Trembling With Fear 11/08/20

Scorch the Earth by Kevin M. Folliard

7 a.m. Monday morning, Ranger Rell spotted grayish purple smoke. The strange plumes wafted over a ridge of trees on the eastern edge of the park. His initial thought was a forest fire, but it had been so wet lately.

No paths or roads led directly through this part of the preserve, so Rell hiked on foot. He tried to radio the fire in, but high-pitched static interfered. He’d get close enough to assess the situation, then head down road for a better signal.

According to the ranger blog he’d read at breakfast, last night, campers sighted a magenta streak in the sky—a meteor that cut over the mountain. People rarely camped out this way. Maybe thrill seekers, searching for the object, accidentally started a fire. Maybe the object itself started this fire.

An acrid stench burned Rell’s nostrils. As he approached the blaze, a mechanical hum vibrated, and a high quivering voice screamed commands. Yellow streaks blazed between the trees. Flamethrowers.

Rell hurried toward the commotion. It was a controlled burn, but who had authorized it?

People in white hazmat suits clustered in the center of clearing. They blasted fire at the ground. A tall man in a black suit yelped in a shaky language Rell couldn’t place.

“Excuse me!” Rell shouted. “Who are you people?”

In perfect sync, the flamethrowers cut out. Reflective hazmat helmets turned in Rell’s direction. The man in black craned his neck around, leaving his legs and torso stiff. The tight-lipped smile on his pale face stretched like rubber. Chrome sunglasses gleamed. Behind him, fire crackled in tall grass.

Rell halted. His head swam. Stomach churned.

The man in black’s torso and legs twisted to meet the direction of his face. He was sign-post thin. His fingers stretched close to ten inches. His black pencil tie flickered in a gust of hot air. The mechanical hum pulsed.

The man approached, folding his too-longer fingers. “Why are you here?” he asked in a scratchy, helium voice.

“I’m the ranger.” Rell’s heart pounded. “Why are you here?”

“We belong with the federal government.” The man produced a badge. The FBI identification appeared legitimate, though Rell struggled to read the agent’s name. The letters seemed slippery, as if they were changing shape behind the plastic sleeve. The pads at the end of the snaky fingers were oddly bulbous. The skin had a translucent, amphibious quality.

“The park is my jurisdiction.” Rell tried—failed—to steady his voice. Was this man ill? Disfigured?

“Everything is my jurisdiction.” Powdery makeup caked the stranger’s face. He had no defined lips, and only the slightest bump of a nose. 

“You can’t be here without notifying the Parks Department.”

“We are cleared to be here. You should have been redirected. That road,” he pointed behind Rell, “is blocked off.”

“It was open when I entered the park.” Rell reached for his radio. 

“One of them slipped through,” a voice hissed from behind a hazmat mask.

The man in black frowned. “Shut up.”

Again, Rell grabbed his radio. “This is Ranger Rell, please come in.” Static. “We have a situation.” Static. “Some individuals are claiming to be federal agents.” Nothing. His voice came out small, fragile. “Please. Does anyone copy?”

“There’s a lot of radiation in the air. Could be interfering.” The strange man held up a stiff hand. The hazmat people turned away. Their flamethrowers erupted once again. Fire swept back and forth across something large poking from the grass.

“Radiation?” Rell shouldered past the man in black. “What’s going on here?” A flatbed truck was parked at the far end of the clearing. A huge, oval shaped object was covered by an enormous tarp. 

Rell was about to ask how on Earth these men had managed to drive a truck through such dense forest. But suddenly he wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing. Like the letters on the FBI badge, the vehicle shifted in his vision. 

Was it a truck? Or just a chrome rectangle that stretched through the trees and . . . bent into nowhere.

He smelled cooked meat. Charred things lay in the grass. Huge, black husks of creatures baked in streams of fire. They had long necks and sharp spines on multiple sets of arms and legs. Their blackened limbs curled inward like dead spiders. Narrow crocodilian snouts crisped between jets of flame.

“What in heaven?”

The wiry being snatched Rell. His willowy arm tensed like steel. “You were never here.” 

Rell tried to speak. He tried to agree. He wanted nothing more than to never speak of this.

But his whole body froze. His tongue felt like a plug of cotton.

“You were never a ranger.” The vice-like grip tightened. With the fatty pads of his other fingers, the man in black removed his hat to reveal a huge, pulsating forehead. He took off his shades. Bulging black eyes swam with stars.

“You were never important, and you never will be.” The man’s voice drilled into Rell’s mind. Echoed on his bones. Behind the man, white hot shivers cut the earth. Rell’s eyes seared into empty windows, belonging to nobody.

“You were not meant for this moment, and so I am erasing you,” the man in black explained. “You will be a crust of ash on the forest floor. Then carbon in the wind.” 

Rell sank into the pit of his mind. Through the windows of the eyes the canopy shivered and fire swallowed the faint outline of the man.

“By day’s end, I will be the final one who remembers you,” the man in black promised. “And then, I will smile as I choose to forget.”