The twitching became more obvious, and before long she caught a glimpse of a faint outline of an oval shape—of something hard, of something familiar.
“No,” she said again, letting go of his head and pulling his shirt collar back up.
Why? Why am I back here?
When she finally managed the courage to wipe her tears away, Kent was back in her lap staring up at her. Only this time he had an embarrassed look on his face.
Corina sniffed, confused by the expression.
“Corina?” the boy whispered, his light orange-colored eyebrows rising up his forehead.
Corina sniffed again and nodded.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve never kissed a girl,” he said, his pale cheeks reddening.
Despite their situation, Corina couldn’t help but smile.
She used the sleeve of her t-shirt to wipe away the mucus from her nose and mouth. Then she helped Kent rise from a prone position to being half seated.
“Please,” he pleaded, staring into her green eyes, “please don’t let me end up like Tyler—I don’t want to end up like him.”
A tear ran down Corina’s cheek, but this time she didn’t wipe it away. Instead, she closed her eyes and leaned into Kent, ignoring their collective smell of sweat.
Her lips met his in a kiss that was surprisingly tender. His lips were soft, pleasant, and gentle.
Before the kiss was over, she slipped one of her hands from his face down to the base of his throat.
Corina pulled her face away and stared into his eyes.
“I’m so, so sorry,” she whispered, then turned him so that he was sitting in her lap, his back against her chest. He didn’t resist.
She continued to snake her right arm around his throat, trying to be tender, to be gentle, like the way that he had kissed her. When her hand made its way all the way under his chin and reached the bicep of her other arm, she squeezed.
Kent never said another word.
After a full two minutes, the boy’s heels stopped clicking on the dirt basement floor of Mrs. Wharfburn’s Estate, and Corina released the choke.
Again she turned her eyes skyward, tears streaming down her cheeks in thick rivulets.
“Why?” she screamed until her throat was hoarse. “Why?”
PART III - INFESTATION
36.
“Turn it off,” Sheriff White whispered, averting his eyes. “Please, just turn it off.”
The cameraman closed the viewfinder and they waited in silence. Coggins felt like he was going to vomit. Nancy and Mrs. Drew had looked away after the first crab had budded from the bare chest of a boy who could have been no older than six or seven.
In the midst of all of this, the sheriff had caught an exchange between Coggins and Jared, an exchange that indicated that while what they were seeing was new, it was similar to something they had witnessed before. A knowing exchange.
In that instant, he no longer wanted to know what happened to Dana.
Silence ensued for some time. No one dared make eye contact.
It was Deputy Williams who finally broke it.
“I don’t hear them anymore,” Deputy Williams said from the second rung of the staircase, his voice flat. He had remained on the steps when the cameraman had shown the footage that Nancy and he had taken. It would have been impossible for him to make out the details, but it was clear by how pale his face was and how he kept swallowing as if something were stuck in his throat that he had seen enough.
The sheriff tilted his head and listened. It was true; not only had the crackers stopped throwing themselves at the steel door, but he couldn’t hear their claws scratching across the floor upstairs, either.
“What does it mean?” Deputy Williams asked, swallowing hard.
“The fuck if I know,” the sheriff answered. He turned to Coggins, whose hearing had returned somewhat after he had cleaned some of the blood from his ears. “We had one of the fuckers caught in the cell upstairs… and after a while, it…” His eyes darted to Williams’. “It called to the others.”
Williams nodded, and Coggins thought about that for a moment. His mind flashed repeatedly to Andre Merckle, the gas station owner, lying face down on the tarmac. And he thought of the woman in the small souvenir shop not far from where he had met up with Jared. Had they been breathing? It was difficult to tell, what with the crackers budding off of them. But he thought that maybe they were. Was the thing in the cell somehow communicating with the crackers in the bodies? Telling them to produce more palil—to send them here?
Coggins cleared his throat and looked at the odd group of people around the table: the elderly woman; Nancy, who had since crept over to the sheriff and was buried in his chest; Jared, his thin features looking chiseled by the fluorescent lighting; and the fat cameraman still staring into his dark viewfinder as if he expected something to suddenly appear on the screen, something that would teleport them all out of there; out of this place, out of this situation.
An odd mix of individuals, all brought together and now sharing a singular purpose: survival.
“We need to draw them away from town,” Coggins said at long last. “We need to go to the source.”
Another hush fell over the group.
The source. Even to Coggins, who had uttered the words, they sounded strange, but oddly appropriate.
Sheriff White leaned down and kissed Nancy’s smooth, damp forehead. She looked up at him with her bright green eyes and squeezed him tightly.
“I think you’re right,” the sheriff finally said.
His mind flicked to when he and Coggins had travelled out the back of the Wharfburn Estate, and how he had smashed one of the crackers that had lunged at them with the butt of his gun.
“And I think I know”—he looked at Coggins, then at Jared—“I think we know where the source is.”
* * *
“And what do I do?” the cameraman asked, his voice high and tight. The man was holding the camera over one shoulder, and as he adjusted the strap, the fat below his chin started to flap.
The sheriff stared at him.
“Do what you do best,” he replied. “Tape it.”
The man’s wide face went blank for a moment. Then he brought a hand up to one of his chins and scratched at the greasy stubble. He nodded, and an expression of calm passed over him.
Williams removed his Kevlar vest and handed it to Nancy. The woman’s short blonde hair was clinging to her jawline in thin, wet strips, and there was a streak of dirt directly in the center of her forehead. She had since ditched the high-heeled shoes that she had been wearing, and now that she had, she was at least a foot shorter than Sheriff White. When she turned her face up to him again and leaned in for a kiss, Paul had to crouch down considerably. He closed his eyes as he kissed her, loving the warmth that spread from his lips and billowed throughout his entire body.
Sheriff White pulled away and helped her put on the Kevlar vest. Then he reached into his holster and removed the pistol.
He handed it over without reservation—unlike Mrs. Drew, he was positive that Nancy knew how to use it. In fact, she was probably the best shot of all of them.
But she wouldn’t be firing today, not if he had a say in it.
The sheriff’s dark eyes drifted over to Mrs. Drew next, and whatever calm had spread over him suddenly vanquished. The woman had been more or less silent when they had formulated their plan, which wasn’t at all like her. Now, her brow was perpetually furrowed, thick creases forming on the usually smooth, albeit aged skin.
Thinking about Dana? About Alice?
It was impossible to know.
‘I’m all alone,’ she had said. The sheriff glanced around again. Clearly, the woman had meant right now, but also something else. A loneliness that ran deep.
Paul White frowned, but before he could give this much thought, Williams spoke up.
“I’ll lead,” he offered, but the sheriff immediately shook his head. He reached for the shotgun o
n the table in front of him and tossed it to Coggins.
The deputy caught the gun and made a sour face as he pumped it.
“Feels familiar,” he muttered, a comment that made little sense to the sheriff.
“No,” Sheriff White instructed, “you fall in behind me and Coggins. Jared, you pull up the rear.”
Deputy Williams opened his mouth to say something, but the sheriff cut him off.
“Andrew, behind Coggins.”
Williams’ eyes darkened. When they got through this, the sheriff knew, he was going to have to set some ground rules—break some of the tension between his two deputies.
If. If we get through this.
To clear his head, he turned to Nancy and leaned down and kissed her on the lips again. Then he kissed her for a third time. They didn’t exchange any words; none were necessary.
He turned to Mrs. Drew next.
“Just go,” she said flatly before he had a chance to say anything.
Sheriff White nodded.
“You come last,” he instructed the cameraman.
The man nodded voraciously, the skin below his chin making an audible slapping sound.
After scooping up the four grenades and distributing them—tossing two to Coggins, one to Williams, and keeping one for himself—the sheriff made his way to the bottom of the stairs and waited for them to line up, single file, in the order that he had instructed.
Then, gritting his teeth, he took the first step, feeling his heart leap into his throat and adrenaline surge into his fingertips.
This was it.
* * *
“What the fuck.”
It wasn’t a question but a statement, and even though Coggins had said the words, it was a sentiment shared by all.
The upstairs was empty, devoid of any crackers. In fact, if it weren’t for the white smear in the corner of the cell, the sheriff might have convinced himself that none of this had been real—that the infestation had never happened.
He led the way, staying high, while Coggins came next keeping low, trying to collectively cover as much of the area in front of them as they could. Then came Williams and Jared, both of whom looked scared, their faces long and pale. The cameraman lagged much further behind, the old-fashioned camcorder strapped to his right shoulder, the red recording light like a sniper’s laser.
The interior of the police station was empty, but as they slowly made their way to the broken front window, they soon found out why.
“Oh my God.”
This time, no one was sure who had spoken.
The men spread out in the reception area, staring at the scene that unfolded before them, their jaws slack.
They were staring at hundreds—no, thousands of crackers, all lined up just outside the station. The entire expanse of lawn in front of the station, and the parking lot beyond that—in fact, for as far as Paul could see by the dim street lights, there were crackers. Even the Buick that Jared had driven up to the door was covered in them, the entire hood a sea of those long, jointed legs and the milky white shells.
That wasn’t the worst part, however; the worst part was the sound. They weren’t cracking, as the men had become accustomed to, which, in this case, might have been better. Instead, the men were accosted by the sound of rushing air, as each of the thousands of the creatures forced air through the tiny perforations on their shells at the same time. Rocking, pulsating… communicating.
It was like a nightmare; the boogeyman had crawled out from under the bed and was breathing its sour breath on their necks.
Deputy Coggins leaned into the sheriff from his right and whispered, “What are they waiting for?”
The sheriff, his shotgun aimed at the crackers on the roof of the car, kept his eyes on them when he answered.
“I don’t know.”
“How the fuck are we going to get to the car?” Coggins asked next.
The sheriff’s answer was the same.
“I don’t know.”
They had expected to see a couple dozen, maybe even a hundred of the crackers on the way to the car, but none of them could have expected this; not thousands of them, not all lined up, fanned out, waiting, watching, thrumming.
No one moved. No one, save the crackers, breathed.
What did they do now?
A noise, the sound of the metal basement door flying open, broke the silence, and the sheriff immediately turned to see Nancy and Mrs. Drew bust through the doorway, the pistols held out in front of them as they made their way to the front of the room.
“No!” the sheriff yelled, turning his body completely. He waved his arm at the two women like a madman. “No! Go back downstairs!”
That was it. Whatever calm had been holding the crackers in place broke, and the air was filled with the sound of cracking joints as they started to lower into place, readying themselves to jump.
Coggins fired the first shot, and the spray of pellets took out at least a half dozen of the tightly packed crackers just outside the smashed window.
Williams’ and Jared’s pistols barked next, and more cracker bodies, the front wave, were sent flying backwards, their bodies reduced to the now all-too-familiar milky white smears.
The sheriff turned back to the car and ripped off a shotgun blast, the pellets embedding themselves into the roof of the car, taking a handful of the crackers with them.
“No!” he continued to shout even as he fired.
He turned back in time to see Nancy and Mrs. Drew pull up the rear, firing their own pistols.
They had taken out at least fifty of the damned things before the first flew at them.
The men rolled out of the way and most of the crackers overshot their targets, flying over their heads and into the station behind them.
Williams and Jared turned, firing at the crackers that were behind them now, while the others kept firing into the throngs of crackers that kept coming at them.
Any thoughts of making it to the car, despite the fact that it was practically within arm’s reach of the front door, left the sheriff’s mind. They were going to go out in a blaze of glory, but they were going to fucking go out.
A large cracker just missed the sheriff, but when it hit something soft and he heard an accompanying whoosh, he turned in fear. The thing had struck the cameraman in the chest and had knocked him to the ground. Evidently it had failed to find purchase, as it landed a few feet to the man’s left. The cracker scrambled to right itself on its tall legs, then immediately scampered back toward the fat cameraman with amazing speed.
As the sheriff watched, the cameraman spun his body in a deft move he did not appear capable of doing and delivered a swift kick to the thing’s underside, sending it back into the air.
Nancy turned and shot the thing before it hit the ground, showering them all in a white paste.
“Die, you motherfuckers!” Jared shouted, and took several steps toward the throngs of crackers that amazingly just missed him as they flew by.
Coggins also began to move forward, and it was clear by the way he was heading to the window and not to the door that he too had given up hope of heading to the source.
The plan had changed; it had become what the sheriff had feared when he had first seen Coggins leaning out of the car window—it was now a suicide mission, one designed to take out as many of the fuckers as possible.
Fucking Kamikaze.
As the sheriff fired off another blast of his shotgun, one of his hands fell to the grenade on his hip.
The plan was now to take out as many as he could, even if it meant taking himself—them—out in the process; no way did he want to become an incubator like the kids at Wellwood Elementary.
Sheriff White bit his lip hard and charged at the window.
“Die!” he heard himself shout along with Coggins.
He became acutely aware of the fact that there was someone beside him now—a flash of yellow in his periphery.
Nancy.
Well, if he was going to go
out, at least he had her by his side.
37.
They heard the rumble long before they saw its source. It was like a heavy drone trying to break through the high-pitched cracking that filled the night air.
“There!” Deputy Williams shouted, pointing a hand down the dimly lit Main Street.
A cracker hit him in the chest, and then another, but he swatted them off of the Kevlar, then turned his pistols—one in each hand now—and blew them away before they could even scramble back onto their legs.
Deputy Coggins turned his head following where Williams had pointed. There, ripping down the highway going at least a hundred miles an hour, was the outline of a dark blue muscle car. A Chevelle, if he wasn’t mistaken—a loud Chevelle, one that sounded like it was a fucking jumbo jet and not a car.
Coggins fired another shotgun blast and then quickly reloaded his weapon, stepping behind Jared, who continued to fire as Coggins filled the shotgun with five new shells.
When he looked up again, the car had jumped the median and was now on their side of the road, coming straight for them.
Coggins fired off another shot.
Right at them.
“Get the fuck out of the way!” he shouted, grabbing Jared and pushing him to his right.
Sheriff White, standing side by side with Nancy, dove out of the way, forcing the woman down to the floor.
The driver hammered on the e-brake at the last second, sending the Chevelle into a skid that smeared a good hundred or so crackers across the lawn. The engine hissed and popped, and the sound was followed by a thick cloud of smoke that leaked out from cracks in the hood. The acrid smell of burnt rubber added to the foul scent of the annihilated crackers.
Williams fired again and again, taking out more crackers while they flew all around them. It was hard for Coggins to keep track of all of them, and he had resigned himself to aiming his gun behind them, trying to make sure to pick them off before they crept up on them and latched onto their skin. Twice, he had hit one just a few feet from either the sheriff’s ankle, or one of the cameraman’s fat hands.
Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3) Page 55
