Monster

by Christopher Pike

“Christ,” she swore. She turned on the water, scalding hot, and splashed it on her face again and again, all the while crying pitifully. Her fingers were bleeding from where she had bitten them; nevertheless, she pounded the countertop with her fists and heard it crack. She didn't want to be like them! She would kill them! She would kill herself first!

  “Oh, go away,” Angela moaned. Plastic had come into the bathroom and was trying to lick her hand. She had never seen the dog so friendly. Plastic must have known she was upset. Angela knelt to pet the dog on the head and scratch the fur on her back – Plastic just loved to be scratched. But the heat of the dog's tongue, the faint scent wafting off it. Why, it smelled of beef blood. Plastic must have been chewing on her bone just before Angela drove up. Oh, why, Angela asked herself as her brain once more began to do the unthinkable voodoo dance of death, couldn’t the dog have been eating dry dog food? Just the smell of the blood — Angela didn't want to.

  “I’m sorry,” Angela cried.

  She grabbed the dog hard. It began to fidget, then to whimper. Angela reached round and dug her nails into the dog’s neck. Plastic started to cry, heart-piercing wails that Angela tried to quiet by reaching deep inside the dog’s mouth. She was going to snap Plastic's face into two pieces...

  “Angie,” a voice said.

  Angela let go of the dog, and Plastic dashed away as if she had a devil on her tail. Angela was breathing heavily. She looked up, although it was not necessary; she had recognised the voice.

  “Hello, Jim,” she said.

  He knelt in front of her, looking so good. A healthy young man with his whole life in front of him. Maybe he’d live to be a hundred thousand years old; she didn't know. He'd probably have huge, leathery wings by then, and purple talons. His fingernails were black as ink already. He was holding the note her grandfather had left her the previous morning. Now she wondered why it had been typed as Jim handed it to her.

  “I wrote this,” he said.

  She glanced at her grandfather's closed door. He never shut it when he went out. He always laughed and said that at his age he had nothing to hide. Jim had probably eaten him immediately after their first date. Sneaked back into the house and didn't even bother to stop and give his sleeping beauty a kiss. But maybe he had done her that small favour before he had stolen away another huge chunk of her existence. Maybe it was a kiss that had bestowed upon her the vision of the alien world. No, it was his blood. His blood was a concentrated form of the contaminated water.

  “I understand,” she whispered. Her lower lip trembled, and she bit it and sucked on the blood. Jim put his hand on her shoulder. There was no warmth. A huge crab claw would have been more comforting.

  “Mary's dead,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You're one of us now,” he said.

  “I understand.”

  “There are lots of us.”

  She looked up. “I’d like to meet them.”

  “Whenever you want.”

  “Tonight would be good.” She forced a smile. “I’d like to have a party here for all of us.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Angela sat alone in the house on her grandfather's bed. It was three in the afternoon. Jim had left a few minutes before. The party was set for eight. She couldn't have it any earlier because she had things to do to prepare for her visitors, and she was going to do them. Jim hadn't cleaned up after killing her grandfather. What remained of her father's dad was not pleasant to view. It was amazing that she hadn't noticed the smell, but then Jim had stuffed sheets under the door to prevent the stench from circulating to the rest of the house. She shuddered to think what would have happened if Kevin had peeked into her grandfather's room while he had been in the house the previous morning. Sweet Kevin – she wondered if she would ever see him again.

  A tear ran down her cheek, followed by a sniffle and another tear. She hadn't known her grandfather well, but what she had known she had loved. He had been the only one who'd wanted to take her in when things were tough at home. He'd been happy to have her stay with him. She remembered the day he picked her up at the airport with his latest girlfriend on his arm. She had thought the woman was a second cousin to her or something. She had loved his love, so full of life, so free, so non-judgmental.

  But what did they know about love? It didn't satisfy their hunger; therefore, it was useless to them. Their existence seemed incredibly one-dimensional to her. Since that was the case, she doubted they were very smart. She had sure fooled Jim easily enough. He thought she was one of them just because she had tried to eat her dog. So her tastes had changed a little. Jim's walking in at that exact moment had been fortunate. He had seen her at her worst and now he trusted her. Now she would have them all in one place. Mary had never had such an opportunity. Angela suspected Mary had greatly underestimated their numbers.

  Angela had already decided she was going to blow up the house when she got them all inside. Since she didn't have dynamite, she'd have to do it with gasoline. She couldn't count on being able to detonate the propane tank. Jim had run into it with his truck, and nothing had happened. Sure, if she rigged it with a five-gallon bottle of gas, it would probably blow. But the tank was outside the house, where everyone parked. Because there would be a bright moon, they'd see it if she used such an obvious device. The only place to plant a bomb was in the basement. It was normally closed off from the rest of the house; no one would go down there during the party.

  She didn't know the exact firepower she'd get per gallon of gasoline, but she figured that if she could obtain twelve five-gallon water bottles and fill them to the brim with gas, she'd be able to kill everybody in the house. If the propane tank blew at the same time, so much the better.

  But she didn't want to die with the others. Jim had already contaminated her with his blood. It must have been his blood that was changing her, because she'd never gone through the heavy water-drinking stage that the others had. Still she would probably end up like the rest of them. But she had to give herself a chance. Maybe she could learn to resist the urge to kill even if her body insisted that she feed. She couldn't just light the bomb and have it go off in her face.

  She needed a fuse. A two-minute delay at least.

  Unfortunately, she didn't have a box of unused fireworks lying around. She'd have to make her own. But with what? She couldn't take a long piece of rope and soak it in gasoline. The flame would jump too quickly along the rope and kill her before she could get back up the steps. Plus the gasoline would smell. She guessed that improved physical strength wouldn't be the only benefit of the human-to-monster transformation. Their senses, including smell, would probably be heightened far beyond the normal human range. She'd have to be careful to wipe all gasoline off the bottles before she sealed them and bought them into the house.

  Gunpowder was what she'd need to make a fuse. It, too, would give off a powerful odour, but only once it started burning. Bullet shells had gunpowder in them; shotgun shells had more. If she could get enough of the latter and get the shot out of them, she could lay down a long enough line on the basement floor to give her time to get out of the house. She could place a piece of rope leading right up to the centre bottle of gasoline, which would have a paper cap on top of it with more gunpowder. The stuff would burn through the cap in a second. Then bang – no more Mr. and Mrs. Monster.

  Angela flashed a faint smile at the bloody mess in the bedroom.

  It was good to have a plan.

  It would be even better to watch them die.

  Angela collected her purse and left the house. She didn’t have to clean up her grandfather's bedroom – at this party the mess might even be a drawing card. She worried briefly what she should serve them, then laughed at the absurdity of the idea. What should she plan to serve a bunch of cannibals who were only interested in one thing? Well, she wasn't inviting any of her other friends over to meet these new kids in town.

  Before she was able to do anything she had to stop to eat. She bought f
our pounds of steak and ate half of it in the car in the market parking lot. The pounding in her head diminished; it didn't go away, though. That worried her. Even if she survived the blast – how could she live like this?

  “I'll have to face that when the time comes,” she whispered to herself as she wiped her hands off on the bag that held the other two steaks. She had also bought a bottle of Tylenol; she popped four pills before starting the car and swallowed them dry. She doubted they'd help. They didn’t.

  It was ironic where she was heading to steal the empty five-gallon water bottles – Point High. The faculty apparently drank bottled water. Maybe that's why they eat so little red meat, she thought. Anyway, she'd seen the bottles at the back near the guys' showers. There was a whole pile of them, if she remembered correctly. The water guy must have a huge route and only stopped by occasionally, she thought.

  Fifteen minutes later Angela discovered that her ‘whole pile’ equaled only eight empty bottles. That was forty gallons of gasoline. A lot, but would it be enough? Who the hell knew? She was stuck on the idea of having at least sixty gallons. It was already close to four – no time to fool around. She had to get to the sporting goods store in the mall in Balton by five to get the shotgun shells. She'd worry about her other containers on the way home.

  She made it to the mall by twenty after four. The shells were stacked behind the counter. She had picked a bad week to buy them. After all, a girl her age had killed two people with a shotgun only the week before. The guy at the counter looked as if he had just got out of the army. He had a blond crew cut, square shoulders, a rod up his spine – the whole bit. He wanted to know what she wanted the twenty boxes of shells for.

  “They're for my grandfather,” she said.

  “Is he with you?” the guy asked.

  “No.”

  “What does he shoot?”

  “He target-practices, mainly. Is there a problem? I’m eighteen. I have ID.”

  “I'd like to see it,” the guy said. Angela showed him her licence. He studied it closely – he seemed to be memorizing her name. “You're from Chicago?” he asked.

  “I moved here last June,” she said.

  The guy blinked. Something had struck him. “Hey, is your grandfather Mike Warner?”

  She smiled, although it was forced beyond belief. “Yeah. Do you know him?”

  The guy slapped his knee. “Hell, he used to go out with my sister.”

  Angela winced. “Your sister? How old is your sister?” The guy himself couldn't have been thirty.

  “She's younger than me.” He chuckled. “He was a great guy, though. She really liked him. How's he doing?”

  She swallowed. “Oh, he's still up to his old tricks.”

  “He bought himself a shotgun? I don't think he had one when he was dating Dorothy.”

  “He hasn't had it long.”

  The guy began to stack up the boxes of shells on the counter. He wasn't worried about her anymore. Twenty boxes. “Tell him hello for me. The name's Sam. Tell him Dorothy still says he was the best.”

  Angela had to lower her head. “I will.”

  Before Sam finished ringing up her order she added a hundred feet of rope, a tube of glue, and a razor-sharp hunting knife. She had nothing at home to cut open the shells; all the stuff in the kitchen was dull. Besides, she thought, the knife might come in handy.

  She drove around Balton for half an hour but couldn't find any more five-gallon water bottles. At a supermarket she bought eight two-and-a-half gallon containers – they were much more common – and also picked up a plastic funnel. She had decided how she would get enough gasoline.

  There were three stations in Point. She had a fifteen-gallon tank in her Camry. She could fill up the tank, drive it home, and angle it up on some rocks to drain the gasoline directly into the bottles with the help of the funnel, leaving herself just enough fuel to get back to a station. Sixty gallons – four tankfuls. Then she'd be set.

  The thought of revenge drove her on, but she felt terrible anxiety about the evening. The stakes were high – how high she didn't like to guess. The death of the community? The end of the human race? Jesus. There were a dozen things that could go wrong. As she drove back towards Point she resolved that if she had to – if it looked as if even one of them would escape – she would forget the fuse, put her lighter directly to the gasoline, and be the first to go. Kevin would just have to forgive her. She knew how much he’d miss her. She thought about him a lot as she worked, and about Mary, too. Great people – she'd been lucky to meet them. She wished she could go to Kevin for help now, but she vowed to herself that he wouldn't be brought into it. He'd never believe her and would just end up being killed.

  Angela filled up at the station closest to her house. At her grandfather's place she easily steered the left side of her car up on to the rocks. The stones worked as well as jacks and left the bottom of the gas tank exposed, able to slide one of her empty five-gallon bottles under the bottom cap on the tank. Then she ran into a problem – or rather, she realized she was going to have a problem before it materialized. Once she took off the cap, how was she supposed to stop the flow of gasoline while she positioned the next bottle? She debated the issue for several minutes without coming up with a brilliant solution. She was still extremely worried about spilling gasoline close to the house.

  What she eventually did was slowly unscrew the cap. Near the end of the cap strip the gas began to trickle out. She undid it just a tiny bit more. Better to be patient at this stage, she cautioned herself. The gasoline dribbled into her funnel and began to fill the bottle. It took her five minutes to empty five gallons. She retightened the cap while she reached for the next bottle, spilling only a few drops. They'd have to have noses like wolves to get a whiff of the stuff, she thought.

  It was funny, but it was only then that she paused to ask herself what they would be called if they were to be named by someone in the twentieth century. They craved human flesh but preferred to eat people alive – that made them ghouls or zombies. In a sense they were from outer space – that made them aliens. But they liked human blood – she liked human blood, for God's sake – and if the myths and her nightmares were true, they mutated into bat-like beings.

  “Yeah,” she said to herself as she resumed her task, “they’re vampires. It's too bad they were here before there were crucifixes or garlic, or I could forget all about this bomb business and just get myself to the religious store and the supermarket.”

  Angela filled close to three bottles – she left herself just enough gas to get round to the other side of the lake – and went searching for the next station. She kept an eye in her rearview-mirror the whole time, on the lookout for Nguyen. She doubted he was still tailing her. What he had seen at Mary's cabin had scared him – it would have scared any normal person into a mental hospital. And that thing she had done to him just before she left felt as if she had locked his brain neurons in a pattern she chose. It came to her then that Jim had been using the same power on her from the start of his seduction. She liked to think she hadn’t come that close to screwing him on the first date without some kind of supernatural influence. The goddamn bloodsucker. How come they didn't sell birth control to protect girls like her from guys like him?

  Gee, they might sell them soon. They might be the next big market in birth control. Keep those micro-organisms from growing in you, girls! Save money on your at the same time! Practice safe necking! Wear Count Condoms! The only ones he can’t bite through!

  “I am sick,” she muttered.

  It was also sick how he still had a sexual hold on her after all he had done to ruin her life and the lives of those she loved. Even while she was in the middle of plotting his destruction her thoughts turned to his kisses, his touch, his body. God, she couldn't let her imagination run down that yellow brick road, or it would constantly be stopping behind the bushes for a quickie. What was craziest of all was that she didn't know if she was still a virgin. Had they done it in the
middle of the lake last night? While she was having her nightmare? Was she going to have a two-fanged baby in nine months that needed ten blood transfusions a day just to keep its colour?

  Angela took care of her eight five-gallon bottles, then dumped the water from her two-and-a-halfers into the lake and started on them. They were harder to fill because the openings were smaller. But unlike the five-gallon bottles, they had caps, which she replaced after they were filled. The bigger bottles she capped with tin foil.

  Except for one – one that she had left only half-full. She knew a thing or two about how gasoline exploded. It was the fumes that caused ignition. Stick a match directly into a gallon of gasoline and most likely the match would go out. Her half-empty bottle would be her detonator. She would tie the other bottles tightly round it with her rope and lead her trail of gunpowder to the top of It. Bang, bang – they would all go off in the same second.

  She got one question at the last gas station she went to, which had also been the first station she had visited eighty minutes before. The guy wanted to know what she had done with her first tankful. Angela just smiled.

  “I need a tune-up bad,” she said. “Getting terrible mileage.”

  She had no trouble carrying the bottles inside and stacking them in the corner of the basement. She was stronger. But the smaller bottles – they didn't quite fit with the big ones. She put them aside for a moment while she set to work on the shotgun shells. She would figure out what to do with them later.

  That was the fun part – getting the fuse ready. The gunpowder reminded her of past Fourths of July – happier times. It helped her to think about the past. She couldn’t think about the future, and the present was too oppressive. Tears streaked her face – yeah, she was having a grand time. She'd seen too much blood but hadn't drunk enough! She was literally dying for a drink of the red stuff. Just a sip, but she wouldn't tiff to get it. She had taken a vow about that, she reminded herself.

  Her head throbbed as her heart broke and her throat cracked on bitter grief. She tried singing to keep up her spirits. “They did the monster mash. It was a graveyard smash.” “It’s my party, and I'll cry if I want to.”