Down Main Street they came, their side-eyed gazes clinging to her. The stragglers, with Broke Beak at their head, stalked towards her, their heads low and the plumage on their necks bristling. Despite their movements, their heads remained static relative to the ground. It felt unnatural, alien in a sense. They were locked in. Nothing Kaysi could do would break it. Gyroscopic focus Dad used to call it. Kaysi began to back away, gripping her short iron. Colt used to call it foreplay because you know you’re about to get fucked. That must’ve been one of his fucking rules.

She counted them with a nervous breath. "Thirteen of you, huh? Thirteen stragglers." The sickly beasts were cast off from the flock, wretched creatures even by the standards of chickens. All thirteen were missing feathers in large clumps. In patches their pucker gray flesh lay bare, exposing oozing, rancorous sores. What feathers they did have were damp, lying close to their bodies. Hints of a rancid odor coming off of those feathers began to drift Kaysi's way. All of them had a smattering of gashes and open wounds, though none bore mutilations as dramatic as Broke Beak. One of the chickens was otherwise healthy aside from a beer bottle stuck on its head. It would try to raise its head and stare down Kaysi like the rest, but the weight was too great. Its head would hit the ground with a soft "clink." But it would keep trying. The chicken was like a metronome with its determination. "Eh," Kaysi said to the chicken. "You don't count. Let's call it twelve."

A brown hen missing an eye, stiffened and keeled over. Kaysi rolled her eyes. “Awesome. Eleven.... anyone else wanna do me a solid and die?”

None of the remaining chickens complied. The horde kept coming, with Broke Beak at its head, a level of malice in its eyes that seemed impossible for a chicken.

Kaysi put the mangled shopping cart between herself and the chickens, holding the handle in one hand. Her heart began racing a she pivoted to follow them, the movement putting her back to Hill Road. Eleven is still fucked. Gotta think. Gotta find a way out. I can outrun them. They're goddamn stragglers. Nevertheless, Kaysi gripped her short iron in her free hand, ready to defend herself. One chicken’s annoying. Three’s a problem. Eleven will swarm me, easily. Gotta get away.

She looked up Main Street and deciding that there was no chance of her escape. Too cluttered. Too much bullshit to trip me up. Goddamn, I’d give someone else's left nut for an open field so I could just outrun them. Chickens were more agile than they were fast. At times humanity's evolutionary focus on their minds made them a poor fit for the chicken's world, but they still had their unmatched ability to run. With a straightaway Kaysi knew she could outpace them....if she could survive their initial burst of speed. If she could, then through the power of slow-twitch muscle fibers, sweat, and a can of peach preserves she could beat them. If I gotta weave between those wrecks, it’ll slow me down too much. Those assholes can just fly over them. She squinted down the street. The rusted-out hulks were washed into Mainstreet by decades of flocks...or at least most of them were. Some were cleaner, more pristine looking. "Garage jobs," as she called them. Cars that she had fixed up, had too much fun with and discarded amongst the Main Street wrecks. "Goddamnit Kaysi..." she muttered to herself.

Broke Beak’s horde rippled at the sound of her curse. They moved to head her off from Hill Road, her only other escape route. “Can we talk about this?” She watched their reaction. They hesitated, their bird brains unable to decipher what her words meant. Kaysi raised an eyebrow. She used the hesitation as an opportunity to reposition the cart between her and the horde. She grabbed at those precious moments, using them to try and think of a way out of her predicament. “Look Broke Beak, about earlier...I was talking a ton of shit.”

There was another pause as the chickens regarded her with a confused look. She backed away, maneuvering her cart past a piece of wood that lay on the road.

“I was projecting my stress onto you, which I’ve been told is a dick move.”

Pause.

“This ain’t nothing new, you know. I don’t know if you noticed, but I ain’t exactly surrounded by friends here, you know?”

Pause.

Finding a clear lane, Kaysi moved the cart back and forth, clearing out the wheel wells.

“It’s actually your fault. Yinz chickens are just vibe killers. You know? All of you.”

She found another can resting at her feet. She added it to the cart for good measure. Every little bit counts.

“See, all of you are some disgusting ass monsters after all...not ass-monster. So can you blame me? Right now, you all are all ready to swarm me and peck my eyes out and leave me bleeding to death with no one to help me because of the, ya know, the whole 'no friends' thing. We just don't got compatible personalities- “

Broke Beak let out a blood-curdling, distorted wail accompanied by flecks of spit and blood.

Well fuck, I guess diplomacy isn’t gonna work. Their stance became more aggressive, wings spread and ready to propel them forward. She glanced towards the tipped-over bus, the only semblance of shelter within the tiny radius she had to work with before they swarmed her. The chickens bunched up in front of her. Ain’t gonna have a better chance, she thought, taking a deep breath. Move fast, don’t hesitate, and watch your heels. If they get me on the ground, I’m fucked. ‘Death by a thousand cuts’...fucking Colt.

Mustering all of her strength, she thrust the shopping cart at the horde. The cart barreled towards the stragglers, sending them scattering in an explosion of feathers. She saw the cart bounce and jerk as it struck a chicken, but she took no time to confirm the kill. Short iron in her hand, she dashed through the maelstrom in the wake of the cart. She kept her head down, focused only on what was in front of her, dodging debris and the corpse of a chicken.

The stragglers coalesced behind her, reforming and beginning their pursuit. The cart had passed through them like a stone dropped into a pond. Her efforts amounted to little more than a ripple. Doesn’t matter. Keep going.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She felt something picking at the heel of her boot. The stragglers pecked at her feet in an attempt to "heel" her. As long as she was breathing, they would consider her a threat. They would peck at her heels hoping to trip her up so that they could swarm her. Instinct told her to turn around and swing at them with her short iron, but that would be a death sentence. She kept running. When she no longer felt the pinpricks, she juked left and made for the bus...

But when stumbling to the ground after stepping on something soft and squishy. She looked up to see the bottled-headed chicken running away from her. Its screams muffled beneath the sound of glass dragging along the pavement.

Within moments the horde was on top of her. She could feel their talons digging into her legs. Her jacket offered little cushion for the beaks digging into her back. Their cumulative weight was smothering. Every movement was a feat of determination. Her mind raced through all the stories. All the Legends of the Wilds who came face to face with a horde and lived to tell about it, and all of those who have succumbed to the swarm...

But momentum was on her side. Her tumble had deposited her at the back end of the bus, within reach of the emergency exit. With one hand she grasped the handle and pulled herself to her feet. With the other she flailed with a wild ferocity with her short iron. A cloud of feathers swirled around her as the metal head of her short iron struck meaty bits of stomach flesh. The horde abated for a precious few moments. Kaysi twisted the door handle and stumbled inside the bus. She slammed the door shut, but instead of the solid metal "thunk" she was hoping for, she heard a squawk. She looked down to see a now dead chicken that had wedged itself in the door.

“Goddamnit,” she cursed through heavy, desperate breaths. Adrenaline surged through her. The chickens were airborne now. They flew at the bus with their pitiful wings, throwing their bodies at the door. If she could have closed the door, she would have been safe, but it was too late now. I need higher ground.

She raced along the upturn seats. Finding an emergency exit window, she climbed on the rotted faux leather and wire seats. She knocked the window out of the way and climbed through, feeling the nipping beaks of chickens beneath her.

Now, in the open with the cool morning breeze stinging her scraped-up cheeks, she allowed herself to catch her breath.

Her smile was not one of malice but of promised catharsis. The bus was so low that they could hop up here. She gripped her short iron in her hands, wielding it like a great sword. And that’s just fine.

In a matter of moments, the horde of stragglers found her. Any semblance of a pack of old-world wolves the chickens had was gone, it was only an illusion caused by their singular focus; their desire to kill Kaysi. Using their limited flight, they began a haphazard, uncoordinated aerial assault, attempting to land on top of the bus.

While familiar with firearms, Kaysi had no desire to wield one. Nor did she have the strength required to use the heavy clubs or mallets favored by most who traversed the Wilds. Her size was her greatest advantage when facing danger. Running and hiding was almost always her best option, but for the times when neither were possible, she had her short iron.

The chickens launched themselves at her one or two at a time. Kaysi focused in on one, a hen whose speckled gray feathers had begun to turn green with rot. She watched as it hurtled up towards her, waiting until its arc reached its zenith. She swung. The metal wedge dug into the airborne chicken's vertebrae, snapping its neck with a sickening crack. She whirled around when she heard squawking at her back, striking a chicken out of the air with a bone-shattering body shot. The chicken lay on top of the bus, spasming and warbling before Kaysi stomped on its neck and kicked it off. A third had managed to land in front of her. It lunged towards Kaysi. She swung the short iron in a wide arc, and struck the chicken in the head so hard it eyes popped out of its head. It slid off the bust like a bag of wet sand.

She gritted her teeth and cursed as she continued her rampage, hurling insults at the chickens as she dispatched them with lethal precision. Only when the air became thick with bits of feathers did she stop, as she was spitting them out after every breath.

Amidst her fits of her hacking coughs, the surviving stragglers fled, leaving behind a half dozen their kin, fresh amongst the dead. Kaysi stood atop the bus, raising her short iron in the air, her voice a high pitched squeak.

“That’s right you mother fuckers-“ Cough “-That’s what you get when you fuck with someone who’s brain is larger than a test-“ Cough “-icle. You got wings idiots! But you can barely fly!” Cough. “How do cloaca’s even work?”

She ceased her taunting when she noticed Broke Beak, still amongst the living, giving her a side-eyed glare. Without even a mocking squawk, he strutted away, disappearing down Main Street.

“Stupid Broke Beak,” she muttered. “Acting like he can’t give a shit about this rivalry…” She paused, remembering that chickens in fact did not have the mental capacity to maintain a rivalry, and that mere moments ago she had made fun of the chickens for their testicle sized brains. Well, he doesn’t have to act like he’s better than me.

Satisfied that the chickens were gone, she went to climb down from the bus but froze when she felt an unpleasant sensation on her knee. It was the feeling of cold, rusted out metal, and a light breeze siphoning the heat from her bare legs.

“No, no, no!” Her fingers ignored the coin sized bruises forming around her calf. Instead, they picked at the threads of her once glorious cargo pants.

Tatters, was the only word her despondent mind could conjure. Wet, blood covered rags hung from her hips. With a ritualistic care, she pulled her pants off and laid them on the bus. All of the once mighty side pockets were gone. Only bits of thread and torn up rags remained of the cavernous pouches. Not even those dinky little pockets that’d I put coins in survived.

“Maybe,” Kaysi whimpered as she cradled the rags in her arm. “Maybe I can fix them. Maybe I can scrinch them…er…sew them like Scrinch did. Fuck…Scrinch had the passion, and two little people that he said sat on his shoulders that told him where to put the needles. And what do I got…Maybe I can duct tape them back together. Something…anything…”

“Fucking assholes!” She yelled into the emptiness of Koppel. She hoped Broke Beak could hear her. Hoped that it could somehow understand what it had done to her. At the very least she hoped her screaming and curse would draw him back so that she could have her revenge…she shook the thought away. “You couldn’t have taken my boots? Plenty of fucking boots around. But no! They’re just fine. Barely a mark on them! Assholes!”

She sat down, dangling her bare legs off the side of the bus, depression taking her as she tried to gather her thoughts.

“They’re gone,” she told herself. “You have to accept that and move on Kaysi. Gotta be a big girl. You aren’t the first person to lose a pair of cargo pants…”

A thought hit her. A spark of hope. “The Galleria of Geeks!”

As soon as the words left her mouth, a darkness seemed to shroud the valley. That’s a bad idea, she thought. No scrapper has been there since…well, forever. I’ve only heard rumors, but nobody goes in that place for a reason. She sighed. But it was a mall, and it wouldn’t have been picked over. If there’s any place that has a sweet pair of cargo pants, it’s gotta be the Galleria.

Kaysi hopped off the bus and set off for the Galleria of Geeks…then turned around when a chill wind reminded her that she was pants-less. Not that she had any shame. God knows the ghosts of Koppel hand seen her in far more embarrassing circumstances, it was rather cold.

Still, she felt good. The loss of her cargo pants stung, but for the past few months she had been aimless. Wondering around her sanctuary waiting either wither away or for her desperation to drive her west like everyone else. Now she had purpose. She had a mission.

“Man, I’m gonna miss those pants.”