Open Season

[We were in Maine this weekend, and I fell asleep while J was finishing his submission, so I apologize for bein' late. This is actually something I wrote before we got back into the blog, and I want to put it up here this week and edit it for next. Feel free to let me know what works for you and what leaves you feelin less intrigued. I know the parts I do and don't like, but it never hurts to have some extra points of view! I think it's too long, so next week it should be shorter—unless I pull out a thread and wind up writing more about that. WRITING!]

This time it was a duck au jus sandwich, left unattended on a picnic blanket while a frantic man in khakis attempted in vain to give a woman in a vintage floral dress the Heimlich. He succeeded in breaking two of her ribs, the pain of which forced her to gasp, pulling the hunk of brie further down her windpipe; she lost consciousness and he jogged in half circles, alternating explaining things to the emergency operator in a shaky falsetto and picking up her limp wrist, meantime leaving the unsupervised lunch by a small waddle of ducklings, the biggest of which muscled his way to the platter in the center and dragged the sandwich closer to the pond, enabling the lot of them to peck through until nothing remained on the plate. The effect was immediate.

Within weeks, the ducks had moved from the pond to the city streets, attacking hot dog vendors, converging on tourists with doggie bags, flocking restaurant dumpsters not for crumbs or stale crusts, not for rice cakes or popcorn, but for the juicy, fatty, tender flesh they had tasted. One at a time, their reptilian eyes peeked out of alleyways. Their soft squawks echoed across unlit streets. Delivery boys and girls refused to ride their bikes through the city, having returned too many times with deep scores in their calves from talons and beaks, tired of paying for meals undelivered, iodine, and bandages.

Precautions were taken, city-wide. People were afraid to buy groceries. Several of the larger chains managed to secure parking garages with labyrinthine entryways, gates, armed guards, and electric fencing. After rooting out and dispatching the half dozen ducks that terrorized one of the larger grocery stores through the ventilation system—feathers and duck shit littering the produce, torn meat packets clogging up the air vents—they were able to keep the fowl at bay. For a while, those without cars took taxis and their chances, crossing the sidewalk and slipping their key into the door with armloads of food and a slurry of feathered desperation pecking at their heels. Some people took to leaving their doors unlocked.

The smaller places, the corner grocers, had to close up shop, because no one would risk the walk laden with bags, and fencing prices had gone through the roof. Restaurants had trouble loading in food, as marauds of ducks swarmed the back alleys. A few enterprising souls had a rotating menu of duck three ways, enticing the brave to come dine on the scourge itself, but it was getting harder to justify the damage done to property and self, and few were willing to pay big money and risk the trip outside.

The areas around the ponds and parks were gradually abandoned as the ducks pushed outward, making ever-widening circles of city uninhabitable. Even if you managed to keep the ducks out of your building, the to-and-fro proved too difficult, too painful, too stressful for even the most calm, nature-loving minds. If one wasn't forced out by the constant fear of attack, one would opt to relocate to get away from the tented communities of vegan pacifists who sprung up, attempting to convert the ducks to veganism and away from carnivorous violence. Despite the frequent screaming and nightly disappearances of human beings, they reasoned that ducks were not genetically designed for consumption of meat, aside from the occasional small fish, and once the initial reaction was purged from their systems, they would revert back to their peaceable ways.

A naturalist among them stole a nest and returned home to force hatch. His last voicemail to his sister was disturbing in its quiet incomprehensibility. The baby ducks had teeth.

Henry Sloane, magnate of a company whose main business was home furnishings, but whose side business was in eider down bedding, began to buy up the city parks and negotiate for rights to all wildlife and air space within and above, effectively locking down a massive market. No one was left to oppose him. The denizens told him all they could to help design traps and were pushing to get his offers approved, hoping he could cull. One night, a team of men and women in head-to-toe protective gear similar to the kind used to train attack dogs swept through the city in near-silence, walking among throngs of ducks—their heads tucked under their wings—to collect abandoned tents, Kashi wrappers, and meatless balls. Following the sweep, a small team with clipboards came through doing a headcount. When they'd converged in an area of high concentration, it is generally agreed upon by all survivors that there was no initial sound, no signal quack, no perceivable sign or symbol, but a sudden rush of wings erupted, unbidden, on all sides—and the battering of duck bodies against a cushioned suit is not a sensation any of those who were left to remember will soon forget. Of the sixty-seven who embarked on the mission, twelve survived. None of them had clipboards. Sloane withdrew his contracts.

A pair of restaurateurs in the south east quadrant of the city was one of the first to try feeding the ducks again. Initial attempts had failed while large stacks of slightly stale bread littered the parks, molded, and were ultimately carried off by ants. This husband and wife team collected the stores from several restaurants that had been forced to close, and with the lack of patrons, everything was close to spoiling. They cooked for three days. They cleared all the tables from the serving area and put piles of food out on the floor. They opened their doors and put more food on the sidewalk and deserted street in order to entice the ducks. They waited. He stood by the bar, begging her to stay locked in the kitchen, watching through the small glass portals. She refused, standing by his side, slipping her hand into his as the sound of talons on concrete grew louder.

The ducks converged. The street and sidewalk fare was eliminated in moments, and the chefs were forced to push back into the kitchen and lock the door, watching the throng grow, downy bodies pressed tight, minor skirmishes breaking out as ducks stepped on one another or pecked out a dominant place by a particularly toothsome pile. The food would run out soon, and the influx of ducks showed no sign of slowing. When enough ducks were pushed against the small circle of glass separating them from the mass that they couldn’t see the inside of the restaurant, they breathed in unison. Her hand hadn't left his, and she put her head on his shoulder and nodded. He kissed the top of her head as he detonated the bomb. It blew away most of the block, and took with it thousands of ducks and two of the most talented chefs the city had known.

Black feathers fell as far away as five blocks, and the smell of burning forced evacuations even farther out. When the emergency and media crews responded, they couldn't get near the heart of the site. A million or more ducks were tearing each other apart to get to the seared bodies amidst a sea of rubble. Ducks smeared in blood and ash were manically hunting through falling brick and twisted metal, tearing at dimpled, crispy flesh, beaks buried deep in greasy thighs peppered with soot. The cannibalistic hysteria was deeply affecting, and several members of each crew vomited, hands shaking for several days, minds forever altered. A few of the more insensate members were discerning enough to recognize their advantage. They called it in, and all authorized enforcement officers who could get their hands on one came to the site armed with a blow torch. The ducks wanted duck.

It was open season. For every duck that was blasted with flame, firefighters were needed to prevent its flapping somewhere it could ignite an uncontrollable blaze, and the ducks that tried to eat it while it was still on fire were likewise tended to as they were immolated. The moment the flames were gone, a new slew of ducks would tear each other apart to get to the carcass. The gourmet district smelled of a mixture of burnt feathers and medium-rare duck. The sounds were inconceivable. The carnage was unfathomable. The scent was mouth-watering.

They worked in shifts as the gutters clogged with duck parts. The surrounding ponds were rainbows of greasy sheen. In the center of the rubble, duck bills dripped fat; small teeth ripped into crispy, charred flesh—their favorite part.

It was about a week before the frosts set in, and they were down to the final couple of dozens when something shut down all of the frantic gorging of the ducks. As one, they stopped fighting, stopped pecking, stopped eating.

They took flight.

A call went out to everyone and anyone with a gun and a hunting license or a badge; unofficially, anyone who had a gun and a chance in hell of hitting a duck or two. Shots rang out, and ducks rained down, bouncing as they hit the concrete. Their Vs fell apart with no spare ducks to fill in the gaps.

Media crews tracked the flocks, keeping a tally on the screen of how many individual ducks remained. The countdown ran swiftly from forty to fourteen. Fifteen minutes passed with that number holding at fourteen. It went down by one, then zeroed out. Throughout the country, people yelled, cried, hugged, laughed, cursed, and celebrated, an outpouring of relief. The displaced began to dream once more of home. The traumatized began to dream of healing. The rest of the country claimed they'd never stood for the quarantine idea that had been bandied about in recent weeks, this display of unity and triumph of the human will proof positive of the willingness of each to help a fellow person in need. The bakers dozen of ducks who were not taken down dreamed of nothing, their minds overridden by the instinct to fly, just fly, for now.