Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

“Just take it easy,” Brent said.

Their feathers and wings were tight against their inert bodies. They looked as motionless as decoys, yet all of their eyes were fixated on the two hunters.

“What do they want?” John asked.

“Hell if I know.”

John stopped.

“Come on, man,” Brent said.

“I’m not moving an inch.”

“We’ll have to get past them, get to the truck.”

“No,” John said. “No way.”

“They’re just ducks, John.”

John shook his head. “Are you nuts? Did you see what they did to Chuck? To the damn dog?”

“They were in water. We’re on land.”

“But—”

“They got beaks, not teeth. They can peck at us, but that’s not going to kill us.”

The eyes of the ducks remained on them. The sound of the warbling continued hypnotically.

“You go first,” John said.

Brent nodded. “Okay.” They were just ducks, after all.

He walked forward. The ducks calmly parted, quacking lightly as he stepped past them. He kept his eyes trained on the truck, but could feel his ankles and calves brushing against the birds.

The pickup was covered with duck shit. Brent slowly pulled the pickup’s keys from his pocket and slid them into the lock. He turned the key gently and winced at the sound of the lock popping up on the other side of the glass. He pulled up on the handle. Turned around slowly to face John.

“Come on, John,” he said as evenly as possible. “It’s cool.”

John pulled his duck call out from under his shirt. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger.

“Come on, John. Let’s go.”

John shook his head. Brought the duck call to his lips.

Brent said calmly, “Hey, don’t do that.”

John said around the call, “It’s magic, man. It’s magic.” He blew on it. Two loud honks.

Waaahhh! Waaahhh!

There was a sudden whirlwind of wings and beaks. Brent covered his face, felt the rush of wings and webbed feet against his body. The quacks were deafening. But they flew away from him. He lowered his arm.

They covered John, beating him with their wings, pummeling him with their beaks. It was a mass of ducks, completely shrouding him.

The mass fell over.

The wings continued to beat, the beaks continued to pummel. Brent opened the pickup’s door and slid in, watching, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

When the ducks flew off of John’s body, John lay still. His face was bruised. It was blue.

The leather strap of his duck call protruded from his mouth. He had swallowed it.

Brent fumbled with the keys in the ignition. He managed to turn them. The truck started with a roar.

The ducks turned toward him.

Brent floored the gas pedal, backing up and turning one hundred and eighty degrees, then shot forward. He made it the short distance to the highway, blindly turning onto it. He heard a screech of tires and the honk of a car horn, but it missed him. He started accelerating.

Ten ducks dropped from the sky like kamikazes and smashed into the windshield. Brent swerved, slamming on the brakes. He turned on the windshield wipers. The wipers couldn’t lift the corpses off the glass. He couldn’t see. He slowed the truck to a crawl. A mist of blood started spraying out of the air vents. Brent closed them and pulled over to the side of the highway and stopped. He stared at the dead ducks on the windshield, the feathers of their smashed, broken bodies.

Brent shook his head.

What would they tell Sheila when they found him?

The ducks on the windshield seemed to stare at him. They seemed to wait. Patient.

Brent closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. He could taste the molecules of duck blood that hung in the atmosphere of the pickup’s cab.

He opened his eyes and opened the door.

What will they tell Sheila, was all he could think. What will they tell her?

He stepped out of the truck. Didn’t look up, instead looked at the gravel at his feet. The ground turned dark. The sound of the warbling was like the cooing of a mother soothing her child. He raised his arms, spreading them out like wings.

What will they tell Sheila? he wondered one last time.

They poured out of the sky.

Some of you might remember my sister, Kelly Holmsted. At fourteen, she made the papers when she pried open an American pearly freshwater mussel from Lake Pepin and pulled out a perfect white sphere nearly the size of a cherry; the largest Mississippi pearl ever found. A dealer offered her five thousand dollars for it, but she refused. He offered seven thousand, and again, she refused.

“Think of the tuition it would cover,” our father said.

“You can save it for your wedding,” Mom said. “Think of the honeymoon you could have. You could fly somewhere.”

I was only eight at the time, and the answer seemed simple. “I’ve got marbles bigger than that,” I said. “Take the money.”

But Kelly wouldn’t part with it. She brushed a lock of light auburn hair from her eyes. “How can I sell something so beautiful? So perfect?”

She kept the pearl secure in a small black velvet pouch attached to a silver necklace Mom had given her for her thirteenth birthday. Although the chain never left her neck, she often lifted the pouch from her deepening cleavage and carefully plucked the pearl from its folds to feel the cool, smooth hardness in the palm of her hand. She’d stare at it, mouth slightly parted, eyes filled with the pearl’s reflection. I’d have to shout to get her attention.

She let me hold it only once, watching my every move, as if I might try to steal it if she so much as blinked. I tossed it in the air just to see how it felt to catch something so valuable.

She nearly choked on her own gasp. “You’re done,” she said and pried the pearl from my sweaty palm.

But as careful as she was, vigilant to a fault, she lost it only five weeks later.

She stood outside the screen door crying, both hands pressed against the wire mesh, her khaki shorts and white blouse muddied and soaked with rain. Several of her fingernails were broken, and her forearms and knees were scraped and bleeding. “It’s gone,” she said through the screen.

Mom hesitated only a moment, looking her daughter over and swallowing back a look of anguish that frightened me. She yanked open the door and took Kelly’s hand. “Oh, honey — what happened?”

My big sister didn’t seem so big anymore as she stepped across the threshold and collapsed into Mom’s arms. Dad and I watched stupidly while she bawled, until Mom finally coaxed her into the bathroom and shut the door. Running bath water muffled any words that were said.

Later, this is what Mom told me;

Kelly dropped the pearl while walking home. A rush of rainwater swept it into the gutter and washed it down a storm-drain. Kelly bloodied her skin by lying on gravel and broken glass trying to reach through the rusty grate for it. And she’s very upset about it, Michael, so don’t you dare bring it up to her. Understand?

I nodded. I’d wanted to ask about the small bruises on Kelly’s neck, but Mom’s eyes insisted that the subject was closed.

And it was.

But that was over thirty years ago.

It’s early March and I’m ready for winter to be over, especially after the white-knuckle drive to my parents’ new house on Lake Krenshaw. I’m surprised at how big the place is, surprised they could afford a lake home like this, but I guess that’s what you get for being thrifty your whole life. My wife Corinne and daughter Amanda are home with the flu, and a big part of me wishes I stayed with them. But Kelly’s visiting from Nebraska, and it’s rare that I get to see her.