Brood X by Joshua Dysart

Author:Joshua Dysart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TKO Studios, LLC.
Published: 2022-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

The logging road runs south, maybe. It’s hard to say once the men are under the trees and the road begins to twist. Their faces are wrapped. Their hats are pulled low, save for Ian, whose cap has been missing since the accident. They wear long pants and long sleeves. The cicadas bang away at their covered mouths, wanting inside of them.

Away from the clearing, surrounded by the wooded thicket, the extent of the emergence is awe inspiring. It’s hard to fully grasp the density of cicadas, flying, chanting, crawling, fucking, living incomprehensible lives. The men are already tired under the persistence and volume of the bugs always on them, always underneath their feet, voices always in their ears, bodies always flapping against their hands. So alive with bugs are the woods that nature has become a single, tottering thing. The green around the men is thinner than when they first rolled down this road, in the process of being consumed by a million tiny, gnawing mouths.

Yesterday’s blood on Ian’s vest has gone black like hardened ink. Baxter, walking behind Ian, wonders why he hasn’t taken the vest off, considering its state and the summer heat. Ian, limping badly from the accident, suffering silently among the men, seems the most frayed of them all, and that’s something Baxter can understand.

Eventually they see Samuel’s truck. It slid sideways down an incline and is wedged up on the driver’s side among some trees. Victor and Quent begin to make their way down to it. Ian tells them he can’t stand to see it again and he steps back from the sight, his hands up, warding the truck off like an evil spirit.

The bed is empty. Tangled out in the woods beyond are the two bodies, tossed in the impact. Inside the cab lifeless Samuel stares past the bugs swarming his face and out of the broken front windshield into the infinite crawl. Samuel stares at everything, endlessly surprised, forever alarmed. It’s hard to see much detail with the swarm of bugs jostling over the surface of the corpse, but Samuel’s throat seems to have been gouged fiercely, and there’s a lot of dried blood spray in the cab. Ian’s cap is crumpled down beneath Samuel’s feet. Victor tries to say something to Quent about the state of Samuel’s body, but the horny, screeching, clacking male chorus is louder here by the Chevy than Victor has heard it anywhere else since the song began. It’s deafening to him now, piercing, and he has to cover his ears with his hands.

Victor helps Quent struggle back up the slope to the logging road where the others have been staring down at them. It isn’t easy. Both of them now carry yet another sight in their heads they wish they’d never seen.

The men press on down the logging road but the bulk of cicadas and the decibel level of their song exhausts everyone. David Bruce, his cheek now properly swollen and blackening, finally yells out above the din to the others, “I’m going back.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.