Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3)

by Patrick Logan

  Corina blew him a silent kiss, tears again streaming down her cheeks. Then she reached for Gregory Griddle’s hand.

  She was done quitting.

  44.

  The entire expanse of lawn before him was surrounded by crackers.

  There were thousands of them, all lining the mossy ground, their bodies pushed together so tightly that their shells overlapped. It was a sea of ubiquitous, organic white, and all of their shells were dipped downward toward him in expectation—or perhaps anticipation.

  The side of the hill surrounding the culvert was also covered with the things, their multi-jointed legs allowing them to cling easily to the steep embankment. They also surrounded the mouth of the culvert and lined the inner surface.

  But that wasn’t what had taken Coggins’ breath away. That had been a result of the boy.

  “Help me,” the boy whispered. The sound was horrible, as if his one end of his vocal chords had been wrapped around a wrench and someone was turning it like a crank.

  Coggins’ hand started to shake so violently that he dropped the handgun. The gun clanked off the shells of the crackers that had silently surrounded his feet. They did nothing to avoid it.

  Only the boy’s face was noticeably human—and even that was undergoing some sort of metamorphosis that would render it unrecognizable in time. In place of the boy’s arms were flat flaps of white skin, huge rectangles of flesh that were stretched to the inside of the culvert, affixed to the corrugated metal interior by the milky white substance that the crackers seemed to exude from their orifice. The boy’s legs were much the same; there were no discernable bones, only sheets of skin that were glued to the bottom of the culvert. The poor boy’s body looked like a patchy white sheet, and it had been stretched so far that it almost filled the entire culvert. There was something akin to ribs in the center of the boy’s taut skin, but Coggins wasn’t sure; they were but spokes poking through the patchy, thin sheet.

  But then there was the face; a boy’s face, a boy with buzzed black hair, a narrow nose, heavy bags beneath his small eyes, and thin lips that were stretched at the sides. A pink scar traced a line down the right side of his face, starting from the outer corner of the eye to the corner of his mouth. When the boy spoke, as he did now, in a horrible, trembling voice, it grated on Coggins the way the sound inside the Wharfburn Estate six years ago had caused pressure to build in his head.

  “Help me, Bradley Coggins. Help me.”

  The voice was clear now—the voice was human. The thing that uttered those words, however, was not.

  45.

  Corina felt herself fading as the man, the one that her uncle called Greg, the father of the boy that she had killed in the basement, wrapped his arms around her back and beneath her knees. The heat of the blaze was intense now, a deep, dry heat, but she shut her eyes before she caught sight of the flames that had turned the entire Wharfburn house into an inferno. Acrid smoke filled her nose and throat, and she coughed, but even this seemed distant, detached.

  Corina hadn’t slept in a long time, and all of the raw emotion of the day had left her more than drained; it had left her empty.

  The burnt smell subsided and the air cooled, but only a little, and she assumed that Greg had carried her out of the house now.

  “Here, you take her,” the man said, and she felt her body being transferred from Greg’s strong grip to one that was more tenuous.

  “You can’t go back in there,” she heard Jared say.

  “My son, I need to find my son!”

  Corina was so tired, but her eyes rolled forward at the mention of the man’s son.

  “He’s gone,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.

  There was a brief moment of silence, and all that could be heard was the splintering and popping of the Wharfburn Estate as the abandoned house was completely engulfed in flames.

  “What?” Greg shouted, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her briefly.

  Corina’s eyes snapped open, and there was a deep sadness hidden in those green pools.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, “Kent is gone. He—”

  Despite feeling empty, more tears came, streaking her pale cheeks.

  “—he’s gone.”

  The man’s face contorted and he opened his mouth in a wail.

  “No!” he screamed. “No!”

  Corina let her eyes close again, and she felt Jared instinctively lean over her a little more, his body shrouding hers protectively.

  “It can’t be,” she heard Greg Griddle say, but his voice seemed far away. “Not my boy! Not my champ!”

  Her body slumped as Jared suddenly reached forward with the hand that was tucked under the back of her knees.

  “No,” her uncle cried. “Greg! You can’t go in there!”

  “Champ! I’m coming for you, champ!”

  The man’s voice was even more distant now, but Corina didn’t know if it was because he had moved back toward the house, or because everything sounded muted now as the darkness that surrounded her mind settled in.

  Sleep. I need to sleep.

  “No! Greg! You can’t go in there! You can’t…”

  But the words faded into oblivion as Corina slipped into a deep sleep; a long, dark, unfeeling slumber that lasted for days.

  46.

  Crackers were budding from the boy’s flattened skin almost every few seconds now, first blebbing before their mostly translucent bodies fell to the culvert floor.

  As he watched the newly born palil fall, Deputy Bradley Coggins’ mind drifted back to when Oxford had sported the skin suit and had stumbled down the stairs to wait for Oot’-keban. Then the man had injected himself with the lethal cocktail intended for the beast. His mind skipped around like a scratched CD, and the next image was of the spaceship in the bathroom, the one with the yellow lights all the way around, and the biker hooker between his legs, blowing him.

  Oot’-keban had been there, too. He was sure of it.

  “I was a good man,” a voice suddenly said, and he snapped out of his reverie. It was the boy talking, of course, but it also wasn’t. Its eyes were different, rounder somehow, brown, and older.

  “I was a good man, I just made some mistakes… I didn’t deserve to be eaten alive.”

  It was Oxford’s voice.

  The boy’s head suddenly twisted to one side and the mouth spread wide, a horrible burping sound coming from deep within the sheet-like torso. When it turned back to face him once more, it was no longer Oxford.

  “Why did you kill me?”

  A chill ran through Coggins despite the fire that blazed at his back.

  “Why, Coggins? You were one of the good boys… one of us.”

  Coggins felt his bladder let go.

  It was Sheriff Dana Drew. It was his voice, his eyes. It was him… in someone else’s flesh.

  The head twitched again, more rapidly this time, and the mouth opened wide, the same horrible burping sound coming forth moments before it snapped closed. Then it turned and looked directly at Coggins.

  “You abandoned me, Brad. I needed you—I still need you, Brad. I thought you loved me—I thought you would protect me.”

  No. It can’t be.

  But of course it was, as much as the thing that had once been a boy, a drug addict, a sheriff.

  It was Alice.

  “I needed you…”

  Coggins was lost in the face, in the vision, the beast, the Oot’-keban, and he felt his feet moving forward without his consent.

  Come

  Come

  Come Come

  Coggins’ eyes rolled back in his head, and he felt the crackers now, all of their pointed limbs pressing on his feet and ankles. They didn’t frighten him anymore; they were no longer aggressive, they were… comforting.

  Alice… I’m coming, Alice.

  An explosion suddenly rocked through the forest, sending a shockwave through the crackers. The trees shook, dislodging leaves and branches, and the ground quivered beneath C
oggins’ feet. The crackers started to move about again, anxious at this new sensation, their joints articulating in multiple directions at once.

  Coggins felt his eyes roll forward, and with this some of his senses began to return.

  What am I doing here?

  The hand not holding the flashlight fell to his side, brushing against something round and hard.

  Where is Alice?

  As his vision began to focus, it once again landed on the thing before him. Only this time it had the face of a boy, the face of Tyler Wandry, complete with the pink scar that marked the right side of his face.

  Join me, Bradley. Join me, help grow my palil. Breed my palil, my crackers.

  Coggins wasn’t sure if the sound was in his head or outside, as the lips of the boy before him, stretched as they were, hadn’t moved.

  Join me, Brad. Join me.

  The words repeated in his head over and over again, even as his hand tightened on a grenade at his side.

  Join me. Join me. Join me.

  He pulled the grenade from his belt and hooked his finger through the loop. He would go down like Oxford, sacrificing himself for all of them if he had to.

  But it ended here. Oot’-keban would end here.

  Join me. Join me.

  Come

  Come Come

  Come Come Come

  Coggins pulled the pin on the grenade.

  “Fuck you,” he spat, tossing the grenade into the culvert. “Fuck you.”

  In his head, he heard an oddly familiar sound; a deep, rumbling laughter that rattled his molars and made his vision spin.

  47.

  When Sheriff Paul White pulled up to the flaming Wharfburn Estate, he expected the worst.

  He was not entirely disappointed.

  There were two cars on the lawn: Jared’s car, which Coggins had left in with both Jared and Greg, and the police cruiser that Corina had stolen.

  But he saw nothing else.

  “Where are they?” Nancy asked from the passenger seat, her voice meek.

  The sheriff didn’t reply, but his chest tightened as he put the car into park.

  “Wait here,” he instructed, and the woman with the short, dirty, sweaty blonde hair nodded.

  The air outside smelled of burning wood, but it was a welcome relief from the smell of gasoline that Paul had become accustomed to over the last hour.

  Sheriff White breathed deeply as he quickly made his way across the lawn. His heartrate quickened when he reached the cruiser first, recognizing that it was completely empty. His gaze inadvertently glanced at the burning house, but it was too far gone to know if there was anyone inside; and if there had been, there would be nothing he would be able to do for them.

  Paul’s breathing regained some semblance of normalcy when he recognized the outline of figures in Jared’s car, but as he grew nearer, any relief that he felt faded. There just weren’t enough of them. There was someone in the driver seat, completely still, and another, hunched form in the backseat. But that was it.

  Five, there should be five of them.

  Somewhere in the distance, he could hear the siren of Askergan’s only fire engine wailing on the wind. Instinctively, he turned his gaze toward town, and although the trees prevented him from seeing any of the skyline, the sky itself was an eerie yellow. Like the Wharfburn Estate, Askergan was burning; and the sheriff was okay with that.

  The big man used two knuckles to gently rap on the glass of the passenger window. He now recognized three figures in the car, one in the driver’s seat, and two in the back, one huddled up and cradled in the other’s arms.

  It was Deputy Bradley Coggins who rolled down the window. His face was streaked with blood and grime, and his beard appeared glistening. There were dark, almost black circles around his eyes.

  And something in his eyes was missing; the wit, the sarcasm, the humor—gone.

  “Coggins,” the sheriff said softly, feeling a weight fall off his chest. “Thank God you made it. You won’t believe—”

  Coggins slumped back in his seat and he turned away from the sheriff.

  “It’s over,” he said flatly. He was staring straight ahead, his eyes locked on the burning Estate through the windshield.

  “—the damn crab-things,” the sheriff continued, despite his confusion. “The damn crackers or whatever you want to call them, they all stopped moving. The fucking things just flipped over and died.”

  Coggins reaction was not what the sheriff had expected. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure what he’d expected—relief, surprise, satisfaction—but he definitely did not expect this: apathy.

  “Coggins?”

  The man didn’t respond. Instead, he opened the car door and exited the vehicle. As Coggins slowly walked around the car to greet him, the sheriff peered into the backseat.

  The second figure was Jared Lawrence. The man’s head was pushed back against the headrest and his eyes were closed. Tears streamed down his cheeks. In his arms he held the nineteen-year-old Corina, her face relaxed, her breathing rhythmic. The girl’s left leg was twisted beneath her at an odd angle, but before the sheriff could lean in and get a better look, Coggins arrived beside him.

  The man smelled foul, but the sheriff didn’t smell all that good either; gasoline had splattered his clothes when he had removed all of the pumps at the station, just prior to setting them on fire.

  “It’s over,” Coggins repeated in the same flat tone.

  The two of them were standing side by side now, staring at the Wharfburn Estate, which continued to burn like a massive bonfire. The entire house was engulfed in huge yellow and orange flames that had already blown out every window and had turned the red bricks black.

  They were going to have to leave the lawn soon; as it was, the heat from the house was almost overbearing.

  The sheriff shielded his eyes against the blaze. Then he shook his head.

  “Almost,” he said, laying a gentle hand on his friend’s back.

  He left Coggins and headed to his own car, surprised to see that Nancy had fallen asleep in the front seat.

  As quietly as he could, Sheriff White reached in and popped the trunk, then grabbed the red gas can from inside.

  Coggins was standing exactly as he had been before, staring at the burning Wharfburn Estate.

  “Come with me,” he said, gently tugging on Coggins’ arm to get him moving.

  They walked together across the lawn, turning their faces slightly to the side to avoid the full brunt of the heat.

  The sheriff’s eyes scanned the sticks on the lawn.

  “There,” he said when his eyes fell on a particular branch in the center of the lawn about halfway between where he had parked the car and the burning porch.

  The sheriff grabbed the branch and tried briefly to move it back and forth. Recognizing the strange way that it seemed to stick and stay in both directions, he nodded.

  “This is it.”

  Coggins looked at him with a queer expression on his face, which was actually a relief to the sheriff—the man wasn’t completely gone after all. Coggins turned his gaze to the base of the stick and started to squat, but Paul stopped him by grabbing his arm.

  “Don’t,” he said. Then he proceeded to empty the gasoline on the stick and at the base, making sure that the dark, empty space on the ground around the branch was thoroughly saturated.

  “I came here before, you know,” the sheriff said, pulling a book of matches from his pocket. “I was here right after you left to go on leave. And I came to this very branch. At the time, I wasn’t sure why I came to this stick instead of any of the others, but now I know.”

  Coggins looked at him, but instead of confusion as Paul expected, something akin to understanding crossed his features.

  “I was drawn to it.”

  The sheriff lit the match and the stick immediately burst into flames. The tendrils licked down the dried shaft and then hit the earth, causing another burst of fire.

  Both men stepped
back.

  For several seconds, nothing else happened. Then there was a puff, like a slowly deflating balloon, and then some sort of mist came out of the ground, sending a shower of sparks into the sky.

  Coggins went to move forward, to take another look, to investigate, but again the sheriff stopped him, this time by grabbing his arm with a firm grip.

  Eventually, the fire on the grass burned itself out. The house, on the other hand, continued to burn in front of them.

  “Now it’s over,” the sheriff said.

  Coggins nodded.

  The two men said nothing for several minutes. Even when the upper level of the Estate collapsed onto the first floor, they said and did nothing.

  At long last, when the Estate had been reduced to a pile of burning rubble, the sheriff spoke.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  Coggins, eyes still trained straight ahead, said, “I don’t know.”

  His gaze drifted to the yellow sky—a tangible reminder of the fire that burned in town.

  “Askergan needs you, Brad.”

  Another pause.

  “What Askergan?”

  The sheriff shrugged, his own eyes turning to the burning sky.

  “Askergan will be rebuilt; Askergan needs good people like you—like us. Askergan needs the good boys.”

  Coggins nodded, but it was clear that he had no intentions of reliving his days as a deputy any time soon.

  “You have Deputy Williams, and he’s like my twin.”

  “As long as you don’t go back to the Nazi biker bar,” Sheriff Paul White quipped. He was surprised at how quickly he had come up with the insult, and also that he had been in a state of mind to make it.

  Coggins made a face—almost a smirk. Almost.

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that… drove by it on the way here. Let’s put it this way”—he turned back to the burning house—“the dirty bastards all have crabs.”

  Epilogue

  The room was warm and smelled of flowers. A quick glance at the bedside table revealed the source of the smell: there were two vases, one with fresh flowers, the other with ones that were mostly dead, the yellow daffodil leaves drooping, their ends starting to dry out.