Aaron Polson - The Bottom Feeders and Other Stories

“Get out, all of you! Load up and get the hell outta here!” He took the bloody hand from his arm and waved it wildly at the small crowd.

“Where’s the Sheriff?”

“Dead…shit…he’s dead. They were everywhere — those goddamn bugs — coming this way. Sheriff stood there, point blank, and unloaded his twelve-gauge. They didn’t flinch. Get the hell out.”

There was a singular moment of silence, and then the handful of citizens in front of Pine Peaks Café started in separate directions, slowly at first. That sound, that scratching, moving sound, grew louder, surrounding and swallowing us. Movement hovered just outside the light, and at the edge of my vision I saw small legs like black bamboo and probing antenna fingers.

Benny hit the pavement with a wet smack. His shotgun dropped to the ground, skidding toward my feet with the force of the blow. A beetle, an abomination the size of a desk, perched on his back, locked its awful pincers around Benny’s head, and twisted with a quick, wet snap and spurting gout of blood. Then the thing started on his body, scratching and snatching with its nightmare jaws.

Randy shoved me aside, and grabbed the shotgun. At the edge of the headlight beam, I could make out the black, moving legs of many more beetles. Randy took quick aim at the beast on Benny’s body, and fired into its mass.

“The light…they’re nocturnal! Stay in the light!” Lane yelled. It was too late. The headlights yanked away, and I turned just in time to see a shadow of Pete’s terrified face behind the windshield of Randy’s truck. With a quick turn and jerk, he pulled a U-turn on Main Street, heading north toward the old highway. The moon poked out from a little cloud, and I saw the shining black carapaces of a half-dozen beetles as they latched on to the vehicle. The street all around swam with the shimmering shells of the devil beetles as they swallowed the town, their little skittering feet chasing the soft padding of shoes on pavement.

Randy fired again, and I just caught a glimpse of a black monster rise up in his muzzle flash. Darla shouted, “Get inside!” Temporarily blinded by the shot, I stumbled toward the café. I pushed past her as she held the door open, the sounds of screams and frightened shouts at my heels. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw nothing but black on the street. With the moon gone, the beetles became invisible, just a scratching and snapping mass of black.

Choking on my burst heart and sucking in air to cool my terror, I climbed over the counter and pushed into the kitchen. The glass windows broke behind me with a thunderous crash. Darla screamed. Needing a hiding place, any place, I felt for the door of the large baking oven, the oven used last when Pine Peaks baked its own bread. I threw it open, yanked out the baking rack, and scrambled inside, pulling the door shut behind me. I hid in that oven all night, cramped and crying in darkness and sweat, listening to the muffled shouts of the townspeople — the screams that echoed into my oven tomb, horrible shrieks that slipped through the cracks in the heavy iron door. The screams faded to moans, and soon I was lost to nothing but the constant scuttling and scrabbling of antennae and legs as the unreal beetles swarmed through the wreckage of the café.

In the morning, after the world fell silent, I climbed out of that oven covered in soot and grease. Little bits of glass and broken furniture crunched as I crawled toward the smashed front of the café. Outside, the forest listened. Surely those awful beetles waited in the darkness under the pine boughs, waited for the night when they would move on.

I found no bodies on Main Street — nothing but broken glass and small bunches of debris washed into little piles by overnight rain. I walked through the dead streets, meandering toward my house, my car. Lumpy, his hair matted and wet, crawled from under a parked truck, sniffing my hand and wagging his tail weakly. That plague of awful, black horrors seemed to have devoured the rest of Monument. When I reached my house, I would call, warn anyone who would listen about the plague, and then load Lumpy in my car and escape that valley while the sun offered protection.

Some places were just born evil, and the Old Flat Mile slid easily into that description. Constructed shortly after the Second World War, that stretch of road was originally intended for glory. Architects and businessmen pointed to what they dubbed the “Golden Mile” as the linchpin in Springdale’s future rise to prominence. The luxuriant homes built there were sure to draw investors with the deepest of pockets. That was the plan until little Calvin Unruh was crushed under the tracks of a bulldozer while chasing his brother’s errant throw.

Construction halted immediately, investors clambered for their money, and the proposed housing development disappeared like a summer mirage. The county took over the road, dubbed it North 1800, and left it unpaved. The locals christened North 1800 “Flat Mile,” surely with no pun aimed at poor Calvin’s unfortunate accident.

Meanwhile, Calvin’s older brother, Daniel, lived with the knowledge that he threw the football his brother chased that day. He spent many years as a haunted, pale boy with black eyes. And as Daniel grew up, the road waited.

In time, Daniel’s guilt faded. Especially after he eased into his teen years and developed a penchant for tinkering with engines and blondes. Some said he tried to forget his brother with those fast cars and girls, and maybe they were right.

Daniel loved to drag race, and the level stretch of the Flat Mile was the perfect spot to flex his automotive muscle. There were other times, quieter evenings with full moons, during which he would ease his ’57 Chevy down that road to put his girlfriend in the mood.

On one of those nights built for romance, he steered onto the Flat Mile only to find his buddy, Jeb Harwood, waiting in his own hot rod, itching for a race. Something in the rumble of those two cars must’ve woken the road; it had tasted blood once, and its hunger must’ve grown.

Daniel ended up losing control on a patch of loose gravel, and the race concluded with his’57 wrenched around a tree. His girlfriend survived, eventually moving to Kansas City, marrying, and raising three children. Daniel, however, never really left the Flat Mile.

Unfortunately, Daniel wasn’t the last to smear his young blood in the dirt and sand. Teenage boys, full of hot blood, loved to prove their mettle with fast, reckless driving. After a few more fatalities, city officials blocked off the Flat Mile, and the road was left in loneliness and disrepair.

Over the next forty years, stories faded, signs were taken down, and the road slept. Eventually, a new generation of Springdale teens found a use for North 1800.

Oblivious to history, Jimmy Campbell, tried to navigate his father’s Chrysler through the thick April mud of the Old Flat Mile while his girlfriend, homecoming runner-up Maggie Bloch, complained. Beneath them, the road smelled engine exhaust, purred with the sweet rumble of a straining engine, woke, and called its children home.

“What the hell were you thinking, Jimbo?” Maggie asked. Her long fingernails carved deep into the smooth faux velvet bench seat as the car groaned, its wheels spinning in place.

Jimmy’s beefy paws clutched the steering wheel, gripping so tight that his knuckles turned white. “Look, I figured it hadn’t rained in a couple days, so it’d be okay.”

“Well, a couple of dry days don’t matter much when it rains for a week straight.” Jimmy ran a handful of stubby fingers through his sawed-off brown hair. “Hell, I thought the full moon would be nice.”