I need to block the hole. Is that my blood? Of course it’s my blood. Who else would be bleeding? Am I alone? Is the creature going to break through the hole? How messed-up are my hands? They hurt so much. My shoulder hurts too. Maybe the creature is bleeding; it got shot, didn’t it? How long will this light stay on? Why is there power down here? What the hell is that thing, a giant spider? If I find a sharp stick, maybe I can stab it. But what’ll happen if I do that? Will it try to get in here? I guess it doesn’t matter. It already wants in here. I can’t believe I dug my way through the wall! I can’t believe I tore my fingernail off. Is it going to grow back? Are my hands gross looking?

Pat looked at his hands.

Yes. Beneath the plaster and dirt his hands were gross looking. There were no broken bones, thank God, but his hands had never looked so bad. In several places his muscles were bunched up like discarded towels in a locker room, the area around his knuckles had bulged into oddly shaped knots, and the skin around his fingertips had become mangled to a point of vulgarity. There were also dozens of deep pricks that were swollen and bleeding non-stop. Only one finger was missing a nail, but with every finger covered in blood and coated with plaster it didn’t look different then the others.

While he studied his hands, the creature moved its leg towards him.

He didn’t look at the leg, not yet. He was too enthralled with his wounds. He wondered if his hands would be permanently damaged or just temporarily injured. Assuming his injuries were fleeting, how long until his body healed? As a child he always recovered quickly; his mother often commented on it. But he was older now, not much older, but older.

Three weeks, he thought. Maybe less?

From the corner of his eye he saw the limb sliding across the floor. Gunshots blasted and the leg zipped out of the hole, grazing the strapping. In spite of his pain, Pat smiled a big goofy smile. He knew what was happening: someone was firing a weapon, trying to save him. Best of all, it seemed to be working. The creature was leaving with a new objective, one that didn’t include him.

I’ll get through this yet, he thought, turning away from the hole. Oh yes I will.

More shots were fired.

He noticed a door that looked like all the rest. He walked towards it, put a hand upon the knob and opened the door.

 

 

19

 

Nicolas said, “Get out of the car, do it slowly and don’t make any sudden moves.”

William felt like crying. He needed something to happen, something good. Hopefully he hadn’t missed his chance to turn the situation around. It would be a shame it he had.

He said, “Should I leave the keys in the ignition?”

“No. Turn the car off and take the keychain with you. Once you’re outside you should approach the front door. Don’t bother running away, I’ll only shoot you down.”

Will removed the keys, opened the door and stepped out of the car. He slammed the door shut harder than he intended, glimpsed at the squirrel torso and made his way to the cabin, following a cobblestone path that was rather nice.

Nicolas tagged along at a safe distance. He said, “Check the door, will you? It might be open. Sometimes I forget to lock it.”

William checked. The door wouldn’t open. “Locked,” he said.

“That’s alright. We can get through this, no problem. By the way, you might want to remember that Big Beth is still in the trunk. So if you’re going to play hero––and fail––I’ll punish her for your actions. That’s the way I do business. I’ll chop her into a thousand pieces and fertilize my lawn with her. When I’m done I’ll blame you.”

He expected the place to look like a scene from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He figured there’d be bones in the corners and chickens carcasses strung up on hooks. He expected blood splashed on every wall, an upside cross hanging above a pentagram, and a goat skull with flames shooting from its nostrils. He expected Satan to step through the gates of hell with a huge, red cape blowing wildly against his pitchfork, singing ‘Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be’ by AC/DC while blood poured from his eyes.

He was wrong.

The place was nice, clean. The furniture was old but well maintained. The walls may have benefited from a fresh coat of paint and new baseboards but the same could be said for his place. The fireplace looked like it could use a scrubbing but whose didn’t? Bottom line, the cabin looked normal.

“Sometimes I make messes,” Nicolas said, as if reading Will’s mind. “But mostly I clean messes. I like cleaning. A woman’s work is never done and all that gopher-shit. Got to admit though, downstairs is a different story. I’ve got rats and mice, flies and cockroaches. I’ve got seventy-five loads of laundry that needs to be washed and babies that need feeding. The house has a foundation problem I don’t know how to fix, and I’ve got leaky pipes that get so cold in the wintertime, icicles hang from them like little fingers. Step inside and I’ll show you around. Put the keys on the table. If you try anything funny I’ll blast your arms off, scoop out your eyes and bury you in the yard.”

A table sat below a mirror in the front hall. William placed the keys on it and kept walking. He needed to do something. He needed to fight back somehow, but every time he considered fighting the psychopath painted a picture of violence. He didn’t want his arms blown off and his eyes scooped out. He wanted to go home, eat ice cream and watch television. He wanted to find a wife and start a family. He wanted to be free of this nightmare and think happy thoughts.

He decided to open the lines of communication. He said, “Hey, do you think––”

Nicolas interrupted. “Shut up Dead Man. Next to the kitchen, there’s a staircase. See it? It leads to the basement. Go there. I’d like to show you the basement, if you don’t mind.”

Will stopped walking; his shoulders slumped. “What do you want from me?”

It was the wrong thing to say, of course. Nicolas knew it; William knew it too. But going into the basement wasn’t a good move and if William could stall awhile he might come up with a plan.

Nicolas said, “We were getting along so well, remember? You told me you’d do anything I wanted, right? Yes or no: did you say that?”

“I suppose I did.”

“You suppose? You suppooooose? What do you mean you suppose? You either did or you didn’t. And you did, you did. I heard you. Don’t start lying to me Dead Man. Don’t you dare. If that’s the relationship you wanna develop you can forget it. I’ll terminate our affiliation immediately.”

William turned around and Nicolas allowed it.

“You’re getting brave now, I see. Is that what you want, hmmm? Do you want me to conclude our coalition? Do you?”

“What?”

“You heard me. Take off your clothing or I’ll shoot you dead. You can leave your underpants on if you want. I don’t want my babies seeing something they shouldn’t be seeing. They’re too young and innocent. Now go on… do it. Do it now. And throw your clothing in the pile.”

Reluctantly, William removed his clothing and threw them on the floor. He didn’t toss them far; he was hoping he’d need them before long.

William walked down the rickety staircase and into the cellar with nothing on but his underwear. He created a mental image of a baby in a crib needing a change of diapers. He knew better, of course. The psychopath couldn’t be doing an okay job taking care of a baby. It wasn’t possible. Knowing this, he braced himself for what he was about to see. He expected it to be bad. Not just bad, in fact, but horrific. He imagined underfed, unloved babies needing a doctor and a real home. He imagined a dead baby, a murdered baby. He even forced himself to imagine a baby that had been burned to a crisp and nailed to the wall, because he knew it would be bad. It had to be bad. Of course it would be bad.

He thought he was ready but he wasn’t. He never imagined adults. The shock of seeing two women locked inside separate cages twisted a screw inside his mind he never knew existed.

He looked at Cathy first, then Olive, then at the empty cage.

Cathy. Olive. Empty cage.

Empty cage.

His mouth slinked open and his eyes dawned like the morning sun. His shoulders raised and his knees began to shake.

Why was there an empty cage? Oh shit… why?

He turned around quickly, shocked and disgusted and scared half to death. He thought the empty cage had his name written all over it. He held out his hands as if to say, this isn’t really happening, is it? Not to me––not to good old William McMaster! I’ve got a business to run and a house to maintain! I’ve got a new television and a handful of DVD’s that need watching! I’ve got some good years ahead of me and this isn’t the way I want to spend ‘em! And why would I? I don’t want to be locked inside a cage! I’d rather die!

The forecast for the days ahead came with such vivid force that Will almost coughed up his lunch and released his bladder at the same time––him living inside a cage for years and years, tortured on a daily basis. Was this his future?! Dear God, really? But it had to be! It just had to be! Why else would the psychopath lead him to an empty cage?

William saw it happening but he didn’t understand. Things couldn’t change gears so quickly, could they? What about the cage? Was that not his future? Was that not the place he’d spend the weeks and months ahead? Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe he’d learn to enjoy it. If not enjoy it, he could surely teach himself to endure life inside the cage, couldn’t he? Was it not possible for a man to live––

The shotgun blasted and William’s kneecaps exploded beneath him.

There are no words to describe what he felt at that moment, for physical pain is an experience with boundaries and limitations. Physical pain has a kill switch that transforms all levels of suffering into a whole new entity, one that clouds the things you see and hear, one that deletes your thoughts and fears while erasing your dreams and emotions. Pain on such a scale is not a white-hot poker in the pit of your stomach. It is not fire melting your pores together. It is more. It is your universe being crushed by a God that punishes you with hatred and vengeance.

William crumbled forward with his eyes round and fit to burst. His face became as white as a face could be. He hit the floor hard, knocking two front teeth from his mouth while breaking his nose. His arms twitched, his body convulsed and his nose bled. His mouth opened and closed like an upstream trout. Both legs were destroyed. Even if he had been rushed to the hospital that very minute, nothing would have saved them. The bone above the knee, the bone below the knee, and the knees themselves––all had been annihilated. Veins hung from garbled meat like wet crabgrass. The neighboring flesh was charcoal black.

Body convulsing, William flipped onto his back.

“I’ll be back in a minute guys,” Nicolas said to no one in particular. He pumped the chamber and moved close to William. “Don’t go anywhere, okay buddy? And keep an eye on the girls. See you real soon.”

He squeezed the trigger a second time, shooting William one more time in the legs. A limb became severed. The concrete floor blasted apart. Blood sprayed the walls, the floor, the cages and the ceiling. Bits of meat exploded into the air before raining down like hail.

Olive screamed with her mangled hands held in front of her open eyes. Cathy broke down in tears, looking directly at the floor. William twitched several times and passed out. And Nicolas Nehalem left the basement with his shotgun at his side, happy with the day’s events, whistling tunelessly and wondering if there was anything good to eat waiting for him inside the fridge.

 

 

20

 

Beth’s hands were at her face and her knees were pulled towards her stomach. With a tire-iron sticking in her ribcage and the trunk’s roof squishing her body, she found it hard to breathe and nearly impossible to move. Pauline’s foul-smelling corpse didn’t help the situation. It was pressed tight against her back; many flies and maggots were now crawling across her skin, finding a new home. The putrid odor was one of decay, rotting flesh and germinating mold. The foul stench wasn’t just inside Beth’s nose either. It had also found its way into her mouth and lungs, it reached into her stomach, it seemed to be consuming her. She was surprised she hadn’t been sick. But she was a tough woman, and being a tough woman she was able to hold it in. Just like she was able to suspend her screaming lunacy. Mostly.

But at first she nearly lost her mind.

Before they started driving Beth heard the shotgun blast and knew what happened: Nicolas killed William. Obvious.

She screamed after the blast and when she was done she screamed some more, feeling it was only a matter of time before she’d suffer the same fate as her friend. She may have blacked out; she did not know.

Then the car started rolling and her screaming ended.

She cried and shivered and prayed to the Lord above for the first time since she was a child. And when the car stopped moving and the engine turned off, her eyes were stinging and her throat felt like it had been rubbed with sandpaper and coated with a thin layer of rot. All at once she decided to get it together, be brave, be strong. She decided never to scream again. Would she be able to do it? Time would tell. But the fact she was thinking this way caused her tears to dry up, and the little girl she regressed into seemed to dry up as well.

She would not allow Nicolas to steal her life from her. She would not deteriorate. She would not become her inner child and allow her emotions to run free. Not any more, not at a time like this. Beth would get through this tragedy; she just needed to stay strong.

A door slammed shut. She heard someone talking. She listened, but couldn’t make out the words. Another door closed. It wasn’t a full slam but that hardly mattered.

Two doors closed. Not one. Two.

What did it mean?

Perhaps William hadn’t been killed after all. Perhaps it only a warning shot. It was something to wish for, something to hold on to.

She would be strong regardless, an adult worthy of respect. Falling apart was not an option.

She listened. Nothing.

Her social worker mentality returned, threatening to take control of the situation. She thought about talking to the man, reasoning with him. She wondered if she could figure out why he did the things he did and help him. After all, he was still a human being. He had a mother and a father. He had feelings. He could be rehabilitated.

“He’s not a man,” she whispered. “He’s a creep.”

That’s what he was: a creep. Nothing more and nothing less. Screw the fact that years ago, he was just a kid, probably being raised in less than ideal conditions. Screw the fact that he needed professional help by someone that cared, like a social worker, like her.

Beth pushed the social worker far, far away. She already tried the psychological approach with this man (Creep, she reminded herself. He’s a fucking creep…) and it didn’t work. She wasn’t about to try again. The stakes were too high. She needed to find a different Beth Dallier, figure out what she could do and what she was capable of. It was time to be honest. Her life depended on it.

Strengths and weaknesses: what were they?

She always considered her mental ability to be her greatest strength. But that wasn’t her only asset. She was physically strong too.

At two hundred and thirty-five pounds, Beth moved slowly. There was no point in pretending she didn’t. But if she changed her game plan, changed the way she approached her situation… Or to put it another way, if she punched the psycho in the face, what would happen then? She was strong. Damn right she was strong, but could she outmuscle him? Could she drop him to the ground with a quick left hook before he considered the possibility that she’d try such a thing?

Maybe she could.

Maybe…

It was decided. She could fight, and she would.

But could she snag the shotgun from Nicolas’ hand and take control of the situation? That question wasn’t so easily answered. And there was another issue, possibly the most important issue of all: if she fought him and won, and took the gun from his hand, would she be brave enough to use it? Could she pull the trigger? Did she have the stones to kill a man?

A bug crawled across her nose and Beth flicked it away with her finger.

He wasn’t a man. He was a cold-blooded killer, a creep. She needed to remember that.

He was a creep.

Killing him wouldn’t be easy but she could justify it simple enough. After all, he murdered the family in the minivan. He probably wanted to murder Cameron and from the look of things, he was planning on killing her too, but what about William? Did he shoot William? It seemed that way. But then why did two separate doors slam? Why not just one?

He was messing with her. Had to be. He slammed the door himself, and then… then… what? Started talking to himself?

Beth considered these things and more. Adding them together painted a series of question marks, but it also painted the image of a terrible man, or at very least a seriously disturbed one.

So here was the question, the real question: was killing a man with mental issues wrong?

If she had to be honest, then––yes, it certainly was wrong. But was killing a sick and twisted murderer immoral?

She thought her answer would be complex enough for different interpretations. It wasn’t. For Beth, the answer was as clear as the sky above: killing was morally wrong. Always.

I can justify it, she thought. And she was probably right. Finding validation for questionable actions was always waiting for those who looked. But if she killed him, could she live with her justifications? Would she sleep sound, or would the justification make her crazy? And on a different tip: if the creep lived long enough to kill more people, could she live with herself then? These were big questions, for which she had no answers.

Wondering why the creep hadn’t opened the trunk yet, Beth closed her eyes. “I’ll kill him if I must,” she whispered.

There was no anger in her voice, only the subtle tone of deliberation. It had been decided. She would fight. If she killed the man, so be it. She was in a tough spot, which needed a tough solution.

Seconds passed.

She heard the shotgun go off again. Twice. It sounded like it came from far away, or maybe from inside a house.

She pushed her body against the corpse, giving her arms more room to move. Lots of flies sprang to life. Bugs scurried inside her shirt, along the folds of her skin and into her hair. She wedged her fingers beneath her ribcage and wrapped her fingers around the tire-iron. She pulled it free, releasing a squeal as she did so. She was more comfortable now. Not only that, she was armed with the tire-iron.

Immoral or not, when the trunk opened she’d come out swinging. And let the chips fall where they may.

 

 

21

 

The big creature, the mamma he presumed, came charging towards Daniel with its legs slamming the ground like a five-horse stampede. Mouths opened and closed, not together, but slightly askew, creating a hypnotic wave-type effect. Black bubble eyes glistened in the florescent light and stingers punctured holes in the floor three inches deep.

Daniel stumbled back and tripped, feeling his stomach clench. Another six or seven crab-critters were crawling from a hole in the wall, scuttling towards him. He landed hard on his ass, raised the gun and pulled the trigger. With his upper lip curled into a sneer and half his teeth showing, he said, “Take this!” He may have looked brave, but there was no bravery in his voice, no composure or tranquility in his tone, either. The words displayed some level of misguided confidence, but they were only words––lies perhaps, as flat and meaningless as a map to a world that doesn’t exist.

CLICK.

His eyes widened and his face became cloaked in fear.

“It’s empty,” he whispered, trembling. And now the words that fell from his lips came out just right. He wasn’t lying this time. Oh no. His voice sounded terrified and his face wore an expression that fit the tone perfectly. He couldn’t believe his gun didn’t fire. Surely there must have been at least one bullet left. He couldn’t have fired all seven times. It wasn’t possible, was it? Was the clip half-empty when he loaded it? He thought he’d been counting. Was it possible that he counted his discharges incorrectly?

As giant stalks pounded against the floor, causing tiny explosions in the dirt, mouths opened and closed, teeth clicked, jaws snapped, and Dan pulled the trigger twice more, just to make sure the gun was truly empty. It was.

“Oh shit.”

Dan looked at the gun like it betrayed him while fighting back the urge to throw the damn thing across the room. He pulled the empty clip from the weapon and tossed it aside. Slamming his hand into his pocket, fingers circled the final clip. He had it, and not a moment too soon. Pulling the clip from his pocket couldn’t happen fast enough; he was running out of time, running out of ammo, running out of luck. The beast was almost on top of him now, and very soon it would be. The thought of being devoured made him feel like crying.

With eyes glued to the big boy he started to scream. His knees shook and his chin quivered.

Two killer crabs scrambled across his legs and onto his lap. One was translucent; the other was brown. They were trying to pierce him with their stingers and nip little bites from his chest, but they didn’t quite know how.

With the clip in one hand and the gun in the other, Daniel swatted both creatures off his body. The little brown monster rolled twice and landed on its claws, six feet away. The other clung to his arm before doing a loop-de-loop in the air. Once it landed on the ground it crawled in a different direction before opening its wings and flying off.

Long dark stalks pounded the floor harder now than before.

The creature stopped running; it was above him. Time had run out.

Dan slid the clip into the weapon and clicked the safety. The brown crab came at him again; this time it had company. Two more crabs were right behind it, a black one and another brown one.

The black crab-critter jumped and Daniel pointed the gun right at it. BLAM. The crab went tumbling through the air. He pointed the gun at the other two and picked them off one at a time. BLAM. BLAM. His aim was true.

The giant creature lifted its body high into the air. It looked down at Daniel with countless eyes.

SQUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

Daniel pointed the gun into an open mouth. And this time, he knew how many bullets he had left: he had two.

 

 

22

 

Pat looked into the darkness, hearing gunfire blast in the other room. On the floor he could see an odd-shaped rectangle of light and his silhouette standing within it, not much else. So he stepped inside the dark new space, surprised that the door had been unlocked. He placed an open hand on the wall. Only then did he realize that his hand was rebelling against all contact, even the slightest amount. Touching things with his swollen and battered fingers hurt like hell no matter how careful and delicate he tried to be, but what could he do? His hands were a mess but he needed to use them.

Deal with it, he thought. Such is life.

Ignoring his throbbing wounds, he slid his bruised, bloody, and swollen fingertips along the wall until he found a light switch. He flipped it on. Nothing happened––then slowly, almost painfully, a florescent light flickered, faltered, and came to life. His silhouette, and the rectangle residing in it, vanished.

The space was not big, not big at all. But it seemed huge because the wall on the far side of the room was home to a giant hole.

Looking at the aperture, Patrick’s expression revealed a surprised kind of bewilderment. It seemed safe to say––at least in his eyes––that the giant creature had chewed its way through the wall. When he looked beyond the opening he could see another hole in the far wall of that room too. The creature, he assumed, had been busy.

There was a door on his left. He walked past without looking at it, eager to see the next room. He stepped through the hole in the wall. The room, like the one before it, was mostly empty. There were a few boxes stacked in a corner and debris at his feet, but that was about all.

More gunshots blasted.

Why the empty rooms? he wondered, approaching the next hole.

Then he noticed a hole in the ceiling, every bit as big as the first two. He thought about the creature, about the crates in the big room––the unopened crates.

“They were just moving in,” he whispered. And with that Pat closed his eyes, creating a full-blown scenario inside his mind:

A strange and wealthy apocalypse-fearing eccentric built the shelter and loaded it with army supplies. After the supplies were delivered, the movers found themselves face to face with a giant bug and left the shelter in a hurry. The eccentric, perhaps named Rockefeller, complained because the shelter had not yet been organized the way he wanted it. The movers didn’t care. They were not going back down and that was final. Neither threats of law suites nor increased wages could convince the men otherwise. Finally Mr. Rockefeller reached into his pocket deeper than he thought he should. He said that he’d pay fifty thousand to any man willing to finish the job. It was a lot of money, and the men found themselves weighing the pros and the cons. Some said money means nothing if you are not alive to use it. Others discovered that fifty thousand was a number worth risking your neck over. After the deal had been negotiated and money exchanged hands, eight men returned to finish the job. Several crates were opened. Several items were placed in different rooms. Then things turned bad. The beast returned and it wasn’t alone. The men found themselves surrounded. One man escaped while the others died. Rockefeller learned his lesson and built a house on top of the shelter, concealing the fact that it existed. The one remaining man––

Patrick opened his eyes and put a hand to his mouth. “The men were surrounded?”

There’s more than one of them, he thought. There has to be.

He didn’t know if his scenario was the least bit accurate but he knew one thing for sure: animals procreate; it takes two to tango.

He looked down.

There was a giant hole in the floor, lost in shadow but there. It was seven feet in diameter and looked like something a four thousand pound groundhog would have dug if it could chew through concrete.

Pat stepped away from the hole with a new scenario brewing.

Rockefeller stumbled upon something resembling a gigantic anthill beneath the earth but he didn’t know it. He built the bomb shelter and one of those creatures dug its way inside. But it wasn’t alone. Oh no. It was never alone. There are hundreds of those creatures, maybe thousands of them. And, and––

Thinking changed gears, becoming a mental question and answer debate inside his mind: Why had the creatures not surfaced until now? Man invaded their space, and keep this in mind Einstein––they didn’t surface; we came to them. But why had the species not been discovered before? Simple. Most animals have a native land, and many animals are on the brink of extinction. This might be the only place on the planet that this species exists.

Pat stepped forward and looked down. He couldn’t see much, but he had the feeling that his little anthill scenario was right on the money.

An anthill, he thought, an anthill for giant, mutant ants. Damn.

Five gunshots blasted within a matter of seconds.

He turned his head left; there was a door. He hadn’t noticed it before but he noticed it now, and he had a pretty good idea where the door would lead him. He approached it and put a hand on the knob. Doing so caused enough pain that his eyes squinted and his nose wrinkled. He turned the knob as much as he could.

It was locked.

Of course it was locked. It was locked a few minutes ago and it was locked now, but things were different now, because now he could unlock it.

Pat turned a latch and unlocked the door. He opened the door and was right where he knew he’d be: in the hallway. On his left was the hole he created in the wall. On his right was the big room with the cocoons. He could see the creature there, facing the opposite direction. It had several legs raised high in the air. He assumed the beast was being shot at.

This is my best time for escape, he decided.

He ran towards the beast, screaming, “Here I come! Don’t shoot me, whoever you are! I’m alive and I’m coming out of the hallway! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

And that’s when he heard Daniel shouting…

 

 

23

 

“Patrick? Is that you?”

Pat came running out from behind the creature with his hands in the air and his eyes wide with fright. He said, “Yes! It’s me! It’s me! Don’t shoot!”

The creature turned.

Daniel fired another shot.

Pat figured he’d be hit. When he realized the gun wasn’t pointed in his direction a moment of serenity washed him like sunshine.

The feeling didn’t last.

Crabs were everywhere. Some were scuttling towards him; some were sprinting away. He had no idea the cocoons would hatch so quickly, but they did. He looked towards the ceiling and saw something Daniel hadn’t: a big cocoon with crab-critters pouring out of it.

As Pat made his way towards Daniel, who was still sitting on the ground, he punted a crab like a football. The crab split into several pieces. White and red pussy goo splashed up his leg and a chunk of meat soared through the air as something resembling spray cheese squirted against the floor.

Pat screamed; he had forgotten how mangled his hands were. They hurt so much. He couldn’t be doing things like that; he had to be more careful.

“What’s wrong?”

With both arms held out in front of him, and blood dripping from his fingertips, Pat said, “My hands.”

Daniel snatched a quick glimpse and pointed his gun at the big creature. It was backing away, giving them room. Two crab-critters flew past. A damp smell followed. “We can’t get up the ladder, and I’m almost out of bullets.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause I’ve been using them.”

Pat raised his knee to his waist and stomped another enemy. Guts splashed up his leg. “No, you idiot. I mean why can’t we use the ladder?”

“Oh. Those things are all over it.”

Pat crushed another crab and kicked a different one a second later.

Daniel saw what Patrick was doing and liked what he saw. He lifted a leg high and stomped on one too. White puss and red gore squeezed out of the creature’s side like toothpaste. A second later he squished another, surprised to have it pop like a balloon.

Killing them was a sick form of fun, he realized; the crabs had no bones. They were like insects that way, and when you stomped on them they turned into twitching, bloodstained, mush. He wished he had of known earlier; he could have saved his bullets and used them on the big guy.

“Listen,” Pat said, backing away from the big mama. He stomped on another critter with his eyes growing wide and intense. “We can’t stay here, we have to get out. These little guys might grow up to be big and strong, but right now we can handle them. And look up there!”

He pointed towards the ceiling. Blood dripped from his finger.

Another winged critter flew past.

Daniel took his eyes off big momma and looked at Pat’s damaged hands. After making a mental note of how bad they were, he looked up. There were a least seventy-five crabs crawling around on the ceiling.

“Holy shit,” he said.

“Holy shit is right. This place isn’t getting better; it’s getting worse. And I found great big hole in the ground. I truly believe there’s more than one of these big guys. I think there’s a whole bunch of them.”

Dan didn’t want to be negative about everything; he wanted to be positive. Pat was being positive and his hands looked like they had been caught in a blender. He said, “Crawling up the ladder is going to be tough, so be ready.”

Without missing a beat, Pat said, “I know it’ll be tough, but we have no choice.”

Big momma bolted towards them and Daniel shot it again. The beast stopped on a dime and backed away; it didn’t like getting shot and was smart enough to know it.

 

 

24

 

Nicolas Nehalem placed the shotgun into his gun rack next to two riffles and another shotgun. Then he put the kettle on, washed a few dishes, wiped the counter down, swept the kitchen floor, and turned his boiling water into a fresh cup of lemon tea. Between sips he ate a banana, dissected the peeling into four pieces, and flushed them down the toilet, one piece at a time. After the water in the toilet bowl had settled he flushed the toilet again––just to make sure––and he took his tea to the back porch. There he released an embellished sounding sigh.

Nicolas enjoyed gazing across his little piece of Cloven Lake with a tea in his hand; it made him feel nice. It reminded him of his mother and the happy days he had spent with her before she disappeared, before his father had been convicted of killing her.

The area in front of Nicolas’ place was marshland for the most part, and not the type of place people visited for long periods of time. Some nights the bugs were so bad that you’d get bitten every few seconds and after ten minutes you’d look like you had a case of the measles. The marsh was the reason he had no neighbors, the only reason. That wasn’t a bad thing, just a truthful one.

Having no neighbors was fine with Nicolas. In fact, he quite liked it.

In his humble, questionable, and often psychotic option, the marsh was doing right by him. It was a good place to put things that needed to be put away.

Crickets sang and frogs croaked. A squawking crow flew overhead and Nicolas looked up wondering where it was going and what it was doing and how long it would take to get there. It was too dark for him to see the bird but he ignored the obvious and looked up anyways.

Darkness and stars blanketed the sky in a 1000:1 ratio.

Once his cup of tea was nearly empty he considered going for a late night swim in the marsh. He did that from time to time when things were bothering him. He had to be careful though; there were snapping turtles in there. There were snakes and leaches too. Tonight he considered risking it. He had a whole cluster of items grinding his mind into a sharpened point; his thoughts were making him antsy.

He considered marching over to the police station and telling the authorities that he’s was just a regular Joe––a normal guy with no interest in killing innocent people or turning his neighbors into his own personal possessions. But would they buy it? That was the question in the forefront of his mind, as noticeable as an alligator in a daycare. Would the authorities buy it?

The police would come knocking before long, he knew. There was no use in denying it; they would come knocking for sure. Probably check every house in town, too. So what should he do?

He considered running. That was an option. That was always an option. He had done it once before, but should he do it again?

No, he thought. I don’t want to run away. This is my town. Mine.

And what about Cameron, where was she? Where’d she go?

Nicolas slapped a fly from his arm and went back inside. He finished his tea and washed out the cup. After returning the cup to the cupboard he went into his bedroom and opened a drawer. Inside the drawer were a handful of bullets and a loaded Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver. It had a four-inch barrel, a royal blue finish, smooth trigger pull, and a tight cylinder lock up. It was one of the finest guns Colt ever created and the only handgun Nicolas owned.

Nicolas put some bullets into his front pocket and tossed the gun in a backpack. He wore the bag like a schoolboy and put a baseball hat onto his head to complete the look. The hat was black and it said: New York Yankees. He nabbed it from a kid he pushed in front of a subway train years earlier. It was a tad small for his head, but that was okay. He liked the way it looked.

Nicolas entered a bedroom. It was filled with all kinds of stuff. Tools, mostly. He grabbed a cordless drill from inside a toolbox and put a nice fat drill-bit in it. He licked his teeth and smacked his lips together.

Stepping outside, he started to chuckle.

This was going to be good.

 

 

25

 

“Hey,” he said, with a tough sounding voice. “Hey... you in there!” He pounded an open hand against the trunk of the car. “You still with me?”

He heard the fat woman say, “Yeah.”

Nicolas didn’t know Beth was curled up into the best striking pose she could manage. Or that she had a tire iron in her hands and she planned on smashing him in the face with it as soon as he opened the trunk. If he had known her intentions he might have done things differently. Then again, he might not have. He was unpredictable that way. His thoughts changed direction like the wind.

Just open the trunk, you asshole, Beth thought. Yeah, I’m ready all right. I’m ready to knock your block off as soon as this trunk opens.

“Alright then,” Nicolas said, after a moment. “Here it is!”

He pulled on the drill’s trigger and started drilling into the trunk.

Beth screamed. She didn’t mean to scream, or want to scream, but she had been burdened with a momentary loss of bodily control. The sound of the drill chewing its way into the car caught her by surprise causing a scream to sneak from her body like a burp after a large swig of Coke.

Laughing, Nicolas pushed hard on the drill. Sparks flew and shavings appeared around the spinning bit, growing into something that resembled a metal anthill.

Beneath the drill, Beth regained her wits. She had a pretty good idea where the bit would come through; she could feel the weight upon her shoulder. She had to move. That seemed to be a fact. If she didn’t move into a different position that sharp, twirling cylinder was going to zip its way into her arm, and what that would feel like she didn’t want to know.

She dropped the tire iron, placed her open hands in front of her body and pushed as hard as she was able, into the corpse. Muscles bulged and her face curled up like a fist. Flies started buzzing and maggots crawled actively. Until that moment Beth didn’t think she had any room to move. Turned out she had lots of it if she was willing to squeeze into Pauline’s rotting shell and ignore the fact that doing such a thing made her want to be sick.

Beth kept pushing.

The drill bit pierced the metal and came into the trunk like a bullet, slamming into her extended arm. A light mist of blood sprayed her face and chest. She yanked her arm out of the way and the drill bit carved a groove into her muscle.

She was screaming again, screaming and in serious pain.

She heard someone say, “I’LL KILL YOU, YOU ROTTEN MOTHER-FUCKING PRICK! I’LL KILL YOU!” The voice turned out to be her own.

Nicolas slammed the drill up and down and few times. He was laughing and smiling and having a great time. He didn’t know if he was hitting Beth or missing her completely; didn’t care either. This was the best, the absolute best. Like a linebacker tackling a quarterback and loving it, this was a sport to him. He never thought of it that way, but he felt it. After he pulled the drill from the car he laughed until tears rolled down his face.

“Oh that’s priceless!” he said, allowing the drill to die in his hand. “That’s completely priceless! I’ll kill you; I’ll kill you… ha-ha! Lady, you’re too much!”

Nicolas stepped away from the car and put the drill on the front porch, still laughing and grinning. Eyes, wet with tears of joy, were wiped clean as he walked down the driveway and along Stone Crescent. He was having quite a day. It was a strange one, and he may have put himself into a big heap of trouble, but was quite a day nonetheless. It seemed obvious to him that the best type of fun was the dangerous kind. Living on the edge. How much fun would it be to turn things up a notch?

“Let the good times roll,” he shouted, kicking wildflowers as he strolled along the edge of the road with his backpack strapped on tight.

Inside the trunk, spooned by a corpse, Beth cried. She tried to be strong but cried anyhow. This guy was going to be the death of her. Of this she had no doubt.

 

 

26

 

Officer Joel Kirkwood was sitting inside a police cruiser at Hopper’s Gas when the call came in. It was a 911 call, which meant a regional call center dispatched the information to the office before it was transferred to the car.

It had been three months since he had gotten a 911-dispatched call. The last one occurred when Mrs. Tally had a heart attack; her ten-year-old grandson phoned it in. As always, the police arrived before the ambulance. Cloven Rock had a modest Police Station but nothing that resembled a Hospital or a Fire Hall. Mrs. Tally survived, but her grandson cried long and hard before the ambulance arrived to take the woman away. The experience put Kirkwood in a bad mood for days. If there was one thing Joel Kirkwood didn’t like about 911 calls in Cloven Rock, arriving at the scene first was surely it.

Tony Costantino, the officer on duty with Joel, was standing across from Jay Hopper inside Hopper’s gas station. They were talking about football and how this team was better than that team and who would make it to the Super Bowl and all kinds of other stuff that had nothing to do with being a cop. He held a bag of ketchup-flavored chips in his hand and waved them in the air when he was making a point.

Jay was all ears; he could talk football for hours. His team was the Cowboys, mostly because he liked the Cowgirls that cheered them on. Sometimes he admitted this nugget of information with a smile that made the wrinkles in his face seem twice as long and three times as deep.

The siren came on.

Tony and Jay looked through a stack of peanuts and chips and out the dirty window. Joel gave Tony a wave, letting him know that shit shootin’ time was over.

“Got to go,” Tony said. His face changed from happy-go-lucky sports fan to officer of the law inside a blink. “Have a good night.”

“Hope everything’s okay,” Jay replied, scratching behind his ear like a dog.

“Me too,” Tony said.

Once outside, Tony got into the car, stuffed himself behind the wheel, and slammed the car door shut. He was a big man, an eighteen-year veteran of the force. He looked so textbook Italian he should have been running a mafia pizzeria. With slow, deep-sounding words, he said, “What do we got?”

If Tony Costantino had an opposite, Joel was it. He had a thin face, pale skin, and the small blue eyes of a university bookworm. Every time he spoke the words shot from his mouth like bullets spiked with a mild dose of helium. “Down by the waterfront. Stone Road, west side, away from everything.”

“How far west?”

“Ten minutes west of King.”

“Shit.” Tony dropped the chips onto his lap and pulled out of the parking lot like Rambo at war. He threw on the emergency lights and kept the siren off. “It’ll take us fifteen minutes to get there from here.”

“The one and only. Two cars were in some type of accident. One is in the ditch and the other is on the road. Three people are in need of medical attention but may be D. O. A. The wounds may or may not be the result of the accident they were in.”

Tony nodded. “It’s a shame it’s not going to happen. It’ll be twenty minutes before those guys to show up. It always is.” He was a realist too.

“We’ll be there first.”

“Absolutely.”

After thirty seconds of high-speed driving Tony turned the siren on and passed a slow moving car that looked ready for retirement. Once the car was behind him he turned the siren off and kept his foot on the accelerator. He said, “I hope it’s not too messy.”

Kirkwood agreed. “I hope it’s not someone I know.”

Tony didn’t respond. Problem was, they knew everybody in town.

After eight minutes Tony turned the siren on again, sighing as he checked his features in the mirror, wondering what they were getting themselves into.

 

 

27

 

Nicolas Nehalem walked along the dark road alone, and it was dark. In towns like Cloven Rock most of the roads had no streetlamps. Oh, there were the exceptions. The area where the Yacht Club, Tabby’s Goodies, the Waterfront Café, Starbucks, and McDonald’s were all nestled together like a big happy family was lit up like New York City, day and night, and the two streets people jokingly called the downtown core had its fair share of light as well. This consisted of King Street, running north and south, and Queen Street, running east and west. Of course, downtown wasn’t much more than a couple of restaurants (the newest one being a Subway), a 7-11, a hardware store, Miller’s Gas Station, and a post office. So how much light did it really have? Not much, or to be more accurate, three streetlamps worth. Five if you counted the pair of posts a quarter mile south on King Street between Spooky’s Antique Palace and Cloven Rock Secondary. To be fair, the Rock’s eleven blocks of residential housing––sitting between downtown and the waterfront––had lampposts too. But along the back roads, where the buildings were sparse and cottages sat vacant most of the year, light was hard to come by. And that’s where Nicolas lived, in the area where light was a rarity. Stone Path Road and Stone Crescent had no streetlamps, not even to elucidate the intersections.

Nicolas’ eyes adjusted to the darkness. He turned off Stone Crescent and onto Stone Path Road. He didn’t hurry; he didn’t slow. He walked at a comfortable pace with his shoes scuffing the earth and his knees knocking together every few steps. He wasn’t worried but he was thoughtful. The way he played out these next few minutes would shape the days and weeks to come, of this he had no doubt.

Over the roll of a hill he could see a white haze that looked like a miniature sunset. There were no flashing lights, which he decided was a good thing. But there did seem to be a glow coming over the horizon larger than he expected, and with each step the forged sunset shone brighter still. As Nicolas moved beyond the arc of land the situation came into view.

There were four vehicles now, two more than he wanted to see.

Dan’s car was the way he expected: facedown in the ditch with its backlights shining up at the stars like a pair of red eyes. The minivan was still sitting in the center of the road with its motor running, home to the bloody mess inside. And there were two new vehicles. One was a Dodge Charger and the other was a Corvette. The Corvette was new. The Charger had its driver’s door open, causing the interior light to shine.

Looking into this light, Nicolas could see a twelve-year-old girl with dark hair tied up in pigtails. Two men stood next to the car, five feet from the girl. One was tall and lanky. He had a bald head and a thin face. Looked like an alien. The other was forty-something and quite handsome. His hair was cut short and his white t-shirt was tucked into his jeans. Nicolas recognized this man as Peter Holbrook.

Peter owned and operated the Waterfront Café, a Cloven Rock favorite. His house, which sat next to the café, was luxurious, beautiful, and on a very large lot. Mr. Holbrook owned many acres of lakefront property and everyone in town knew it. He was the wealthiest man around; many considered him to be the only reason Cloven Rock didn’t expand too quickly and for this the town was grateful.

Holbrook noticed Nicolas walking towards them; he nudged the man Nicolas didn’t recognize, the man that looked like an alien.

The alien lifted his head.

Nicolas sensed that both men were on edge; he could see it in their eyes and the way their bodies were poised. Maybe they figured that he was the shotgun killer. Maybe anyone and everyone within a fifty-mile radius was a suspect.

Nicolas raised a hand and walked towards them with a curious look forged upon his face. His features morphed into a goofy smile. He was trying to get into the mind-frame of a character he knew nothing about. “Hi there!”

Peter Holbrook raised a hand in return.

The alien put a hand to his brow and looked at the ground, fighting back a river of tears.

Nicolas said, “What seems to be the… oh my! What happened? What in tar-nation is this?” He ran to the van with his mouth open and his eyes full of wonder. He considered throwing his hands against the vehicle and screaming in mock-terror but decided against it. He wanted to be dramatic but he didn’t want to leave any prints.

“Careful,” Peter said. “Don’t touch anything. Mr. Burton arrived first and touched a few things but I haven’t. You shouldn’t either.”

Holbrook was a stupid, ass-licking halfwit. He hated the man, truly hated him. Holbrook thought he was so goddamn good, so goddamn smart. He figured he was better than everyone else and he rubbed it in people’s faces. The way he lived, the way he acted. Oh corn-dog crapper––he was a bad seed, all right. He was the worst of the worst. He deserved death. He deserved to have his head crushed in a vice.

“Dunno, maybe five minutes ago.”

Jesus, Nicolas thought. Five minutes? That’s bad. I better make this quick!

 

 

28

 

As Nicolas unzipped his backpack his mind drifted. He was thinking about shooting them––all of them, even the girl. But he was also cooking up an extra little something for Holbrook. He wondered if killing them was smart. It probably wasn’t but he didn’t care, so he stuffed his hand into his bag, yanked his gun free and took control of the situation.

“Don’t move, any of you.” Nicolas’ words were for everyone but the revolver was for Holbrook. It never wavered; the business end of the weapon was locked on the man’s face.

Burton lifted his head slightly. Then he pressed his body against his car, as if doing so would protect the girl inside.

Holbrook opened his mouth and lifted a hand.

“No, no,” Nicolas said, cutting into whatever debate may have been coming. “Don’t get excited gentlemen. Don’t yell and whatever you do, don’t start asking stupid questions. Get on your knees, both of you.”

He looked past the men, into the eyes of the girl with the pigtails. Her face carried an expression of confusion mixed with trauma.

“You too, toots… get out of the car and plunk your ass on the ground. No. Better yet, get out of the car and come to me.”

Returning his attention to Holbrook and Burton, he said, “What? Are you knuckleheads deaf or something? Hands behind your heads and drop to your knees––let’s go people. I haven’t got all day.”

Holbrook dropped to his knees first. Burton reluctantly followed. They put their hands behind their heads slowly and in unison.

As the girl climbed from one bucket seat to the next, Nicolas saw her for what she was: barely old enough to fart and scared half to death. She was wearing a pink dress with red flowers on it. Her shoes were shiny and white. Her teeth were nearly perfect.

“But will you? That’s what I’m wondering.” Nicolas looked at Holbrook. “How about you, tough guy? Do you know how to build dynamite? I do. Three parts nitroglycerin, one part diatomaceous earth, and a small admixture of sodium carbonate. That makes me the boss. Will you do what I say, or will you be the reason I shoot Mandy in the head?”

“I’ll do whatever you want,” Peter Holbrook said. “I’m not being a tough guy, just don’t hurt the girl.”

“Oh, but you are being a tough guy, you are. Everyday of your life you act like Mister Big Shot... Mister ‘I know everything and that’s why I’m rich.’ Driving around in a goddamn Corvette. Just looking at the two cars I know who owns what. Do you think people like you? Do you? Do you think anyone in this two-bit town doesn’t want to see you hang? You’re a fool it you think people like you or respect you, Mr. Holbrook. If I cut off your balls and stuff ‘em down your throat this town will throw a goddamn parade.”

“That’s not true,” Burton said.

Nicolas’ eyes slid from Holbrook to Burton like they were greased. “Do you want to stick up for this chunk of shit or keep your daughter in one piece?” Nicolas’ head slinked towards Mandy. “And what about you? What did I say? Get out of the car! Now! I’ll bury you in the swamp if you don’t get moving.”

Mandy pulled herself from the car with tears rolling down her face. She wasn’t crying full on, not yet. But she was close. She walked past the two kneeling men, past her father. She inched towards Nicolas.

Burton wanted to reach out and touch her, tell her everything was all right. He wanted to tell her not to worry but he didn’t chance it, because things weren’t all right. And there was reason to worry. The situation was getting worse all the time.

Nicolas grabbed Mandy by a pigtail and pulled her close, making her shriek, making her cry.

With one hand around her neck and the gun pointed at her temple, he said, “Okay assholes, ready to play a game? Yes or no? Say the wrong thing and I’ll put a bullet in the girl’s head.”

Burton said, “But the police are coming!” And as soon as the words escaped him, he knew––

It was the wrong thing to say.

 

 

29

 

They ran towards the ladder with dozens of crab-critters moving towards them. Some seemed to dance while others limped.

Dan stomped two.

Pat kicked one against the wall. It exploded like a watermelon in a microwave, splattering his face. He turned away, saying, “You first.”

“No, you first.”

“No Dan, look at my hands! I’m going to be moving slower than cold shit and I don’t want you behind me. I want you in front. I mean it. I might need help near the top too, so get going.”

“But––”

“But nothing. You first. Go, and stop fucking around! We’re out of bullets, remember? This is no time to argue!” He stomped another crab, but eight more were moving in and getting close, too close.

Dan didn’t like it but Patrick was right, no point having them both climb slowly. “Okay,” he said, shaking his head as he mounted his first tread. A few rungs later he noticed that his shoes were gooey with critter guts, limiting his traction.

Pat followed; after two steps he stopped climbing and reassessed the situation. The pain in his hands was an issue, but not the main issue. With something as simple as pain he could have accepted the circumstances, climbed the ladder, and endured the discomfort. Yes, it would hurt but it wouldn’t last forever. Pain wasn’t the big problem. The big problem was the fact that his fingers were so bruised and swollen they couldn’t grip the rungs.

Dan was fifteen feet up when the first crab-critter climbed its long-stock body onto him, making its way up his left arm. It touched his neck with a claw. Wasting no time, Dan flicked it off.

He looked down, watching as the crab-critter tumbled through the air end-over-end. It landed on its back with a WHAPP. Spiny legs twitched wildly. Beside the critter, Pat stood practically motionless, staring at his hand in a state of unease. Critters were all around him, scuttling and scampering, a moment away from attacking. Some had thirty legs or more. Some had eyes the size of apples, clustered together in a bunch.

Dan shouted, “Hurry!”

“Keep climbing. I’m trying to figure this out!” Pat wrapped his arms around the back of the ladder. Using his forearms to keep balance, he climbed. It was a better approach, one that didn’t hurt his hands because he wasn’t using them.

A crab scooted across the wall.

Dan knocked it away before it got too close. He looked down, saw Pat climbing and continued his journey. But he moved slower now, allowing his friend time to catch up, figuring they should stay together. He wanted to keep Patrick’s path clear.

For the first while everything was great; the crabs kept their distance. But everything changed near the sixtieth rung. Three crabs scurried quickly, attacking Dan at the same time. One was small and translucent. Dan knocked it away easy enough, but he allowed a big, black crab to crawl between him and the ladder. It had yellow eyes and tentacles hanging from its abdomen. He swatted it a couple times before using his fist. A brown crab with purple eyes and thin wings flew through the air and landed on his back.

Disregarding the winged critter, he slammed the black crab against the wall. Gray foam squirted from its side. He pulled away from the ladder and the critter fell, legs scrambling, mouths opening and closing, stupid eyes turning dim.

It landed right on Patrick.

Pat had no idea it was coming, and when it plopped onto his head it grabbed on tight and stabbed him with two stingers. Patrick made an AWOOOO sound and the creature climbed down his face and onto his chest, wedging itself between him and the ladder. He didn’t see the irony in this, didn’t know the same crab had set camp in Daniel’s lap a moment ago. Trying to gain his wits and deal with the situation appropriately he knocked the creature a few times with his right hand, accidentally sliding his mangled index finger inside one of the open mouths.

Hearing Pat shriek, Dan knew something bad had happened but he couldn’t do anything about it; he had problems of his own. The crab clinging to his back was taking little bites out of his shoulder.

Patrick––with his face white and terror stricken––thought for sure he would fall from the ladder. It seemed logical. Don’t fall, he thought as the crab tried to snatch another nip from his ruined hand. Whatever you do, don’t fall.

Dan reached behind his back, grabbed the winged critter by a leg and pulled it as hard as he was able. The leg tore from the creature’s body and the creature squealed in pain. He reached behind his back, grabbed another leg––a thick hairy one––and pulled again. “Come on,” he said. “Get off me!” Same result: the leg tore free. He tried to grab a third leg, hoping to rid himself of the pest once and for all. The crab tried to bite him on the knuckle twice. Then for reasons unknown, it released its grip and flew away.

Pat wasn’t in the way of a falling critter this time. The flying monster skimmed his shoulder and zipped past, membranous wings flapping quickly.

Dan climbed.

Pat climbed too.

And the black crab-critter that had eaten Patrick’s finger was still there––wedged between him and the ladder with tentacles wiggling, yellow eyes watching, gray foam running from its wound.

Pat didn’t care. He needed his feet to rest upon solid ground again; he didn’t have the time or the energy to fight.

Thinking he’d faint, he climbed.

The crab took a nip from his knee. He stepped on it and the creature fell. Ten rungs later he was attacked by a villain with little white tuffs of fur under its belly. It grabbed hold of Pat’s shoe and crawled up his leg.

Pat didn’t fight it; he kept on going.

Dan looked down and assumed things were all right. But he was nervous now; his battle with the crabs left him on edge. The little guys could knock him off the ladder quick enough if there were more than one of them, and with that in mind he started to pull away from Pat, just a little.

The crab with the white tuffs climbed onto Patrick’s ass, nipped him a few times, and got a claw caught in his front pocket. His belt unbuckled and his pants––a pair of dirty blue jeans––began sliding down his legs. Pat figured he’d lose them before he reached the top of the ladder and he did see the humor in that. Escaping without pants would be embarrassing; he wasn’t wearing underwear.

Dan climbed. He was almost at the top now.

Pat felt dizzy. He thought about letting go, falling. He wasn’t sure if he could make it to the top and the crab clinging to his waist was adding another eight pounds, easy. Then something happened. Given the situation it was good news: a pocket tore open, the belt pulled free of a loop, pants ripped and the crab dropped to its death. Unfortunately Pat’s cell phone, wallet and keys fell with it.

Dan stopped climbing, exhausted. With only a few more rungs to go he looked down. “You okay?”

A crab scurried overhead.

Pat stopped climbing, took a deep breath and nodded his head. His pants were hanging off; he wanted to pull them up but he couldn’t. Looking down he saw more crabs climbing towards him.

Better keep moving, he thought.

He climbed two more steps.

He was going to faint. He couldn’t help it. The world was spinning, blood was pouring out of his finger, and the crab’s poison was in his bloodstream. It was going to happen; there was nothing he could do.

Daniel made his way to the top rung, pulled himself onto the basement floor, and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. There were three crabs inside the basement. When he saw one scrambling towards him he knew his battle wasn’t over. Not yet. He raised himself to his feet, struck with a morbid thought: Wouldn’t it be funny if the crab knocked me off balance and I fell down the shaft?

No, he thought. It certainly would not be funny.

He stomped the approaching crab and kicked the second one against the wall.

It slammed against a two-by-four with legs broken; then it danced around in a crippled-man’s jig. Dan stomped it twice more, bringing an end to the activity. Meanwhile, the third crab ran up the staircase and escaped into the house.

A bottle of beer sat on the floor, half full. Daniel didn’t know who opened it or how warm it was, and he didn’t care. He lifted the bottle and finished what was inside. The beer was room temperature but that was okay. He was thirsty and warm beer was better than no beer.

Looking into the hole he saw Pat.

“Oh no,” he said, wiping a dirty hand across his wet mouth. “Oh dear God, tell me it isn’t so.”

 

 

30

 

Nicolas rammed the gun against Mandy’s temple.

Holbrook closed his eyes; he didn’t want to see the girl die.

Burton wondered why he gambled his daughter’s life away. Was he really that careless? Was he really that stupid? Apparently he was.

Mandy, who was young and upset, didn’t grasp the fact that a line had been crossed. She was afraid, terrified in fact. But she didn’t know things had gotten worse, specifically for her.

Nicolas was momentary stunned. He was bluffing, that was the truth of it. He had a plan brewing and splashing the girl’s brains across the Milky Way wasn’t a part of it.

Yet.

He tightened his grip on the girl’s neck. “That was your one and only screw up, fuck-nub. Next time you say something stupid the girl’s dead meat. From here on in you’ll do what I say, how I say, when I say. You got me?”

“Good. I have a closet you know. I have this little closet in my hallway and I keep it empty. It has a heavy wooden door and a yellow knob and sometimes when I close the door it gets stuck in the casing. It’s nearly impossible to open the door at times, unless I put a foot against the wall and yank it as hard as I can. There aren’t any shoes in the closet; there aren’t any coats, there isn’t even a shelf to put things. It’s empty, just empty… and do you know why? Do you know why I keep it empty? Because sometimes I like to go inside the closet and close the door tight, lock myself in. And when I’m in there I scream and I scream and I scream. Sometimes I scratch myself. Sometimes I shit on the floor. Sometimes I bite my fingers but mostly I just scream. Stand up or I’ll fucking kill you.”

Holbrook couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He wanted to pretend that he didn’t understand but he understood everything perfectly. The guy was psycho. He stood up quickly because not doing so was the stupidest thing in the world.

Nicolas walked backwards, dragging the girl uncaringly. He said, “Step in front of the car.”

With his heart pumping fast and his hands clenched into fists, Holbrook followed the instructions and stood in front of the Dodge Charger.

Nicolas grinned. “Now lay down.”

Holbrook hesitated; he opened his mouth to object. Something cold swelled inside his heart, and for a moment he thought about funerals. Or more specifically––pine boxes. He looked at Mandy and decided to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t like where this affair was leading, and felt compelled to say so. But he kept quiet all the same.

Holbrook dropped to his knees for the second time in two minutes.

Nicolas pushed the gun against Mandy’s head harder than before, squeezing her neck forcefully. And as her face pinched into an expression of pain, Holbrook placed himself belly down on the road.

“Nicely done,” Nicolas said. He wrapped his hand around Mandy’s throat. “I was going to put a bullet into this girl because of you. But you were smart. You kept your mouth shut and did what I said. I wonder if you’ll be smart enough to follow instructions again.” Nicolas chuckled. “I’ve got to be honest with you, Holbrook. I wanted you to disobey me, I really did. I wanted to put a bullet into this girl’s head, see? Want to know why? Because the very next thing I’d do is shoot you two assholes. I wouldn’t kill you though. I wouldn’t kill either one of you fudge-packers. I’d make sure you lived, in pain… with your kneecaps and your elbows destroyed. Might put a bullet in your back, too. Not sure yet. Still trying to figure it out.”

Nicolas squeezed the girl’s neck tighter and shook her more violently. Her hands slapped at him; her feet began kicking. The barrel of the gun was digging into her skin now, and a small line of blood ran along her check. Mandy couldn’t cry, not with her throat being squeezed shut. But she wanted to start howling and as soon as she was able she’d do just that.

Holbrook made an expression that was hard to read. It seemed like he was trying to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ at the same time, like he was trying to wake himself from a terrible dream.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Yes, yes,” Holbrook said, almost moaning. He wanted Nicolas to stop shaking the girl, stop strangling her. Her face was turning white, her hands were getting weak and her eyes were glossed over. Soon they would be rolling into the back of her head. He knew it. He could tell. “I’ll do what you say! Just stop it! For crying out loud, stop it!”

Burton felt his entire body quiver. He wanted to jump up and save his daughter. But could he do it? Could he get off his knees and run across eight feet of road before the man with the gun pulled the trigger?

The answer was no.

Just as Nicolas was about to fire a bullet, Holbrook crawled across three feet of gravel and rammed his face between the tire and the road. He was under the car now; the smell of oil and rubber was strong.

Nicolas heard a siren buzzing in the distance. Ignoring it, he whispered, “Oh yes I do. I’m going to give you to the count of three, fuck-nut; then your daughter is going to take a pair of bullets in the teeth. I promise you. I’ve done it before and I’ll gladly do it again. Ready? ‘Cause I’m about to start counting. One. Two. Three.”

Nicolas threw Mandy to the ground.

Mandy landed on her back and elbows. She gasped for air as her eyes rolled in their sockets. She wondered what happened, and was surprised to find that her simple little life had turned tragic and unpleasant.

Burton’s eyes popped open and his hand grabbed the car keys. His wrist turned; the car started. He couldn’t believe the situation he was in, or what was expected of him, or what he was currently doing. But he was doing it; oh Lord above have mercy on his soul, he was doing it.

Nicolas pointed the gun at Mandy’s face.

Holbrook, with his nose crammed against the wheel’s treads, flinched at the sound of the car starting. Not wanting to be run down, he pulled his head away from the tire just as Burton threw the car into gear.

Nicolas pulled the trigger twice. Both bullets entered the Mandy’s skull, just beneath her left eye, causing the back of her head to vomit onto the road and her body to convulse like a fish out of water.

Burton slammed on the brake.

The tire crushed Holbrook’s head, making a POP sound. Bone, blood and brains splattered in every direction. A moment later, one of Holbrook’s hands became a fist that pounded on the tire twice, even though his head had been flattened. Then the fist dropped to the earth, opened and trembled.

Burton screamed and jumped out of the car, which was parked on Holbrook’s head.

Nicolas turned the gun towards Burton and pulled the trigger twice more. The bullets caught Burton in the heart. Burton didn’t feel pain but he couldn’t breath and his legs were no longer responding to his mind’s commands. He staggered, thinking his last thoughts, thinking about his baby, about the man that shot his little girl, about killing for revenge. Dark blood bubbled through the hole in his shirt as he crumpled against the car. If he’d been granted one final wish he’d scoop Nicolas’ eyes out with a fork.

In the distance, the sound of the siren grew louder and louder.

Nicolas Nehalem, knowing that time had grown short, grabbed Mandy by a pigtail and lifted her head. Hair, matted with dirt and blood, clung to the gravel road valiantly. Thick liquid ran from her skull to the ground in a rope. He slid both hands into the girl’s wound until his fingers were red and wet. He put his hands to his face and smeared the blood across his cheekbones like war paint.

It wasn’t enough.

He took off his glasses and sat them on the road. With a grunt he turned the girl over; then he got onto his hands and knees, pushed his face into the opening in her skull, and snorted her juices like a barnyard pig. After his face and hands were soaked he rubbed her blood into his hair, and onto his shirt, and onto his pants. When he was finished washing himself he dragged her towards Daniel’s car, lifted her up, and stuffed her into the backseat. Blood drizzled from his chin like rain.

Mandy’s head rolled from one shoulder to the next, like her neck had been broken. Her mouth hung wide. A chunk of brain hung from her skull. Her face was pale, except around her eyes. The area around her eyes was swollen black and purple.

With blood dripping from the scruff of his chin, Nicolas put his glasses back on, lifted Burton up, and plunked him into the driver’s seat of the Charger.

“You pissed me off, fella,” he said. “You know that? Did ya?”

The siren grew louder.

He walked to the far side of the car and opened the passenger door. He sat inside, closed his eyes and concealed his smile, pretending to be dead.

 

 

31

 

Tony Costantino killed the siren and parked behind Holbrook’s Corvette. “Four cars,” he said. “Four, not two.”

“Let’s take a look.” Joel Kirkwood stepped onto the road. He waited near the hood of the car for his partner to join him. The night seemed terribly quiet. And dark.

Tony walked past.

The men removed flashlights from their utility belts and turned them on. Beams of light scored the air in long funnel-shaped tubes. Joel allowed Tony to gain some distance; then he walked to the far side of the street, towards the car in the ditch.

“Hello,” Tony said. He listened. There was no reply. Pointing his flashlight inside the Corvette he found nothing.

Now it was Joel’s turn to speak: “Is anybody here?”

“Look,” Tony said, approaching Burton’s charger. “There are two dead bodies in here, nope, wait… three dead. Someone’s in the backseat.”

“And here,” Joel said, pointing his flashlight into the minivan. “Oh God. Come look.”

Officer Tony Costantino stepped towards the minivan. He didn’t know what he expected to find, but two people with their heads blown off wasn’t it. And when he looked in the backseat, and he saw the splattered remains of the newborn, he turned away horrified.

“Oh man,” he said, putting a hand to his mouth. “This is terrible.”

Pointing his flashlight towards the big lump of meat beneath the Charger, his eyes widened, his face flushed white and his stomach turned against him. His hands began shaking. The world became blurry and he realized he was stumbling. Didn’t fall though. Somehow he managed to stay on his feet.

“There’s another one,” Kirkwood said. He walked around the minivan and took a good long look at the corpse beneath the wheel. “This guy’s head is beneath the wheel. What’s going on here?”

Costantino was the veteran, not Kirkwood. He was forty-eight years old; Kirkwood was only twenty-seven. Yet it was Kirkwood handling himself like a chief. Costantino was almost ashamed. On top of that, he was on the verge of being physically ill.

Kirkwood said, “Let’s go back to the car, Tony. It’s okay. Let’s just sit and collect ourselves a bit, shall we? We’re can’t help these people now. Whatever happened, happened. These people are dead.”

Costantino may have been overwhelmed, but he knew what needed to be done. He said, “We need to check pulses, make sure they are dead. We need to call it in, and search the area and look for survivors. We need to check license plates, block off the road and notify the F. B. I. We need, we need…”

His voice escaped him. It was replaced with a quivering lip and tears in his eyes. He always considered himself a tough guy, a guy that could take anything. Now he wasn’t so sure.

“And we will, Tony. We will. But right now we need to breathe again, okay? Do you know these people? Do you recognize ‘em?”

“Have you looked inside the van, Joel… or beneath the car? How do you recognize that, huh? How do recognize someone with a head beneath a tire? I’ve been on the force twenty-three years, Joel. Twenty-three! I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Kirkwood nodded. “‘Kay then. How’s this? You take a minute; do what you have to do. When you’re ready, verify the license plates and call ‘em in. I’m going to check pulses and see if we have any survivors.”

“Okay,” Kirkwood said, looking over his shoulder. He felt a strong sense of nervousness that simply didn’t exist before Costantino stated the obvious. And it was obvious, that was the funny thing. Joel Kirkwood had been viewing the scene like it was an accident. Then when circumstances suggested otherwise, he assumed they were standing in the aftermath of the event. But he didn’t know whether this was the aftermath or not. He had no reason to assume the bad times had finished. No reason at all. It was a terrible thing to consider, but what if this wasn’t the aftermath? What if it was a break in the conflict? And somebody was watching? It seemed possible.

Kirkwood drew his weapon, slowly and nervously, like a first time gunslinger. He stepped away from Costantino.

“Don’t go crazy there, Joel,” Tony said with a bead of drool on his lower lip. His nerves began to stabilize. He could see his partner’s fear now, and somehow that helped. “I’m just saying be smart. We don’t know what happened here.”

Joel heard the words but he didn’t acknowledge them. The area had changed somehow. This was no longer a street he had been up and down a million times. This was a horror movie, a setting straight from the pages of Creepy Magazine. And it was creepy. Nighttime in these parts was creepy as hell, when viewed in a certain way. It really was. And exactly, how was he viewing things now that Costantino stated the obvious?

The bugs were buzzing, the moon was full; the trees were rustling. Animals and reptiles (and who knows what else) were just beyond his ears perception. The road was littered with the butchered dead. And worse than that, this wasn’t an accident. Oh no. This was a killing spree, a multiple murder, a massacre. Someone decided it was time for bloodshed. And maybe it wasn’t a someone. Maybe there were two of them, or three of them. Or a whole fucking gang of them.

Joel unlatched his safety, whispering, “Is anyone here? Is anyone alive?”

He walked towards Burton’s car and eyed the corpse beneath. Then it clicked. Just like that: click.

He turned towards Costantino.

“That’s Holbrook’s car,” he said, pointing his finger. “Right there, the Corvette. Nobody else in town has one and I think Peter Holbrook is the man with his head stuffed under the wheel. Oh God, I think it’s him for sure. My dad has been friends with Peter for twenty years!”

“What?” Costantino staggered towards Kirkwood. Then he began running, pulling his gun from his holster. He didn’t look sick now. He looked like a man that realized he was sitting in a boat that was tumbling over the edge of the world. “That can’t be Holbrook,” he said. “He’s the one that called this in, right? Right? Oh shit… how could it be Holbrook?”

As the puzzle started fitting together a bat swooped between the two men, making them both jump.

“Christ!” Costantino said. “That’s all we need.”

Kirkwood dismissed the pest while his partner complained. He could hear a siren in the distance, maybe two. He dismissed them as well.

Flipping through the pages in his mind, he said, “I figured there was an accident, you know? I figured the guy under the tire was on the road for some reason. And one car swerved to miss him and the other didn’t. I was thinking the tragedy brought out the worst in these people and someone pulled out a gun or something, and… I don’t know! If that’s Holbrook under the car, what the hell is going on here? How did he make the phone call with his head stuffed under the goddamn wheel?”

 

 

32

 

Daniel looked down the shaft, and said, “Oh no.”

Pat didn’t hear him. He was dizzy, thinking about closing his eyes and letting go. He couldn’t help it. His pants were hanging off and blood was pouring from his severed finger causing his vision to fade in and out. But he was moving. His feet pushed onward and upward and for that he was grateful. It wasn’t an act of determination. It was just something he was doing. It was almost miraculous, really––considering the fact that he wasn’t holding the rungs. With his arms wrapped around the ladder he was hugging them at best.

Looking down he couldn’t see much, just the ladder, the walls, a few crab-critters and––oh shit. It was the big one, the mother. Damn. The big one was in the shaft, coming straight for him.

“Patrick!” Daniel yelled. “Hurry!”

The cloud that was fogging Pat’s thoughts cleared like a bell. He realized where he was, what he was doing, and what the stakes were. He remembered the creature devouring Roger and his adrenaline doubled. He thought about getting eaten alive and his adrenaline doubled again: he was next in line and would die a painful and horrific death if he didn’t get his ass in gear. He knew it, and knowing such a thing helped.

Pat’s chest scraped against the ladder. His feet kicked. The cold air turned warm and he was out. He was being dragged across the floor and it hurt like hell but he was out. Daniel said something but Pat didn’t understand. He couldn’t focus, couldn’t decipher the message. His eyes closed, opened, and closed again.

Dan slapped Pat across the face hard, with resentment and concern bubbling from his emotions. He wasn’t nice about it. He hit him like he was pissed off.

Pat’s eyes blasted open. He heard the words and understood their meaning.

“That thing is climbing up the shaft, Patrick! It’ll be here in a few seconds! GET UP! GET UP, YOU FUCKING DICKHEAD! GET UP! WE’VE GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE!”

With the help of Daniel’s strong grip, Pat sat up.

The room spun, tilting on one side.

Three crab-critters crawled through the opening in the floor: a black one, a brown one and a grey one. The black one scurried up the wall. The brown one backed into a corner and crouched into a ball. The grey one moved towards them.

Daniel kicked it into the shaft. He ignored the other two, yanked Pat to his feet and led him across the room. From there, they made their way past Hellboy’s corpse and up the rickety staircase, holding each other like drunks after the bar stopped serving.

Something the size of a toaster flew overhead, banging into the ceiling. It had two long tentacles hanging from its belly.

“What’s happening?” Pat mumbled, pulling his pants up with his thumbs. His face was pale and his eyes were hollow. He needed medical attention and rest. He needed water, a doctor. “Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you out of here, buddy. Don’t worry; the police are coming. Help is on its way. We made it Pat; we made it. Everything is going to be all right.”

The big creature crawled into the room, one giant leg at a time.

SQUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

Daniel snatched one last glance of the monster and slammed the basement door. He helped Pat walk down the hallway, and led him outside.

With a great amount of effort he led his friend across the yards, opened the door to Pat’s cottage, and brought him inside. He dragged him into the nearest bedroom and laid him on a bed. The cuts in his fingers and hands, which he earned while renovating, throbbed from the strain. But Pat’s hands were worse; they were awful.

Inside a bathroom Dan found a first aid kit, antiseptic cleaner, and painkillers. He wet a couple facecloths, washed his hands, and popped a couple pills. He returned to the bedroom with a bunch of supplies, forced painkillers into Patrick’s mouth, and convinced him to drink some water. Once that was taken care of, he cleaned Pat’s face and hands and wrapped some gauze around his wounds.

Then he entered the living room.

On the couch, his head fell against a cushion and he found his energy draining. The day was catching up with him. He was tired and ready to fade into dreamland.

What a day, he thought.

Then he imagined being at home with his wife, and drifted into slumber. It would be his last, filled with no dreams. Only nightmares.

 

 

33

 

Nicolas watched the pig-mobile stop and two pigs step outside. One was an Italian pig with a fat gut and fingers like sausages and the other looked like an accountant. They oinked at each other awhile and approached the carnage cautiously.

Nicolas smiled when the flashlights turned on and he smiled again when the bodies were found. A giggle snuck free when sausage-fingers stumbled across the road like he wanted to cough up his lunch. A full-on laugh snuck out when the accountant came running. Goddamn he looked funny; watching the pig unload a mouthful of Captain Crunch would have been the best thing he’d ever seen.

Tears appeared in sausages-fingers’ eyes. The accountant said something consoling. Oh sweet herpes, hand-jobs, and hand-grenades, those two fuck-knobs looked like they were going to kiss. They were putting on quite a show. Oh yes they were. Then the most amazing thing happened: a pig looked Nicolas right in the face. What a rush. It was hard for Nicolas to act dead when his grin was crawling past his eyeballs in an attempt to circle his head.

“You got me boys,” Nicolas said, smiling like a lunatic. He pointed his gun it at sausage-fingers; wasn’t fast about it either. He just did it.

And pulled the trigger.

The booming sound shocked the silence of the land. The bullet entered Sausage-fingers’ eye. Blood sprayed. A chunk of white skull ripped from the back end of his head and bounced against the minivan.

Sausage-fingers fell.

The accountant stepped back with his mouth hanging open. As he lifted his weapon Nicolas shot him too. The bullet went into his open mouth, destroying a bunch of teeth and a whole lot more. This was good, but not good enough. So Nicolas shot him again. The second bullet erased his nose and everything buried behind it.

Blood sprayed out of the accountant’s face; his gun fell from his hand and he tumbled to the ground like he was putting on a comedy routine.

Nicolas pulled himself from the car, ran a hand through his hair, and sat down on the road.

The sirens grew louder. Soon more pigs would arrive.

Nicolas untied his laces and took off his shoes. Then he took off his shirt and his pants and he placed them in a pile. Once he was down to his socks and underwear he yanked the jacket off the accountant pig. Blood ran from the pig’s head; some went on the jacket but most went on the road. Nicolas took off his shirt next, followed by his pants. The pig’s pants proved to be tough. The belt was new, heavy, and hard to manipulate.

Nicolas considered the plight of the approaching authorities. What if they arrived while he was standing around in his underwear, fondling a pig, surrounded by dead people? They would think he was crazy!

He needed to hurry.

Nicolas dressed himself in the pig’s attire. The clothing was small but it didn’t matter. Again, the belt was hard to work with.

Pig belts are a pain in the ass, he thought, struggling to fasten it. Why do those dick-wads put up with such bullshit?

Flashing lights appeared in the distance.

He hooked the belt, put on his shoes, and dusted himself off. Then he picked the pig’s gun off the ground, checked the safety, and slid it into the empty holster.

“All right, I’m ready,” he said to nobody. Followed by, “Oh shit! No I’m not!”

Nicolas grabbed the naked pig by the hair, dragged him to the side of the road, and tossed him in the ditch. Then he grabbed his stack of clothing and tossed it in the ditch too, but what about sausage-fingers? What was he supposed to do with that waste of meat?

The flashing lights grew brighter.

Nicolas cursed under his breath, stuck his fingers into sausage-fingers’ mouth and dragged him as far as he was able. The man was heavy, very heavy. After a few feet Nicolas’ grip slipped from the gaping maw, ripping lips apart.

“Fuck!”

Nicolas grabbed the man’s jacket and pulled. It was easier, but not much. Nicolas gave up after dragging him a few feet. But he didn’t want to leave the pig lying on the road, so he walked away from the corpse, hesitated, and went back for one last attempt. He took hold of the pig’s boot, spun him around, and dragged him to the ditch. If the authorities saw what he was doing, so be it. At this point, he didn’t care.

A fire truck rolled over the nearest hill. It parked behind the police car and the siren turned off. Firemen started pouring out of the truck.

Nicolas counted four of them––no wait, five of them.

One man jumped to the ground and began opening the large cabinet door on the side of the truck. Nicolas didn’t know this, but the man’s name was Mark Croft. He was new. He’d been a volunteer fireman for less than three months.

Nicolas ran towards him and said, “Quick man! Give me an ax!”

 

 

34

 

Once the cabinet door was open, Mark turned towards Nicolas. He said, “What?”

“You heard me! The ax! The ax! Oh God man, hurry up! I need the ax! It’s an emergency!”

Mark hesitated; something wasn’t right. But the policeman seemed to be panicking and he wanted to do the smartest thing so he reached into his rack of tools and grabbed a large fireman’s ax. And as he handed it to Nicolas, he asked, “What’s the situation, officer? You have blood all over your face!”

Snatching the ax from Mark’s hand, Nicolas shuffled back a foot, giving himself some room to move. He said, “I do? Goddamn, I forgot all about that! Watch this, fucko!”

The ax soared between Mark’s open hands and smashed into his helmet. The helmet, which saved his life, split apart but stayed in one piece as Mark dropped to the ground with legs like balsa wood, suddenly thinking about his mother.

He had told her––no, promised her––that he’d visit tomorrow. He said he’d stay for dinner, maybe even spend the night. He hadn’t seen his mother or his father in nearly six months and for Mark and his parents, six months was an outrageous amount of time. He had never been away from them for such an extended period. He had a great family; he loved them so very, very much. And it was his parents––Colin and Janine––that he thought about as the blade hit home.

WHAM!

Mark dropped to the ground and Nicolas spun around, gripping the ax with both hands.

A fireman stood a few feet away, holding his hat near his chest. His eyes were wide and his mouth was agape. He had a grey beard and gigantic eyebrows. This was Gary Sharpe, father of three––soon to be the late Gary Sharpe. Father no more.

“Perfect,” Nicolas muttered, with his lips pinching together.

He raised the ax up and brought it down again.

Gary’s response was even less effective than Mark’s. He looked up, his stomach flipped, and his chin quivered. He squeezed his fingers into fists and his throat made a noise that sounded like a groan. Then he took the blade right in the face. This caused his neck to snap, his skull to split open, and an eye to pop from his head. As his skull cracked apart and the grey matter from his brain exploded, blood gushed through his giant eyebrows, down his beard, and onto his chest.

Nicolas kicked the hat off, spun the ax around, and smashed him with the blunt end, which wasn’t very blunt. It was shaped like an ice-pick.

All four inches of the pick went into the center of Mark’s skull, making a slapping clapperboard POP! as it went in.

His neck crunched; his vertebrae shattered.

Nicolas tried to pull the pick free but found it was stuck. He wiggled the tool back and forth, widening the hole he had created.

Barry Doreen, a veteran on the force, was born with one blue eye and one brown eye. As a result, he spent his entire life being called ‘Wolf.’ And when all three bullets caught Wolf in the chest, it caused him to release a noise that wasn’t completely unlike a howl. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Two firemen left: Douglas Waterier and Kyle Van Ryan. Neither knew they were under attack but both heard the gunfire. For Douglas, the sound of firing came a second too late. He stepped from behind the truck just as Wolf exhaled his last, copper-flavored breath, and Nicolas shot him down.

With Barry on the ground, it was official: the area looked like a battlefield.

Tara and Brett Adkins sat in the minivan with their heads blown off.

Baby Michelle, strapped in her baby seat, looked like a sack of wet entrails––the word horror doesn’t begin to describe her remains.

Twelve-year-old Mandy Burton was stuffed into the backseat of the Dodge Charger with a pair of bullet holes in her innocent looking face and parts of her brain smudged against her thin shoulder.

Her dad, slumped over in the front seat with blood still streaming from his chest, had turned bleach white.

Beneath the car, Peter Holbrook’s skull was crushed, flattened beneath the car’s front tire.

Officer Joel Kirkwood had been stripped to his socks and his underwear and dumped in a ditch. In the moonlight, his face seemed to be locked in a scream.

Barry ‘Wolf’ Doreen and Douglas Waterier had been gunned down at point blank range and were lying on the road, less than five feet from the vehicle that had driven them to their fate.

And––

Almost miraculously, one man was left unharmed: Kyle Van Ryan.

Kyle, standing on the far side of the fire truck, wasn’t moving. Once he heard gunfire his instincts told him to stay put. Now he could hear someone talking. It wasn’t Barry or Douglas; it wasn’t Mark or Gary. So who was it?

“This isn’t going the way I planned,” Nicolas was saying. “What am I supposed to do now?” He did a quick headcount of the slain firemen.

Nicolas heard the voice; now he knew where the man was hiding. He was on the other side of the vehicle, not far away. It would be easy to pinpoint the exact spot, but for reasons beyond him, he didn’t want to hurt the man. Not that one; not him.

A longer pause; then Kyle answered with the truth. “We’re trained to leave the keys inside the ignition in case the driver is injured. Sometimes we need to move the truck.”

Nicolas shrugged his shoulders. “That sounds about right. Well, I can safely say your driver is injured. Sorry about that. I’m going to borrow the truck.” He climbed onboard and sat in the driver’s chair. Sure enough, the keys were there, free for the taking.

 

 

35

 

The ax was embedded in Mark Croft’s skull. The wooden handle sat on the road like a fallen tree. Gary Sharpe’s corpse was less than six feet away; his face had been split in half. These men were like brothers to Kyle Van Ryan. He had lived with them, trained with them, and played a million games of cards with them. He had gone to weddings and funerals together. And although he enjoyed Mark’s company more than Gary’s, he cared for both equally. These men were family. They were part of the brotherhood.

On the road beside Gary was an eyeball. It was wet and bloody and it had dirt on it. Kyle was staring at it when he heard the voice.

Douglas had been transferred from a fire hall in Chicago a few months back. It was his decision. He was fifty-two years old and tired of the big city. He wanted to live in a place where the living was easy. Now he was lying on a road with a broken spine and a punctured lung and a pool of blood beneath his shoulders deep enough to drown in. His eyes had turned dark and his skin had gone pale. The man was dying; soon he’d be dead.

“I will, brother. I will. And don’t worry; the ambulance will be here soon.” Kyle said it because it meant it but he was wrong; the ambulance would never arrive.

 

∞∞Θ∞∞

 

Nicolas turned a corner a headed for town. He was smiling and singing, wondering if he could get a fire-hose working so he could have some real fun. Before long, he saw an ambulance racing towards him with sirens blaring and lights flashing. When the vehicle got nice and close Nicolas pulled the fire truck into the wrong lane and laid on the horn, playing a friendly game of high-speed chicken. He hoped that the two vehicles would collide because he liked his odds of survival.

The ambulance swerved. The driver lost control and the vehicle rolled four times. When it stopped rolling it was upside down on the far side of the ditch with its windshield shattered and its hood crumpled.

Nicolas, still singing and smiling, parked the fire truck at the side of the road and stepped out. He walked over a small hill and past several trees. He shot three medical workers at point blank range, even though two of them were clearly dead.

He was tired, decided to call it a day.

He got in the truck and turned it around. It was not an easy feat but he managed, somehow he managed. And on his way home he drove past Kyle Van Ryan and saw that the man was holding onto a corpse like he had fallen in love. Nicolas waved and smiled and drove on by.

Kyle watched him go.

When Nicolas arrived home he parked in his driveway, thinking about how exciting the day had been, thinking about the bitch in the trunk and the guy in the basement with his legs blown off. He’d deal with them in the morning. In fact, he’d deal with the entire town in the morning.

The time to wage war had arrived.

 

 

36

 

Lying in the trunk next to Pauline Anderson’s corpse, Beth cried many times. The psycho’s trick with the drill had done its damage, both mentally and physically. This fact could not be disputed or denied. Her physical injuries were painful but her mental wounds kept the tears rolling long after her physical abrasions became manageable.

Beth thought she’d go crazy.

She wondered if she’d suffocate. Or bleed to death. Constructing the psycho’s features in her mind gave her shivers. But more disturbing, much more disturbing, was thinking she’d never see him again. If that happened, she’d be locked in the trunk forever. How would she survive, by eating what was available? She knew what was available: Pauline’s corpse, the things living within it, and not much else.

Time crawled. Flies buzzed. Maggots scurried across her skin and she pretended not to notice. Outside, a raccoon walked next to the car and Beth figured Nicolas had returned with another brilliantly sick joke. The next forty-five minutes were spent waiting for the punch line. And when she heard the fire truck pull into the driveway, she wasn’t sure what to think.

If someone other than psycho-boy was in the driveway, she needed to yell––draw attention to herself. But it was psycho-boy; it was. Of course it was. Who else could it be, the garbage man?

“Won’t talk.” Nicolas scratched his head. “I can make you talk, you know. Oh yes I can. Do you think the drill is all I can do? Is that it? How would you like me to stick a water hose into that drill hole for the next few days? Would you like that? Huh? Would you? I can do it; I don’t mind. You and the corpse can go swimming together, yes? Do you know what else I can do? I can make a little bonfire beneath the car.”


Nicolas listened.

Nothing.

“I’ve got a jar filled with hornets, too. I ever tell you that? I do. I found a nest near the swamp and I put it inside this big mayonnaise jar that I’ve had since, gosh, I don’t even know when. I poked a bunch of holes in the lid. Every now and then I give ‘em a little water. Sometimes I give them honey. I’m not sure what hornets eat but I know one thing for sure: they’re ready to get out of that jar. Oh yes they are! If I shake the jar, open it, and place it upside down on the trunk… do you think the hornets will crawl through the drill hole? I think they will. Yeah, I’m pretty sure of it. You do you know what else I think? I think they’d be pissed off and ready to wage war. I also think you’re a fucking twat.”

Nicolas listened.

“Maybe you are dead. Is that what you’ll have me believe? Oh no. That brainless bitch is dead. Whatever will I do? I’ll tell you what I’ll do, ya stupid whore… I’ll drive the fuckin’ car into the lake. How about that? How do you like them apples?”

Finally, Beth said, “What do you want?” feeling defeated. Again. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Oh! There you are! Well, well… what do we have here? You are alive! Isn’t that incredible?”

“You don’t have to get all snippy. I just want to ask a few simple questions, God. By the way you’ve been talking you’d think I’ve mistreated you.”

Nicolas went suddenly quiet. He didn’t ask his questions. He just stood there looking at the trunk, smiling. He was tired and ready for bed, but he was also smiling. This was a big day, a very big day. Everything would be different tomorrow, absolutely everything.

“Well?” Beth unleashed. She was starting to hate the psycho on all kinds of uncharacteristic levels.

“I want to know about Cameron,” Nicolas said flatly. “I want to know where she is and why she took off her clothing. That was the strangest thing I ever saw.”

Nicolas thought the question was ludicrous. Why would she want out? He was going to kill her, or stick her in the cage, so what’s with the hurry? He said, “I’ll let you out in the morning.”

“No!”

“Yeah. I’m tired. I’m going to bed, you dumb twit. Don’t forget to keep your mouth closed. Otherwise the bugs will get in, and there are some big fucking bugs in there. Trust me, I’ve seen ‘em. Well, I guess that’s it. Good night.” Nicolas slapped his hand on the hood twice more; then he went inside.

Once he was in, he locked the front door and approached the closet––the empty closet, the one in the hallway. He put his hand on the doorknob and gave it a good yank. It was hard to open but he managed.

She tried not to think about the spot she was in or the things she had witnessed. She tried to forget the fact that the warm air tasted like death. Thinking about her future was out of the question. She didn’t feel good about anything. In time she closed her eyes and fell asleep, keeping her mouth closed.

 

 

37

 

The tree was old and dead, branches were knuckled and knotted like witch fingers, half-inch trenches separated thick chunks of bark, which were infested with worms and termites. A wasp’s nest was attached to a branch. It was the very branch that a very large cocoon clung to, and although the insects had stung the body inside the webbing, the body did not register pain. The cold blood beneath the changing skin remained impervious.

Cameron opened her eyes, covered in a silky mesh.

Below the crude, off-white thread, her exposed skin became darker. Her breasts bloated and elongated and turned completely black. Not a healthy and attractive African black, but the color of tar, the color of something burning in a chemical fire. All of her skin turned this way, even the tips of her fingers and the balls of her feet. The black skin was oily and greasy, covering muscles that had grown large and swollen.

As time forged ahead she looked like a strangely mutated corpse, except for her eyes and teeth. Her teeth had fangs now, fangs like needles, like daggers. Her eyes bulged and the whites had turned dark. Each eye had a red dot in the center. To look there, into the place surrounded by gloom, was to look into the heart of a demon, a succubus––the devil’s chilling and exotic whore. To look into those eyes could only bring madness.

Cameron crawled from the tree and sat at its base. She wrapped her arms around her swollen knees. And in time, she picked the silk away, freeing herself of its sheath. She was in no hurry; she was still changing, transforming, post-embryonic.

Leaning forward, she listened. She could hear so much now; she could hear everything for miles and miles. Yesterday she was deaf in comparison. Now she could hear footfalls in the heart of the town, people laughing at the waterfront cafe, boats slapping against the docks at the Yacht Club. She could hear lovers crawl into bed; fish swim in Cloven Lake, deer rustle in the forest. She could hear radio frequencies in the air, crickets in Nicolas Nehalem’s marsh, the beast from Daniel’s basement.

And she could hear more––much, much more.

Cameron could hear George Gramme talking lovingly about motorcycles, even though a Harley had amputated his fingers two summers ago. She could hear Jay Hopper ring in his final sale of the night, all the way out on the 9^th line. She could hear Stephen Pebbles brooding inside his two-bedroom apartment. He lived there now––now that a fire had destroyed his farm and everything he owned. She could hear odd-job Martin West limping across the kitchen like a ninety year old man, knowing he wouldn’t have to limp if he hadn’t been shingling his neighbor’s roof––something he was dangerously unqualified to do. She could hear Lizzy Backstrom roll her wheelchair across the hardwood towards the window; for the window was the place she kept watch. Lizzy didn’t trust Cloven Rock, not anymore. Not after seeing the great multi-legged beast creep across the street on that long and terrible night, the night that changed her life forever.

Cameron could hear Stanley Rosenstein, who had been a foreman at the docks and an all-around good guy before his wife left him and his sanity was questioned: he thought there were monsters in Cloven Rock. Stan pulled his shades down and triple bolted his door. He did that every night, and often times, checked to make sure they were locked.

She could hear Father Mort Galloway, sitting in his house by the church, secretly and shamefully watching his X-rated movies and thinking about Leanne Wakefield. Ever since Leanne’s husband Simon had drowned in the backyard pool she had been attending church religiously––so to speak. And every Sunday morning at nine, she arrived at mass wearing a shirt that was tight enough to make the Pope take notice. Galloway wasn’t sure if Leanne felt remorse for talking on the phone while Simon died, or if she was trying to land a new husband. Maybe it was both.

She could hear Nicolas asking questions, and Beth––locked inside the trunk––giving answers. In fact, she could hear Nicolas thinking. And when she put her mind to it, she could hear Beth thinking too. Listening to the thoughts of the entire town seemed almost within reach. She just needed a little more time.

She liked listening to Daniel; he was a good man, a nice man, the right man for her. He was handsome and smart, funny and kind. He was someone she could be with and love––not in conventional ways, of course, not now. But that hardly mattered. She wanted him. She wanted to be with him forever.

There were others she could hear. Others she needed to see.

She had a list of them.

Paul LaFalce was on that list. Paul LaFalce, the lying cheating, cunt-hungry prick that fucked every open-leg slut in town. Oh yes, oh yes. He was on that list for sure. He wasn’t alone, there were more. Like Lizzy Backstrom’s ex-best friend Julie Stapleton, who didn’t know how to keep a secret but knew how to sleep with Paul and act like nothing happened. But Paul was first. Oh yes. She couldn’t wait to see Paul LaFalce. She couldn’t wait to see the ‘the Gasman.’ She wanted to give him a little piece of her mind. And take a piece of his.

Her dark and bloated skin was fading now, fading, fading––color returning to normal. And beyond. Becoming wilted and pale, insipid and palled, almost toneless. Her organs and bones looked gloomy beneath her skin, which seemed as transparent as the webs she picked from her body.

With a grin she lifted herself to her feet. She was almost ready.

Her transformation was nearly complete.

 

∞∞Θ∞∞

∞Θ∞

 

 

~~~~ CHAPTER FOUR: THE KYLE THREAD

 

1

 

Kyle Van Ryan squeezed Douglas Waterier’s hand.

Douglas coughed twice, spraying blood into the air. He exhaled one final time and shivered. His fingers opened, his eyes locked on nothing and the tension seeped from his body.

He was dead.

Kyle was holding hands with a dead man.

He looked away from the corpse with grief-stricken eyes, seeing the carnage on the road instead. With the headlights cutting the darkness into various shapes and shadows, the area looked like something from a horror movie. He felt like crying, like turning off his mind and shutting down the world. The dead man’s hand slipped from his own, making a soft thump against the ground. And although he didn’t see it, a moth landed on the unmoving hand after it dropped, fluttering its wings like it found a new home. In time, the insect stood very still, as if waiting for the future.

Kyle felt terrible, but not for long. Soon enough the feeling was replaced with something unrelated to grief, anguish, misery, and sorrow. This was a new emotion––a vile sentiment, and quite possibly a dangerous one.

He was being watched.

Deep down where his instincts dwelled, Kyle Van Ryan knew he wasn’t alone. There was something in close proximity he couldn’t put his finger on. Might have been an animal, might have been something else.

Something worse.

He glanced at Barry ‘Wolf’ Doreen’s haunted features, his blue eye and his brown. He sized up the minivan and the bodies within. He looked at the car in the ditch, the ax embedded in Mark Croft’s head, the blood on the road, the tread marks in the gravel. If he could teleport himself into another time and place he would. Of course, he couldn’t. All he could do was gaze across the dark and evocative road to a place he didn’t want to see. And it was there, near Daniel’s car––a white shape against a black background, watching him, studying him, like a ghost. Was it hiding near the forest or was it just too dark to see? He didn’t know; didn’t want to know. He wanted it to be gone, just gone––nothing more and nothing less.

Go away, he thought. Jeepers bum-fuck, just go away.

He felt his nerves unraveling and the muscles in his neck stiffen. He felt a cold chill along his spine. His arms grew goosebumps and face felt flush. There was a knot in his stomach tightening like a noose.

Standing at the side of the road, waiting, lurking, looming. What was it?

No––not it. Her. It was a girl.

The woman at the side of the road seemed to be a phantom, but not transparent. Real. With pale skin and the eyes of a demon she moved towards him, naked and seductive, dominant and strong. Her feet, colorless and exposed, dragged against the gravel until she was close enough for Kyle to smell her rotting decay. Or maybe it wasn’t decay; maybe it was something different than decay, something tainted and sour that had no name.

He wanted to run but couldn’t. His defenses were weak and his will to escape was drifting. She was beautiful, stunning––more breathtaking than his wife on their wedding night, more spectacular than a perfect morning sunrise. But she was hideous too. Creepy and foul; like something that crept from a tomb in a gothic tale from a time long since past. She mixed the two extremes in an equal concoction. He wanted to kiss her passionately and run screaming at the same time. He was excited and terrified. His eyes were wide, his mouth agape, his muscles clenched tighter than ever before.

“No,” he whispered. But like the moth on the corpse, he stood motionless, waiting for the future.

Another stride. Two.

She was less than ten feet away now, getting closer. She almost appeared to be gliding towards him, lighter than the air she breathed, if she breathed.

He looked at her wilted breasts, her desiccated skin, her strange black eyes––eyes with bright red dots that seemed to dance in circles while not moving at all. The sound of her feet crunching against the pavement was louder now, her stench grew worse, and yet he remained in place, helplessly obeying her unspoken commands.

Her jaws opened terribly wide, something unnatural. And inside that tragic and cavernous maw, that gaping hole, he could see long, sharp spikes that had no business being inside a human mouth. But she was not human. Couldn’t be. Not now. The teeth belonged to a wolf or a shark, not a woman, not a girl. They were awful and horrific, incisive and dangerous.

He felt himself growing hard.

He wanted her. And he wanted to give himself to her, wanted her to bite him; needed it, in fact. He longed for it pensively.

“Hurry,” he said, sounding desperate and vulnerable. But, oh God, why was he saying that? The voice wasn’t his. It couldn’t be his, could it? It was. That was the worst part; his words were betraying him. He needed to shut up, stop talking, escape his own will. But his will was no longer his to escape. It belonged to her now. He would do what she wanted, what it wanted. He had no choice. He would become her concubine, if nothing more.

Deep inside, in the little place that still belonged to Kyle, he considered pulling the ax from Mark Croft’s skull and chopping the abomination down. This was no woman; it was a monster, a thing. It looked like a girl but it was not. It was an evil succubus, a vampire, a fiend––or quite possibly a combination of all three.

She limped now, limped towards him. A living scarecrow wrapped in a corpse’s skin.

A question mark flashed inside his mind: was the girl the walking dead, a zombie, a living corpse? She couldn’t be, could she?

He looked at her chest again, and could see the heart beating beneath her skin, beneath her bones. That meant she was alive, didn’t it?

But oh God, he thought. Why can I see that? Why can I see her heart beating right through her skin and her bones? What’s wrong with this picture? And what’s wrong with her teeth? What’s wrong with her enormous razor-like teeth?

There was a voice screaming inside his mind now, screaming and screaming, pleading for him to stop what he was doing, demanding that he run away. But the voice had no control. It was powerless.

She bit his neck. Not in a romantic way. She didn’t leave two flawlessly round incisions in his milky, unblemished skin, like an amorous character from The Vampire Lestat. She didn’t have a red and black satin cape fluttering in the wind. She didn’t step from a wooden carriage along the mountainous slopes of the Transylvanian Alps, taste his sweet nectar, turn into a bat, and fly into the night before the backdrop of a full moon.

Drooling, she tore the meat from his neck and he cried out, releasing a scream of agony he never knew existed. She devoured him and the pain was overwhelming. A hot spray of blood spewed into the air, splashing his chin and cheek. It squirted across her face too, then it ran over her lips and down her chest––and he knew, right then and there, that she was killing him. He was about to die in a sea of anguish.

And as she chewed a second helping from his body his arms quivered, he knees became weak and his heart slowed. Then it did the thing that all hearts do in moments of extreme physical trauma. It stopped.

Everything stopped.

His eyes rolled back and his life was over; it had been extinguished. She murdered him and he was dead.

Then the impossible happened. His heart started up again, beating faster now, pumping his blood in reverse, causing an internal torture he had never imagined. His organs labored through the unpredictably faulty design and he screamed with a voice that was different, more animal than man, more beast than being.

He felt what she felt: hunger, hatred. Rage.

He was a monster now, but not like her. He was no vampire. He was a zombie, a ghoul, a slave to the Master––a slave to Cameron. His intellect was falling while Cameron’s skills grew greater and greater. And as Cameron devoured him his hunger mounted; his eyes shifted to the bodies on the road. If she allowed him to feed he would. He would rip meat from the bones and drink blood until the human shells had none left to give.

And she would allow him to feed. She would.

 

 

2

 

Time passed. Kyle Van Ryan was on the road, alone. His fireman’s jacket was off. His neck and shoulder had been chewed apart. He looked pale and shriveled, a fireman that had been withered rather than burned, with meat ravished from his body. Each eye had turned dark, with a red glowing dot in place of an iris. His body cooled. Muscles contracted. His cheekbones looked like large knuckles in his face. His fingers were twigs. Knees and elbows like doorknobs. Stranger than this, Kyle’s teeth had begun to elongate. A second row of teeth was forming.

He lifted himself to his feet and grunted.

He was not like Cameron, not a true vampire. He was a zombie, but not like the ones he had seen on TV. He was a zombie with a mouthful of daggers, a hybrid zombie-vampire whose blood flowed in reverse, a zombie that needed to avoid sunlight. And although his thoughts slumped along in a thick and dull jumble of disorder, he was a zombie on a mission. He had a job to do. He had a Master.

Kyle put a foot on Mark Croft’s shoulder and yanked the ax from his head. He entered the forest with blood dripping from the blade. He chopped and gathered long, sturdy pieces of wood. There was no need for Kyle to travel far; the woodland was thick and abundant with all that he desired.

But it wasn’t his desires he looked to fulfill.

He was following orders, being a good little henchman, a fiend that knew his place.

He gathered six long sticks, straight as he could find, two inches thick and twelve feet long. He brought them to the side of the road and removed the branches and leaves, making the sticks relatively smooth. After sharpening the ends into spears, he returned to the forest and found six more. He sharpened and cleaned them. Laid them in a pile.

The road was hard but the grassy land next to it was soft. The bottom of the ditch was softer still, but he didn’t want that––she didn’t want that. He needed the spears to be in a place high enough for all to see.

He lifted a single spear from the pile. With straining muscles, he forced the spear into the soft earth at the side of the road. Just hours ago he would have been lucky to bury the stick an inch, but Kyle was different now. Stronger. Some might say he had the strength of ten men.

He returned to the pile, lifted another stick and repeated the procedure. He did this again and again––and again and again and again. When he was finished his task, four spears pierced the earth on the left side of the road, four more pierced the earth on the right. Another four stabbed the road itself. These last four were the not easily managed, but he handled it.

The spears were separated evenly; not perfectly, but close enough. Each stick was fifteen to twenty feet from the one next to it, enclosing Nicolas Nehalem’s war zone in an oval ring.

Kyle lifted the ax from the ground, returned to the forest, and chopped apart an overturned tree. Once he was done he dropped the ax and returned to the road with a thick log cradled in both arms. He returned to the forest and grabbed another log, and another.

Placing the logs beneath the nearest spear, he created a makeshift stepladder. Then he eyed the bodies of the dead.

For no reason at all he started with Gary Sharpe.

Gary was the fireman with the grey beard and the gigantic black eyebrows. He was the father of three that had taken ax blade square in the face.

Kyle stripped Gary to his underwear, gripped his hands and dragged the man’s heavy frame across the road. Gary’s broken neck allowed his head to flop back and forth without resistance. Blood drained onto the ground. Kyle lifted the man up and threw him over his shoulder like a large bag of grain. Then he walked up his log stepladder, stood on the top, balanced himself carefully and hoisted Gary onto the spear.

The spear perforated both skin and muscle, traveling two inches into the dead man’s belly before it became stuck. Kyle grabbed Gary by the hair and the beard and stepped off the log, pulling the corpse to the earth. The spear traveled through Gary’s intestines and spleen quickly; it came through his back with a POP.

He removed his uniform and split him in half with the ax. He put his groin and his legs on one spear and his torso and head on another. It was easier that way. Smaller pieces were easier to work with.

He found little Mandy in the backseat of Mr. Burton’s car.

He stripped her naked, chopped off her head, and placed it on a spear. He slid her twelve-year-old body onto a different spear, upside down. The stake entered the stump of her neck, traveled through her lungs and intestines and exited the place she was saving for her wedding day. Her arms hung straight down. Her legs were opened in a ‘Y’.

He did the baby’s next, impaling her mouth first. After he was done with the baby he impaled the child’s mother on the same spike.

An hour and fifty minutes later he was done. He had twelve bodies skewered across fifteen sticks. The sixteenth stick was in his hand.

Covered in dirt and blood, he walked.

He walked away from the dead bodies, the abandoned vehicles, the bloodstained road. He walked away from the spikes and the clothing, which he left lying carelessly on the ground. He walked––not towards Nicolas Nehalem, Daniel McGee, and Patrick Love, not towards the pit in Daniel’s basement. He walked towards town.

For the first twenty minutes he saw nothing but the moon in the sky, its glare upon the road, the fields at his sides. He listened to the earth crunching beneath his feet and the insects in the grass. He didn’t know what the sounds were, or what they meant, or where they came from. They just were.

A row of houses came into view on the left side of the road. A row of houses came into view on the right. He walked past them, towards St. Peter’s cemetery. He saw the church that sat next to it. And like all small-town churches, it looked abandoned in the darkness. He couldn’t see the windmill or the wooden bridge that sat behind the graveyard; the night was too dark for that. But he could see the fence that surrounded the necropolis, an outline of the forest in the distance, and the one thing that his eyes were focused on––

Light.

The light was glowing dimly, not from any of the houses that were lined up in a neat little row, and not from inside the church. The light was coming from the humble residence that sat beside the church: Father Galloway’s place.

Kyle stumbled towards the light with his body cooling. One hand was raised and one hand hung limp. He looked at the cross sitting high upon the tall steeple, the sea of tombstones, the scattered trees. His thin, dry lips pressed together. A crow flew overhead. Looking at it, he tightened his grip on the spear.

His mind was consumed with hunger and rage.

 

3

 

Father Mort Galloway opened his eyes, staggered out of bed and lifted his housecoat from an antique hook. The housecoat was white. The hook was made of wood.

He put the housecoat on and yawned.

On his way to the bathroom he flicked several light switches. After a squirt and a flush he wandered into the kitchen. He poured a drink of water, swallowed it down, and wiped his mouth with his hand.

On the wall was a crucifix. He looked at it and looked away.

With his dehydration somewhat relieved, he opened the cupboard beneath the sink, removed a half-empty bottle of gin, unscrewed the cap and poured himself a shot. Not a big shot; just a small one, a mouthful. He only wanted to wet his whistle, nothing more.

He drank the gin straight, squinting his eyes as it went down his throat. His chest burned. He looked at the crucifix again, took a deep breath and poured another shot, lying to himself about quitting his nasty habit: I can quit. It won’t be hard.

He swallowed the shot and poured a third.

Then he heard a dull THUUMP, THUUMP on the door.

He sat the glass on the counter, next to several candles and a vase full of flowers. He wiped his lips with his hand and walked towards the sound, not wanting to open the door. After all, he had been drinking––not much, but some. And that was no way for a Catholic priest to present himself. He was a man of God, not a sales rep from Budweiser. In a town like Cloven Rock these things mattered.

But then, doesn’t a man of God help a brother in need?

A hymn:

 

When I was hungry you gave to eat,

When I was thirsty you gave me to drink,

Now enter into the home of my father...

 

Damn, he thought. I need to open that door.

He certainly didn’t want to open it, didn’t want to do anything but swallow another shot or two of London Dry, crawl under the covers and wait for morning. Besides, it was late. Real late. Who comes knocking at this hour?

Someone in need, he thought. Now enter into the home of my father.

THUUMP.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m coming.”

He scooted into his bedroom and threw on a pair of pants and a shirt. Then he returned to the door, unlocked it and opened it up.

“Hellooooo––”

Father Galloway’s eyes widened and color drained from his face.

Kyle Van Ryan was there, dead but not dead, blood pumping in reverse. His shoulders and neck was gnarled; the blood on his shirt was soaking. His eyes shimmered and glowed like a cat caught in the headlights while his nose sniffed the air like a dog.

He grinned; he growled.

He dropped the spear and attacked.

Father Mort Galloway stepped back and Kyle was on him, grabbing his shoulders with his hands. They crashed against the floor. A statuette of the Virgin Mary fell from a shelf and snapped into three pieces. Kyle slammed a palm beneath the priest’s chin, causing his teeth to smash together. A little section of Galloway’s tongue was chomped off and pain shot through his body. His eyes bulged. His nostrils flared.

Kyle chewed a chunk from Galloway’s neck while clawing at his face.

Galloway tried to push the attacker away and dispute the situation. “Son,” he begged, “Son!” Blood ran into his throat. “Stop it! Stop this!”

Kyle lifted a clawed hand, straightened and flexed his index finger, and rammed the finger into Galloway’s bugling eye.

“Son!”

The conversation ended with a scream. Galloway swung his arms madly while kicking his heels against the dark hardwood floor. He thrashed his head left and right. Little spots of red speckled the freshly painted walls around him. A painting of St. Christopher slipped from the wall and smashed against the floor.

Kyle’s finger slid free from the man’s eye socket. A long, glimmering stringer clung to his nail. He raised his hand up, flexed his muscles and stabbed the same finger into the same eye again. It went in easy; the cherry had already been popped.

Galloway convulsed. Blood drained from his nose. Legs shook and hands slapped at nothing.

Kyle wedged a second finger inside Galloway’s skull, scratching a hole in his brain. It almost seemed like he was trying to dig a path to the other side. He scooped a scrap from inside Galloway’s head and a piece of meat rolled free. He pulled his hand away and licked his finger’s ravenously.

Galloway twitched twice more. Blood poured from his eye socket, his nose, and from one of his ears.

Kyle bit into the priest’s neck again, feeding.

Feeding.

 

 

4

 

Father Galloway sat up. There was a blank spot in his memory. He remembered getting up from bed and having a glass of water. He remembered pouring a shot of gin and hearing a knock at the door. He remembered being attacked and then, and then––

He wasn’t sure.

The blank spot was big enough to park a bus in.

Galloway looked at his hands; blood poured from his skull to his palms. He licked what was left of his lips and grunted. He tasted blood and forced himself to his feet. Chunks of his brain and mush from his eye rolled down his face. He didn’t notice, nor did he care. All that had happened was in the past, and the past seemed pointless now. Previous thoughts and beliefs didn’t matter. Religion didn’t matter. His church didn’t matter. His dwindling congregation and the community it represented mattered even less.

All that mattered was feeding.

But no, he quickly realized. That wasn’t true.

What mattered wasn’t feeding but following the command of the Master. He was no longer the shepherd; he was among the flock. He knew the Master’s needs even if he didn’t understand the Master’s plan. He knew the Master’s order even though the Master remained a mystery. It was the town that mattered. Old Testament judgment was being forged in Cloven Rock. The people were to be divided. Some would be executed while others would be given a seat at the Master’s table. Some would feed; others would be fed.

Eternal life: he preached about it but never understood the meaning. Now he knew; now he understood. Eternal life also meant eternal death. He would live inside his corpse, blood flowing in reverse, following the will of the Master, a servant of the damned.

Galloway stepped outside with half his face hanging from his skull and bite marks in his neck. He sniffed the air like a wolf.

There was a row of seven houses to his right, a cemetery to his left. He walked away from his home, along the great wall of St. Peter’s church, across the parking lot and onto the lawn. He made for the houses.

The houses were dark, except one. In one the lights were on.

He heard a family screaming and a young girl crying. He heard a glass shatter and something heavy hit the floor. A bright light appeared behind one of the windows. Something might have been on fire. And as Galloway walked past the house, he saw Kyle Van Ryan inside, strangling a child.

Dragging his feet against the road, he walked to Leanne Wakefield’s house. He entered her backyard and stood by the pool.

He thought about Leanne a lot before the blank spot, which was growing bigger and deeper and somehow more relevant. He thought about her while he watched X-rated movies and drank himself sick with gin. The tight little shirts she wore to mass always looked so good. With her nipples peeking through the fabric and her lips painted red, she was the girl of his dreams. He wanted to eat her up.

 

 

5

 

––AAASSSSH

Simon drowned in the backyard pool two summers ago; Leanne had been sleeping alone ever since. She mumbled her late husband’s name one last time, extended an arm and clicked the nightlight beside her bed. The light came on; it was bright, so very bright. Didn’t matter. Even in her weary and lethargic state she knew something happened. So she sat up, put her feet on the floor and sighed. She had to deal with it… whatever it was.

“Is someone here?” she said, lifting her eyebrows rather than her eyes.

Being more awake, she realized the bedroom window was broken. There was glass on the floor, in the drapes, on a plant and inside several pairs of shoes.

Someone broke the Goddamn window, she thought angrily, rubbing a knuckle into her eye. But maybe it wasn’t a ‘somebody’. Might have been a bird, right?

She exhaled a deep breath.

No. It was a somebody. Not a bird. No bird could have done such damage, and if it did, where was it? Why wasn’t it flying around or wounded on the floor?

She looked into the heart of the mess. No bird. But a rock peeked out from beneath her bed.

She stood up, naked except for her tiny underwear. She didn’t care. She wasn’t an exhibitionist but it had been so long since anyone had seen her body she felt like it was going to waste. And she had nice curves; she was lean and attractive and worth taking a look at. She knew this, even if she was the only one that did.

Leanne put an arm across her chest, walked to the window and looked into her yard. A slight breeze gave her a shiver and made her nipples erect.

A man stood by the pool. His head was down and his shoulders were slumped.

She didn’t know who the man was; it was too dark to see.

Stepping away from the window, she lifted a blouse off the dresser and slipped it on. Then she returned to the window and let her emotions shine.

“Hey!” she said, with a cracking voice. She looked older when she was angry; the lines in her forehead changed her from thirty-seven to fifty in a heartbeat. “Whatcha doing in my backyard? Get away from here! Did you break my window? What the hell is wrong with you?”

Father Galloway snapped his tattered head towards her and growled. His single eye grew wide and blood dribbled from the remains of his chin. He lifted his hands, extended his arms, and shuffled towards the broken window. Chucks of his scalp hung loosely over one ear, flopping up and down as he moved.

Leanne, shocked, stepped away from the window.

A long sliver of glass dug into her heel. She let out a squeal and fell onto her bed. The pain was excruciating but her mind was elsewhere.

She recognized that man: it was Galloway.

What the fuck was going on?

Suddenly the priest was at the window, screaming like a lunatic. He slammed his forehead into the broken glass. Blood splashed. He raised his arms over his head and thrashed about like Kermit the Frog introducing a guest. Rage. He seemed to be filled with it. He smashed the window with his left hand. His smashed the window with his right. A chunk of glass fell to the floor. A layer of skin fell from his face and slid down his chest.

Leanne Wakefield hadn’t released a good-sized scream yet but she could feel one crawling around her throat, ready to be set free. She had to get away from this man, this thing––if she didn’t get away she would scream, and once she did she might not ever stop.

She tried to stand.

The shard of glass dug into her body deeper now than before. She sat back down. Another squeal escaped, this one, louder than her first.

Don’t scream, she thought, biting back her fears. Don’t scream, or it’ll be over for sure!

Still sitting on the bed, she looked at her foot and the growing puddle of blood beneath it. She eyed her wound and did a quick examination.

The bad news: she had a big hunk of glass hanging from her heel.

The good news: it would be easy to pull out.

Galloway tried to crawl through the opening but he couldn’t do it; the broken glass was none too kind. It ripped his body apart. His arms were shredded now. His throat was cut. Three fingers were broken and blood poured from him generously.

Leanne grabbed the chunk of glass between her thumb and her index finger, closed her eyes and yanked it free. She let out a quick yelp and stood up, conscious of the mess on the floor.

The priest became more excited. He smashed his broken fingers against his mangled face. He smashed his mangled face against the side of the house. Then in his seemingly exaggerated aggravation––he bit a HUGE piece of meat from his own arm. A mouthful.

Now Leanne did scream. She did. She couldn’t help it.

And when she figured things couldn’t get worse, Kyle Van Ryan showed up at the window, next to Galloway, looking like death, eyes glowing red, with someone else’s brains smeared across his face, smoldering fire in his hair, snapping his teeth like a caged hyena at feeding time, smashing his fists against the windowpane.

Galloway turned towards the gruesome fireman and hissed. He pounded Kyle with an open hand and ripped a chunk of smoking hair from his head.

With a snort and a growl Kyle grabbed the loose flap of scalp that hung from Galloway’s head. He tore it off and stuffed it in his mouth like cake.

Galloway shrieked and spat and pounded Kyle in the face with a broken-finger fist. He growled like he had forgotten how to speak.

Leanne closed her eyes.

Her shoulders were high, her muscles were tense and her fingers were balled into fists. Blood drained from her foot. Her teeth clamped her bottom lip; one eyebrow was raised higher than the other. On top of it all, her hair was a complete mess. In short, she looked like horrified shit.

“I have to get out of here,” she said.

She turned away from the zombies, walked out of the bedroom, down the hall, and sat on a bench. Yes, she walked. She didn’t run and she didn’t jog. She was trying to keep her composure. But it was hard; her poise was clearly slipping.

Sitting on the bench in her front hall, she put her shoes on.

“Easy,” she said. She took a very large breath and cleared her throat. “Just take it easy, Lee. Stay calm. Don’t panic and everything will turn out just fine.”

She stood up, opened the front door and stepped outside.

It was the biggest mistake of her life.

 

 

6

 

The house beside Leanne’s place had its lights on. So did several other houses. She figured her neighbors heard screaming and called the cops. That was good. Cops were good. A little bit of law enforcement was exactly what the situation needed.

She hustled across her yard and onto her neighbor’s porch. Only then did she realize she had no pants on. Thankfully she did have underwear. She considered going back home. Then she dismissed the idea, opened her neighbor’s front door without knocking, and stepped inside.

Her neighbor, Tabitha Smith––owner and operator of Tabby’s Goodies––came running out of the haze; she was naked, with one arm ripped off, her skull cracked open, and teeth that resembled a bear-trap.

Leanne lifted her hands in front of her face, opened her mouth and screamed.

Then Tabitha knocked her down and landed on top of her; blood drained from her arm-stump. She grabbed a hold of Leanne’s shirt and ripped it halfway off her body.

Leanne screamed again. Breasts exposed, she pushed Tabby’s chest and tried to get away––but it was hard, impossible even. Tabitha was clinging to her like hungry on a crocodile.

She screamed, “Get away from me!” And it seemed to work.

Tabby scurried off, resembling a three-legged dog.

Leanne shifted her position. But before she had a chance to get off the floor, she saw Father Galloway standing above her with gore hanging from the place his face had once been. She looked away, only to find Kyle Van Ryan standing there too.

And Kyle––oh God, she knew Kyle from the Yacht Club. He was a nice guy, a gentleman. He was a Goddamn sweetheart for crying out loud and she often wondered what it would be like to date him. But that didn’t matter! Not now. What the hell was happening here? This wasn’t Kyle. This was some kind of monster!

The concrete steps pounded her body as she was dragged across them. The stone pebble driveway scrapped skin from her ass, back and legs.

Van Ryan released her right hand.

Galloway released her left.

Leanne flopped against the driveway. As she tried to get up, Tabby jumped on top of her, pinning her arms with her knees, clutching her neck with her only hand.

Leanne had been doing a good job of keeping her wits; she was trying, still trying. But she was beyond scared now; she was terrified. Her heart was racing, her blood was pumping; she was on the verge of wetting herself.

She said, “What are you doing? Stop this! Stop this all of you! Are you crazy? Have you all gone mad?”

But when she looked at Galloway’s face, and Tabby’s missing arm, and the void in Kyle’s eyes, she knew they hadn’t gone mad. This was something different, something utterly ludicrous.

Kyle stepped away; he returned a moment later with a spear in his hand. He greased the tip with the blood from his neck and knelt down beside her.

Leanne saw the stick and went wild. Her fear intensified fifty notches. Feet kicking, eyes bulging, she screamed, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHAT? STOP! OH DEAR GOD, STOP! ARE YOU INSANE? LET ME GO!”
 Galloway forced Leanne’s legs apart and reached between them. He grabbed her underwear and yanked them to her knees.

Leanne couldn’t believe it. She said, “NO! FATHER GALLOWAY––NOOOOOO!”

Kyle forced the tip of the spear into Leanne’s anus and started pushing. And there was a moment––before her blood squirted onto the stone pebble driveway, her cervix was destroyed and her sigmoid colon was sliced into sections––when her fear hit its all time high.

Fear of the unknown is great.

But the fear of evident torture and anguish is much, much worse.

Leanne’s protest became agony. She screamed as loud as she was able; she screamed with all of her might. She screamed as the spear shredded her rectum and poked a hole in her uterus. She screamed until the spear crept into her intestines, between her lungs, and into her throat. Then her screams turned to gags, and her gags turned into a sick, knowing horror. There is no combination of words to describe her emotional and physical amalgamation of suffering. Her pain was a description unto itself.

Galloway continued holding her legs and Tabby continued holding her neck but there was no need. Leanne didn’t want to kick and thrash––it made things worse. When she tasted the wooden spike in her mouth––mixed with blood, acid, and shit––she began thinking, Kill me. Kill me. Oh please… why won’t I die?

But she wouldn’t die. Not yet.

The interesting thing about being impaled: the pain goes on and on. Sometimes it can last for hours. Sometimes it can last for days.

The spear scraped the roof of Leanne’s mouth and she opened wide; there was nothing else she could do. A moment later she could see the wood sticking out of her face. It had entered one end and come out the other.

Kyle Van Ryan, Father Mort Galloway and Tabby Smith began hoisting her up.

She slid down the pole another few inches, getting splintered from the inside. She couldn’t scream. She made no sounds that were louder than a moan.

They planted the spear in the ground, somewhere between Tabby’s garden and the road, near a ceramic frog that stood on a painted flower, holding a sign that said: RIBBIT - YOUR PAD OR MINE?

She had a nice view of the neighborhood. Not that she enjoyed the view.

Tears rolled from her eyes.

She heard somebody scream. Several lights turned on and a fight erupted in a neighbor’s driveway. She watched in horror as an eight-year-old child she didn’t recognize was strung up like she had been. The poor kid had been impaled on a stick with his arms and legs clearly broken.

Tabitha Smith, Father Galloway, and Kyle Van Ryan weren’t the only ones acting like savages. More spear-carrying, bloodthirsty zombies wandered the streets every passing minute.

She saw ‘odd-job’ Martin West drag Lizzy Backstrom out of her wheelchair and across the road by her hair. He then proceeded to stab her with a shovel and hoist her into the air. Leanne closed her eyes and cried. When she opened them again she found Lizzy impaled on a long stick in the garden next to her. She was coughing and gagging. The spear went in through her vagina and out through her neck.

As the night marched on, so did the insanity.

She watched Azul Bunta, the cook that worked for Roger and William over at the Big Four O, have his ribcage ripped open and his lungs torn out. She watched Stephen Pebbles, the man who lost his home in a fire a few years back, be eaten alive by old Jay Hopper and his half sister Emily.

Leanne closed her eyes again, not being able to turn away. She thought about her late husband Simon, remembering the day he died. She felt so bad for standing there like an idiot, doing nothing as he drowned in eight feet of water, a stone’s throw from where she had been standing. She didn’t think there was anything worse than drowning. Now she knew differently. Some things were worse. Some things made drowning seem wonderful.

Once she was done thinking about Simon, she wondered why her friends and neighbors had turned into bloodthirsty savages. She wondered if things were bad all over. She wondered when her suffering would end, and if the time she spent in St. Peter’s Church was time well spent. She wondered for a very long time.

And in time, she wondered no more.

 

∞∞Θ∞∞

∞Θ∞

 

 

~~~~ CHAPTER FIVE: THE PAUL THREAD

 

1

 

Paul LaFalce sat behind the counter, drinking a Coke and reading a paperback novel someone had deserted the better part of a week ago. The book was old and battered; it had yellow pages and a broken spine. Paul wasn’t much of a reader; he liked Batman comics and magazines loaded with female celebrities. Reading a book with no pictures wasn’t really his style. Truth be told, it seemed like work. But he was bored, the night was long, the magazine rack needed an update and instead of tossing the book into the garbage he decided to give reading a whirl.

James Herbert’s The Spear was a fictional tale about a man battling Neo-Nazi cultists that practiced a strange and evil religion. Paul tried and tried but wasn’t enjoying the story. It was too descriptive and for the most part, over his head. Girly books and comics: that’s what he liked. Only he didn’t think of them as girly books and comics; he considered them men’s magazines and graphic novels whether they deserved such labels or not.

Mid-sentence, Paul stopped reading and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was 3:26 am but time moved slowly; in ten thousand years he figured it would be 3:27 am.

He considered watching a movie.

There was a small television beneath the counter. It didn’t have cable but it did have a DVD player, and Hopper’s Gas rented movies. The selection wasn’t great but there were a few titles that hadn’t been watched yet. Of course, there was a reason. Romantic comedies, movies about animals playing sports, and stories where old people rediscovered their youth, were not considered essential viewing for a guy like Paul. Most nights he’d rather mop the floor and smoke cigarettes.

Headlights brightened the parking lot.

This was both good and bad. Patrons made the time roll faster but they were a pain in the ass too. Some hung around asking stupid questions and counting nickels. Others made a mess everywhere they went.

Hey lookie, chips! I want ‘em! Naw, maybe I don’t want ‘em. I’ll just put ‘em over ‘ere. Oh wow, chocolate bars! I’ll take this one, this one and this one. Oh wait––I don’t ‘ave ‘nough money fer three chocolate bars. I’ll put two of ‘em over ‘ere, by da magazines. Maybe I’ll get ma-self a drink insteada chocolate. Where’d I put ma chips? Don’t matter… I’ll getta ‘nother bag from da rack.

Assholes. That’s what they were. Complete fucking assholes. And guess who cleaned up the mess? You guess it: Paul LaFalce. Then there were the jackasses, halfwits and morons that tried to steal stuff when he wasn’t looking. Nobody will notice if I hide a bottle of Coke in my shirt! He hated those scumbags. The only guys he despised more were the small town, hip-hop, wannabe thugs.

Can I get a yo, dawg? Werd.

Give me a break.

Paul didn’t want to be working, that was the truth of it. He’d rather be bored than bothered. If it were up to him he’d lock the door, spark a joint, and fall asleep in the back room listening to Bob Marley. Good thing the decision-making wasn’t up to him. The place would go under in a month.

The car in the parking lot was a cop car, he noticed. It was parked right next to his piece-of-shit Honda motorcycle.

Should have known.

Cops were always popping by, just as bored as he was. Most nights they weren’t too annoying, he had to admit. At first he felt guilty, seeing them up close, talking to them like buddies. He felt like he had done something wrong just because they were around. Needless to say, he didn’t like cops, but what could he do?

It occurred to him one afternoon, while watching The Best of Jerry Springer and eating ice cream straight from the tub, that if he were robbed––or heaven forbid, shot––the cops would be there quickly. Might save his life too.

Looking through the car’s front windshield, he tried to see which cops he’d be dealing with. Couldn’t tell. Not yet. Not until the car’s interior light came on and he could see who was behind the wheel. Of course, it didn’t matter who was out there. Cops were cops. They were all condescending, self-centered and egotistical.

The phone rang. It was sitting on a counter next to a stack of cough syrup and cold medicine. Paul turned towards it and lifted the receiver, which felt greasy in his hand. “Hopper’s Gas.”

“Hi Paul, it’s me… Julie.”

Paul smiled. He was currently juggling two girls and Julie Stapleton was the latest. “Oh, hey babe,” he said. “What are you doing up? It’s late.”

“Woke up, couldn’t get back to sleep. You know how it is. You busy?”

Paul glanced over his shoulder but didn’t investigate what was happening outside. He didn’t care what the cops were doing; sometimes they’d sit in their car for fifteen minutes or more, taking their sweet-ass time. He wondered if they did that to freak him out… probably not. They were likely just killing time. Didn’t matter. The door had a buzzer; he’d know when it opened. Besides, with Julie’s unexpected phone call he wanted the cops to sit in the parking lot. They could jerk each other off for all he cared.

 

∞∞Θ∞∞

 

Cameron crept from the driver’s seat, naked and disgusting, smelling like something that crawled from the river. She moved slowly, not unlike a zombie from a Lucio Fulci flick. She had dried blood on her face, across her exposed chest and along her belly. Red-dot eyes were unblinking. Her feet were swollen and bruised. Greasy flakes of skin hung off her legs and back. Both hands were stained in gore.

She could hear Paul talking; she could hear Julie Stapleton talking too.

Julie will be next, she decided. Julie has to be next. That girl thinks she’s so smart, so clever. Steal Paul from me and get away with it? Think again, Julie. Think again bitch!

She opened the front door; the store-buzzer rang.

 

∞∞Θ∞∞

 

Paul ignored the buzzer. He also ignored the sound of the door opening and closing and the footsteps inside the store. He was busy. Besides, cops were cops. They weren’t going to rob him. They were just killing time.

He began telling Julie about the book reading in an attempt to sound smart. He was saying the story was okay but not really his thing. Then he noticed Cameron in the fish-eye mirror. Spinning towards her, his mouth snapped shut.

The vampire stood before him, mouth open, knife-like teeth exposed. Inside her right hand was a long wooden stick. One end was rounded; the other was jagged, broken. It looked like a snow-shovel without the scoop.

The phone slipped from Paul’s fingers and banged against the counter.

From the other end of the line, Julie said, “Paul? Paul? Are you all right? What’s happening?”

Cameron made her way to the counter, pressed her belly against it and leaned towards her Paul. A bug scurried across her chest and fell into the ‘take-a-penny/leave-a-penny’ tray. A flake of skin dropped from her face and fluttered to the counter.

Paul backed away, thinking about the button he was supposed to push if he found himself in a jam. He needed to push it. Oh God, he really needed to push it.

This wasn’t Cameron English. How could it be? This wasn’t Cameron and even if it was, he didn’t do anything bad to her. He never said he loved her. He never said she was the one. He was still finding himself for crying out loud. He was barely out of school and every time he saw a nice pair of tits he wanted to run home to the spank-bank in his hard drive and shoot a handful of knuckles-babies onto the screen––so what the hell did she want? What was she thinking? Did she want to get married and raise a family together, ‘cause that was just crazy! They had only been dating for three months! What type of irrational bitch would want to start a family with a guy after dating him for three months? And what the hell was wrong with her? How can anybody look the way she does? What’s with her teeth? They look like walrus tusks! And where is her clothing? What the fuck is going on?

Get away from me, he thought flatly. Get away!

And that was his last rational thought, because after that he looked into her eyes––her cold and haunting red-dot eyes.

And God above have mercy, he did that too. His left foot moved forward; his right foot followed. And all the while his eyes were the size of baseballs. Tears dripped from his face. And now, he realized, he was screaming. Long words without meaning were escaping his throat, rushing past his lips, polluting the air. But screaming wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

As her cold hands touched his skin he felt himself getting hard. He wanted it; that was the worse part somehow. He wanted her to bite him and rape him and rip the lungs from his chest. He wanted her to shred his muscles from his bones and stick her fingers into his eyes. He wanted her to snap his spine and yank hair from his scalp in large, bleeding chunks.

And Cameron knew this. Oh yes.

Paul felt this way because Cameron demanded it; she was different now. She knew things; she could see things, hear things. Make people think things. And she was willing to accomplish Paul’s needs.

And in time, she would.

She’d fulfill his needs most adequately.

 

∞∞Θ∞∞

 

When Cameron was finished with Paul, she picked up the phone and enjoyed a nice conversation; then she enjoyed another. After that she continued her journey. She had places to go, things to do, people to see: like Julie Stapleton.

It was time to visit Julie.

 

 

2

 

Andrew Cowles and Dean Lee pulled into the Hopper’s Gas parking lot. Andrew was driving. Dean was riding shotgun.

Andrew scratched his head and pulled his wallet from his pocket. The wallet was made of hemp and had a poorly drawn pot leaf on both sides. It said, THIS BUD’S FOR YOU! beneath each leaf. He pulled four five-dollar bills from the wallet and handed Dean the money through the open window. Each bill looked like it had gone through the wash several times.

Dean entered the store with his oversized Nike sneakers grazing the tile floor, thinking about buying smokes and munchies, only to find Paul LaFalce lying on the ground by the counter. Seeing the man was startling, causing Dean to stop dead in his tracks. Seconds passed. He slid the bills into his back pocket and forgot all about them. Then slowly, somewhat carefully, he walked towards Paul. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. This was serious, very serious. But he wasn’t scared, not yet, just curious. And excited. Yes, a little part of him was excited too.

He often wondered why nothing thrilling happened to him, why his life was drifting past without something worth remembering dropping in for a visit.

But this––

This was something worth remembering. It wasn’t a good something, but it was something he’d talk about, something he’d be asked about: Paul, lying on the floor in a large pool of blood, arms broken, eyes closed, stomach obliterated, intestines sitting beside him in a lump, neck chewed, nose and lips missing, pants and underwear pulled to his ankles, a wooden pole stuffed so far up his ass that it shot through the side of his neck. The kid had been impaled with a broom handle, which in Dean’s mind meant one thing: this will be front-page news in the Rock for sure!

Dean stood next to the body. Looking at the place Paul’s lips and nose had been, the blood and the gore, he was amazed. How could such a thing happen? he wondered. Then it hit him: this was no accident; it was a murder. He was standing at the scene of a crime.

Dean released a crooked smiled.

The police would want to interview him, newspapers too. He’d probably get his face on television and be the talk of the town for the next few weeks. He would probably get famous. Suddenly he felt special, like he mattered, a celebrity.

People are going to ask me what I did when I saw the body, he thought. And what am I going to tell them? The guy was dead so I robbed the place. Got three hundred bucks and bought a used couch off my step-dad.

Dean shook his head.

“No,” he whispered. “I’m not going to rob the place a buy an ‘effing couch… that’s a stupid idea.”

Dean decided to check the kid out, make sure he was dead. He looked like a corpse, no question there. And surely he was a corpse, but making a thorough investigation seemed like the right thing to do. Plus it was something he could tell people about later. It was a better idea than robbing the place.

He knelt down, put an ear to Paul’s lipless mouth and listened for signs of life. He was careful not to touch it anything. This was a crime scene after all, and everybody knows that you need to be careful at a crime scene.

There were no signs of life.

Of course, he thought. The kid’s intestines are on the floor. Do I expect the dude to jump to his feet, dance the wango-tango, sing a little song, and ask me about my love life?

Dean sat up, noticing Paul’s teeth for the first time. They looked strange, hiding behind the mangled and bloody remains of his face. They looked like they belonged in a shark. They were uncanny and bizarre, like something from a bad dream. But as weird as they seemed, Dean shrugged the teeth off and placed his fingers on Paul’s chest. Because Paul was dead, right? He couldn’t do anything. Teeth or no teeth, his intestines were sitting floor like an overturned bowl of spaghetti. So what could he do?

He thought about the teeth again. Oh God, those ‘effing teeth. They were big and sharp, looked like could bite a carburetor in half, like they could––

Paul’s corpse moved again; the eyes opened.

And suddenly Dean was scared. Really scared. Fear swirled inside his belly, chest and throat. His blood felt like it was getting thicker by the moment. His right leg quivered and the fingers in both hands squeezed together. His eyes opened a little wider then they were before, and then––

And then––

Paul growled, opened his mouth as wide as he was able and wrapped his broken arms around Dean’s body. The shattered limbs wiggled and flopped as they circled his back, but somehow managed a slight grip.

Dean screamed. And Paul bit into him with his outlandishly massive fangs, ripping Dean’s ear from his head.

Blood sprayed.

And as Dean put a hand on Paul’s face and pushed himself away, a little piece of his mind was thinking, I knew it! I knew it! I knew those teeth were dangerous! Why don’t I listen to my instincts? But a bigger piece was thinking, AHHH DUDE! What the hell is this?! What just happened?!

A warm stream of blood squirted from the place Dean’s ear should have been, and had been his entire life. And as the red liquid sprayed, Dean’s fingers slipped into Paul’s mouth and Paul did the same thing the crab-critter did to Patrick Love hours before. It was almost funny, when looked at from a certain angle––almost, but not quite. And Dean would see no humor in the fact that Paul LaFalce was chomping down hard, severing two of his fingers at the knuckle. He would see no humor at all. But it happened, and now blood poured from Dean’s hand and his head. The world spun. Vision diminished.

Paul chewed.

Dean fell onto his back and lifted his gnarled hand in front of his face. Gore ran from his digits like a faucet––hitting him in the eyes, nose, neck and chin. It was on his lips and in his mouth; it was in his hair; it was on his chest. It splashed the floor around him. It was everywhere, reaching comical proportions, and every moment that passed more leaked free.

“Oh shit-dogs,” he said, voice trembling. “I’m not a witness, I’m part of the story!”

He rolled across the floor, leaving a thick red trail on the tiles. Hot and cold flashes came in waves. A thin line of liquid shot from his knuckle and made it all the way to the ceiling.

The Paul LaFalce zombie-monster tried to stand up, but with his arms broken and the wooden stick impaling his body, it was impossible. He grunted, slinking across the tiles, still chewing Dean’s fingers like a ravenous dog.

Dean hauled himself to his feet, ready to pass out––ear gone, two fingers gone; blood rolling out of him in a stream. It was definitely time to get going. Standing, he lost his balance and stumbled into a display of snacks.

Potato chips tumbled. The rack fell over.

The monster kept coming: Paul crawling, looking like an insect on a fishhook, grabbed Dean’s ankle and pulled his feet from under him.

Dean fell, smashed his head off an industrial-sized ice-cream freezer. He saw a cartoon drawing of a kid licking his lips. Yummy, the kid seemed to be saying. Yummy, yummy… good for the tummy! Then everything went black, quiet, calm––and slowly, too slowly, senses returned. He could hear again, smell again; think again. His eyes opened.

Paul was on top of him, chewing his throat.

Dean tried to scream but only managed to squeal. He pushed Paul away with his ruined hand, discounting the pain in his fingers. The pain raged in a new place anyhow. The pain was in his neck, burning him like fire.

Paul flopped in the opposite direction; he tried to bite the floor. He howled and hissed and slammed his broken arms together pathetically.

Dean lifted himself to his knees, then to his feet. Blood poured from his neck in quantities he didn’t want to think about. His witty ‘MY OTHER SHIRT HAS A SKULL ON IT’ t-shirt was covered. His ripped jeans were covered. His shoes were covered and when he stumbled towards the door, through chips and chocolate, dizzy and disorientated, the color drained from his face like a magic trick.

Moaning, Dean pushed the door open with his shoulder and made his way across the parking lot, leaving a trail of bright red splotches that were big enough to see from thirty feet away.

 

 

3

 

Andrew had greasy hair, dirty fingernails and food stuck in his teeth. He sat in the car, in the driver’s seat, wearing a Misfits t-shirt that said Die, Die My Darling, and a pair of work boots that had the laces untied. He was completely oblivious. Not just now, but always. He was the type of guy that would wear the same pair of underwear eight days in a row and then try to pick up girls. He had big bushy hair and nicotine stained fingers. He had a habit of going on welfare because he didn’t like to work, and a girlfriend that was five months pregnant. He had three cats he didn’t bother naming and a litter-box so loaded with turds that more often than not the cats shit on the floor. He had a dusty black flag with METALLICA – KILL ‘EM ALL printed on it, hanging in front of his bedroom window like a curtain. And he had a best friend: Dean Lee, who was running towards him, covered in blood, lost in terror.

Andrew was looking for something good on the radio but having no such luck. He turned the power off in disgust and was about to pick his nose when Dean slammed a bloody hand against the passenger window and said: “Open the doooooor! Open it dude, quick!”

Andrew didn’t. Instead, he looked at his friend in awe. Then he looked towards the store and saw nothing out of the ordinary. He scratched his head and considered the getting out of the car. He figured he should go inside the store and buy some bandages, because bandages would come in handy now that his good buddy was––

Dean screamed, “GET THE ‘EFFING HELL OUT OF HERE!”

“Okay dude,” Andrew said, startled. “Don’t freak out… I’m only trying to help!”

Andrew threw the car in gear and drove, causing the passenger door to slam shut. Then he started shooting out statements and questions faster than anyone could respond. He paid little, if any, attention to driving.

He said, “Oh shit man! What the hell happened, Dean? Are you okay? Who’s inside Hopper’s? Who did this to you? Did you see ‘em? Are you hurt? How bad are you hurt? Is it bad? Are you hurting really bad? It’s bad, isn’t it? Oh shit dude… it’s bad! I know it’s bad! Look at you, man! Look at you! You’re bleeding all over my car! I don’t care about the car, even though I just cleaned the ‘effing thing, I care about you, but look at you, dude! Just look! You’re going die man! Oh shit! Are you going to die? Please don’t die on me man! Please don’t die! I’ll take you to the hospital; I’m taking you right now, see? That’s where we’re going… to the hospital; I’m taking you to the hospital so just hang in there Dean, just hang tight good buddy! Everything will okay if you just hang on and don’t die on me! It’s not so bad! It just looks bad. Oh shit man… it looks really bad, Dean! It looks REALLY ‘EFFING BAD!”

Dean’s eyes opened wide. A red bubble appeared on his lips. He took his hand off his neck; the blood was wet and glistening. He tried to point at the road ahead but his finger was gone. He said, “Loooook out!”

Andrew Cowles glanced at the road just in time to see a stop sign he didn’t know existed, and the car they were about to sideswipe. The car was a blue Mustang with a lot of bodywork. He saw two people inside: a guy and a girl.

Dean wasn’t wearing one, and in his final moment of life he closed his eyes and hoped for the best. Then his face smashed into the windshield and his neck snapped; sounded like a campfire crackle.

Spinning.

The whole world was spinning.

And when it stopped spinning Andrew saw nothing but darkness. Then slowly, almost reluctantly, he opened his eyes. Everything was blurry. The steering wheel was in his hands. The windshield was fractured and speckled with cherry splotches. The hood was crumpled and a thin line of smoke was sneaking out from under the car. Looking through the smoke he could see the Mustang: the driver’s door was open, the driver had a crushed head, but worse than that, his jaw had been pulled from his face.

Andrew turned away.

There was a girl lying on the road leaking generous amounts of blood from her mangled legs. Her legs were broken, so terribly broken. They looked like they had been smashed apart with a sack full of scrap metal. Beyond the girl, he could see a wooden stop sign post that had been snapped in half. It looked like a broken stalk of corn now, dry and forgotten at the end of a season. There was knapsack next to the sign, sitting up straight as if nothing had happened. Its contents were spilled across the intersection.

 

 

4

 

Dean opened his eyes for what seemed like the first time. He smelled blood, dust, rotting food, gas, sweat, smoke, and dirt. He shifted his weight and his head rolled around his broken neck like a golf ball circling the hole. He looked at his friend and grinned.

Things became clear.

Dean had been given a seat at the Master’s table. He was one of the chosen few, a disciple. Andrew, unfortunately, was not a disciple. He was to be made an example of: a warning sign for others. There was a new law, a new power.

All hail the new regime.

 

∞∞Θ∞∞

 

Andrew, still shaken from the accident, couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His friend was alive; Dean was alive! He was hurt badly (Oh so badly, how can anyone be alive when they’re hurt so badly? It’s not possible, is it? No! It can’t be possible! It just can’t be!) but he was alive! Thank heaven! He said, “Thank ‘effing Slayer dude; you’re alive! I figured you were dead meat for sure!”

Dean growled, revealing the animal-like teeth growing inside his mouth. He reached out, grabbed Andrew by the hair and pulled.

Andrew, surprised and distressed, tried to say something half-funny. Something like: Hey man, don’t squeeze the merchandise. Or: You broke it you bought it! But all that came from his mouth was ARRRAGHHHH!

Dean yanked hard, ignoring the fact that Andrew wore a seatbelt.

Andrew slapped at Dean’s hands. He managed to say, “Don’t asshole! That hurts!”

Dean let go. He opened his door, pulled himself from the wreckage and walked around the car, favoring one leg. Blood ran from his face, neck and hand. His head rolled around his shoulders in a slow moving circle; his neck was clearly broken.

Andrew watched in shock, thinking his friend’s teeth were best suited for a saber-toothed tiger. Once he realized that he was in danger, he tried to roll up his window. Too late: Dean reached through the opening and grabbed Andrew by the hair. Then he pulled, really pulled.

Inundated with pain, Andrew waved his hands frantically and slapped at nothing, screaming: “The seatbelt’s on! The seatbelt’s on!”

Dean pulled harder.

Andrew tried to unlock the belt. He was willing to do anything to relieve the pressure in his head, which seemed to be getting torn from his body.

Dean yanked in sharp violent surges. Seatbelt or no seatbelt, Andrew was getting out of the car.

Andrew gained a new fear: he thought his neck would snap. It seemed more than possible; it seemed unpreventable. His fingers danced around the seatbelt switch. Every time he thought he had it, Dean jerked him and his thumb slid off the button.

He began crying, kicking his feet. Drool hung from his bottom lip. A long red crack appeared just below his hairline. The crack his skin crack widened; then widened again. Blood poured down Andrew’s face and into his eyes. He tasted it in his mouth and realized that his forehead was being torn apart.

Dean yanked again and again.

Squiggly-cracks emerged like miniature earthquakes, cutting across Andrew’s brow. Screaming, he slammed his thumb onto the seatbelt button and pushed it hard. This time it worked; the seatbelt released. The belt slithered across his waist.

Dean pulled on Andrew’s scalp one final time, heard a RRRRRIP and stumbled back. He tripped and fell, holding a flap of hairy skin. Looked like a rug, or a flattened puppy. He dropped the pelt and stood up.

Andrew was bald now; he was scalped. His bony white skull glimmered beneath the car’s interior light. There was hardly any blood on it, except around the fault line, the place the skin tore free.

Andrew saw himself in the rearview mirror. In a different set of circumstances he would’ve looked funny. His haircut was preposterous. It was clean-cut, right to the bone. He put a shaky hand on his head, knowing but not really knowing––not really believing. His eyes widened. His mouth crept open.

He whispered, “No.”

It didn’t hurt, not the way you might imagine it would. It was stinging and it was numb; it felt itchy, cold, and just plain wrong. But pain wasn’t the right word. All of his nerve-endings were sitting in the dirt like road-kill, so no––there wasn’t much pain at all. It felt terrible though. It felt worse than anything he had ever imagined.

Dean reached into the car, grabbed Andrew’s shoulders and dragged him––squirming and begging––through the open window. He dragged him past the injured girl, the girl with the broken legs. He dragged him past the corpse inside the other car, whose skull had had been crushed, whose jaw had been torn from his face. He dragged him towards the broken stop sign, scalped head reflecting in the moonlight. Then he lifted Andrew up and fulfilled his Master’s commands. He slammed Andrew’s body on the broken STOP sign pole, growling insanely.

The wooden pole tore through Andrew’s back, ripping apart his intestines as it shot through his belly.

Andrew screamed once, but only once; he couldn’t do it again.

Dean stumbled across the road, still favoring one leg. He grabbed the girl by the face and dragged her––kicking her broken legs and screaming––towards the sign.

The girl’s name was Amy Lopes. She was nineteen. She liked Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, and books by J. K. Rowling. And for some unknown reason she thought about J. K. Rowling, her wonderful storytelling ability, and the book she was currently reading: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Then Dean slammed her body on top of Andrew and she didn’t think about anything else.

 

∞∞Θ∞∞

∞Θ∞

 

 

~~~~ CHAPTER SIX: THE JULIE THREAD

 

1

 

Julie Stapleton crawled out of bed wearing nothing more than a pair of underwear. She crossed the room and flicked on the overhead light. Thinking about her conversation with Paul LaFalce, she wondered what happened. Was he playing a trick on her, making a sick joke that wasn’t funny? Somehow she doubted it. Paul liked comedic movies and smoking pot. Sick humor wasn’t his style. So what did the phone call mean? Was he in trouble? Was he hurt? She thought about the way he was screaming and goosebumps cultivated her arms. She needed to do something, but what?

The obvious answer: dial 911.

But what if Paul was playing a practical joke on her? What then?

The fact of the matter was this: she didn’t know Paul very well. He was three years older and they had been seeing each other less than three months. She wasn’t even sure if they were a couple or not. She hoped they were, and some days it seemed like they were, but other days it was hard to tell. He kept secrets; that was the truth of it. He kept secrets and some days he acted strange, like he wanted to get rid of her as fast as possible. She had to wonder, what did that mean? For all she knew, Paul was seeing another girl. So how much could she trust him? And how much did she know about this guy? Unfortunately, not enough––so where did that leave her?

Truth or fiction, television taught Julie that calling 911 meant traced phone calls. And if the call were traced, her parents would be notified, even if she didn’t offer up her name.

And if her parents were notified she’d get in trouble.

She didn’t want that.

Her parents thought she was too young for a boyfriend. Of course, she disagreed. But if they knew she was dating someone three years older they wouldn’t be impressed. Plus Paul had a motorcycle. She had to take that into consideration too. Guys with motorcycles were bad news, her parents often said. They were nothing but trouble and innocent girls should stay away from them.

If she called the police she’d get trouble. And if he were playing a malicious joke she’d be heartbroken. However, if Paul was in trouble and she did nothing, she’d never forgive herself. Not ever. Doing nothing while her boyfriend (if that’s what he was) screamed would haunt her for the rest of her days.

She had to act. That’s what it came down to; she had to do something––even if it meant getting in trouble.

 

∞∞Θ∞∞

 

Julie’s parents were asleep. Gina Stapleton––Julie’s mom––was on the far side of the bed, close to a window and a patio door that opened onto a newly renovated deck; Ron Stapleton was stretched out like a grizzly bear; his left foot hung from the mattress, showcasing toenails that needed to be trimmed.

Ron pulled his foot beneath the covers, turned on his side and tried to ignore the exchange. He had to work in the morning; he needed sleep.

“No,” Julie said. “I’m not sick but we need to talk.”

“Now? We need to talk now?”

“Yes.”

“It can’t wait?”

“Mom, listen. And don’t get mad; just listen. I couldn’t sleep. Actually… I fell asleep and woke up. And I have this friend named Paul. He used to go to my school. He works over at Hopper’s Gas. He works the night shift.”