Jacqueline Druga - Omnicide

May 7

“This is Modine, do you copy?” The deputy gave it a few seconds as he cruised down the secondary highway. He brought the microphone to his mouth again. “Calling Seaver, this is Deputy Modine from Griffin, do you copy?”

Nothing.

He shook his head, and looked up to the rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of his tired eyes. Christopher ‘Kit’ Modine had been going nonstop for at least twenty-four hours. He looked old; he wasn’t. Around his eyes were dark circles, and the fine lines were more prominent. It was the strangest call he had been on in his twenty years of police service.

Then again, it really wasn’t a call.

After one more, “This is Modine. Seaver, do you copy?” he switched radio channels. “Griffin, this is Modine.”

The radio crackled and so did the transmission. It was distorted but Kit understood the male voice.

“We can barely hear you. You must be close.”

No shit, that’s why I’m driving out here, Kit thought to himself. Instead he just replied, “Three miles. I’ll radio back when I can.”

A staticky, “Be careful” came over the radio.

“Roger that, out.” Before he set down the radio, he switched the station and tried one more time. “Seaver, do you copy?”

Still no reply. He had been trying steadily since he left Griffin nearly thirty miles away.

Seaver was the closest town, one Griffin regularly communicated with several times a day. But since the day before… nothing.

Kit volunteered to be the one to venture to the town too far away for a reliable radio transmission.

Just about there, he spotted a red pickup truck on the road. It wasn’t moving, in fact, it was parked slanted across the road. As Kit drove closer he could see the driver’s door was open.

He knew the truck.

It belonged to Hillbilly Jim. Not that Donald Smith was a hillbilly or even named Jim—it was a nickname he had gotten when he protested the changing date of the county refuse pickup. He grew his beard long and bushy and looked like the legendary wrestler Hillbilly Jim. It was strange. As if his hairy face would make the county change their mind about picking up garbage on Mondays instead of the new day, Thursday.

Kit was pretty sure it wasn’t Hillbilly Jim’s beard that caused them to go back to Mondays, but everyone else thought it was and Don ‘Hillbilly Jim’ Smith kept the beard and became a legend.

A legend whose truck was eerily abandoned a quarter mile outside of town.

Kit didn’t want to admit to himself that he found the sight unnerving. The truck just left there on the outskirts of a town that had dropped all communications.

He parked right there, right by Hillbilly Jim’s truck and, just in case someone could hear, he radioed home to let them know he’d arrived and that he didn’t think all was well in Seaver.

Kit stepped from the squad car, leaving his door open and the car running, and he walked the ten feet to the open truck door.

No one was in there and Kit examined it closely.

The keys were still in the ignition in the ‘on’ position, yet the truck was dead. It had run until he’d run out of gas.

Why would Hillbilly just up and leave his truck?

The interior was the typical mess. A few empty packs of smokes, a coffee in the holder, candy wrappers.

No driver.

Kit looked toward town; he didn’t see any movement and he returned to his squad car.

Typically, he would have walked, had he not had his friend’s voice in the back of his head talking all kinds of end-of-the-world crap she saw in movies.

Kit didn’t believe in zombies and didn’t worry about them, but something was amiss in the town of Seaver and he wasn’t taking any chances if he had to get away.

Like Hillbilly.

He drove the two blocks, stopped again, and opened the car door just outside of Frieda’s books.

It didn’t take much for him to know something was really wrong.

It was quiet, not a noise to be heard.

No one was racing in and out of the coffee shop.

Not a soul on the street.

Kit had driven all the way there. He knew he had to at least investigate.

Did the people leave? Did they evacuate for some reason?

It took only for him to step from the car to know it was something bigger than that. He heard a crunching sound the second his foot hit the pavement.

Slowly, Kit looked down.

On the ground everywhere were birds and bugs, as if every living creature had just dropped from the sky.

They decorated the streets like litter after the Fourth of July event.

Kit knew.

The people of Seaver didn’t leave, he just hadn’t seen them yet.

They were there. What state they were in, whether they were like the birds and bees and other insects, remained to be seen.

May 4—Three Days Earlier

They argued.

Of course, that was commonplace for the young couple after any instance where they visited Brad’s mother.

The hour-drive home offered them plenty of time to argue it out, and usually they were done and better by the time they made it to their two-bedroom apartment in Prescott. Having just left the small town of Griffin not even ten minutes earlier, they still had a good deal of ‘hashing it out’ time left.

Brad put out his cigarette in an old soda can he had tucked in the driver’s side door well. He yawned once, thinking he was in the clear. After all, to him, the night went well.

Or so he thought, and he stretched to put on the radio.

“Oh, no.” Jenson reached forward, stopping Brad from turning on the radio. “We talk.”

“Oh my God,” he said with a shake of his head. “What is there to talk about?”

“Um… the visit.”

“It’s always the same thing, Jen. You start with how my mother hates you…”

“She does.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“Then she doesn’t like me,” Jenson said.

“She does, too, like you. Why does it always have to start with this? Every single time?”

“Because you fail to acknowledge my feelings.”

“You know, I can write the script for this,” Brad said. “Save you the trouble.”

“Why don’t you see it?”

“What is there to see?”

“She stares at me weirdly, doesn’t look me in the eye.”

“My mom has that eye thing,” Brad replied.

“She made ham.”

“So.”

“I hate ham.”

“Oh my God.”

“Why do you always defend her?” Jenson asked.

“She’s my mom. I’m her only child.”

“No, you are not.”

“Okay, but I’m the favorite.”

“I’ll give you that.

Brad shook his head. “Is there anything new that happened tonight, aside from my mom not liking you, cooking you foods that aren’t your favorite, and making fun of her lazy eye?”

“I did not.”

“You did. Now give me ten minutes of radio.” Brad reached down for the button.

“Can we not… deer.”

“Sweetheart.”

“No… deer.”

Brad hit the brakes instinctively before he even looked up fully.

Jenson had good eyes. She’d spotted it making its way onto the dark road long before Brad would have.

It was ten feet in front of them, stopped.

But something was off.

Brad thought at first the six-point buck was being brazen as it made its way slowly to the car, but it was something else.

“What’s wrong with it?” Jenson asked.

“I don’t know.”

Something was.