exhaust fumes curled up behind them.

  “Lovely,” Tara said. “There’s no way to cross in a car.”

  Robert wished he had an answer, wished he could be Jason Statham or Vin Diesel. But he wasn’t. Even with his mother’s lessons, he wasn’t.

  Still, he could try.

  “Let’s see if the passengers are okay,” Robert said.

  He let Vermillion out of the car, and followed. The pooch hurried to the Cadillac and put his paws on the opened passenger side door. The interior lights were still on, the keys dangling in the ignition. Robert glimpsed something on the driver’s seat-something he didn’t quite believe was real until he let himself stare at it for a good, long time.

  A pair of teeth, and a chunk of human scalp, hair still attached.

  Robert’s stomach turned on him, and he tried to stave it off.

  He stepped away from the car, noticing the long bloody drag marks that led up the road and the grassy embankment.

  Vermillion growled, and started to follow the blood trail up the hill.

  “No boy,” Robert said.

  Vermillion paused at tree line, then turned and headed back to Robert’s side.

  Tim stepped out of the car. “Smart dog,” he said.

  “Let’s check the other vehicles,” Robert said. “I’ve got the semi.”

  “Alright,” Tim said. “But it looks like if we’re going to get past this complete fucking mess, it’s going to be on foot.”

  Robert wondered about that. Having a solid metal shell between yourself, and what was going on in Elmore right now was probably the best bet.

  As Robert examined the pile-up, he noticed the car roofs had long, uneven gouge marks across them.

  He crawled under the jack-knifed semi tanker, almost knocked back by the gas fumes. He tucked his shirt collar over his mouth and proceeded to the cab.

  No one was inside.

  Weird, he thought. Maybe the driver had fled into the woods.

  Or maybe something had plucked the driver from the cab.

  Robert returned to Tara near the end of the pile-up, as Raul waited inside the idling Buick.

  Robert motioned to his neck in a slicing gesture. Raul killed the engine.

  That was important.

  Between the steady drip drip of leaking gasoline and the idling engine, Robert had thought he’d heard something, almost a buzzing type sound, like a nest of angry wasps.

  In the stillness he was able to hone in on the noise. It came from the southeast, beyond the bridge and down Highway 18.

  “Uh, don’t like the sound of that,” Tim said as he took a drag from a cigarette.

  “Not sure we have much choice,” Robert said.

  “There’s always a choice,” Tara said.

  “Yeah. Bad ones,” Tim said.

  Robert headed toward the tanker. A feeling compelled him. He craved knowledge, because knowledge was power. They could use it to survive. They needed to know what the noise was, needed to know if they could make it on foot. Otherwise, it was back to Highway 18 in the Buick, through downtown and then on to Spargus-which was a long way.

  “Tim, come with me,” Robert said. “We need to figure out the noise source. Tara, keep an eye on Vermillion and Raul, please.”

  “Great,” Tara said. “I’m really into it.”

  Robert hurried back to her, and gave her a hug. “I’m sorry about all this,” he said. “I’d like to make it up to you one day.”

  Tara squeezed him back. “You already have,” she said. “I’m just over it.”

  Robert and Tim made their way through the wreck, finally emerging on the other side of Trout Bridge, a little high from gas fumes.

  Tim stretched on a camping headlamp and flicked it on.

  “Nice,” Robert said, relieved to finally have controllable light.

  The two men hiked along the western embankment, Tim’s cone of light sweeping in arcs from road to national forest. An ominous haze pervaded Robert’s thoughts. He didn’t like how Trout Bridge was the only way out of town in these parts.

  It didn’t help that the odd buzzing sound grew louder the further they hiked south. And
a certain smell permeated the woods here, like a lumber mill on a rainy afternoon.

  “Woah,” Tim said as the visibility on his camping headlamp cut in half. The cone of light tried to punch through a thick fog to no avail.

  The buzzing only grew louder, more frenetic.

  “Not digging this,” Tim said.

  The fog condensed around them, as if alive.

  Robert peered south (or what he thought was south). Something moved back there in the fog. And then a muted color.

  Red.

  The fog shifted, revealing a dim outline of some kind of structure. But the structure wasn’t even, rather it was jagged, with outlines going off in all directions, like sticks arranged into a beaver dam. An outline of something crawled across the top, its red tag flashing at forty beats-per-minute. Right away Robert knew what it was: one of the creatures that inflicted convulsions via frequency. A few seconds later, the first creature was followed by several others, although these did not have a red tag.

  “Fuckin’ creepy,’” Tim said.

  Robert wanted to run. He’d never been more sure of that in his life. Yet a terrible feeling compelled him to stand there-the feeling of raw discovery, of senses overwhelmed. What he was looking at, he realized, was a natural barrier.

  “They look like seals, with legs and forepaws,” Tim said. “Except they kill you.”

  “And they build dams that block highways,” Robert said.

  The smell of wet sawdust filled the air, as the buzzing intensified. The seal with the red flashing tag illuminated rhythmically atop the jumble. It’s slug tail tapered to a keratin-like saw, which the thing used to gouge into branches and logs along the dam’s structure.

  “Holy shit,” Tim said, pointing to where the structure met the forest. “Look at that.”

  Robert did. On either side of the road, the forest had been chewed up, and the dam structure extended out of sight into the mangled trees. Far back in the woods, red lights blinked on and off like fireflies in distant glades.

  “Let’s go,” Robert said. “There’s no safe way around.”

  “Wait,” Tim said. “I just heard something weird.”

  Robert listened. It sounded like a baby crying out to be fed. A moment later a seal with a red tag appeared on top of the dam, carrying a much smaller seal in its forepaws.

  “Cute,” Robert said. “A baby.”

  “Fucking great,” Tim said.

  Robert turned to leave. “Come on.”

  As they headed back to Trout Bridge, the sound of an engine cut through the incessant buzzing.

  “It’s coming from the other side,” Tim said.

  Robert and Tim hunkered down behind a patch of ferns at tree line and listened.

  The honking stopped. The angry voice of a man echoed.

  “What the hell is this?” the man shouted amidst the rising buzzing.

  “Dude needs to shut up,” Tim whispered.

  Robert wanted to scream at the man, tell him to shut up, but if he did, he’d be risking his group’s safety in doing so. Still, he couldn’t help it. He was just that kind of person.

  “Go back to Trout Bridge,” Robert whispered to Tim. “Get the car ready.”

  Tim didn’t hesitate, and soon faded into the fog.

  The man shouted again. “Hey, anyone on the other side of this shit heap? I need to get back to town, my wife is eight months pregnant.”

  Robert cupped his hands to his mouth. “Keep quiet,” he shouted. “You’re in danger. Get your ass back in your car and GO!”

  The buzzing stopped.

  In its place came the crackling of branches on both sides of the road, as red blinking tags converged on the highway.

  The man shouted again.

  Robert’s left lip ticked up to his left eye, and his eye ticked up to his forehead.

  Well, he thought. I’m dead. That’s it. Over.

  But instead of converging on him, the seals scurried over the dam, to the other side. The man screamed. At first his words were intelligible, and then utter gibberish.

  Robert ran.

  A voice shot back at him in the night, cutting through the fog in demented waves.

  His own voice.

  GET YOUR ASS BACK IN YOUR CAR AND GO The voice said.

  GET YOUR ASS. GET YOUR. CAR AND GO.

  Robert dove into the trees, just as the flier crashed into an old growth cedar. Snapped branches flew through the forest like detached helicopter blades, slicing vegetation. The flier grunted and huffed. It lumbered back to the road and shook its enormous head, then jabbed its beak into the deadfall Robert had backed into.

  GET YOUR ASS BACK IN YOUR CAR AND GO. GET YOUR ASS.

  After three violent jabs, the flier backed up onto the road, flapped its wings, and thrust for the dam. A seal with offspring in tow balanced atop the structure, paying no mind to the thing coming for it.

  The baby seal cried in the intermittent red light and the mother turned, just in time to spring its frequency on the gigantic flier. The disoriented flier crashed into the jumble of sticks and logs, then tumbled down the slope in convulsions. At the bottom the flier shook its head, backed away, then launched to the top once more, impaling the mother seal with its black beak. In two quick wing beats, the flier disappeared into the fog with its prey, given away only by the fading blink of red.

  Robert ran for Trout Bridge.

  At one point he closed his eyes, and thought of his mother.

  As he pumped his quads and his arms, he wondered if Tim made it. Wondered how Tara and Vermillion were. And he wished he had his own light to see what the hell was going on.

  As he ran, the fog that had ensconced only the base of the dam spread out to envelop him. The sound of leathery wing beats pumped the air behind him, followed by a blaring, antagonistic voice: I CAN’T DIE, MY WIFE IS PREGNANT. PLEASE DON’T EAT ME. PLEASE GOD.

  Robert kept running. Something thumped onto the road in front of him-something the flier had dropped.

  It was a dead man, eviscerated across the midsection, a long rope of intestine dangling free.

  Robert tried his best to ignore the gore and sprinted onward through the fog, using the asphalt as his guidepost.

  As his lungs pounded and his mind swam, the image of the dead man played over and over: The sound of him slapping onto the pavement, the moist intestines slithering out.

  Wings thrummed the air above him and Robert headed for the forest-or what he thought was the forest. He figured he’d know as soon as he ran into a bunch of branches.

  And he did.

  Robert juked to his right, just as a four foot long beak jabbed to his left, straight out of the fog.

  He hit the ground and rolled away, until the forest understory blocked his momentum.

  The big flier’s wings scraped and battered the branches surrounding him, as bits of bark and snapped twigs fell upon his legs.

  The flier screamed its mockery into the woods: I CAN’T DIE. MY WIFE IS PREGNANT. MY WIFE. MY WIFE.

  Robert held his breath, remained still. His heart pounded in his throat, and he wondered about heart attacks.

  The flier ceased its mimicry and backed out of the woods. The worst part was Robert couldn’t see a thing. He relied on noise.

  But the flier wasn’t his only worry.

  Other creatures stalked the woods. While he was focused on one creature, another could finish him off. He had to be smarter. Much smarter.

  He laid there in the bushes and deadfall, the cool night chilling him. He listened.

  Something slapped along on the pavement, unseen except for the dim blink of a red tag.

  Robert counted forty-five beats per minute.

  Great, he thought. In all of this, moment after surreal and disturbing moment, the impending sense of a countdown drove him the maddest. He had so many questions: How many of them were there? What is their weakness, species by species? How did they get here? Who put those tags on them?

  Not all of the creatures had
a tag, perhaps some thirty to forty percent by Robert’s count.

  They didn’t get there by accident.

  A squeak emitted from the fog. Robert looked down as a creature scurried near his boot. He was relieved to see it was the marsupial creature, mostly ears and a long snout tipped with whiskers. The animal stood on hind legs and regarded him with triplicate pupils.

  “Hey little fella,” Robert said. “You’re not so bad, are ya?”

  The creature rubbed against Robert’s leg, then disappeared into the fog.

  A series of conflicting emotions bubbled up within him. The trouble was, each emotion made sense. What he, and what Elmore was witnessing, was an ecosystem invasion-not just a bog standard super predator invasion. These things were like the invasive spotted knapweed, or invasive zebra mussels, trying to establish themselves in the valley.

  He wondered how they’d hit so hard, so fast-and if this was widespread across the United States, or localized.

  If he had to guess, it was localized. Or there would’ve been a government warning as the species spread across states.

  Certain the flier was gone for now, Robert took a deep breath and pulled himself from the forest. His boots scuffed across the rough asphalt of Highway 18 once more, and he found himself using the center painted lines as bread crumbs back to Trout Bridge.

  A huge object materialized from the fog, startling him. The flipped-over semi. Robert scrambled underneath the rig, and back to the pile-up on the other side. But he did not hear the humming of a Buick, just the drip drip of leaking gasoline.

  They’d left him.

  Like he was nothing…nothing at all.

  Robert checked the remaining vehicles, but none were drivable. As if on cue, several tentacles of leaking gasoline spread out along the pavement. Even if he could find a vehicle, starting it up over Lake Gasoline was a very bad idea.

  Robert had a hunch, so he ferreted through the Subaru and found what he was looking for: a camping headlamp that stretched over his head. Hell yes.

  He didn’t dare flip it on though. Not yet. Instead he hiked north on winding Highway 18, rising out of cool and foggy Trout Creek canyon, back to the highlands.

  7.

  Despite the circumstances, it felt good to ditch the fog, and to be heading back to Elmore. Robert kept tight to the embankment, for obvious reasons. Off in the woods, on both sides, the screams and chitters of native, and non-native animals rang out. His stomach turned at the thought of these new arrivals mixing with the beloved native wildlife of the Apex Valley. Wildlife life like elk, deer, bobcats, and bighorn sheep. He wondered if the fliers were eating the deer, or the if the frequency seals were killing rabbits, and whatever else they could stun.