Tim Curran - Biohazard

“All right,” I called out in a calm, cool, non-threatening tone of voice. “We’re going to leave now. Just everyone stand up and follow me out of here. I’ll get up first.”

Tensing, I slowly got to my feet, breathing nice and slow, trying not to gag on the stink of the carrion birds or what they were eating. A raven flew over my head, unconcerned. A huge buzzard pulled a stringy red flap of meat from a corpse’s neck, chewed it down, and made a sharp hissing sound at me. Its jaws yawned wide and it hissed again, then it got back down to its meal. I started breathing again.

The Clansman were nearly reduced to skeletons by this point. The one that had tried to run wasn’t much more than that. A raven was pecking through a gash in the gas mask, tearing out pink scraps while a pair of crows sat atop the bloody exposed ribcage, spreading their wings now and then, cawing, and digging out some juicy morsel overlooked.

Around me, the others began to get up. Very, very slowly. They were seeing that they were dead center of the feeding grounds now. The birds were everywhere. Lined up atop wrecked cars and trucks like soldiers in ranks. Flying though the air, circling high above and not very high above at all. Buzzards walked around with chunks of red, ragged meat hanging in their jaws. Vultures were pecking their entire heads into the body cavities of sprawled corpses, shaking their entire bodies as they ripped at something within. When they pulled their heads free, savagely gulping down morsels, they were red and dripping.

I led my people forward, thinking the whole time, this is either gonna work or we’re all about to die in the worst way imaginable. But I did not hesitate. Years back, in Youngstown, I’d known a guy named Roger Sweed who worked at the zoo with the big cats. He claimed that when you had to deal with them you never showed fear. When you were in their areas you had to act like you belonged there. So that’s what I was doing now: just threading my way amongst the corpses and birds, being perfectly casual and disinterested in what they were doing. Which was not real easy when a raven plucked an eye out and stood there watching me, the eyeball dangling from its beak by the optic nerve.

I walked on, my empty Savage in one hand and Janie’s hand in the other.

There was bird shit and feathers everywhere, scattered bits of human, dead birds lying in tangled heaps and others dragging injured wings that scampered away as I approached.

Birds squawked at me, but I ignored them. I moved through breaks in their ranks, paying no attention to the ones that flew just over my head. Flies lit off corpses and scattered limbs and viscera, huge buzzing clouds of them. They droned at my ears and crawled over my neck but I did not swat at them. The entire time I thought the birds would attack at any moment.

But they never did.

“It’ll be dark in an hour,” I said, as we paused to reload our weapons, hiding out in a trashed pharmacy.

Carl looked around the devastated city. “So we better find somewhere to lay low for the night.”

“Shit, shit, shit,” Gremlin said. “I thought we were going to be out of here. Somewhere else. Fuck.”

Using the U.S. Army medical pack I’d gotten from Sean, I attended to Texas Slim’s spear wound. It was a nasty looking gash across his ribs, but hardly fatal. I disinfected it, closed it with a couple butterfly bandages, taped a sterile battlefield dressing over it, and gave him a shot of antibiotics just to be safe. He’d be sore for a few days but nothing more.

Janie was off looting through the store. She was gone quite awhile. When she got back there was a funny look in her eyes.

“Where you been?” I said.

“Just looking around,” she told me. She was lying and I knew it. But I wouldn’t realize how big of a lie it was until much, much later.

“Why don’t we keep going…we have guns,” Mickey said. “Within an hour, I think, we can be at the garage with the Jeep. Why wait until tomorrow?”

Texas Slim grinned. “Because when it gets dark, child, out come the oogies and the boogies and the things that go bump in the night.”

“Let’s risk it,” she said. “We get that Jeep we can be out of Gary in twenty minutes.”

“Why don’t you just do us all a favor and shut up?” Janie said.

“Take it easy, Janie,” I told her.

Her eyes were not just blue at that moment but glacial. “Jesus Christ, Nash. She’s been with us a few hours and she’s calling the shots? Who the hell asked for her advice anyway?”

Mickey shrugged. “I was just saying.”

“Oh, shut up.”

They stood there, staring at each other while I was getting annoyed and Texas Slim and Carl were silently amused and Gremlin was practically in heat. “Hey,” he said. “Just like Roller Derby. We’re gonna have us a cat fight. Out come the claws! Fur is gonna fly!”

“Why don’t you go fuck yourself?” Mickey told him.

“No, I wasn’t thinking about fucking myself. I was thinking about fucking somebody else.”

I got in there then. God knows I’d had enough of that fucking idiot by then. I shoved Gremlin and put him on his ass. “Knock it the hell off. What did I tell you about that shit?” I had a sudden desire to throw him another beating. The only time that asshole took a break from whining and complaining was to start panting over one of the girls. “Keep it in your fucking pants. Christ.”

I turned and saw that Mickey was smiling at me like I’d come to her rescue and I also saw that Janie was steaming. The green-eyed monster was out of its cage.

“Let’s all just settle down here, okay?” I said to them. “We’re not going to accomplish anything like this.”

Gremlin got up, brushing dust off himself. His face was still bruised from the last time we’d tangled. He touched his fingertips to a purple welt under his eye that was slowly fading. “Sure, Nash. I got ya. We got to keep our new girl nice and fresh, eh?” He winked. “Our friend don’t want damaged goods, do he?”

“Here we go again,” Carl said.

“What the hell is he talking about?” Mickey wanted to know.

Texas Slim hooked her by the arm and led her away. “Nothing to worry about, my dear. You see, many years ago, Gremlin’s mother took a large healthy shit and fell quite in love with one of the turds she saw in the bowl. So she nursed it and fed it and brought it up and the result of that you see standing over there.”

Carl burst out laughing.

We all did…except for Janie and Gremlin himself.

Sighing, I led them outside.

It was about that time that I noticed we had an audience. At first, I went for my gun…but then lowered it. There was a man standing not fifteen feet away on the sidewalk. He was naked except for an outrageous cranberry bathrobe that was hanging open, his business on full display. His fingernails and toenails were both painted purple.

“Boy howdy,” Texas said to him. “Join the party?”

The guy just stared at us. He had a brilliant, fluffy head of trailing blonde locks. He also had a beard that was more white than gray.

Texas Slim had no fear of crazy people. He went over to the guy and tied his bathrobe shut for him. “The ladies, you understand,” he said, pressing a hand to his wound.

The guy had a phonebook under his arm. He pointed down the street and said, “They came in silver buses. I saw ‘em. They had orange suits on. They took Reverend Bob and threw him in the bus. I saw it happen. I saw lots of things happen. I wrote all down in my book here.” He showed us the phonebook, shrugged. “I ate my dog because I was hungry.”

Carl laughed in his throat and turned away. “Who’s the fucking Gomer?”

“Pay no attention to Carl,” Texas Slim said. “He hasn’t had a serious romantic encounter since his dear mother passed.”