Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

Another V of ducks flew overhead. Brent counted thirty of them.

Another group followed.

And another.

Brent watched, scratching his head. He looked down at Blackie.

Blackie swam in circles in the middle of the lake and started barking.

Chuck and John got out from behind their blind. Chuck walked to the edge of the shore.

“Come on, you stupid mutt. Get back here.” He looked up and saw the ducks in the sky, flying low overhead, their squawking echoing and mixing with the barks of the dog.

“Jesus, look at all of them,” John said. He gave two frustrated honks on his duck call. “Blackie, damn it!” Then he said to Chuck, “Looks like you’re buying pizza again.”

Brent watched another V of ducks fly in low overhead. But this time, a couple of birds veered off and flew down over the lake.

Chuck scrambled for his rifle, which he’d left behind the blind. John was about to give another honk on his duck call, but decided against it.

Brent knocked an arrow and sighted one of the ducks.

They dove at the lake and landed on Blackie’s head.

“Hey!” Chuck yelled. “Get off him!”

Two more ducks dropped out of the sky and landed on the other two.

“Hey!”

Blackie’s barking stopped as he struggled to stay above water.

Chuck stepped into the lake, aiming his gun at the ducks. But Blackie was thrashing around and there was no getting off a good shot without risking the dog’s life.

John fired his gun in the air, the sound like a slap in the face.

The ducks jumped. Chuck fired and knocked one out of the air, but the other three dropped back on Blackie’s head.

Two more ducks swooped down and landed on the dog.

“Aw, sheesh.” Chuck pumped his shotgun. “Get the hell off him!” He fired into the air. This time the ducks barely flinched. Blackie could no longer be seen among the wings and beaks and feathers.

Two more ducks dove in, their quacks sounding gleeful.

Chuck dropped his shotgun to the ground and walked out into the water.

Brent wiped sweat off his brow. He felt helpless. What could he do? He didn’t trust his aim.

“Stay on the shore. The water’s too cold,” John said.

“I gotta go in,” Chuck said, tossing his vest onto the shore. “They’re killing him.”

Blackie was about thirty feet from the shore.

“Take off your damn vest then.”

Another duck dove from the sky. John fired at this one before it landed and knocked him out of the air.

Two more ducks replaced it.

Chuck belly-flopped into the water. He began to swim through the cattails toward his dog. “Blackie!” he called. “Hold on!”

Once he got into the open water, it was obvious that he was in trouble. Despite taking off his vest, he was still weighed down by too much clothing. It was like wearing an anchor. But Chuck strained and struggled against the suck of lake bottom gravity and managed to keep his head above the surface.

When he was ten feet from the mound of ducks, they gave a communal quack and lifted into the air. Brent let an arrow fly and knocked one down. John blasted another one in two. But that was all.

Blackie had disappeared from the surface. Chuck was working too hard to call out anymore. When he got to the spot his dog had been, he managed a weak, hoarse cry.

Brent watched as Chuck reached into the water and pulled Blackie up next to him.

“Aw, sheesh,” Chuck wheezed. “Aw, God.”

The dog’s eyes had been pecked out. One ear hung by a mere thread of cartilage. Chuck had to let go of him in order to stay afloat.

“Come on back,” John called, waiting at the shore, one hand held out for Chuck, even though he was still twenty-five feet away. Chuck dog-paddled slowly back, spitting the lake water out of his mouth that kept splashing in. “Come on, buddy,” John called. “You can do it.”

Brent dropped his bow and quiver to the ground. He was about to drop out of the tree when something caught his eyes. It was the cornfield he had been looking at earlier. It appeared to waver.

“You can do it,” John called again.

The cornfield seemed to rise up, the stalks lifting into the sky. Brent realized they weren’t corn stalks at all, but more ducks. Hundreds of ducks. Thousands of them. They all rose into the sky as if in answer to some ethereal signal.

Brent dropped quickly out of the tree. He stood next to John.

“You can do it!” he yelled to Chuck. “Come on, man. Keep kicking!”

At twenty feet, Chuck stopped. He stayed in the same place, treading water. “I just have to rest a moment,” he gasped.

“No,” Brent yelled. “You gotta keep moving toward the shore. You don’t have far to go.” He began to look for a long branch, but froze when the sound of quacking thundered out of the sky like the screech of a dozen tires.

Ten ducks swarmed out of the sky and landed on Chuck in a shroud of undulating feathers.

“Christ!” John yelled. He raised his rifle to his shoulder and aimed.

Brent yelled at John, “No!” He ran toward him. “Don’t fire!”

“They’re drowning him.”

Brent began to kick off his sneakers. He’d have to go in.

John fired into the air. The ducks didn’t move.

Brent took off his jacket. Started taking in deep breaths.

John lowered his gun. Aimed at the mass of ducks.

“No!” Brent yelled.

John pulled the trigger. The crack of the rifle could barely be heard above the terrible squawking.

The ducks rose into the air.

A bullet hole appeared where Chuck’s nose used to be. Blood poured out in a fountain just before he was swallowed up in the lake’s blackness. Feathers floated in an expanding circle around the spot.

John lowered his rifle. “What the hell? What the hell was that?” He threw the rifle to the ground as if it had burned him. “Just what the hell was that?”

He stepped to the edge of the pebble-covered shore, the toes of his waders breaking the green slime on the water’s surface. His jaw quivered, his Adam’s apple jumped up and down. He pointed to the center of the lake and looked at Brent. “Did you see that?” he said. “My God, I shot him right in the face. Did you see that?” His eyes darted between the sky and the lake. “What the hell am I gonna tell his wife?”

Brent watched the surface of the lake, part of him expecting Chuck to come sputtering to the surface at any moment. But the lake remained deep, black, and impenetrable. He looked up at the sky. It was clear.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. Chuck was gone.

“What do you mean?” John asked. “Just leave?”

“Do you want to go out there and get him?”

John’s mouth fell open. He looked up at the lake and back at Brent. “But what am I gonna tell his wife,” he asked, shaking his head.

“C’mon. Let’s go. We’ll call the police. Come back for our stuff later.”

“The police?”

“Yeah. Come on.”

John seemed to accept this. He picked up his rifle carefully with the tips of his fingers, as if he were picking up a poisonous snake.

Brent put his shoes back on and grabbed his bow and arrows. He picked up Chuck’s vest and dug out the keys.

“Come on,” he said, putting an arm around John’s shoulders.

“Yeah, Chief. Yeah.”

They walked back over the narrow trail, John with his eyes to the ground in a daze, his mouth open, snot collecting on his upper lip. Brent kept his eyes trained on the sky. It remained clear. Suffocating.

As they got closer to the truck, Brent thought he could hear something. A soothing sound. The sound of vibration.

The sound of warbling.

Hundreds of ducks stood between them and the truck.

John slowly looked up, comprehending. Brent could feel him shaking.