In the Language of Scorpions. Charles Allen Gramlich

and void,

      wasting out their life,

      in blood.

      ROADKILL

      No moon.

      A sky flecked like mica with stars.

      My Harley is redlined, the V-Twin burning between my legs. It’s always been dangerous riding fast at night. More dangerous now. But since the “Change” I have nothing to lose, no one to care if I lay the machine down.

      Then I see her, lying across the blacktop.

      Dead, I think.

      But she moves when I swerve to avoid her.

      I get the bike stopped, u-turned, wince as I see.... Her back is broken.

      I hang the bike on its kickstand, the headlight painting her, refracting jewels from her liquid eyes. I rush to her, kneel.

      She opens her mouth but makes no sound. How can she be alive? How can she breathe with a chest half crushed? What is she doing so far from the protection of a Safe-Haven? What sick fate sent a vehicle to rendezvous with her at this lonely spot? There are no signs of burnt rubber. Whoever hit her hadn’t even slowed down.

      I try to force, “It’s OK,” through my lips. The meaningless words won’t come.

      Then she looks past me toward highway’s edge. I turn, see some shadowy movement. When I turn back she looks like she’s sleeping but her chest no longer rises and falls.

      My feet follow where her gaze had pointed, and I see why she’d been crossing the road. See what she was returning to. Or running from.

      Her puppies had been born dead. But in this new world they haven’t stayed that way. Their eyes aren’t open but their noses work. They smell me, and squirm toward me through their mother’s afterbirth, their baby teeth stark and white and gnashing.

      I back away, then scream as a sudden flashing agony lances my legs. I fall, roll instinctively away from the source of pain. The mother hound’s mouth is flecked with foam and blood. My blood. Her eyes have been reborn as scarlet hells.

      I try to get up, find she’s torn out my Achilles tendons. Still screaming, I scrabble away along the highway. The hound growls and hitches herself toward me, her front paws slapping at the asphalt. Intestines unravel behind her.

      I laugh hysterically as I realize the mother’s broken spine will keep her from catching me.

      Then I see the puppies. On the road. They can’t walk either. But they’re crawling faster than I am.