TWO

 

"Even after all these years," mused Abby, "all that volcano stuff in the sky…it makes for real beautiful sunsets, don’t it?

The sun was setting—lowering itself into the Pacific Ocean—a horizon of fiery orange-red glare. To the east, a line of dark approached—the shadows of evening making their first appearances.

Abby and Frankie sat cross-legged on a weather-beaten picnic table, overlooking the waves. They were halfway down a hill, on a small cement patio; fifty feet below was the water, fifty feet above, their beach house.

A tilting stone staircase connected all three.

There was a pile of orange peels below the table, lodged here and there in a layer of invasive ice plant that covered the ground all around them. On top of the table—within easy reach—were the girls' weapons.

Two submachine guns and three machetes.

Frankie moaned in delight, practically devouring a handful of orange slices; juice ran down her chin and she licked at it greedily. "Love oranges!"

Abby spit out an orange seed. "You love everything."

"Don’t love skeeters," Frankie quickly corrected her sister.

 

 

FRANKIE

 

When the Event happened—it brought the skeeters out of hiding.

This was called the "Awakening".

Abby said that most adults thought that the volcano going off in Jellystone must have opened a door to a secret world under the ground, and that was how the skeeters got out. Other people thought that maybe the skeeters had been hibernating somewhere and they simply woke up.

The old-timey newspapers—they said it was the ‘Awakening of the Beasts’.

But there were other people who said that the Event and the Awakening were actually this bible-thing called the ‘Rapture’.

They believed that the skeeters were beasts that came from Hell, and that they were sent to earth by God to eat up all the bad people.

The real truth was, however, that nobody ever did find out where the skeeters came from. They just showed up one day and started killing…and they never stopped.

So, whether they’re vampires or demons—Abby and I don’t know.

What we do know, is that they stink…like really bad.

Abby jokes that their smelliness is our ‘skeeters early-warning system’.

Doesn’t matter if you can’t see them—you smell skeeters, you darn well better start running.

By the way, it was Abby who came up with the name ‘skeeters’.

The old-timey newspapers always called them ‘Beasts of Unknown Origins’ or ‘Unidentified Beings’. There was even one newspaper, it called them ‘Were-vamps’.

For us, though—it’s skeeters.

Although, when Abby grabbed me that first day and we started running—like before I can remember—Abby said that she was calling the beasts sh*t-kickers.

She said that it was because she overheard our daddy tell our mommy just after the Awakening that—if you come up against a beast—you get out real fast, because it ain’t easy beating them. Abby said that Daddy told Mommy that the beasts are big and tough and they’re scary, and that they’ll sure as heck kick the sh*t out of you.

So—that’s when Abby started calling them sh*t-kickers.

However, even though it was a really good name, Abby eventually felt kind of bad using it—because sh*t is a bad word…and poop-kickers just sounded kind of stupid.

That’s when they became skeeters.