Chapter 33: S#6. Jungle Soma (2)
by fnovelpia
“Splat~~~ Phooey!”
The grandma spat a glob of phlegm on the map.
It was a thick, gooey spit.
We all looked at her in horror.
Pointing at us and with a raspy voice, grandma commanded:
“Find yourselves a decent place to die!”
“What… what do you mean?”
“You’re all gonna die a terrible death! You’re marked for death because of your great sins!”
She cursed us. She was completely mad.
“Gas would be the best remedy for a crazy old bat…”
Adolf muttered.
As the grandma continued to point and clack her dentures, Bob hurriedly returned to the car.
The car left the old grandma and the dilapidated gas station behind.
The feeling was terrible.
It was as if a sinister ghost had latched onto us.
After a while, the forest appeared.
The narrow path leading to our destination was too narrow for the car to pass.
“Oops. Looks like we have to walk from here.”
“Men, get ready to march!”
Bob and Adolf got out of the car. Nancy and I followed.
The bare trees swayed in the wind. It wasn’t exactly welcoming.
We stepped into the forest.
Sunlight filtered through the moss-covered greenery.
Dark green shadows seemed to crawl everywhere.
The feeling was still bad.
It reminded me of the forest where I first met Nancy.
It felt as though water-soaked zombies might jump out at any moment.
I warned the group.
“Stay alert, everyone. We might run into something dreadful.”
“Dreadful? You haven’t met my wife yet.”
Bob joked, but his tone was too serious for a joke.
We went deeper into the forest.
The forest path twisted and turned like intestines.
The boundary between the bush and the path blurred, and then disappeared altogether.
The path turned into a rugged trail that only an animal might traverse.
“…Summer. Something’s off.”
“What’s wrong, Nancy?”
“These plants. They don’t belong in the U.S.”
Nancy pointed at the foliage.
It was tropical vegetation that you might find in the Amazon.
What was going on?
But the weirdness wasn’t limited to the plants.
Beetles clinging to the trees were as huge as if they came from a jungle.
The humidity was so unusually high, we felt sticky all over.
Suddenly, Bob at the back shouted for us to stop.
Panting heavily and drenched in sweat, Bob looked as if he’d just escaped a sauna.
“Heck… Heck… I think we’ve been walking in circles… Have we lost our way…?”
“No, we haven’t.”
“How can you say we haven’t! We’re doomed! We’ll starve to death…!”
“Don’t overreact. You ate a donut just three minutes ago.”
“That was my last ration…!!”
Bob screamed in despair.
Adolf next to him looked as if he was dying too.
How the hell did these guys become cops?
While Nancy and I still had energy…
Then someone approached.
No, it wasn’t someone.
It was a maggot.
A body segmented into several parts.
As long as an anaconda and as thick as a bull. It seemed to weigh over a ton.
It had no organs, just a round mouth.
We stood frozen, blinking our eyes.
It felt like a collective hallucination due to dehydration.
But the giant maggot in front of us was no illusion.
The maggot lunged at us.
“Aaaaaaaaaaah!!”
A sharp scream echoed through the forest.
The scream wasn’t from Nancy but from Bob Bojangles.
The maggot aimed for Bob.
Its huge mouth gaped open to swallow its prey.
I threw a punch.
I hit the maggot with all my might.
A piercing punch followed by a heavy impact.
The giant, bloated body twisted.
I didn’t stop.
Charging forward, I rammed it with my shoulder, and the maggot flew into a tree.
Bob and Adolf finally pulled out their guns in panic.
“Ah… Adolf…! Quickly, read it its Miranda rights!”
“Die, die, die, you Jewish bastard!!!!!”
The two cops fired their guns in unison.
Bang bang bang bang bang – The fallen maggot turned into a bullet-riddled carcass.
“Stop shooting, it’s already dead!!”
I intervened.
But it was too late.
Other maggots had come, attracted by the sound of gunfire.
Despite their bulky bodies, they moved swiftly.
One of the maggots swallowed Nancy whole, like a greedy child gobbling up cotton candy in one bite.
Seeing that, I lost my mind.
“Nancy!!!!!!!!!!!”
I rushed over.
I grabbed Nancy’s ankle, which was sticking out of the maggot’s mouth, and pulled her out forcefully.
I was worried she might come out with only bones left, melted away, but luckily, Nancy was intact, just slimy all over with mucus.
The maggot seemed displeased, licking its lips as the prey it had swallowed got away.
It was angry, but I was angrier.
How dare it try to swallow Nancy.
I delivered a soccer kick to the maggot’s body.
The hit area exploded, sending chunks of innards flying everywhere.
The maggot let out a painful roar and extended its long tongue.
It looked like a tentacle, but since it was inside its mouth, it must be a tongue.
I tore it to shreds and killed it.
“Look over there…! The maggots!!”
Bob shouted.
A horde of pale maggots was swarming from all sides, each as huge as a bull.
Their abnormal size was hard to believe, even after seeing it with my own eyes and killing two of them.
What the hell were these things? Mutants?
I pulled out the hand axe tucked at my waist.
The maggots might have been big, but they were soft.
I thrashed the approaching maggots, brutally bending their segments and chopping them with my axe.
I pulled out their green intestines.
The enraged maggots fired their tongues at me, just like frogs.
I dodged the incoming tongues and then ripped them out.
This time, a tongue came from behind.
I crouched and threw my axe diagonally.
The spinning blade cut through the tongue and split the maggot’s head.
I followed up with a dropkick, crushing the maggot’s side.
Bring it on.
I was under the delusion I could handle their numbers.
But there was a limit to how many I could take down with my hand axe.
The slime and flesh of the maggots stuck to my body, reducing my mobility.
To make matters worse, I started to feel my senses blur, possibly due to a paralytic toxin from the maggots.
The two cops beside me were no help at all.
Nancy was providing cover fire instead.
The sight of maggots swarming through the bushes like a pack of dogs was horrifying.
“Run!”
A strategic retreat for an advance… or the opposite?
Anyway, I picked up Nancy and ran.
Adolf and Bob also screamed loudly as they bolted.
Then someone shouted at us.
“Come this way!”
It was a girl dressed in pure white.
We followed the girl, escaping the horde of maggots.
Once we reached a certain point, the maggots gave up chasing us and turned back.
As if they had agreed to do so.
“My name is Lily.”
The girl in white greeted us with a kind smile.
Her face was freckled, and her hair was braided.
She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but her smile was pure.
“Huff, huff… What the hell are those snake things?!”
Bob asked, panting. Lily shook her head.
“They’re not snakes. They’re maggots.”
“Since when did the U.S. have maggots as big as tractors?”
“They’re not just any maggots. They’re children of God.”
Children of God.
What a preposterous thing to say.
I sensed that Lily was part of some cult.
Nancy spoke up.
“…We came to meet Olivia.”
“You’ll meet her soon.”
Before we knew it, we had arrived at a village deep in the forest.
I was tense.
This time it might not be the tongues of maggots but arrows or spears flying at us.
Having two cops with us was no reassurance.
In a cult village in a horror movie, law enforcement is powerless.
As seen in <The Wicker Man,> the father of folk horror.
In lawless lands, cops are helpless.
Especially if they’re incompetent and foolish.
But contrary to my expectations, the village was very peaceful.
Under the warm sun, a fresh meadow gently sloped with small cabins scattered about, and everyone wore white clothes.
Everyone seemed relaxed. It had the atmosphere of a peaceful village.
“Lily. What are you? Amish?”
Referring to the Amish, a Protestant sect.
They thoroughly reject the conveniences of modern civilization, like electrical and electronic technology, and live in isolation from society for religious reasons.
To my eyes, this village seemed exactly like that.
Lily smiled broadly.
“No, we’re not Amish. We don’t have grand doctrines or anything. We just maintain traditions to survive.”
According to Lily, her ancestors committed a great sin and were cursed by some god.
The curse involved being attacked by giant maggots.
This unbelievably disgusting curse has been passed down through generations.
No matter how much they ran, the maggots persistently followed them, preventing them from ever integrating into society.
So, they lived in isolation in the forest…
It was a strange myth.
“We’re in the middle of the forest. Why don’t the swarms of maggots come after us here?”
“Because we’re inside the boundary. This place is like a sanctuary, so the insects don’t invade. It’s as if they’re keeping us enclosed and raising us. You might say it’s like a human farm.”
Lily said it matter-of-factly.
Sanctuary.
So that’s why the maggots hadn’t chased us here.
I remembered the photo enclosed in Olivia’s letter.
A photo of people in white clothes surrounding Olivia, almost like they were playing a game…
“But we’re not completely trapped. We can go out into the forest when the insects periodically sleep. However, we must offer seven sacrifices to the God every year.”
“Seven sacrifices? Do you mean cutting up human intestines into seven pieces or sacrificing seven newborns?”
“Not living sacrifices!”
“Then what?”
“That… I can’t tell you yet. Just know it’s not materialistic.”
Lily explained.
It smelled like a horror movie cliché.
I could imagine the future developments.
“So, you lull us into a false sense of security and then harm us? Trapping us in a cabin or a wooden doll and setting it on fire…”
“I swear, we do no such barbaric acts. <The Wicker Man> is not real.”
At that moment, my eyes lit up.
“Lily, you’ve seen <The Wicker Man>?”
“Of course.”
It’s the 1980s now.
The Wicker Man is a 1973 movie, so it’s not strange at all that she’s seen it.
The Wicker Man
I felt a sense of kinship with Lily.
People often say, “People who like dogs can’t be bad people,” disregarding the fact that Hitler liked dogs.
Just as dog lovers have that belief, I have my own theory.
People who like horror movies can’t be bad.
My trust and liking for Lily skyrocketed.
Bob, hitching up his belt, spoke up.
“It seems we must urgently arrest these maggots and this ‘God’! Where’s the village chief?”
“There’s no leader in our village. We do have the oldest and wisest person, though. Go to that house.”
Lily pointed to a cabin on the hill. Bob’s eyes sparkled.
“I’m starving… Maybe we can get some food?”
“Of course.”
Heading towards the cabin, Bob ran at an incredible speed.
Faster than when we were being chased by cannibalistic maggots in the forest.
Adolf followed Bob.
The village wasn’t very large.
The identical cabins were clustered together, resembling a small miniature set.
Passing by one of the cabins, I saw a small child crouched down.
A cute-looking boy with bright eyes.
Lily said he was her younger brother.
A brother who didn’t resemble his sister much.
He was scribbling something on the ground with a twig.
“What are you drawing?”
I asked. The child then looked up at me.
“Be wary of sin.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you sin, the maggots will gulp you down.”
What the child had drawn on the ground was a picture of a maggot.
Nancy Strode thought about Olivia.
They had been close friends since they met at the age of five.
Nancy, who had no father, was Olivia’s only confidant, even though they lived in different neighborhoods and were in different classes.
They thought they would always be friends.
Until Olivia suddenly disappeared.
“Follow me, Ms. Strode. Let’s go meet Olivia.”
Lily led Nancy.
Olivia’s house was a cabin at the edge of the meadow.
I walked to the front door and opened it.
The rusted hinges creaked loudly.
“Olivia…!”
Nancy stepped into the house.
Despite it being daytime, the inside was surprisingly dark.
It was as if she were blind, unable to see anything.
A sinister chill brushed her neck.
It didn’t feel like a space where people lived.
“Olivia…?”
She groped the walls as she moved further inside.
The sound of Lily’s footsteps following her echoed ominously.
It felt like falling into a bottomless well.
Suddenly, her fingertips brushed against something rough.
It was a curtain covering the window.
So, the reason it was so dark was because of the curtain blocking any light.
Nancy pulled the curtain aside.
As the darkness lifted, Olivia was revealed.
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