Traumatized after witnessing the sudden death of his loving wife, emergency responder Travis Pates watches his life take a downward turn when he is suspended for drinking on the job. With no family, no job, and unable to sleep due to vivid and terri...
A filmy mist hung over the island. Travis looked through the forest to the distant waters after hearing what he thought was a high pitched foghorn but turned out to be no more than one of the island's native birds of prey. A flock of red-bellied robins hopped along the wet peat, but then took flight for no apparent reason. He had seen few birds here, more than the other parts of the island and only on shore or high in the canopy. Travis had let his backpack slide down his arm to the ground where it had stayed long enough learn that a mile walk to the north shore would take longer than originally planned due to the rough terrain.
Jonah had regained consciousness during their discussion, alerting them with a garbled, pain-filled moan. Remembering where he was and that he was infected, he became hysterical. Travis slapped him across the face and told him to get ahold of himself before offering him the last bite of a granola bar and some mallow, but he couldn't keep it down and ended up vomiting in the dirt.
"I don't know what else we can do for him, but keep him as comfortable as possible," Zahra said.
"We can't leave him here," Travis replied. Defenseless, Jonah was nothing more than a juicy steak out here.
"Travis, he nearly took a chunk out of my arm. Something is happening out here—a terrorist attack, a virus, I don't know—but whatever it is, it's happening to him. It's not a matter of if he tries to do it again, but when and it's going to be sooner rather than later."
"So what are you suggesting?"
"If we take him with us, we'll have to restrain him."
Travis looked at her as if she were mad.
"Then why don't you think of something," she responded.
Binding someone's wrists together were for prisoners, not teammates, but the only other option was to leave him behind. Binding him, Travis decided, would be a shitty thing to do, but it had to be better than leaving him to be ripped to shreds and eaten alive. He thought of Jonah as a wounded zebra on the African prairie being pounced on by a hungry lion, its teeth ripping through the fur and flesh, puncturing organs and clamping down on the meat until the entrails and organs spilled to the ground like globular water balloons bursting open and painting the landscape red. Travis felt bile roll in his stomach and suddenly Zahra's idea didn't sound so bad.
"Let's use the twine from last night," Travis suggested. He had placed it either in his own backpack or Santiago's, but when he tried to find it, Jonah and the bag was gone.
Travis sprinted forward. "Shit, where'd—?"
Zahra appeared confused at first but when she saw the grass had been trampled down where Jonah had been sitting previously, in a quiet voice, she called out to Santiago.
Santiago stepped out from behind a tree where he'd been urinating and was now buttoning up the front of his pants.
"What?" he said and then saw the vacant spot. "Goddamn fuck. La concha de la lora."
Travis understood very little Spanish and even less Argentinean, but he thought he heard the word parrot in there somewhere.
Travis searched for Jonah north. Zahra took off and veered to the right to cover even more ground while Santiago dropped to one knee inspecting the matted grass for evidence of tracks.
Jonah could've turned, Travis feared. He could be anywhere, waiting behind the nearest tree to snatch any one of them as they ran by, or dying in the grass at their feet until one of them got close enough for his jaws to snap at their ankles like a snake in waiting. As his eyes searched the forest, alert to every sound, every movement, especially Zahra's as she swiveled about looking behind her and then ahead, and Santiago as he followed the grass, Travis continued to think of snakes—venomous snakes and poisonous secretions.
There was a difference between poisonous and venomous, Travis knew. Many people make the mistake of calling snakes and spiders poisonous when they are actually venomous. Venom is an injection that occurs to prey when it's bitten, but poison is a secretion through the skin like the rare and deadly golden poisonous frog. One touch of this frog almost always means certain, instant death. Ren had been bitten before he turned, but Jonah had not, yet he was still sick. Did that mean these creatures were both venomous and poisonous?
Well, at least not by touching their skin. Each of them had at some point had defended themselves from a zombie and by doing so had come in contact with their skin. Only Jonah had touched the goo directly, and he was infected, whereas Ren had actually been bitten, turning him faster, most likely due to the bite wound transferring the goo directly into the bloodstream.
Santiago raised a hand over his head and his fingers twitched motioning them to follow. Still swiveling their gazes in all directions, Travis and Zahra moved closer and saw a long trail where the grass had been pushed down where Jonah had crawled away.
Their eyes combed the ground as they inched forward.
First, they heard it—the ripping of flesh, followed by the hideous screech of something dying, a piercing screech—a sound Travis had never heard before. Then he saw it. They all did. Jonah, lying flat on his belly, his head tilted back. Something twitched in his hands. A dead jack rabbit, its paws jerking violently as Jonah pulled out its bulbous innards with his hands and teeth. The rabbit's round eyes stared blankly up at Travis, and he could see his reflection in its glossy black pupils. He heard Jonah chewing, the crunch of intestines and the bowels from between his masticating teeth.
"Oh shit, Jonah," Santiago moaned.
Zahra gasped and looked away and Travis covered his mouth to keep from gagging. The detestable smell, the fresh insides, was bitter in his nose and his face twisted with disgust.
Bits of fur and gore poured red down Jonah's chin, the rest of his face had turned pale and blue, especially around his eye sockets with lips turned purple. Jonah, realizing what he'd done, dropped the dead rabbit into the grass and spat out a chunk of raw muscle and wet fur. He then groaned and rolled to the side. Travis saw his red eyes had darkened to crimson.
"What's wrong with me?" Jonah croaked. Then he doubled over and began to sob.
—
Thank you for reading chapter 24 of my novel Evilution!
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-L.K. Scott
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