Forgotten Fool

“Get down!”

The warning shouldn't have been necessary. However, the young guy, Chad, had thrown caution to the wind to piss in the wind. That's why he didn't see the giant flaming glob descending on his post.

The old guy, I think his name was Buck or something, barely got the warning out in time. Chad, to his credit, didn't stop to look around like a chump. He just dove backwards, back behind the cover of their busted up white van. Seconds later, the spot where he'd been standing was splattered. Chunks of the stuff stayed aflame and spread out like napalm.

They should be so lucky.

Chad started to kick dirt at a burning patch of grass, while still trying to get himself put back into his trousers. Then the smell hit him. His face blanched and he almost threw up right there. Clearly, this was his first time on the front lines.

Buck, however, was doing his best to hold his breath and tie an old blue handkerchief around his face. In the distance, they could hear the mocking maniacal laughter.

“Where do they get all this shit?” Chad finally choked out, before gagging again on the putrid smell coming from the burning splatter.

Buck slapped him on the shoulder to get his attention and then pointed to the nearby twisted road sign that read “Fertilizer Plant - 1 mile.” The old guy rolled his eyes and then peered through the windows of the van to see into the grey dawn beyond. He knew it would take them time to reload, but he also knew better than to expect anything that happened next to make sense.

I watched the scene unfold from the trees nearby. Neither the two idiots behind the van, nor the insane creatures up the road, had seen me yet. I hadn't decided yet if it was a morning to mind my own damn business, or get revenge on the destroyers of the free world.

Don't get me wrong. Everyone had known the end of the world was coming. You could feel it in the air, even if you didn't know what it meant. Some people prepped for nuclear war like we were living in a video game fantasy. Some argued over the best ways to fight off zombies like it was going to be a bad horror flick. War, famine, aliens, Planet of the God-damned Apes… you heard it all back before.

But no one was ready for the yard gnomes.

No one but me, that is. I had seen them. I had tried to stop them in the beginning. Instead, I watched the micro-masochists kill my brother and my friends one by one. That was the horror show. I made it out alive. I warned everyone that would listen.

I watched the world die at the hands of porcelain pygmies from a padded room in a maximum security facility. They said I'd had a psychotic break. That I was off my meds. I watched it fall apart and when the dwindling staff opened the front doors to abandon patients and providence alike, I had been left strapped to my bed following another “episode.” That was five years ago.

The yard gnomes won because no one believed. Whole towns dropped off the map in little blood baths filled with well-decorated lawns.

Now humanity finally realized there was a threat, but it was too late. Communication was spotty and no place was safe for long. How do you fight an army of cold-blooded murderers that are all less than a foot tall?

The high-pitched imp laughs came again. Another manure-filled missile launched out of the wreckage of old semi trucks. The shot went wide and splashed down across the old highway.

Buck must have seen something when the catapult had come up, because he quickly dragged a hunting rifle up into the driver side window and fired a shot through the van at the wreckage. If he hit anything, I couldn't tell.

Not that it mattered. The yard gnomes were basically indestructible. They just kept coming. Who knew that hell would belch out Walmart’ garden center on the unsuspecting population?

When I finally got out of my restraints and out of the hospital, I thought I was going to just destroy the whole red-capped menace myself. They had shattered easily enough in the beginning.

Over time, that changed, though. And the longer it all went on, the weirder it got. The killer ornaments kept getting smarter. They started rigging up things like catapults full of flaming shit to fling at people like hell chimps. They moved at night when they needed to, giving rise to a rumor that the gnomes were vampiric.

From the wrecked semi, I heard a rooster crow.

I could see the wide-eyed look of panic on Buck's face.

He had heard the rumors of the Chicken Cavalry, too.

Chad scrambled to get his own gun ready as he crawled on his stomach under the van. Buck clamored into the van and scooted across to point his rifle out the passenger side. The creaking shocks gave rise to a cuss of protest from Chad that almost got taken out by a manifold or something. Buck ignored him.

I pulled up the shotgun I had found on the remains of a highway patrol a few days ago. If they had chickens, I wasn't going to be sneaking past. The Cavalry was too fast.

The overgrown grass along the road erupted in a flurry of motion. I did my best to track their movements, but I couldn't even figure out how many of the little jockeys there were. With an angry chicken yell that would send generations of Nintendo gamers into therapy, the Calvary burst into the clear on the old highway.

There is nothing more terrifying than a dozen angry chickens charging at you at full speed. The fact that each of these chickens had a 10 inch tall bearded man in a red hat riding it might have been funny if they weren't statistically the most terrible sight in the apocalypse. It was like a horribly twisted little Hell's Angels riding at you swinging tiny shovels.

Chad fired first. His shot skipped off the broken asphalt right in front of a charging chicken. The feral fowl simply skipped over the shot in a feathered flurry and kept going.

Buck took aim and fired. With a sound like my clumsy sister running through a pottery store, the lead gnome flew back off his mount and bowled over the next jockey in the spread. The lead chicken jumped over its companions and doubled back toward its downed rider. I aimed for the closest bird. All I had was a shotgun, and range was not my friend.

I pulled the trigger and remembered too late that kickback was a thing I had heard about. The momentum drove my right arm into the tree beside me. I screamed a whole string of obscenities, started to drop the gun, caught it, and accidentally pulled the trigger again. I rolled myself over the underbrush with a crash. I had no idea if I had hit anything besides myself.

I scrambled up out of the grass to see that parts of the gun were now choked with crud from my fall. I heard more shots from Chad and Buck. I looked up to see what was happening now. I locked eyes with the lead chicken. It stalked a few steps toward me and looked more sinister than I could have ever imagined. Whatever evil had made the gnomes alive had not only given them control of the little fowls, but it had made them evil as well.

The lead chicken, the alpha, the meanest flocker, whatever you wanted to call it, spread its wings and made an awful sound. And just before it charged my location, it grinned at me and bared its razor-sharp teeth.

It bared. It's teeth.

A whole beak full of ivory death daggers.

It showed me it's God-damned teeth.

I will admit. At that point I lost it. Weird evil magic conquering the world using ornaments and rabid Southern delicacies aside, I would not abide this newest mutation.

As the flocker charged me, I bellowed a war cry of my own and charged right back at it. As we met in the middle of the tall grass, the alpha leapt into the air and came at me with talons and teeth. I swung my shotgun like a baseball bat and took the feathery bag of wrong in the gizzard. It crashed to the ground with a crunch and before the sack of shit could recover I leapt at and bludgeoned it with all I had.

“Chickens. Don't. Have. Teeth!!”

Every word was a shotgun blow to the alpha. This wasn't some Wallace and Grommit special. Reality had stopped making sense years ago, but this? No.

No. No. No.

When the chicken stopped trying to get up, I soccer kicked back toward the wrecked semi.

Another rifle shot.

I heard the bullet buzz past my ear just before I heard the chicken squawk behind my head. The chicken that the lead gnome had wiped out had recovered and come at me. Buck was apparently a pretty good shot. With a wet sound, the chicken exploded in mid-air, showering me in feathers and gunk.

Stress, panic, and disgust hit me like a wet noodle.

I lost my dinner, little as it had been. I was still heaving while I tried to wipe the exploded chicken bits from the back of my head. It was in my hair. I hated it. I hate all of it.

“Well, thanks for the distraction there, buddy. Your little shit show confused the whole mess long enough for us to get off a few well placed shots.”

It was Buck. He walked up on me just as the worst of the gagging stopped. I could tell he was trying not to laugh. I couldn't be too mad at him. The guy had just saved my life.

“You got a name, stranger?”

He handed me an oil-soaked towel I presume he had brought from the van. Okay, now I really couldn't be mad.

“Derek.”

“Well, Derek, pleasure to meet you.”

Buck walked past me. I heard more shattering gnomes. One of them tried to squeak something that sounded like an insult, but the message broke up along with its head.

Chad could be seen scattering the remains of the other gnomes along the highway between here and the van. It wouldn't stop them, but it would slow them down.

“What the hell has you guys driving this deep into enemy territory?”

Buck pointed at the wrecked semi.

“Used to be my rig. When those things caused the wreck, I was in such a hurry to get away I left stuff behind. Swore one of these days I’d come back for it. Today's the day.”

He headed toward the truck. There had been no further sounds since the chicken charge, but Buck was taking no chances. He stepped carefully and kept his rifle ready.

I waved a half-hearted hello to Chad, who just nodded back. Then I followed Buck. I also tossed the blood-soaked shotgun into the grass. No way was I cleaning that, even if I had known how. I was lucky I hadn't blown off my foot just figuring out how to load and shoot it.

Seeing that I had tagged along, Buck handed me the rifle and then climbed through the busted windshield of the truck. I scanned the area. I could see the little pen where the gnomes had kept the chickens. I could see the manure-flinging catapult they had pieced together; a trebu-shit, if you will.

I could also see the tiny wheelbarrows lying about and the worn path through the grass toward the old fertilizer plant. At the sound of crunching glass, I jumped away from the truck, once again ready for anything. It was just Buck, though.

He carried a small urn. It was white with pink roses painted on it. I didn't ask for an explanation, but Buck gave one.

“My wife. Lost her the year before this started. Cancer.”

He stopped to clear his throat and keep himself from tearing up.

“That's…”

A million shitty things went through my head, but I managed to somehow derail those thoughts before they reached my mouth. I course corrected.

“Sorry.”

“Thanks. What about you?”

I stared at him blankly, unsure exactly what he was asking.

“What's got you out here?”

“Oh! I, uh, well… I grew up around here. Got left behind in the mess and couldn't get past all statuary to get out. Was easier to just stay hidden and cosplay I Am Legend.”

He looked at me the way old guys always do when they think they can read trauma and buried emotions into your sarcasm. Whatever. I didn't lie.

“Well, I got what I came for.”

He held up the urn briefly before clutching it to his chest like a newborn. I'm not the only one with trauma.

“We made a hell of a noise this morning. Won't take long for others to come down from the plant or these ones to get together. Let's all get in the van and make tracks.”

I smiled. First genuine smile in years. I started to turn and follow him back toward the van where an increasingly nervous Chad watched the grass on all sides.

I stopped.

I looked out over the grassy sea to the fertilizer plant. It no longer belched smoke into the sky like it did when I was a kid. A few parking lot lights still flickered to stay lit. The grounds around that plant would be like a city for these things. I stared at it, that piece of my lost youth, and my feet wouldn't move.

Buck stopped and looked back at me. I felt his eyes on me so I looked right back at him. He saw the stupid decision on my face.

“They didn't remember me before. So no one will miss me.”

I held out his rifle.

I could see all the “dumbass kid” lines in his eyes, but like me, he chose restraint. Instead, he shook his head.

“Keep it.”

With his free hand, he tossed me a small box of ammo. Neither of us knew what to say, so we said nothing.

He went back to the van. I heard him tell Chad to “mind his own business and get in the goddamn van.”

I was still standing there when they drove away. I watched as civilization left me behind again. I fumbled with the rifle until I figured out how to reload it. I fired a test shot at the face of a half-formed gnome that tried to pull itself out of the grass toward me, evil intent whistling through the gap where its mouth was not.

It worked.

I turned back to the plant. If I figured out how to pull this off, it was gonna be one hell of a shit storm. I cradled the rifle like I'd seen in the movies and finally managed to move my feet. Time to get to work.