Those weird little guys, they called her “Nature Lady,” because she talked to them about the flora and fauna in the woods around Camp Adventure. That was just how they talked, those weird little guys, using words like “flora and fauna,” while the rest of their middle-school-aged peers at this all-boys summer camp were content to talk boobs and butts and farts, or maybe take the not-so-occasional curse word out for a spin. But those weird little guys, they called her “Nature Lady” and the name stuck. And stuck good.
Soon, the other campers and even all the other counselors were calling her Nature Lady as well. At the daily flag-raising ceremony, in the mess hall, and even at the after-hours’ counselors-only bonfires held when the kids finally went to bed, packed away in their bunks.
Nature Lady, pass the salt. Nature Lady, where’s your boyfriend? Nature Lady, Nature Lady…
Those weird little guys were to blame. They’d taken away her name for the summer. Re-christened her as the Nature Lady.
Of course, working at an all-boys summer camp wasn’t the first thing that’d come to mind when Nature Lady was considering post-college employment options. Plenty of her friends were starting in entry-level positions, joining workplaces where power suits and pencil skirts were de rigeur, many of them moving into apartments in fancy-sounding neighborhoods in New York City, California, and D.C.
One of her sorority sisters, Kelly, was starting with a tech company in Germany. Hearing that news, Nature Lady had imagined the girl with her blonde hair and perfect teeth, gripping huge steins of golden- and amber-colored beer, or maybe wearing chic black turtlenecks and waxing philosophical on everything from death to the band Death. Lately, Nature Lady found herself longing for one of those German turtlenecks, figuring it might provide extra protection against all the goddamned mosquitoes trying to eat her alive at Camp Adventure.
But that wasn’t her lot in life.
Derrick (her boyfriend since sophomore year) just had to get (inherit from his old man) the job of running Camp Adventure (“an outdoor wilderness experience for young gentlemen”), and he just had to ask (beg) his girlfriend (who even he now called Nature Lady) to join him for the summer (six weeks in July and August). With nothing lined up that made for a good enough reason to tell Derrick, “No,” she’d found herself bunking with the other female counselor at the camp. This other woman with her straight black hair and nose acne was working as the camp’s nurse, and was also teaching the campers “First Aid and Life-saving Techniques.” She tried to call herself “First Aid Lady,” but the weird little guys wouldn’t give her the time of day. The most attention they gave the other young woman working at camp was to steal the first aid dummy and stab it multiple times with a butcher knife purloined from the mess hall kitchen. Of course, there was never any direct proof. But deep down in her gut the Nature Lady knew it was true.
Needless to say, the name “First Aid Lady” died on the proverbial vine. A non-starter.
In her low moments—occurring more frequently than she cared to admit—Nature Lady supposed she should be grateful for the attention. In a certain light, some might consider it sweet. That was how her bunkmate, Sonia (not The First Aid Lady, no matter what she might say) looked at what was happening. “Oh my gosh,” she’d say, “you’re some boys’ first crush.”
Was that true? Nature Lady supposed it might be. After all, those weird little guys always seemed so enraptured on the nature walks and bird-watching sessions she hosted. They followed close behind her, eyes focused, ears open. Those weird little guys acted as though everything she showed them was a revelation. Meanwhile, Nature Lady was just trying her damnedest to recall everything she’d crammed in her head via old field guides available in the camp’s library.
It would have been much easier to just look up some trivia online. But Camp Adventure had a strict “no electronics” policy that also applied to counselors. “And there can’t be exceptions,” Derrick had told her, “otherwise, folks might think I’m giving my girlfriend special treatment.” (The same reason he gave when she asked why she couldn’t just shack up with him, instead of bunking with Sonia and sneaking away most nights to Derrick’s cabin to fool around.)
Rather than “appreciate” the unsettling affections of those weird little guys, Nature Lady was too busy dealing with the fact it was too hot—morning, afternoon, and night; plus the damned mosquitoes seemed determined to suck all of her blood right out of her body. It took less than a week of working at the camp before all Nature Lady wanted was to go home, to sleep in her own bed. And get her name back.
As the summer continued along in its summery way, Nature Lady also found herself wanting to get away from those weird little guys. It was only a hunch, only a tidbit of a suspicion, but Nature Lady became fairly certain that those weird little guys were planning to kill her. Maybe even kill her and everyone else at the camp before the summer was over and the camp closed for another year.
#
There wasn’t one big “AH-HA!” moment that tipped the Nature Lady over to full-blown suspicion regarding those weird little guys. There were little clues and big ones.rom her first days at Camp Adventure and continuing until that final bloody week. Nature Lady couldn’t say for certain if everything she identified as a “clue” was actually evidence of the plotting and machinations of those weird little guys. But she also decided it didn’t matter.
“One path or another, they’re all gonna take you somewhere.” That was something Carl the Hiking Guide liked to tell the campers and the other counselors. Carl, with his permanently bloodshot eyes and faded tie-dye Grateful Dead shirts, his arms and legs hairy enough that one might mistake him for a civilized Sasquatch.
The first clue—if we’re calling them that—about the sinister intentions of those weird little guys, probably came when Nature Lady had her first session with them. It was the first Monday of camp. “These fellas might think what they’re about to do is boring. But you all gotta make sure they all think it’s fun with a capital F by the time it’s over,”said Derrick. Nature Lady tried to live up to that directive, she really did. But then she noticed those weird little guys for the first time.
The diminutive in their shared nickname wasn’t meant to be cutesy. Each of the boys, all three or four or five of them (Nature Lady could never get an actual, official count of their number), was on the shorter side. Not dwarves, but little. Sub four feet, but just barely. Each well-proportioned, perhaps too well-proportioned.
Watching them clamber onto the picnic tables under the wooden awning where she was set up to give her first presentation on “respecting the environment and the importance of leaving the woods the way we found them,” Nature Lady noticed that this particular group of young men all appeared to be the same height, with arms and legs sticking out the same amount from their same-sized t-shirts and shorts. Those weird little guys even shared the same haircut, a shaggy bowl cut with jagged sides, suggesting they or loved ones with bad eyesight had done the job rather than professionals. Wispy, thin hairs, like baby chick feathers, fell from the heads of those weird little guys, dropping whenever they moved. Brunette, black, or blonde, the hairs felt surprisingly slick, oily to the touch.
The other boys at camp came in all shapes and sizes. Tall boys, short boys, skinny ones, fat ones. Mostly white, but there were some Asian and Black campers, too. A couple of Indian kids. Their diversity made them fade into the background though. It was the sameness of those weird little guys that made them stand out. Plus, there was the way they listened to her. Eyes trained on her, all of them zeroing in on her pale hands as they moved to point at pine cones and leaves and snake skins and an old abandoned bird’s nest that she’d gathered for the presentation.
The other boys at camp spent their time goofing off. Laughing, joking. Sometimes listening, but more often…not. Yet, whenever Nature Lady tried to track what those other boys were doing, she found herself distracted by those weird little guys and their unwavering commitment to watching her every move. That first day, if someone were to ask her, she might say she took their attention as a positive, a sign that her lessons were at least proving rewarding to a small sub-group of the campers. And later that session, when they stood in front of her, after the other campers had rushed off to practice whittling in their wood carving class, and they’d bowed deeply, before tipping imaginary hats and telling her, “Thank you for the informative lessons about nature, Nature Lady,” well, she kind-of-sort-of found a certain goofy charm to what they’d done.
That only lasted until the end of the day, when Clark—who taught the wood carving classes—showed her the crudely carved, overly bosomed wooden idols that those weird little guys had made. Each carving, round and voluptuous like a fertility statue, was stained red at the top, matching the natural auburn coloration of the Nature Lady’s hair.
“It’s blood,” Clark told her, shaking his head. He seemed more bemused than frightened or concerned.
The next day when those weird little guys showed up for their first nature hike with their hands bandaged, Nature Lady’s stomach lurched. She spoke to Clark again, asking him what the kids were carving now.
“Oh, nothing,” he said. “They didn’t show up for class today. Wish they’d at least returned their knives …”
“What?” Josey said, noticing that Clark backed away from her, his hands up in a conciliatory fashion. “You let them have the knives?”
Clark had just shrugged, acting as though it was no big deal. “Boys like knives,” he said.
“But…” Nature Lady’s counter-argument fizzled when she caught sight of those weird little guys standing in a perfect row just past the tree line. Watching her.
“C’mon, Nature Lady, take a chill pill,” Clark said.
That brought Nature Lady’s attention back squarely on him. “What’d you call me?” she asked.
“Nature Lady,” he said, not picking up on the annoyance in her question. “That’s what they’re calling you.”
“Who?” she insisted.
“Uh, everyone,” Clark said, though the way his eyes wandered to the tree line told Nature Lady everything she needed to know about where her nickname originated.
#
The escalation of hostilities proceeded apace. However, the actions taken by those weird little guys were subtle. If Nature Lady hadn’t been looking out for these attempts on her life, she might not have connected the dots.
But she was looking, and so she found them. They included:
– The broken step on the swimming dock that broke just before Nature Lady was exiting the lake to dry off. Kyle, one of the “normal” kids at Camp Adventure, busted his chin wide open against the slimy wooden surface of the dock. Blood gushed from his mouth, producing an unavoidable coppery taste in the air that seemed to permeate the lakeside.
– The brown recluse spider that Nature Lady found balancing precariously on one of the shower heads. She’d screamed and run out of the counselors’ showers without a towel or a stitch of clothing on. Her freckles and how far they spread across her body were the talk amongst the male counselors the whole rest of that day. Derrick had the nerve to tell her she should “be more careful.” No one found the spider upon later inspection. However, one of those weird little guys later went to see Sonia with an allergic reaction that ballooned his little hand up two or three times bigger than normal. Nature Lady started calling that one “Big Hand” because it helped her tell at least one of them apart. The usefulness of the name lasted until she found her pillow smeared with a yellowish discharge like pus. And then, all of those weird little guys went back to having hands that were all the same size.
– The peanut sauce on Nature Lady’s salad—despite her allergies—was the last straw, marking the moment when she felt things had moved firmly from childish pranks and that the others would have to take notice. Those weird little guys were working in the kitchen as part of the rotating duty roster that day.
Nature Lady brought all her evidence to Derrick. “It’s lucky I could smell the peanuts,” she said. Her eyes were bloodshot and she had a frog in her throat that made her words come out in a growl. But she figured that was better than going into anaphylactic shock. Between the poisoning, the spider, the broken step, the stolen knives, and the stabbed-up dummy, Nature Lady figured she’d presented a pretty solid case.
Derrick didn’t agree.
“They’re kids, babe,” he said. Like that was all the counterargument he had to provide.
“So were the Children of the Corn!” Nature Lady shouted, cringing afterward at how loud her voice had gone. But still…she thought.
Instead of saying that, she followed with a more measured, softer attempt at explaining her position. “They’re weird. Scary weird.”
“They’re eccentric,” Derrick said, “and talented, too. You should see what they do at the campfire talent show. They’ve won the last few years.”
He waited for her to be impressed.
Nature Lady returned to her bunk, leaving Derrick—and his boner—to wait a whole lot longer.
#
Camp Adventure’s Annual Bonfire Bonanza marked the kick-off to the camp’s Spirit Week. Spirit Week also marked the final week before the end of summer. Or, at least, the “end of summer” according to Camp Adventure. That bonfire evening, Nature Lady wasn’t sure whether she should sit close to the fire or as far away from it as possible. The vague feeling of impending doom that surrounded her grew more and more concrete with each passing moment. She even considered “calling in” sick, and telling Derrick she wouldn’t be able to make it.
But sharing quarters with a nurse like Sonia hadn’t helped her case in the slightest. Sonia had put her hand on Nature Lady’s forehead, pale knuckles pressed against a paler, freckled forehead, and tut-tutted a bit. Then, she’d headed off to the male counselors’ lodgings, after which Derrick had arrived to beg and plead with his girlfriend (who hadn’t been too friendly to him since he’d dismissed her concerns about those weird little guys) to “just please, please come to the bonfire.”
“It means a lot to the kids,” he told her.
“Which ones?” she asked.
He couldn’t meet her eyes or answer the question.
But she finally gave in and agreed to watch the fire, figuring there’d be safety in numbers at the event. Surely, the little creeps won’t try anything.
She ended up sitting close to the front, but not at the very front—not right in front of the fire. “Counselors need to sit around the middle,” Derrick explained, “so we can keep track of the kids, make sure no one sneaks off. Like you…you’re not gonna sneak off, are you, babe?”
She smiled at him. He was trying, and at least that was something. Maybe.
The bonfire-lit talent show was about what Nature Lady expected it to be. Derrick and Clark kicked things off by doing a rip-off of the old Hans and Franz weightlifting macho men characters from SNL. Nature Lady was sure the reference would go zooming over the younger kids’ heads. But she’d apparently underestimated the comedic appeal of fake Austrian accents because the audience’s laughter traveled in waves around the fire.
Derrick returned to his spot next to Nature Lady, out of breath and sweaty. He kissed her cheek, but she kept her eyes on the roaring inferno a few feet ahead. The colors of the flames danced before her eyes. Their twisting, shifting moments seemed to whisper to her, each tendril of yellow, red, orange, plus the greens and blues at the very heart of the fire—sitting back in the center of the pit, providing a note of enchantment. The crackle and pop of dry wood and leaves was timed like the tick and tock back-and-forth of a metronome.
More acts followed: the daily “Taps”-playing kid treated everyone to a trumpeted version of “Big Pimpin’,” and one of the smart-aleck “normal” kids at the camp did a brief roasting of the counselors but ruined the bit when his voice cracked a little and his cheeks flushed a crimson red, the onset of puberty having the ultimate last laugh. Even Sonia got up and told a ghost story, using her stabbed-up CPR dummy for a jump scare that sent most of the boys into tittering hysterics.
All those performances passed in Nature Lady’s periphery. She kept watch on the fire. A feeling had taken hold of her as if she’d connected to something ancient. She pictured her prehistoric ancestors beholding a similar fire, its tongues of flame trying to taste the night sky. Were they, like her, thinking, ‘this fire is important. It means something.’? Or were they just thinking about eating and fucking and not getting killed?
At last, it was time for the final act. A hush fell over the campfire crowd. It was the type of quiet where even the crackling, roaring fire seemed to lower its volume by a few decibels. Or when the crickets and bullfrogs find something else to do for just that moment.
That was also the time when Nature Lady looked around the crowd, viewing the boys’ faces in scattered illumination, before realizing that she hadn’t seen a single one of those weird little guys all evening. Not laughing at the skits. Not gazing off bored at the athletic feats of their fellow campers. Certainly not shivering and shaking at the ghost stories.
“Watch,” Derrick told her.
Except he didn’t sound like himself. His voice had a strange, echoing quality to it. As if he were calling to her from the bottom of a well, but the well was built deep inside his body. Creating a doubling effect.
Not sure what else to do, she followed his instructions.
#
Because the boys on top were painted red—red, like the tips of the flames, but also red to match the color of her hair, the Nature Lady missed when those weird little guys stood and the shape they’d tied, tumbled, and contorted their bodies into was revealed to the captivated audience. It looked as if they’d been inside the bonfire pit the whole time, waiting for their moment. But the Nature Lady knew that was impossible. It had to be.
The red-painted ones were on top, bent at their midsections, legs hanging off the backs of peers painted mostly in flesh tones. Primary red sneakers hung loose in the night from the red boys. The Nature Lady reached behind her head, her fingertips touching the soft hairs at the end of her ponytail—sensing an unsettling kinship.
Suddenly, there seemed to be far more of those weird little guys than the Nature Lady had ever previously counted. Certainly more than five of them. Bent and contorted, lashed together with ropes and cables and even barbed wire, this multitude of tiny bodies worked together, in tandem. Elbows and knees bent in strange unnatural fashions. Bodies were painted red and flesh-tone, plus green and khaki. The colors matched the counselors’ uniform. Matching the same uniform Nature Lady wore at that very moment.
Squinting through the fire, eyes watering from smoke that seemed to billow more furiously since the onset of the last performance, Nature Lady witnessed a distinct shape emerging from the flames. A human sculpture—humans sculpting themselves into a humanoid shape—revealed itself, like some haunted house attraction springing forward from darkness.
It was her. Standing on each other’s backs and shoulders, hanging onto each other to form approximations of arms dangling loose, “knuckles” brushing against the fire, those weird little guys had remade themselves into a loose interpretation of the Nature Lady’s form. A crudely shaped child’s drawing version of the counselor.
The new Nature Lady was an abomination. A mockery of the young woman’s existence—an existence already spoiled by the subtle machinations of those weird little guys throughout the Camp Adventure Summer. Nature Lady’s hands shook, and when she peered across the way into the fire her doppelganger’s “hands” did the same.
Those Weird Little Guys…the other Nature Lady, whatever the correct term might be, stepped out from the fire pit and stood before the audience in all of her—their—glory. Rapturous applause and wolf whistles greeted this emergence. The boys and young men stamped their feet in the dirt to signal their approval. Sonia was applauding as well.
Even Sonia.
The Nature Lady couldn’t believe it. She didn’t understand how such an ecstatic reaction could come in response to the horror show unfolding before them all.
Keeping her hands at her sides, she pressed her palms down in the leaf-strewn dirt, preparing to rise. She wanted to say something. She felt as if she needed to say something.
But before her words came from her own mouth, they instead emerged from the mocking abomination “standing” before the fire.
“Nature Lady,” those weird little guys said, speaking as one, mimicking her voice. It was a near note-perfect re-creation of her speech. A good enough impression so that even the Nature Lady had to bring fingers to her lips, her throat, making sure she wasn’t the source after all.
“The Nature Lady requires sacrifice. The Nature Lady demands offerings. Seed the earth with blood,” the voice that sounded like hers but was not hers continued. The hurdy-gurdy movements of the false double made her stomach do flip-flops. Bile rose in her throat, scented and sticky with marshmallow residue from s’mores.
“Kill for her. Kill for the Nature Lady. Death is the harvest. Death is what we bring her…”
That was the moment—that brief pause in speech—when she couldn’t wait anymore, when she could no longer ignore the inexplicable, baffling sights and sounds presented to her. The Nature Lady knew that if she didn’t act, then the next step taken by those weird little guys would be to end her life. She ran toward the fire. Screaming, swinging her arms. Angry and afraid and absolutely unconcerned with how she looked or how she sounded.
Approaching the reconstruction of her form, she couldn’t see the individuals comprising this composite being. There was only the hulking, shambling doppelganger towering above her. Hands in front of her, she pushed this imperfect copy, shoving as hard as she could. Shoving until she warmed her hands too close to the bonfire. Her pale skin puffed and puckered in such proximity to the heat. The “Nature Lady” crashed into the fire, sending sparks up to kiss the moon.
She pulled her hands back with a yowl and yelp. And like the snap of fingers, the clapping of hands, the truth was revealed in a horrifically mundane incarnation.
She spun away from the flames and found those weird little guys standing at the edge of the clearing made for the fire circle. They were still painted as she’d seen them moments before. But no bindings connected them, no signs of rope burn or barbs stabbing into their skin. And again, there were just the usual four or five of them. Not enough to make the living statue seemingly constructed to resemble the Nature Lady. While her eyes stayed on that group, studying their blank faces, trying to find meaning in the colors each one was covered in from head to toe, the other counselors rushed past her, panicking, shouting. Some of the braver members plunged their arms into the open flames and dragged out bodies from the heart of the fire.
Not the bodies of those weird little guys though. But the bodies of other campers. Skin bubbling, black and charred in places. Some eyes cloudy and useless. Blood-stained skulls and bones were revealed in patches where the fire had done the worst of its work.
The Nature Lady missed all of these horrendous sights. For her, the sobs and wails of the other campers witnessing their fellows’ gruesome injuries were like the low pulsing murmur of an old radio—where the traffic reports of rock ‘n’ roll DJs are reduced to whispers and the listener grows uncertain whether or not they’re hearing anything at all. The smell of charred, cooking flesh evaporated for the Nature Lady, dispelled before it reached her nostrils. Like she was cocooned, protected from witnessing the very worst of the worst.
She missed Sonia barking orders to the survivors, sending their fellow counselors running for supplies from the camp’s first aid station. She missed the tears streaming from the other woman’s eyes, silent and steady trickling down her face because there was much, too much, to be done and no time for sentiment and emotion.
Derrick’s embrace, the way he put his body between her and those weird little guys standing, waiting, and watching on the periphery, was the sole means by which the Nature Lady became suddenly, shockingly aware of the campfire chaos.
“It was an accident,” her boyfriend said, sounding as if he was more trying to convince himself than comfort her. “You got confused, mixed up. You haven’t been eating. You bumped them but you…you…never thought they’d fall like that. You didn’t push them. No. Of course not…”
Later, when Nature Lady returned to her bunk, leaving Derrick and Sonia to facilitate treatment of the campers suffering from second and third-degree burns and to arrange for an ambulance to come all the way out to Camp Adventure as soon as possible, she discovered green paint on the ground, the brushstrokes spelling out a message for her alone.
“YOU’VE GOT THE SPIRIT. YES YOU DO. GREENS YOUR TEAM IF YOU KNOW WHAT WE MEAN.”
But she didn’t want to play any games. Certainly not their games. All she wanted was to sleep.
#
Nature Lady wasn’t sure how long she’d slept or even if she’d slept. She wondered if maybe she’d somehow managed to fall asleep standing up because when consciousness returned she was still standing outside her bunk. Except the sun was up, pink and plump with potential, inching above the trees. The green-painted letters in the dirt were gone because now her arms and clothing were covered in a muddy emerald-tinged mixture of both substances. Streaks and smears covered her face. The substance, like a mud mask facial, dripped from cheeks and forehead as she moved.
She walked slowly at first, one foot in front of the other. Her heartbeat was steady, regular, as expected. But just as quickly, quick as the gentle cooing of morning birds shifted to screeching, panicked cries, she felt a pounding against her chest. At this signal, she ran across the campground. Heading for the road back to civilization. Disoriented, unsure of who or what exactly she was looking for.
Then, she caught sight of the ambulance. Apparently having arrived better late than never. The last of the injured, burnt-up boys was being wheeled into the back of the rescue vehicle. Derrick—the love of her life or at least so she’d started the summer believing—hopped in behind the final gurney. EMTs closed the rear doors and headed to the front.
Except, the Nature Lady wasn’t so sure that the so-called rescue workers, the would-be saviors, were adult men or women at all. She had more than a sneaking suspicion that they were those weird little guys, back to standing on each other’s shoulders, back to play-acting as grown-ups for their sinister ends. Like cartoon kids in trench coats. She ran after the departing ambulance. Arms waving. Her screams were high-pitched and erratic enough to match the cawing of crows, the delirious medleys of mockingbirds.
The road was a muddy, rock-strewn shit show. A blessing in disguise because the rough conditions were the only reason that the Nature Lady could keep pace with the vehicle. She chased the ambulance, imagining those weird little guys trying to work the gas pedal and steer at the same time. She pictured their shaggy bowl cuts and round, owl-like eyes peering over the dashboard.
Was she going to let them claim more victims?
Kill for her. Kill for the Nature Lady. Death is the harvest. Death is what we bring her…
Arms continued flailing. A dead branch from an old maple, hanging on by a wooden thread, came loose when she struck against it. It scratched her and left jagged splinters in her hand and forearm. But she embraced the offered limb.
She hefted up the branch, holding it longways over her shoulder and then launching it at the ambulance.
An explosion of glass followed. The back windows, supposedly reinforced, bullet-proof even, turned to so many shards upon impact with the Nature Lady’s wooden projectile.
She stopped running. She watched the boxy vehicle tumble over and over. Rolling onto its side, then back upright, then back over again, before smashing into the trees.
When the ambulance came to a stop, its back door swung open like an afterthought. All was chaos in the interior. Nature Lady moved closer, trying to get a better look inside. The blooming odors of spilled gasoline and oil made her light-headed.
She stumbled, twigs and leaves ground beneath her heels with each awkward step. Her eyes grew cloudy as she squinted to see more.
Then, Derrick filled the open doorway at the back of the ambulance. Derrick and the branch the Nature Lady had thrown. His chest was exposed, his camp counselor polo ruined. The gray-brown branch was splashed red, decorated with chunks of his flesh splattered up and down its length.
Somehow, some way, the branch was speared through his chest. Bullseye. Nature Lady couldn’t have asked for a better throw.
Except, she hadn’t asked for it. She hadn’t wanted it. She’d only thrown the branch to stop the ambulance. She’d done it to make sure those weird little guys weren’t causing more trouble, adding to their list of victims.
And where are they, anyway? she thought, already gazing past her boyfriend whose lifeblood was, at that moment, gushing out of his mouth in vomiting torrents. Nature Lady couldn’t find those weird little guys anywhere.
Derrick raised his arm. He pointed a finger out of the ambulance. He pointed it at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She was too panicked, too distraught to add, “But I told you so about those weird little guys.” She kept all that to herself.
New fires burned at the front of the vehicle. Sparks from a damaged dashboard danced amid the wrecked bodies of the EMTs—who were what they had seemed to be after all.
The white-hot fire. Plus the gasoline stench bouquet. Nature Lady put two and two together.
But she was almost too late.
The explosion blossomed before her, throwing her body backward like she was a ragdoll. Her eyes stayed open the whole time so she could watch her lover burnt to a crisp before she hit the ground. She felt heat against her cheeks and chest, searing her skin.
Then, darkness consumed her.
#
Nature Lady stood before the flagpole.
She’d awakened in the woods with the moon already up, darkness spreading between the trees. The fire was out, and the ruined ambulance was a skeleton.
Yet another puzzle appeared before the Nature Lady. Why hadn’t anyone come? Where were her rescuers?
She’d run her hands up and down her body upon waking. Her clothes were gone. Burnt away. The green sludge of paint and ash had hardened around her, creating an armor of sorts over her scorched flesh. The muck mask had also stuck to her face. She gave it a slight pull but stopped when she felt her flesh moving beneath the mask—stretching, straining, nearly tearing. Like she was trying to pull off a scab. Except, picking this particular scab would no doubt take her whole face along with it.
Now, back at camp, she found where the other counselors had gone. The campers, too. All of them were waiting for her. All of them were lined up in neat little rows. All of them were dead. All of them.
Throats cut. Every wound, a jagged mess. Inspecting one of the bodies—wood-carving counselor Clark’s—she followed from the initial puncture site, along a jagged path over his Adam’s apple and across the other side.
The murder weapon was still there, waiting to be found. One of the stolen pocket knives. He’d died with his eyes opened. His brow remained raised, frozen in rictus, as though he didn’t, couldn’t, believe the identity of his killer.
Nature Lady plucked the knife from the dead man’s neck. The blade’s plastic casing stuck fast to the tacky covering of green slop on her body. The apparent murder weapon snapped in place. As though it belonged there, as though it were meant to be a part of her.
She walked slowly along the rows of the dead, plucking knives free where and when she found them. Soon, it appeared as if she held blade-tipped fans, points jutting out from between her fingers, in both of her hands.
Nature Lady wished she had her phone—anyone’s phone. She wanted to take a picture of herself, wanted to get a good look at what she’d become. Muddy and green, burnt and bloody, blades and splinters of wood poking from her body.
#
“You killed everyone,” Sonia cried. Unfortunately, there was no way for the sniveling, crying young woman to wipe away the tears and snot. Her arms were gone. Torn from her body. The same body that was severed at her midsection.
Staring down at her, the Nature Lady realized what Sonia now reminded her of, as blood oozed from the dying woman’s wounds and her guts lay on the ground in spirals. “You look like that CPR dummy,” Nature Lady told her.
Sonia’s mouth opened wide, as if she were about to lay into the Nature Lady with a righteous rant, leveling accusations against her bunkmate. But any potential words seemed to have flowed out with her blood and guts. Instead, the only sound she made was a dry, crackling death rattle.
Nature Lady had only wanted to talk. Had only wanted to help another survivor. She’d found Sonia hiding at the Nature pavilion. “Come on,” she’d said, “we’ve got to get away from them. We have to get away from those weird little guys.”
Sonia had screamed. She’d thrown the Nature Lady’s teaching materials at her fellow counselor—a desperate barrage of dried wasp nests, snake skins, and baby animal skeletons. Cicada shells crunched under Nature Lady’s feet as she deflected the projectiles and tried to make Sonia see reason.
She’d only wanted to take the other woman in her arms. To tell her it would all be okay. To tell her she forgave her. Like she’d wanted to forgive all the others. They hadn’t believed her about those weird little guys.
Those transformed hands had closed around Sonia’s wrists. Knife blades and splintered chunks of wood stabbed through the camp nurse’s skin. In this way, the two became connected. The Nature Lady and Sonia. “Shh,” Nature Lady had said, “shhh, it’s okay. You’ll believe me now.”
But Sonia had only struggled more, trying to tear herself free. As she pulled away, Nature Lady pulled her forward—a tug of war. “Dammit, Sonia,” she’d said, her words mushy, watery, almost inhuman, as the paint and slop on her body leaked inside her tear ducts, nose, mouth, and every other orifice. “I don’t care that you were fucking Derrick. I don’t even care that you all teased me. Made my whole summer miserable. All I care about are those weird little guys!”
The cracking and tearing of bones and flesh separating had served as the sole reply to Nature Lady’s pleas. Then, twin screams—hers and Sonia’s—followed. Nature Lady had shaken loose the severed limbs and, exhausted, fallen against her wounded counterpart. Trying to pick Sonia up—for rescue, for an embrace, for…something—Nature Lady’s pincushion arms had instead sliced the other woman across her middle.
#
Nature Lady watched the life dim and finally fade from Sonia’s eyes.
Then, she felt more alone than she ever had in her whole life.
She stood under the pavilion. Green all over, a hardened shell protecting her physical form. Covering her face. Spikes and blades in her hands and up and down her arms. Her breathing ragged. Her words were barely discernible. Not that it mattered, as the Nature Lady found herself reduced to manic gibbering, punctuated by deep-throated, bellowing sobs.
She walked to the tree line at the edge of the campgrounds. She stood and waited. Finally, the cracking of twigs, the crunching of leaves, and the silence of everything else, announced the arrival of those weird little guys.
“Nature Lady,” they said.
She nodded. Because that was her name. That was who she was. Now and forever.
“We made you,” they said. “We made you like we want to be.”
Bloodshot eyes, held open with sap and spider’s webs and soil rich and black, found those weird little guys. They were like her, like the Nature Lady. Green and dirty, vibrant with the filth of the natural world.
Seeing them at last—looking up at her, hands open to her, the Nature Lady did not find them so weird anymore. No, she thought, they’re seeds. They’re eggs. Fledglings, cubs.
They’re mine.
Kill for her. Kill for the Nature Lady. Death is the harvest. Death is what we bring her…
She called them to her, speaking in a tongue that only they knew, that only they shared. Summer was wasting, but they would remain.