by Hunter Shea
They kept coming, now getting the attention of the creature. It took a quick look at them, then returned its attention to Winn and the children.
To make matters worse, it began to shift from side to side, bobbing its head as if to latch on to their scent, looking for the fastest way to get at them. Winn’s gun followed its movements.
It knows, he thought with blossoming dread. It made itself a moving target so I can’t shoot. What kind of hell did this thing come from?
Tiny hands touched his waist and legs, as he if were a totem of protection. In a sense, wearing his uniform, wielding a gun, that’s exactly what he was supposed to be.
“Folks, if you don’t stop, I can’t take this thing down,” he said evenly through gritted teeth. “If I can’t shoot it, someone is going to get very, very hurt.”
A boy bawled for his mother. One of the women walking toward them stopped, her face a mask of worry, pain and confusion. She must have been the mother of the boy. Her hands were clutched against her breast. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
All of the parents had stopped. The creature, sensing the change, flicked its terrible head to them and gave a hoarse bark. As fully formed and muscular as its body was, something was very wrong, almost unfinished, with its ability to vocalize.
Two men and one woman who had been to the left of the creature stepped carefully away, giving Winn a comfortable buffer should he miss.
“Kids, cover your ears,” he said, never taking his eyes off the prowling beast.
He pulled the trigger.
Incredibly, it seemed to anticipate the shot, bursting to its right in a full gallop. The bullet buried itself into the wall of one of the hotel rooms with a sharp crack. A man standing by the room leapt away from the splintering wood.
Winn watched the creature run in a half circle, its cloven feet pounding the gravel, never losing stride.
It was angling around them so it could get to the children from the rear, where no adults stood in its way.
Children and parents shouted, piercing wails that echoed into the night. The parents sprang into action, running for their kids. Most of the children dashed toward them. It was pure chaos. Two girls, neither older than seven, stood rooted to the spot beside Winn, following the creature’s line of attack with wide, wet eyes. They held hands, shoulders bobbing with sobs, too scared to break free.
Winn fired three rounds at the swift-moving monster. All missed, kicking up gravel, thudding into a car door and the last sailing off into the darkness.
It made a tight turn, now facing them, hurtling like a missile.
Winn fired again, this time grazing its hind flank. Blood misted the air, but didn’t slow it down. Before he could squeeze off another shot, it barreled into the girls, breaking their grasp on each other. Their bodies spun, hitting hard into the sharp gravel.
It dove into Winn. He heard, rather than felt, his ribs crack when its snout crashed into his chest. As he collapsed on his back, all the breath expelled from his lungs. His head turned in time to see the creature continue on as if he’d never been an obstacle. It pounced and took a chunk out of the back of a man’s neck. The light of the moon briefly caught the white of his spinal cord. The man collapsed. The little boy whose hand he’d been holding also went down. Adults and children scattered.
The pain in Winn’s lungs was excruciating. His diaphragm hitched, desperate to pull in air, but too shocked to do so.
When the beast made it past the fleeing children and adults, it skidded to a stop and rounded back to Winn. Its face was smeared with gore. Jaundiced eyes bored into the little boy shaking his mortally wounded father, trying to get him to stand up. From what Winn could see, the man was probably already dead.
It charged at the boy.
Despite the white spots dancing in Winn’s periphery, he rolled onto his stomach, raised his arm and fired. The boy screamed, his body leaping away as if he’d stepped on a hornet’s nest. He rolled on the lot, holding his arm.
Winn fired again. And again. His finger twitched against the trigger as fast as it could, sending round after round into the approaching creature.
This time, they all hit their mark.
It wasn’t until the hammer had fallen down on an empty magazine a half-dozen times that he realized the creature was down. Its shredded body had collapsed just five feet from him. The face was in ruins. Blood and scarlet tissue and shattered bone stared back at him. The stench coming out of it was unreal. His lungs, finally able to draw air, threatened to clamp shut again.
Turning his face away, he pulled himself up to his knees. He felt hands touch his arms. The girls were at his side, trying to help him up. One of them smiled at him, bits of gravel clinging to the side of her red face.
“Thank you for making the monster go away,” she whispered to him.
On his feet now, he patted her head. A woman brushed against him, nearly sending him back to the ground. She scooped up both girls, pulling them to her chest, kissing the tops of their heads.
Everyone staying in the motel was outside, gathering around the lot.
Winn remembered the boy. He was crying, hard, his armed pulled tight to his side.
He knew he’d shot him the moment the boy jerked away from his fallen father. Stumbling to him, he prayed he’d only grazed the boy. Anything worse was unthinkable.
West of the carnage at the motel, in a $3.8 million summer home on the Hamptons coast, the cast of The Wealthy Wives of the Hamptons was getting their first dose of reality.
A brilliant explosion of glass pebbles spilled from the raised deck overlooking the beach into the living room. Pam, a fresh-out-of-college production assistant, was lashed from head to bare calves by the shrapnel. She ran from the room, hands raised and trembling, screaming both with fright and the burning pain of dozens of tiny wounds.
Samar Van Dayton’s shrill shriek brought their epic battle to a halt. From her vantage point at the head of the mahogany table, she could see straight into the living room. Her chin quivered as she pointed toward the production crew, their backs to the scene.
“What the hell is going on?” Nancy Primrose shouted, upset that her grand moment was being usurped.
She followed Samar’s finger, head swiveling in slow motion, or at least that’s how it felt to her.
“Holy shit.”
The director tapped the squatting cameraman but he ignored everything around him, the view through his lens the only thing that mattered. Right now, he filmed the color draining from Nancy’s face and the rapid rise and fall of her chest.
Grace Bavosa and two of Samar’s friends had to tilt their bodies across the table to see. Grace’s wail topped all the others. She backed up against the dining room wall, scooting as far as she could, trembling behind Samar as if she were a human shield.
“Guys, get out of there!” Nancy screamed at the production crew.
It seemed as if they had all become statues after meeting Medusa’s gaze. Only their eyes moved, rolling back and forth as they took in the approaching trio of monsters.
What were those things?
At first, Nancy thought that a pack of wild, perhaps rabid dogs had come crashing through the doors. The terror of getting rabies had been enough to close her throat.
She would gladly take rabies over anything these creatures would do to them.
All three looked very much the same, like animals born of the same litter. Nancy once dated a man from Wales who bred Irish wolfhounds for British aristocracy. Her favorite, Baldric, was so tall, its back came up to the bottom of her breasts, which were very high at the time thanks to a wonderful enhancement and lift she’d gotten in Beverly Hills several months earlier—a birthday gift from a previous boyfriend. She joked that the dog was big enough to ride. Her boyfriend, an old, rich codger who paid handsomely for a little slap and tickle, told her to go ahead and give Baldric a spin. She had, and the wolfhound pranced about with her bouncing on its back as if she were nothing more substantial than a f
lea.
These—things—were the size of Baldric, but they were certainly not wolfhounds. Their heads were much too small for their bodies, beanlike in comparison, with narrow, rheumy eyes, small, round ears and snouts that curved downward to sharp, tapering points like beaks. They looked diseased, their fur a clotted mess. Deadly-looking rows of sharp, crooked teeth were bared. It seemed odd that they made almost no noise, considering their manic entrance and menacing stance. Their throats could manage only a strange, asthmatic kind of cough.
Samar babbled, repeating, “Why is this happening to me? Why is this happening to me?”
Nancy looked down at the floor for something to defend herself with. She snatched up a handful of forks and knives. If jammed in the right place, they would make a formidable deterrent.
Finally, Ned, the cameraman who had been following their every move the past two seasons, swiveled on his knee to face the intruders.
He was just in time to film their attack.
Without warning, the beasts sprang at the production crew. One of them hit the front of the camera hard, smashing it into Ned’s face, shattering his eye socket. Before he could react to the agony, its front paws were on his chest as it lunged at his face, taking his nose, cheeks, lips and chin with one jaw-crunching bite.
Nancy backed up, crouched in a fighting stance, silverware flashing in front of her.
Another monster stood on its hind legs, towering over the director. It dipped its head down to his neck and shoulder, tearing at flesh, muscle and bone. A heavy arterial spray erupted from his neck, painting the ceiling and walls. The monster continued to work at his neck as he crumpled to the floor.
“Noooo!” Grace’s scream even made the creatures pause.
For once, Nancy was grateful for Grace’s hysteria.
“Help me lift the table onto its side!” she shouted at her costars. Reaching down for the leg—Crap, this table is heavy—she waited for them to take her cue. There was no way out of the dining room. No windows, no doors. They had to create a barrier between them and the bizarre animals that were now feasting on the crew.
Samar was the first to come to her senses. She put her shoulder under the edge of the table. Grace, who was in full-on panic mode, pulled it together enough to wrap her arms around another leg. Samar’s friends lifted it by the edge and together they heaved. They struggled to lift it from the floor, but once they had some momentum, it turned onto its side, settling with a thunderous thump.
“How the hell did they manage that?” Nancy exclaimed.
Samar’s two friends had somehow positioned themselves so they were on the wrong side of the table barrier. They were now face-to-face with the creatures, and judging by their screams, had gotten their attention.
The table filled half the entryway into the living room. Nancy knew it wasn’t going to be enough to keep those things out, but maybe it could slow them down enough so she could bury a fork in their eyes as they struggled over it.
“Samar, Grace, help me!” she shouted.
A pair of pale, well-manicured hands flopped over the lip of the barrier. The women shouted and sobbed. They were too incoherent to understand, but Nancy didn’t need words to know they were terrified.
“Grab their hands and let’s try to pull them over.”
Samar reached for a hand, still muttering “Why me?”
The hand went rigid. It was followed by a glass-shattering scream and what sounded like a water balloon bursting on pavement. Samar put a foot against the underside of the table and pulled. She flew back onto her ass, rapping her head against the floor.
“Samar!” Grace yelled.
Samar looked to her right, saw the alabaster hand in hers. She followed it to the wrist, then elbow, all the way to the torn, bloody shoulder. The rest of her friend was still on the other side.
Nancy struggled to pull the other friend but wasn’t strong enough to win a tug-of-war with the creature that yanked the hands out of her grip.
There were no more screams.
Nancy struggled to catch her breath, leaning against the underside of the table. Samar finally let go of the hand and scrabbled on her rump all the way to the far wall.
Grace, having settled down, moved toward Nancy. “Do you think this will keep them out?”
Nancy shot her an incredulous look. “No. Grab a knife and be ready for anything.”
When she looked at Samar, she saw a woman who had had a complete break with reality.
Samar rose to her feet, her legs unsteady. “I have to go shopping.” A line of blood snaked down her neck. “I have to get fruit at the fresh market. People are coming for the weekend and I have to get things ready.” Her eyes were like pinwheels, spinning and seeing something that wasn’t there.
“Sit, Samar,” Nancy hissed. “And keep your voice down.”
She ignored her, walking to the barrier.
“The market only takes cash. I’ll have to stop at the bank.”
One of the creatures vaulted over the barrier, pinning Samar to the floor. She didn’t make a single sound of protest. It bit into her breast, reeling backward when its teeth penetrated the silicone-laden bag underneath. Samar’s body trembled, but Nancy thought she heard her say something about looking for her American Express black card.
She spied the knife in Grace’s hands. “Go for its eye.”
Grace nodded, her hand tightening on the steak knife.
“Now!”
They lunged at the creature, arms held high, knives pointed at the sides of its head. Nancy heard a crunch as Grace drove hers home. Nancy followed suit. The creature’s eye popped and a geyser of black and green ichor hit her in the face, filling her mouth. She heaved immediately, vomiting the vile, burning fluid. Her mouth, throat and chest felt as if someone had poured gasoline into her and dropped a match.
The monster thrashed about, knocking into Grace, sending her tumbling into the wall. Samar’s breast was still in its mouth. Looking over, Nancy could see one of Samar’s exposed lungs.
As the beast struggled, blinded and wounded, the other two scrabbled over the barrier. Both turned to Nancy.
Her mouth had gone numb and it was hard to breathe. What the hell are they made of? she thought as she faced her death. It would be a welcome relief from the fire trailing within her.
“Go fuck yourselves,” she croaked.
When the first monster bit into her throat, she wanted to cry out in thanks.
CHAPTER 32
It was a miracle that Captain Hammerlich had let them finish telling their story, from Meredith’s first run-in with one of the strange, dead creatures on the beach to their narrow escape from the federally protected Plum Island Animal Disease Research Facility. To his credit, he interrupted them only a few times to ask questions. When they were done, Meredith was exhausted. She’d been running on an adrenaline high the entire time. The captain’s complexion seemed to have turned a sickly gray. Or was that just her imagination telling her how he should look after receiving news both this bizarre and grave.
Staring at the pictures she’d taken, he said, “Wait outside.”
She followed Dalton out the door. He closed it slowly, careful not to make a noise. They walked to the break room. Meredith lifted the empty coffeepot from the warming plate.
“Of all the nights for there to be no coffee. I need a cup, bad,” Meredith said.
Meredith pulled at her bottom lip as she leaned against the counter. Now that she’d had her chance to lay everything out for the captain, she had a moment to think about what she and Dalton had done in her shower. It was a welcome break from the reality of the creatures that had broken free from Plum Island. You have to admit, that was pretty amazing. Are we a couple now, or was that just a pre-Rapture roll in the hay? What will my friends say? I can’t be a cougar yet. I’m not even thirty-five. And what will his friends and family think, being with a crippled older woman? You stepped in all of it this time, Mer.
Her thoughts were broken when he
wafted a fresh cup of joe under her nose.
“So, you’ve been here longer than me. How much trouble do you think we’re in?” he asked, blowing across the surface of his mug. He didn’t look the least bit worried. Just the opposite; there was a hard look in his eyes that said he didn’t give a shit what the captain thought. They both knew what they saw. She worried that he might jump in a free squad car and look for a fight.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I have no frigging idea.”
Before Dalton could press her, they heard a door bang open. “Hernandez, Dalton, get in here.”
Dropping their half-full mugs in the sink, they returned to his office. Meredith saw all four extensions blinking on his phone.
“I made some calls to the directors of the federal agencies that crashed into town while you were playing Hardy Boys.”
Oh boy, we’re doomed. He looked so angry he could break his desk in two.
“Every time I said the words ‘Plum Island,’ collegial calls either turned to ice or I was disconnected.”
“Sir, we didn’t make this shit up. We could get a team together with some heavy-duty firepower and go back to the island.”
Dalton touched her shoulder, silencing her.
Captain Hammerlich stood up and pushed his chair away. “What I was going to say is that it seems I touched a nerve. When my call wasn’t disconnected, I got the distinct impression I was being fed heaping spoonfuls of bullshit. Did you know we have FEMA and the CDC and the damn military prowling around? And I just got word that the National Guard will be here in the morning. About an hour ago, all Internet service to this end of the island was cut. No one can give me any answers, at least straight ones. Any other night, I’d send you both to be evaluated by a horde of shrinks.”
He pulled his hat off the hat rack in the corner of his office and squared it on his head.
“If what you say is true, those goddamn feebs are going to do their best to keep us in the dark.”
Opening the door, he motioned for them to leave. To their surprise, he followed them into the hall.
“We just got an animal disturbance call that stray dogs are all over the condo complex over by the plaza in Montauk. Conrad and Leeks are already there. I’m going to assume our communications have been tapped, so the military and feebs will be there soon to make a mess of things.”
