The Bottom Feeders and Other Stories

7: Grim Adaptations

On a late Sunday afternoon, Scab Hullinger caught an abomination in the Republican River about forty yards downstream from the old wrought-iron bridge south of Springdale. Glistening wet, heaving, and gray as a dislodged lung, the thing flopped and writhed in a cooler filled with murky river water. Three boys on the fringe of manhood, one thin like a twist of wire, one wide and solid like a bulldog, and Scab somewhere between — slender but athletic — stood on the muddy bank, staring at the thing.

“Damn Scab, that’s big. Nibbled like crazy on my fingers.”

“Did it get any of them?” Joel asked with a chuckle while rubbing his grubby hands across the front of his jeans.

“Naw. Just sandpaper gums like most bottom feeders.” Allen, a skittish rail of a boy with brown-black eyes bulging from his thin face, squatted next to the cooler. “I’ve never seen a channel cat that color.”

“Can’t be a channel cat,” Joel said.

“Like hell.” Allen spat in the mud. “Has to be. It’s got the flat head, whiskers and pretty grim looking spines on the sides.”

“Sure does. Cut myself on one of them.” Scab held the meaty part of his left palm, squeezing just hard enough to produce a thin stream of blood from a jagged gash.

Joel kicked the cooler with one muddy boot. The fish flopped slightly in the cramped enclosure, showing a wide, flat eye of green-gray. “You ever seen a channel with eyes like that?”

The three were silent for a moment.

“I’m gonna call Barry. He’s home this weekend.” Scab said, fumbling in his jeans for a cell phone.

Joel scratched his black hair. “Your brother?”

“Yeah, he’s studying fish and wildlife at college, right?”

Allen paced behind his garage while Joel cleaned the rest of the afternoon’s catch.

“You could help out, you pansy.” Joel wiped the filet knife on a rag. “It’s your house, your freezer, your fish.”

“You’re doing fine all by yourself.” Allen flipped open his cell phone. “Where the hell are they, anyway?”

“Hell if I know.” Joel rubbed his hands under the backyard spigot. He was shaking them off when Scab’s car pulled into the alley.

“Hey Scab,” Joel called. “Hey Barry.”

Barry Hullinger smiled as they climbed out of Scab’s Honda. Scab managed a cursory grin while cradling his wounded hand.

Gavin Hullinger earned the unfortunate nickname “Scab” in middle school when Cori Hamilton, still the prettiest girl in Springdale, caught him chewing on a bit of loose skin from his elbow in seventh grade PE. He grew out of his awkward, boney frame in the five years since and became starting linebacker for the Springdale Saints’ district championship squad. He was even the frontrunner for class valedictorian, but the name held on, as stubborn things will in small towns. His brother, Barry, had been one of the finest scholar-athletes to graduate from Springdale High School.

“Where’s the fish?” Barry asked.

The four young men stood around the stained cooler in Allen’s garage. The grayish fish-thing thrashed about, splashing a little water over the edge each time someone disturbed its temporary home, but otherwise floated motionless in the muck.

Joel picked mud from under his fingernails with a pocketknife. “So, channel cat or not.”

“If it is, it sure isn’t healthy,” Barry said, squatting next to the cooler. “This color…isn’t right. Those eyes…I think it might be dead.”

“Dead?” Allen asked. His voice shot up an extra octave.

“Well, it looks dead. Smell’s dead, too. I don’t know what’s keeping it going.”

“So what do we do? Filet the thing, have a fry up with some beers?” Joel chuckled and then shook his head.

“I’m not eating that shit,” Allen squeaked.

“No,” Barry said as he stood. “We aren’t going to fucking eat it. Are you really as dumb as Gavin says?”

Allen frowned.

“I’m going to call one of my professors.”

“Your professor?” Joel flicked the knife shut on his pant leg. “What the hell for?”

Barry shook his head slowly and scratched his chin. “I don’t know. But something’s not right.” He glanced at his brother who was leaning against the side of the garage. “Look, I better get Gavin home”

“You sure we should be doing this?” Allen asked as Joel steered his truck over the rough gravel roads in Greenwillow Cemetery.

Joel shrugged. “Look, do you want to keep that freak-o-fish at your place this weekend?”

Allen squirmed in his seat. “Hell no. But what if Barry wants to see it again — ”

“I don’t give a shit. The college-boy can fish it out of the pond.” Joel squinted into the gathering twilight ahead of the truck. “’sides, if it is a good sized channel — even a mutant one, it can take out some of the nasty little bullhead up there in Potter’s Pond. Maybe make the fishing worthwhile.”

“Yeah, I ‘spose so. But what if it is sick. Diseased or whatever Barry said?”

Joel smiled. “Well, it’ll clear up Potter’s Pond either way.”

Just beyond the city limit of Springdale, Kansas, in the woods beyond the boundary fence of Greenwillow Cemetery rested an abandoned farm pond. Years of disuse allowed the trees and brush — mostly crooked spruce trees, sickly cottonwoods, and gnarled redbuds — to encroach on the shores of Potter’s Pond. The name spun from the pauper’s graves, Potter’s Fields, of old. The boys understood little of the Potter’s Pond legend, only vague myths about the poor of Springdale being tossed to its green depths when they couldn’t pay for a decent funeral. That’s what the old men at Jenson’s Hardware joked about every time the boys bought a few dozen worms for bait so they could spend a Sunday afternoon catching tiny bullhead when they were younger. The pond teemed with those small members of the catfish family.

Joel brought the truck to a rough stop on the road nearest the barbed-wire fence marking the edge of the cemetery. “Look, you coming? Or do I have to lug that damn cooler all by myself?”

Allen glanced out the window, noting the heavy outline of trees like black fingers lunging toward the darkening sky. The trees around Potter’s Pond always lost their leaves earlier than the rest of town. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to swallow the deafening thud of his heart. “I’m coming. But let’s hurry up, all right?”

Scab missed school on Monday, and both Allen and Joel were a little concerned.

When he was gone Tuesday, Allen was worried.

“Do you think we should call him?” He asked Joel after PE.

Joel shook extra water from his hair and rubbed his head with a towel. “I did last night.”

“Yeah?”

“His mom said he was pretty bad. Stomach flu, or something like it.”

When Scab missed school on Wednesday, Barry met Allen and Joel in the high school parking lot.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Joel asked.

Barry, his eyes rimmed with dark circles as if he hadn’t had much sleep, cleared his throat. “Gavin’s not well.”

“Yeah, your mom — ”

“It’s worse than that. I drove in yesterday after class. I’ve been up with him all night. He’s been vomiting. Sometimes blood.” Barry slumped against his steering wheel and looked past the others at the school building. “She’s got to work nights at the new job, and didn’t want to leave him alone. I told her he needs the hospital, but she’s afraid they’d take him to Kansas City.”

Allen and Joel exchanged a look. Allen shifted his weight nervously.

“Hospital?” Allen asked. “Why not just go to Doc Carlton’s?”

“Mom lost her insurance when she was laid off at the plant.” Barry rubbed his eyes. “You guys need to see something.”

They followed Barry to the Hullingers’ house. The place was quiet, Scab’s mom gone for work, having left a note for Barry on the counter. Upstairs, the odor started, hanging in the air like a blanket of rot.

“What’s that smell,” Allen said, his voice pinched as he held his nose.

Joel punched him in the arm.

Scab lay in bed — Springdale’s all-league middle linebacker reduced to a pallid smudge under his sheets. The putrid smell radiated from his room. Joel and Allen both tugged their jackets off in the stifling humidity. Barry pulled the comforter down to show Scab’s left hand, and his brother’s eyes fluttered open.

“Hey…guys,” he managed to say.

“Look.” Barry held up Scab’s left hand, peeled back the gauze, and titled the wound into the light so the others could see. The area around the small cut in Scab’s hand had blackened, and little dark fingers stretched out from the wound. His face was pale, but his hand, other than the black gash, was utterly gray.

“God…” Allen backed toward the door.

“God doesn’t have anything to do with this.” Barry gently laid his brother’s hand back on the mattress. Scab’s eyes blinked open and shut a few more times. “Do you still have the fish?”

Allen flashed a nervous glance at Joel. Joel set his jaw and shook his head.

“What? Why would we need the fish?” Allen took a step away from the bed.

“We dumped it,” Joel said, his voice flat and serious. “We dumped it in Potter’s Pond.”

Barry nodded his head slightly. “Potter’s Pond?”

“It’s what the old guys in town call that pond out behind Greenwillow.”

Barry stood and moved toward the door. “I want to find that fish.”

Joel, noting the stoic determination on Barry’s face, nodded and followed him down the stairs. “I’ll drive,” he called.

For a moment, Allen hesitated. He glanced back at Scab, and then scurried after them.

Barry grabbed a fish net and a couple of rods from the garage and tossed them in the back of Joel’s truck. It was an extended cab, but Barry jumped in the front seat, leaving the back for Allen.

“What’d you catch that thing with?”

“Just worms,” Joel said. He turned the key and fired up the truck. “We tried blood, liver, all kinds of stink bait, frozen shrimp…nothing else worked.”

“Figures…”

“What figures?”

Barry shook his head. “Just a theory I have. Let’s go — this could take a while. Can we stop by Jenson’s and pick up some more worms.”

“We have some over at Allen’s place.”

As Allen slammed his door, Scab came shambling out of the house wearing a heavy coat and unlaced boots. He waved for them to stop.

“I’m…going…too. I don’t…want to be left…alone.”

Three of them spilled out of the cab while the fourth leaned against the small, rear window of Joel’s truck. Scab’s eyes were open, staring out at the field of granite grave markers. “I’m going…to die,” he muttered.

“Stop saying that negative bullshit,” Barry said. “Look. You stay here. Stay warm. We’re going to catch that god-forsaken fish and figure out how to help you.”

The three healthy men started toward the fence. Joel and Barry were laden with fishing poles, a net, and various tackle; Allen carried his shotgun, his hands squeezing the stock and barrel until the knuckles went white.

Joel set his rod on the other side of the fence and pushed a heavy boot against the loose barbed wire, pushing it down so the other two could climb over. “I don’t know why you brought that thing. Not like you’re going to shoot the fish out of the water.”

“I just feel safer.”

“You’ll probably just shoot yourself in the foot.”

Joel and Barry led through the winding path to the pond, their feet cracking fallen twigs and sucking against soft patches of mud. Allen trailed behind.

“Why do you need the fish?” Joel asked.

“Well…the doctor might need to see it, to help figure out what the hell is wrong with my brother’s hand. I’m taking Gavin in either way — with or without Mom’s permission.” Barry looked at the sky. “We don’t have long.” Sunset was still two hours away, but the maze of dark branches overhead blotted out much of the light.

“You said you had a theory — about the live worms.” Joel pulled back a limb so Barry could climb underneath.

“Yeah. It’s a little crazy maybe, but I figure all that run off near the Republican must have something to do with that weird fish. None of my professors had heard of anything like it, but all of the chemicals the farmers dump on their fields, all the crap folks in town dump in the sewers…add up to a pretty nasty cocktail.”

“So?” Joel asked as he stepped into a small patch of clearing by the water’s edge and laid down his tackle.

“It’s called non-point source pollution, and the ditches around the edge of the fields are full of it. If anything could survive in that shit, it would have to be pretty hearty.”

“The fish you mean? I still don’t get it.”

“No — not the fish, exactly. I think all that chemical soup has bred some sort of super disease, a virus or bacteria maybe. Something that thrived in the polluted water. When the river flooded last spring, some of the super bug spilled out. Something that zombified a channel cat — that’s why it only went for the live worms. You assholes caught it and brought it home.”

“Zombified?” Joel tried to laugh as he squeezed a wriggling worm onto his first hook. “That’s nuts.”

“I told you that it was a little crazy. I figure the super bug killed the fish, but animated it enough to help seek out a new host — another living thing to infect. That ‘fish’ my brother caught on Sunday is one of nature’s grim adaptations.”

“Do you think, well, is Scab okay? A germ like that couldn’t jump from a fish to a person, right?”

“I don’t know. If it was hearty enough to survive in that crap, it could adapt to almost anything.”

Joel stopped baiting his hook for a moment. “Look, Barry. Sorry I’ve given you some much shit for being a college boy.”

Barry shrugged. “I’m not sure I know what the hell I’m talking about.”

Both men turned around as Allen stumbled from the brush. Allen smiled briefly, but his grin drooped into a frown as he glanced beyond his friends. “Hey, what the hell is that.” He pointed with barrel of his gun.

On the muddy bank only ten feet from where they gathered, a group of gray, flopping things crawled toward them, using their fins as makeshift legs. Joel thought they were too big for the bullhead that used to live in the pond; these creatures, drained of color like the fish Scab caught a few days prior, were the length of a man’s forearm.

Barry picked up the net and took a few steps toward the pale, writhing lumps. “Maybe we don’t have to catch that big one after all.”

Allen raised his gun halfway, but Joel caught the barrel in his hand.

“Careful there General Custer.”

“Looks like Gavin’s catch contaminated the pond.” With a swift motion of the net, Barry scooped a few of the fish-things from the mud. He reached into the net, careful not to catch his hand on the sharp spines poking from their pectoral fins, and lifted one out. “They’ve learned to crawl out of the water,” Barry said, his voice tinted with awe. “This thing isn’t breathing — it’s not alive, but…”

“We caught some healthy fish out of the river. How’d the whole pond go bad so fast?” Joel asked.

Barry held the gray mass in front of his eyes, studying it as its gaping mouth flapped open and shut — not for breath, but trying to bite Barry’s fingers. “The pond is stagnant. The river kept a little clean because of the running water.”

“Watch out.” Allen stepped back toward the path, unable to keep his eyes from the squirming thing in Barry’s grip. Having crawled through the mud, it looked more like a giant slug or worm, and less like a fish.

At Barry’s feet, a few more inched from the water. He stumbled over one. “Shit…they’re everywhere.” As Barry glanced down and tried to regain his balance, the thing he held lunged forward, squirting out of his hand. One spine raked across his throat before the creature flopped on the ground. Barry dropped to his knees and immediately pressed his hand against his neck. A crimson stain, almost black in the twilight near the pond, throbbed from between his fingers. A thick moan squeezed from his mouth as more of the things leapt toward him, lancing him with the spines on their pectoral fins.

Allen ran. Joel took one step toward Barry, but it was too late. Within moments, Barry’s body was covered with what seemed like hundreds of the flopping aberrations. Joel’s eyes caught more crawling from the murk at his feet. The edge of the water boiled with them. He kicked one away, launching it into the pond with a plop. Lifting his right foot, he ground another into the soft mud. There were too many. Retreating slowly at first, he remembered the afternoons in junior high when they would catch dozens in just a few hours. He hurried after Allen, crashing through the trees, hesitating only slightly as branches snapped and caught him in the face.

Clearing the edge of the path, he tried to hurdle the fence, but the top of his trailing boot caught, and he tumbled to the ground. Pushing off with both hands, he staggered to his knees and glanced behind him. The ground under the trees seemed to be alive, a moving shadow, shambling toward the fence as hundreds of undead fish struggled toward him.

Joel scrambled to his feet and rushed to the truck. Allen was twenty yards away and still running. Without looking inside first, Joel opened his door, and the reeking thing that had been his friend lunged for him.

The living and undead crashed on the ground. All trace of Gavin Hullinger’s humanity was gone. Its face, ashen and wasted with visible, black veins beneath the translucent surface, twisted into a snarl with bared teeth. A fishy stench of rot and decay spilled out.

“Allen!” Joel cried, kicking against the ghoul. He dug his fingers into the dead grass, pulling out little tufts as he struggled to free himself. “Allen, you son-of-a-bitch!”

Allen skidded to a stop. Now nearly forty yards from the truck, he looked back to see two bodies on the ground. Scab looked to be hugging Joel around the lower legs, and Joel fought to get away. Allen clicked the safety off on his gun. “Too far to shoot.” Shame more than courage forced him closer; he ran back another fifteen yards and raised the gun again.

“Do it!” Joel shouted.

Allen, never a good aim under the best circumstances, cracked off a shot.

Joel howled.

Instead of hitting the undead Scab, Allen missed his mark and peppered the meaty part of Joel’s upper thigh. Spatters of his own blood caught Joel across the face. Wincing with pain, he stopped struggling just long enough for the ghoul to sink its teeth into his calf. Joel managed to work his pocketknife from his jeans, snapped it open, and plunged it into Scab’s eye socket.

Allen began to cry, and through his tears, he saw the undead fish undulating toward him.

“Oh god,” he muttered. With a few backward steps, he turned to run, but collided into a headstone, wrenching his ankle and toppling to the ground. The shotgun skidded from his hands.

“No…no…no,” he sobbed through the pain. The gun had landed a few yards away, and Allen began to crawl toward it. His spindly fingers dragged the rest of his body, but the things were close. Flopping and writhing, twisting through the brittle brown grass, they worked their way to him. Allen’s fingertips touched the end of the shotgun’s stock, but he already felt their sharp spines and nibbling sandpaper mouths at his ankles. Abandoning the gun, he dragged his body upright against a granite cross. He shook a few of the putrefied fish-things from his feet, and began a slow, but panicked limp toward the gates of the cemetery and away from Joel’s fading cries.

The fat, gray former-fish crawled after him, slowly at first, but as they adapted to the land, their awkward movement became rhythmic. They gained momentum, hundreds of tainted and ravenous undead fish, following Allen in his terror, as he inadvertently led them, pied-piper like, to the rest of Springdale.