Duck and Run
by Josh Dale

My Dad and I are driving home from a family dinner on a Sunday. Turkey and potatoes sit in my gut. The sun turns the sky purple. His easy-going driving down the back roads put me to sleep. But then a freaky scratch awakes me. Then a thump. I jolt my body up. I feel warm like my heart just restarted.
“What the fuck?” my dad says. 
He never curses.
“Dad, what happened?” I say. 
He pulls our Ford station wagon into a McDonald’s parking lot. He gets out first to look around, leaving me inside. I’m anxious as hell. My dad touches something weird on the roof. He pushed something over the backseat window. It blocks out the one streetlamp.
He yells, “There’s a damn duck up here!”
I get out and see the wing on the window. It flew underneath the bike rack, choking itself to death. Or worse. The feathers have speckles of green. Looks like blood. There are bumps on his head. Like horns. Its webbed feet are huge, too. And red. I step back and get goosebumps on my arms. They feel warm. I want to run.
“Gonna call the cops,” my dad says. He opens his door and snags his cellphone. “I ain’t touching this thing anymore.”
I sit on a concrete curb. He chats with the operator, says ‘duck’ multiple times. Sounds like they’re as confused as we are. Like the time I accidentally called 911 when I was a little kid. Those cops in black scared me then. I’m 13 now and still anxious. My dad ends the call and comes over to me. I’m tapping my foot to a crazy song in my head. A metal song I heard in a video game.
“Police are on the way.”
“I’m gonna take a nap,” I say, trying to get the song to chill out. I lie myself down onto the dry mulch. “Can I get a McFlurry after this?”
My dad grins. His bushy mustache covers his top teeth. He shakes my hair with his blistered hand. “Sure, bud.”
I close my eyes for, like, a couple minutes. The sirens stab my ears until they get close. Then I hear car doors open and slam, guns clicking and clacking. Then the bright spotlights make it basically lunchtime.
“Man, and boy, get on the ground, hands out!” one of them screams. Some deep-voiced dude.
I lift my body and there are three squad cars. Cops in all black again. But with gas masks. Big rifles and shotguns like in video games. My skin gets warm, and I want to run. I look at my dad. His arms are up in the air. I see the old bird tattoo on his shoulder. It’s flying upside down.
“Boy, get on the ground,” a lady cop screams.
“Secure the bird, Thompson.” 
And now there is a person in a rubber suit at our car. My dad gets down, so his chin is on the road. I copy. Cold metal cuffs hit our wrists. A strong arm lifts me by my shirt. It tears a bit on the sleeve.
“It’s the one,” the rubber-suited Thompson says.
They hold the giant bird by its legs. Its wings are huge and slimy purple under the light. They walk it back to a big white van I couldn’t see with all the lights. The cops check our pockets, ask, “Did it touch you?” We shake our heads, say, “No, no,” all crazy. The quiet one with the shotgun now breaks out a temperature gun and hits us both with the laser. I breathe fast. I want to run.
He finally says something. “They’re clear.”
“What is going on?” my dad finally says. They uncuff us. The color in my wrists goes back to normal.
The lady cop says, “Sir, we’ve been tracking this mutated bird for years. It’s a shame you killed it.”
“It looks freaky.”
“We call it the Goopy Grouse.”
My dad shrugs. I giggle at the name, but my mind is all over the place. Did we kill, like, the Jersey Devil’s cousin?
“Citizens have called about this big ass bird a lot,” the deep-voiced cop says. They all take off their masks. “Can never find it when we arrive.”
We hear a “Hey, wait,” from the truck then a loud screech and flapping sound. It’s a couple cars away, but I see pieces of skin and muscle fly up and Thompson screams only once. Then the bird jets up with big flaps and cops take shots at it and miss. It screeches and flies away and two of them get in a cop car and chase it with the sirens blaring.
I hear nothing but “Oh shit, oh shit” and doors slam and people are yelling and drivers on the road stop to look and then Thompson stands up with blood all over his body and moaning like a zombie and he charges us and eats a few bullets and but tackles the deep-voiced cop to the ground and rips his throat out so he doesn’t sound like that anymore then my dad scrambles away and falls over the curb and his bird tattoo is forever grounded so I try to pick him up but Thomspon grabs my dad’s foot and I’ve never seen him scared ever in my life until now and he tells me to run and I feel the warmth in my body and I want to run so I do.