Free Quarrel with the Moon by J.C. Conaway Page A

anything to listen to. No serenading crickets, no rustling leaves, no tiny animals scurrying around the tent.
    Amy was suddenly frightened. She tried to conquer her wild excess of imagination, but she could not. The ominous silence covered her like a cold sweat. "Ted," she whispered sharply.
    "Mmmm," he answered in his sleep.
    Amy stretched out her arm and turned up the dim camping light. Shadows skittered about the interior of the tent like dark and illusive imps. As the light grew stronger, the shadows scampered away. The bright glare made Ted groan. Shielding his face with the back of his hand, he turned over.
    "This is silly," Amy told herself and turned off the lamp. "I'll just try to think of something pleasant." She closed her eyes and, despite the pounding of her heart, forced herself to lie back on the sleeping bag and pretend sleep. Perhaps if she did that it would eventually come to her.
    A sound as soft and insinuating as a malicious rumor disturbed her manufactured dreams. Amy sucked in her breath, lifted her head and listened. Nothing. It was just her fertile, as Ted called it, imagination. Still, she held her breath. There was another sound, then another, and another. Breathing? Footfalls? She shook Ted violently. "Ted, for God's sake, wake up!"
    Dark forms suddenly filled the, tent. Amy screamed, not only with the horror of surprise, but with disbelief in what she was seeing. Strange humped shapes, their outlines undefined, amorphous like an underdeveloped print. An odor as pungent as decay permeated the interior of the tent. Amy struggled to get out of the sleeping bag, but the zipper jammed. Ted, unsure whether or not what was happening was real or the remnants of a nightmare, began flailing around.
    They were caught, caught like two butterflies in a cocoon.
    Amy lifted herself to her elbows. She felt something brush against her bare shoulder. It was furry and stank of the alluvial earth. She twisted her head and shrieked with mortal dread. The tent was swarming with things!
    Ted balled his hands into fists and raised them. "Amy," he rasped. "The zipper! Work on the zipper!"
    Mouths snarling, they sidled closer to the terrified couple. The zipper sprang free and Ted and Amy started to crawl out of the sleeping bag. But they were too late. The leader sprang at Ted, plunging his teeth into the young man's wrist and snapping it like a twig. The pain was crushing; Ted fell to his side, struggling to free his arm. To the left another dark shadow sprang. Amy shrieked as great jaws yawned in front of her face. Sharp fangs tore away her nose and part of her cheek. Another dark mouth closed on the top of her head and ripped off her scalp.
    Ted had managed to wiggle out of the sleeping bag as far as his knees, but then they were all over him. He heard his ribs cracking apart. Then his stomach was opened up, and his entrails were pulled from their resting place. Ted was dying when another attacked his throat, crushing his larynx, taking his life.
    Amy was still alive, but barely. She was wrapped in paralyzing agony. Her small breasts had been torn from her and carried away. The younger ones licked her body with long, wet lavings of their tongues. Amy's consciousness faded, and with it her life.
    The tent became filled with the sound of bones being crushed and flesh rent as the predators devoured their prey.
    ***
    Harry Evers was dead to the world.
    The empty bottle lay next to his foot. His snores were loud and uneven and punctuated the night air like a faulty motor. A chilling gust of wind attacked him from the left. Harry rolled over, and his foot nudged the bottle. It went skitting down over the crest of the burial mound and fell onto a pile of rocks below.
    He pulled himself to his feet and looked over the edge of the mound. The glinting shards of the glass on the rock pile told him what had happened. He grunted, then strained his eyes toward the tent. The light was out. He could imagine Ted and Amy snuggled