Jacklyn Peters's Story

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"and all was silent, all they could hear was the beat of the metronome through the radio. It pounded with the thump of their heartbeats. Budump. Budump. Budu-budu-budu-budump" Emma pounded her chest as she told her story, the light barely casting shadows on her face. As the heart beats echoed themselves into a hollow hum, she jumped up, sending embers into the faces of the group.

"Shit, that burns Emma!" Brad stood up and walked over to the tree that Jacklyn was leaning against. A trail of smoke flooded from his blunt, as he walked toward her. "Babe, it is a lot warmer by the fire, what's up with you just relax."

"I don't understand weed. Just look, she is still laughing and she didn't even scare anyone. Do you know what kind of things that does to your head?" She looked at him disgusted.

"Fine, whatever. You're such a buzzkill. I thought you wanted to make friends." He blew the smoke in her face, causing her to gag. asshole

"Hey Jack Ass why don't you come sit down!" Kelly shouted through the fog.

"It's Jacklyn," she replied as she made her way over to the closest log. She sat beside a guy who held a blunt out in front of her and tossed his arm over her shoulder, leaning in to study the blunt with her.

"If weed is a weed, then why don't we have more weed then dandelions? Or does it have to grow in pots?" He looked at her completely seriously, and laughed obnoxiously within a few inches from her face. He spat all over her, making her sick. He smelled like beer and brownies, and you could see the remnants of such stuck in his gums.

"Bitch take some already!" Kelly passed her a beer, that she slowly began to sip at. Brad came over and rubbed her shoulders as she drank.

"There you go babe just have some fun!" The group started cheering her on, as she lifted back her head and chugged it. Emma threw more wood onto the fire, then grabbed Kelly's hands and started dancing. Before she knew it, Jacklyn was on her feet, and spinning, and spinning and spinning.

Soft rustling of foliage was the only sound the fireteam had been hearing for the past three hours. Prior to that was the ingestion of pill-like rations and water from flasks. The fireteam consisted of six men and women- unidentifiable under the camouflaged, light fatigues and the face paint that complemented the greens and browns of the patterns of their outfits. Their armaments were all rifles of differing types, but all of them had the unmistakable cylindrical suppressors slipped over the muzzles.

A snap filled the sky, but was muffled mostly by the trees. The otherwise dead silence of the forest made the sharp sound ring in their ears. The entire team ceased movement, while the leader glanced around. After determining a direction, the fireteam leader removed a hand from his battle rifle and pointed four outstretched fingers to their nine-o-clock.

The source of the sound was a distant flickering light. One member motioned for attention.

“What do you see?” the fireteam leader whispered.

The fireteam member had a marksman’s rifle with a scope attached along the top rail. He had been looking through the magnification lens to get a better look at the source of the light. “Campfire, sir,” he returned just as quietly.

“Camp fire?” another asked, “What should we do, sir?”

“The main force is coming through tomorrow, and we can’t have any witnesses,” the fireteam leader replied, “Bury them.”

The rest of the fire team nodded in affirmation.

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Eddie unzipped the fly of his blue jeans a few metres away from the camp. In the shadows, no one could see anything besides the college student's covered backside barely lit by the campfire. Eddie was comfortable that his privacy was being respected… or maybe that was because he was drunk and high and felt abnormally comfortable.

The sudden pain that burst through the side of his head, however, made him emit a shriek of agony as the sobering experience began to sink in with the force of a tidal wave.

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The marksman cursed under his breath. If only the kid didn’t sway haphazardly, it would have been a clean headshot. He only punched the kid’s ear clean off with the first shot. The marksman corrected his mistake two thirds of a second later, but it was already too late. The shrill scream was sure to give away their presence.

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At the camp, Quinn flinched as the roar of agony killed all silence in the forest, only to cut short and give way to a rush of flapping wings and upset forest critters chirping and squeaking in surprise. He only managed to get a glimpse of Eddie falling backwards to see the two glistening red holes in Eddie’s ear and forehead.

“Holy shit!” Kelly- another camper, and Eddie’s girlfriend- yelled. She scrambled to Eddie’s side, only to flinch and drop to the ground in a similar fashion to Eddie.

The nearly-spent roll of green in Quinn’s hand dropped, and was smothered by the non-flammable, slightly moist dirt. Despite his trained desire to help his friends, Quinn felt an unusual feeling in his gut, that feeling that humans suppressed over many centuries of civilization. The instinct that whispered a single thought into his brain: “Run.”

Quinn did not ignore the feeling. He ran. He grabbed the small black hatchet that was laying on a nearby stump for firewood. As he darted away from the fire, he heard quick instances of buzzing bees… but Quinn knew it couldn’t be bees. Bees didn’t zip forwards and send wood chips flying from nearby trees.

He ran, and he ran. He darted around trees for cover and ran some more. Two beers didn’t do much to his sense of balance much, but when combined with the last few drags he took, he was slowly but surely feeling his senses go a little weird.

He ran until the full effect of the weed kicked in. He hadn’t smoked weed before, and his body was not used to the sensation. He comically tripped over a root he couldn't see, and he dropped and tumbled down a steep hillside. In the darkness beyond the fire, he never saw the hillside coming. The hatchet left his grip part-way down, but it did not return with a vengeance after he rolled to a complete stop several metres down the hill.

He lay there, unconscious and covered in the pretentious, yet effective forest-camo light clothing he wore. Everything else that wasn't covered in the greens and browns were swiftly covered in the dirt and dry leaves that were knocked loose by his terrible tumble.