"Underbrush" - August 22, 2024
There’s something in the woods... something worth killing for. In a small college town, a disappearance in the woods kicks off a fantastic chain of events...
Every Thursday, Silver Gecko Publishing highlights one of my stories, either a work of short fiction, a novel, or an audiobook. This week’s selection is the novel Underbrush.
Underbrush was developed while I was attending Bowling Green State University and taking more than my fair share of science classes. It was patterned after the technothrillers of Michael Crichton and Robin Cook, who developed excellent works of fiction with a hard science background.
Because this is a full novel, only an excerpt is presented. However, if you like what you’ve read, click the link to buy the book, available now on Kindle and in paperback.
-Kevin Carr
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UNDERBRUSH by Kevin Carr
The beat-up Chevette’s wheels locked as the car slid through the thick mud patch at the end of the gravel driveway. Inertia carried the car forward until the dented bumper struck the rusty iron gate that blocked its way.
Klang! A spray of rain water spat up from the gate, then pattered to the mud below.
“Damn,” Alexis Deacon hissed, killing the engine and headlights. Her white-knuckled fingers gripped the steering wheel as she fought against her anger and frustration. “Damn him!”
She shook her head and took a deep breath. A sharp pain stabbed her side, above the hip, causing her to catch her breath and wince.
That’s gonna leave a bruise, she thought, tenderly rubbing her side where Cam – her now ex-boyfriend – had hit her.
She looked out the front windshield to her dented bumper nestled against the gate. “You’re gonna have to be more careful with this heap,” she said softly to herself. Alexis knew she could never live without a car, and her paltry income from working in the Bursar’s office allowed her few repairs.
Of course, Daddy would eagerly provide her with her choice of a new sports car if only she would ask – which she had told herself she would never do. The whole point of her living on campus at Webster-Elek University, only a short five minutes from home, had been to get away from Daddy’s money. Insisting on buying her own car, albeit a rusty old gray Chevette, Alexis broke that financial bond.
Alexis sighed and opened her door. The hinges wailed, then fell in place. She swung her legs out of the car, and her heavy hiking boots sunk into the turgid earth below. Earlier that evening a flash rain shower made the ground soggy. Mother Nature had been kind this year and spring had come early to northwest Ohio. Only light snow fell through the winter, giving a delightful change from the normal white-carpet winters in Greengrove.
Alexis stood and breathed in a hearty lungful of the unseasonably warm air. Puffs of mist danced in front of her face when she let it out. Already, some of the night’s tension melted away. Coming to the Woods had always done that for her. Deep in the Woods, she could find a nice bed of leaves and detritus protected from the rain by the trees’ canopy where she could relax and escape.
Alexis reached into the back seat of the Chevette and grabbed a bulky backpack. She left her cell phone plugged into the charger. Those things never worked properly in the Woods, anyway. Plus, the point was to get away from human contact for a bit, wasn’t it?
Slinging her backpack over her right shoulder, she closed the car door and approached the gate. A sign hanging from the rusting frame declared:
KEICHMAN WOODS
PRIVATE PROPERTY
WEBSTER-ELEK UNIVERSITY
ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING
VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED
Then, underneath, in smaller letters:
CONTACT NORMAN WATSON
BIOLOGY DEPARTMENT BOX 134
FOR PERMISSION TO ENTER
Alexis ignored the warning. As a junior in high school, she discovered the all-but-forgotten Keichman Woods and came here ever since to snatch a few hours of quiet solitude. No one had ever cared before. Why would they start now?
Webster-Elek University purchased Keichman Woods as an ecological preserve in the 1970s. Originally, it appeased the crusaders of the burgeoning environmentalist movement. A big deal back in the seventies, the Biology Department championed its property as “The Largest Natural Biome of Northwest Ohio,” originally part of a vast depression known to Native Americans and early settlers as the Black Swamp. With help and funding from state and county governments, farmers drained the swamp in the mid-1800s, and the ecosystem changed. Loggers cleared most of the native hardwood forests of oak, maple, poplar, and of course buckeye trees to make way for expansive farms of wheat, corn, and soybeans. Yet, somehow Keichman Woods survived.
In the past twenty or so years, the university’s interest in the Woods dwindled, reducing it to a location for occasional Biology 104 field trips. Most students and faculty forgot about the place. Soon, natural ecological succession ran its course, covering old hiking trails with thick underbrush and dead trees.
Alexis knew no police would stop by to check out the suspicious car at the entrance – not on a Thursday night, at least. Both the campus police and the local city police patrolled the bar scene on Thursdays – the biggest drinking night on campus – picking up drunks, underage consumers, and sidewalk urinators. No one would bother her tonight.
Alexis hoisted herself over the gate and entered the Woods, reflecting on the night’s events. It all began when she told Cam Unger to get lost. Her words still rang in her ears:
Get out! You’re drunk! I don’t like you drunk!
The scene replayed in her mind’s eye, as fresh and vivid as if it were happening now. Cam had stumbled through her dorm room’s door. A splash of beer had spat from the mouth of the bottle he held in his hand. It foamed on the carpet when it landed. Cam had slurred incomprehensible speech and lurched forward. Alexis had side-stepped him and pushed him away. He landed, confused on her bed. Again, she told him to leave.
Cam had whined, then made a growling sound. He lashed out quickly, his fist snatching a wad of her shirt sleeve.
Alexis had smacked at his hand, but he held tight. She looked down to him, staring into his eyes. A fiery rage seethed through the drunken stupor.
Alexis tried to pull away, but could not break his hold. Cam let the beer bottle fall from his fingers onto her comforter, spilling a dark pool of booze on the peach-colored fabric. He reached forward with his free hand and slipped his fingers under the lip of her jeans. With a sharp yank, he pulled her closer. Cam had let go of her sleeve and jabbed her in the side.
Pain roiled through Alexis’s body, but she gritted her teeth and ignored it. She fell towards Cam, baring her fingernails like claws. Her left hand missed, but her right landed squarely on his cheek. Alexis heard herself growl as she dug the nails into Cam’s flesh. His grip on her jeans suddenly loosened. Seizing the opportunity, Alexis reached down to the comforter and picked up the beer bottle. With a fluid motion, she swung it around and smashed it against Cam’s left temple. Dark brown glass shattered through her fingers and Cam’s body went suddenly limp.
Alexis stumbled away out of his grasp and backed up against her desk. Keeping an eye on Cam, Alexis reached behind and found a pair of scissors.
Cam swooned and sat up, his eyes squinting against pain. A blanket of scarlet coated half his face. Cam stood, wobbling off-balance for a moment, staring at Alexis. Rage distorted his face.
You bitch... he had began, raising a hand to his cheek, then up to his temple. He paused, then looked down at his fingers. Suddenly, his eyes grew vacuous at the sight of his own fresh blood.
He looked back up at Alexis, eyes wide. Cam let out a squeak, then caught his breath before he turned and darted out of her dorm room.
Alexis had left for Keichman Woods only moments later – before the enraged Cam Unger could recover for a second round.
She shoved the memory into the back of her mind and walked blindly, purposely taking direction off the shadowy hiking trails and into the areas most densely grown over. The thick underbrush of Keichman Woods provided the best wall of privacy from Cam Unger, her life, and the rest of the world.
After about fifteen minutes of hiking, Alexis emerged into a natural clearing. The absence of paths told her that few – if any – had come back here for many years. Even in its heyday, Alexis doubted this patch of forest had ever been thoroughly explored.
Alexis removed her backpack and pulled out a large, plastic tarp. After laying the tarp on the cool, damp leaves, she reached into the backpack and removed a rolled-up sleeping pad and a sleeping bag. She then grabbed her John Saul paperback and clipped a book light to it. The backpack, wadded up into a tight ball, then became her makeshift pillow. Alexis squatted on the sleeping bag and began unlacing her hiking boots. When she leaned her hand back in the leaves for balance, she felt a wet, clammy mass. It squirmed and slid between her fingers.
“Hey!” she yelped, standing up and shaking her hand furiously. A tiny shape sailed from her fingers and landed in the leaves. It quickly darted to the side, then back towards the sleeping bag. Lunging forward, Alexis brought her heavy hiking boot onto the wriggling form in the leaves. Beneath the thick sole, she heard a soft grinding sound.
Alexis lifted her foot and took a step closer, squinting. The overhanging trees cast a shadow from the bright moon over the patch of ground. She moved down onto her hands and knees. Brushing away a few dark leaves, she instantly recognized the creature.
About half of a fat, dark earthworm curled against a small chunk of sandstone. The body squirmed back and forth, its movement growing slower. In a moment, it stopped. The other half of the worm appeared to be fused with the rock, its innards crushed into a gel beneath Alexis’s weight. The mirror image of her hiking boots’ logo – Oregon’s Best – appeared in the worm’s remains. Looking closely, Alexis saw chunks of soil mixed within it. Remembering her Biology 104 class, she recognized the soil as the worm’s principle food source.
“Ooh,” she said softly, slightly hurt. “Poor worm. I didn’t mean it. It’s just that you went after my sleeping bag.” Alexis’s mind flashed back quickly to the days of grade school. After a good, solid rain the boys gathered the worms from the schoolyard and threatened to throw them in the girls’ hair.
Even with the unpleasant memories of worms, Alexis looked down at her unintended victim with remorse. It was probably the biggest earthworm she had ever seen – even bigger than the bulbous, black nightcrawlers her grandfather bought when he took her fishing on Lake Erie in her youth.
Alexis let out a soft sigh and moved back to her sleeping bag. She began to finish the job of unlacing her boots when a sharp chill washed over her. She stopped and looked around, listening. The deafening forest noises rattled through the trees. She saw nothing.
Then, her heart rate suddenly increased, and she felt a burst of adrenaline pump into her veins. A sudden wave of intense fear rushed through her, so oppressive that she had to gasp for a breath.
Am I having a panic attack? she thought. I don’t get those.
Her stomach lurched. Another wave of fear crashed into her, bringing her to the point of nausea. Alexis put a hand over her heart, feeling the thick muscle slamming against the inside of her ribcage. An overpowering terror drove through her mind with a single thought galvanized in her brain:
DIE!
Behind her, Alexis heard a soft rustling which quickly grew to a deafening rumble.
She spun around and looked into the heart of the woods. A dirty white blob bulged from within the tangled underbrush. Alexis’s mind spun back to a family vacation to West Palm Beach when she was five. One morning Alexis and her father watched the tide come in – the billowing surf... the breaking waves... the swelling sea...
The thought exploded again in her mind: DIE!
The impending tide closed its gap. Alexis saw that it was not a tide of salty brine, but a tide of screaming white rats!
Thousands of albino vermin poured from the underbrush and joined the expanding ivory wave. As the flowing white carpet bore down upon Alexis, it reflected the cold blue light from the moon, seeming to glow. They were legion, like a single monster plowing under the trees!
And the noise they made!
Their individual squeaks blended together into a shrill screech like fingernails raked across a chalkboard. Alexis could not even hear herself scream as the first of the albino army ran up her leg.
Finally, Alexis broke her paralyzed stance and darted away. Her feet skidded to a rough stop though when she saw a second wave of albino rats crashing through the woods directly ahead!
God! she thought. Where the hell are they all coming from?
She turned to her right only to be greeted by yet another wave of rats.
Am I being cornered? she though.
A quick glance to her left confirmed her last escape path was blocked. They had surrounded her!...