Jeremy

  “Drop… me… you… stupid… big… summumma… bitch!” Jeremy said between every bounce. Why did you take me you big oaf? he thought.

  The monster didn’t slow, didn’t acknowledge his insults, didn’t even try to silence him. Trees blurred past. His punches landed uselessly against its back.

  Images forced their way into his head: teeth chomping, bones cracking, flesh torn from limbs, being eaten alive. He squeezed his eyes shut, but the thoughts remained. Bart had strength. Steve had luck. He had nothing but a wish, and wishing for magic would do him no good.

  Kidnapped. Carried off by something with claws, hair, and brute strength. A werewolf? This wasn’t right. Werewolves belonged in fantasy and horror novels. Anywhere but knee-deep in the swamp and cypress roots. Something tickled the back of his mind. Some old story his paps told him maybe. A half-heard campfire story maybe. The name hovered just out of reach.

  He slammed his fists into its back again and again. The thing didn’t react. Didn’t even grunt. If it tripped. If it slowed. He'd do whatever he could to either fight back or run.

  Jeremy felt a sudden downward surge as the beast began to shrink. In an instant the beast shrank at least several inches if not a foot or two. All the hair just sort of sucked into the body and thinned. It… became a he. A human.

  He, whoever it was, was still strong and continued running wherever it was taking him. Jeremy felt less like a little kid being carried by a giant and more like an injured man on the back of a firefighter.

  Jeremy's face bounced off the sweaty and grimy skin of the stranger and tried to squeeze his eyes shut to avoid seeing the bare butt. A hairy dirt road to nowhere started about mid back and worked its way down…all the way down. The filthy, smelly stranger never broke a stride despite the mud holes, roots, sticker vines, and jagged stones.

  Jeremy yelled, “Who are you? Why are you doing this?”

  The man growled. Like literally growled, but he said nothing.

  Jeremy heard the sound of water behind him. He attempted to straighten himself up, but the man stopped on a dime, heaved, and threw Jeremy hard. Jeremy caught a glimpse of the stranger as he hit the water and was immediately sucked into the whirlpool.

  “MISTERRR….” he screamed, reaching out on instinct, fingers grasping for someone who shouldn’t be here. Before Jeremy could finish the name, he was consumed by the whirlpool and absorbed by darkness.

  Bart

  They were everywhere. Each mosquito was about the size of a small drone. I could literally see the bastard’s bellies filling with blood like a translucent plasma bag. I wasn’t wearing a shirt because it was still covered in vomit, so I easily saw hundreds of black bodies against my white skin. I swatted and slapped myself over and over, spattering blood all over the place. I wasn't making a dent in their number. Steve flailed about like he was competing for some new interpretive dance contest. I looked like that guy who makes music just by slapping his chest and legs. We jumped around arms windmilling, smacking ourselves like a bunch of tweakers. Even Starla tried to bite and swat as many as she could.

  I froze mid-slap watching my health bar slowly dropping. Every mosquito I smushed was replaced by two more, and the buzzing only grew louder. We had to start a fire and get some smoke going.

  A fire power would be nice, I thought, but nooooo, you wanted to punch things. Hulk smash! How's that working out for ya?

  “Do you happen to have a lighter?!” I shouted.

  Through spits and sputters, Steve shouted, “I got one in my bag over dere by da tree! Aaaggghhh! I swallowed one!”

  I stopped swatting at the ones on my torso, but I couldn’t help but smack the ones on my face and ears. I found the lighter in Steve’s bag, then I searched through Jeremy’s bag which he had dropped before being kidnapped by the monster, “Where is it? Where is it?”

  I finally found the can of bug spray I knew we had brought out here with us in the front pocket.

  “Here! Cookies & Cream!" I spat and sputtered as I made my way back to Steve. "You start spraying! Spray us first, then spray up at them. I'll light the stream.”

  Steve shook the can then sprayed desperately over our heads coating us in the blessed deet. The swarm recoiled, hovering just out of reach, their wings whining in frustration.

  “Okay! Now, spray directly at them!”

  Steve sprayed, and I struck the lighter putting the flame directly into the spray blast.

  Fwooom…We have a flame thrower, baby!

  Hundreds of the mosquitoes started falling like chocolate rain. The sky stayed thick with their movement, and I had a feeling we would run out of spray before killing all the bloodsuckers.

  I handed Steve the lighter and ran to the trees. I tore at Spanish moss hanging from them. It crumbled in my hands, perfectly dry tinder.

  "Quick! Set this on fire here!" When it caught, the smoke rolled black and heavy, and the mosquitoes hated it. “Great! Help me get a bunch of this moss! We need to get a good fire going!”

  We gathered handfuls of the driest moss we could find and started piling it up. Steve found some damp bark covered in green carpet moss as well. As we worked, the deet Steve sprayed earlier was still deterring the majority of the vampiric pests.

  “You keep that fire lit! I'll get more fuel!” I shouted as I scrambled looking for more fodder. Even Starla brought sticks to the pile.

  The dark acrid smoke billowed as the moss turned to ash almost as fast as we put it on there. “More moss!” Steve shouted.

  Steve dropped the can and started gathering everything he could find that would burn. He gathered a couple of piles then he stopped and got close to the fire, hands resting on his knees sucking in huge gasps of air.

  It didn’t take long, and we had a good, sustainable fire going. If I could find sage or lavender or any good mosquito deterrent, I would definitely add it to the fire. Unfortunately, in our current situation, we had moss, a lot of it, and nothing else.

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  The swarm stayed back, circling, waiting, patient in a way bugs shouldn’t be close enough for us to still hear them. We checked each other for stragglers and killed the ones we found. I started healing myself as much as I could. Starla started licking Steve.

  “It’s okay, she is healing you, so let her lick your wounds,” I explained.

  I’d planned for monsters with teeth. Animals big enough to shoot. Not clouds that drank you alive.

  “Any ideas?” I asked, hoping Steve wouldn't give me a sarcastic response.

  “Besides you puttin’ on a shirt, Vin Diesel?” Steve asked as he laughed. Then he seriously asked, “Mud? Can’t we use mud as a barriuh?”

  “That might buy us some time, but it won’t last long. We need onion or lemongrass.”

  “I bet dere are some herbs in dat field, bra,” he nodded with his head. “I find wild onion out in deese parts all da time.”

  “The ambush field. Right. That’s the perfect spot for exactly what we need.” I shook my head. He was right, though. There were no signs of mosquitoes in that field. I was willing to bet, whatever was going to attack us out there would be easier to kill than the swarm. “I say we take that chance.”

  “I agree,” Steve nodded and then slapped himself, killing a bug.

  Our fire started to weaken. “Let’s go. Make a run for it. Ready!?”

  I got up and started running. The vast majority of the mosquitoes started chasing me. It was about 100 yards from where we were to the field, and I made it in under ten seconds. Steve, already sucking wind again, stood right behind me. Starla took another couple of seconds, but she made it. Weirdly enough, the mosquitoes did not follow us to the field. They stopped like they hit an invisible wall. Either the whole area was a natural deterrent for them, or they had an instinct to avoid whatever was out here.

  I plucked some of the grass and smelled it. I honestly couldn’t tell if it was anything special by the scent. It just smelled like grass.

  I heard a rustling and saw four banners heading our way from the other side of the clearing. The grass was too deep to make out the creature, but the banners said:

  Steve lifted his rifle up, ready to fire, scanning the grass. Starla did what she usually does when a fight was coming. She disappeared.

  I dropped my pack and drew my Glock in one hand, holding the machete in the other.

  “We got in-coming,” I barked. “Get ready!”

  Steve opened fire first, shooting blindly. I doubted he could see one yet, because I couldn’t see a thing through the tall grass. About fifteen feet away from me, the grass rustled again.

  I squeezed off a round aiming at where one should be, hoping I hit something. I couldn’t afford to waste ammo, so I wouldn't fire again until I had a clear visual..

  Then, one jumped straight into the air directly in front of me. Its vertical leap cleared at least ten feet, like it had springs for legs.

  My brain stalled for half a second, refusing to assemble what I was looking at.

  The spider had an ovular body, like a daddy long leg spider but scaled up and deranged. It had a wild pig’s snarling face, complete with giant yellow boar tusks. Eight short, chitinous spider legs covered in bristly hair jutted out from its gruesome body.

  I fired three quick shots into its belly before it hit the ground. It landed hard a few feet behind me then lunged without hesitation, throwing up grass and soil like an F1 tornado. The thing must've weighed a couple hundred pounds limiting--thankfully--it's jump distance.

  I sidestepped and swung hard with the machete chopping into its snout with a satisfying crunch. It screeched and skittered backward, then it lunged again. I nailed it with two more rounds, but my mag ran dry. I could tell it was hurt as it swayed. Instead of quitting it lurched up on its hind legs raising its front legs like crooked spears. In a more calculated attack it approached slowly jabbing its front legs at me. I blocked, parried, then drove the blade straight into its open maw. The blade sank deep, all the way to the hilt with a sickening sloshing sound. The monster convulsed then fell at my feet.

  I turned. Steve was firing erratically between the two that came after him. The spider-pigs coordinated their attack against him. His endurance or his luck kept him alive as the spiders stabbed him several times.

  I reloaded the Glock and fired all thirteen rounds into the one flanking his left.

  When Steve ran out of ammo, he flipped the A.K. around and beat his freaky foe with the stock like it owed him money. I saw the kill notification as Steve slumped to the ground covered in a soapy mixture of blood and sweat. With a bit more stamina, he would become a force to be reckoned with.

  Lurking back in the tall grass, a fourth spider pig schemed. Apparently, Steve had hit it a few times luckily, and as we fought the three initial attackers, it was bleeding out. I handed him the hatchet which he gladly accepted.

  As he headed into the grass, I noticed the one I riddled with 40 cal earlier was still twitching. I walked over to finish it off quickly. As I approached, it reared up in a final attack, scaring the bejeebus out of me. I brought the machete down hard, cleaving its head clean off. I had received 100 experience points for my first kill and 75 more for the one I just beheaded. Just 300 away from level 5.

  Steve came out of the tall grass after a few minutes. “Hey! How many points did you get?” I asked him.

  He swelled with pride. “160. I leveled up twice and got four points to distribute. Pretty sweet!”

  “Nice! Wait! Only four?”

  “Yeah. Why?” he asked.

  “I got three points each time I leveled up.”

  “Oh well. I might get more as I get stronger.”

  “Your intelligence must be lower than mine. Jeremy would be pissed. I can just hear him complaining saying something like, ‘I can’t believe you two got powers, and I didn’t! Y’all don’t know anything!’ You know?”

  “Yeah,” Steve acknowledged. “I can hear him say that too. I hope he’s okay. I know he’s a good friend of yours. Sorry man.”

  “Yeah. He's a good dude, but moping around won’t bring him back,” I said, as I reloaded with my final Glock magazine. I would have to reload the other two spent magazines here very soon. “I think you should put your points in endurance. I noticed you got tired pretty quick.”

  “Yeah, I’m either out of shape, or I used to smoke too much,” he laughed. “I’m tired as hell right now, but it seems to refill pretty quickly!”

  “Be careful not to let it bottom out,” I said. “I passed out for a few hours the last time I did that.”

  “Cool beans. I’m going to add my points real quick. Give me a sec.”

  Steve surged with energy with what I now know leveling up looked like. I recalled an old movie, Highlander, when McLeod took someone’s head off. The sequence we went through was similar, but we didn't float.

  He appeared renewed.

  He pointed and said,“Weird. I can see an arrow hoverin' over where we're supposed to go.”