Realising her predicament, Leo’s father changed his tone, instead attempting to help the woman, instructing Leo to remain on the tractor as he climbed down to help her. The woman however didn’t seem too keen to accept his help, shouting something aggressive in English that Leo didn’t understand, whilst warding him off and throwing stones to keep him at bay.
“Stay away! Get the fuck away from me!”
“¡Está bien! ¡Loca!” Leo’s father snapped back angrily and mounted the tractor once more. They left the woman there and continued on, his irritable father muttering under his breath.
After a few minutes on the road, they came to a traffic jam, something rarely seen around these parts, not this far out from the towns or cities anyway and encountering it was most certainly a surprise.
“¿Un accidente?” Leo’s father pondered, attempting to look ahead. It didn’t appear they were going anywhere quickly and drivers in front and ahead were no less frustrated than he, slamming their horns as though they were going out of fashion. Some drivers were already leaving their cars and travelling up the road to investigate, which certainly did no favours for traffic prevention.
Stuck with nowhere left else to go, Leo’s father climbed down from the tractor.
“Vamos, veamos de qué se trata todo el alboroto”, he suggested, coaxing Leo down with the promise of mystery solving.
They abandoned the tractor and made their way to the top of the road. At the top where the road curved to the right towards Levittown, they found amassing crowds of people and birds filling the skies, squawking.
“¿Qué demonios está ocurriendo?” His father grumbled as they approached the crowds, but it was only as they reached the crowds and meandered their way to the front did they find the source of the commotion. There before them, leaning slightly on its left hand side was a ship, but not just any ship, a beached cruise ship and on the sand before it lay bodies sprawled everywhere.
People gasped and covered their mouths in shock, but reactions beyond that seemed far and few. Why was no one helping? Why were the birds hovering above?
Leo could only just about see the grisly scene before him and could honestly say he had never before seen anything quite like it.
Where had this ship come from? When did it get here and why?
Some of the onlookers had already made the decision to run down the banks towards the beach and help in any way they could, encouraging more people to want to help. Soon enough everyone was making their way down to the beach.
Something didn’t feel right. Leo couldn't take his eyes off the birds, even with the frantic voices of those scurrying around him, calling for medical attention, law enforcement and even the press, those birds felt like a bad omen.
Slowly all sounds around him were drowned out by the beating of his own heart, his attention solely on the circling birds. Even his father’s words went unheard.
“Estoy aquí, voy a ayudar”.
Leo was hypnotised by the birds, their presence demanding his attention, warning him or mocking him… then he heard the screams, one at first and then multiple, ripping him away from trance.
Having followed their instincts rather than their intuition, those helping had failed to notice the unusual twitching of the beached corpses, so when the first one sat up and lunged towards its victim, sinking its teeth into their arm, others were too distracted by the man’s shrill screams and the alarming scene, to notice the other corpses around them doing the same. Before long, the beach was a frenzied bloodbath, as the screams resounded through the air.
Leo couldn’t move, he stood transfixed, staring at the scene unfolding around him.
In panic, people fled, shoving past him with complete disregard, stumbling over themselves, making for their cars. In close pursuit were those thought dead and injured, leaping onto victims and eating them alive.
In what could only be described as a moment of gallows humour, Leo could only start laughing, what else could be done? He didn’t know where his father was and the chance of outrunning those things just by looking at other’s attempts seemed slim to futile. Suddenly he could understand a little of what it was like to be an insect in the world of man.
As one of those previously thought dead people spotted him and sprinted towards him with a crazed expression the likes of which he had never seen before, twitching and shaking psychotically, he stopped laughing and simply smiled. Maybe this was it, maybe a miracle would occur, but who knew, this wasn’t his story after all.
End
