by David Wood
Taylor nodded, then pointed out the window. “What is Dirk doing?”
Kyle glanced behind him and saw his friend run toward the fence gate. As soon as he reached it he lifted the latch and swung it open. The dogs, already in a barking frenzy, surged through the opening and ran toward the approaching monsters. Kyle winced, knowing what lay in store for the animals, but hoping at the same time they'd give him and the people with him an extra few seconds.
“Come on!” Dirk yelled as he picked up the metal cases. “Move your asses!”
“You heard the man.” Kyle stepped out of the doorway. “Go!”
Maya moved to the other side of the door, and between them Morgana and Taylor dashed for the Honda's back doors. Maya stepped close to Kyle, touched his face, then gave him a quick kiss before following after them. Kyle didn't care to close the door as he stepped into her wake.
Moving like an avalanche of fur, the four German Shepherds tore across the parking lot and leapt at the creatures. Kyle counted ten of them as he neared the Honda's driver's side door, though that was only a guess. The creatures stumbled back a step when the dogs crashed into them. They barked and growled as their teeth and claws sank into graying flesh. Blood spurted into the air, driving the dogs further into a frenzy, but soon the growls became yelps of pain, and the monsters surged forward again. Kyle winced as the dogs cried out, the sound of it eerily like screams.
“You better use that thing if you want to get out of here!” Dirk said, his eyes flicking at Kyle's gun. He then reached into his truck and pulled the Mossberg shotgun they’d once slaughtered countless bottles and cans with from the rack mounted on the rear window.
With the dogs now nothing more than meat staining the parking lot, the pack of creatures split in two. One group headed toward the Honda, and the other toward the truck. Kyle gauged how rapidly they approached, then calculated how fast he could get in the Honda, engage the transmission, and flee. Math wasn't his best subject, but it wasn't hard to put two and two together and get four dead people. The creatures would be on them and pounding at the Honda's windows before he got the car into reverse, and he didn't think it could take much of a pounding. His only real option was to fight.
A loud boom to his right told him Dirk was way ahead of him. The shotgun sounded like a cannon as it sent buckshot into the half dozen or so creatures headed toward him. One fell to its knees, a spray of bloody holes turning its upper body into a gory mess, but the others around it didn't miss a step. He pumped the shotgun and fired again, this time hitting several at once, but they didn't flinch, and it only slowed them for a second.
Kyle raised his .40 cal and took careful aim. One squeeze later and a creature fell, blood spurting from a ragged hole above its black right eye. Kyle gave a quick, silent word of thanks to his drill instructors, then lined up his sights and shot again. The second bullet hit a creature in the throat. He didn't know if he killed it, but it dropped to the ground and flopped around like a fish pulled out of the river to drown in fresh air, and that was good enough. Dead was good, but down and out was a close second. His third shot either missed or didn't hit anything vital because none of the creatures reacted, but the shot after that hit the leading creature in the chest, spinning it around and dropping it.
A flash of light in the far periphery of Kyle's vision drew his attention, and with a quick look he saw Dirk step away from his truck and back toward the office. His shotgun boomed, sending a creature flying to the ground on its back. He pumped, shot, pumped, and shot again, turning another creature into ground chuck. “Running out of ammo!” He took another backward step. “Got more in the off—”
Dirk flinched and stopped in mid sentence, then looked down. Kyle followed his gaze. A blunt, dark object stuck out from Dirk’s chest. When it opened, Kyle recognized it for what it was – a fist. Dirk coughed. Blood jetted from his mouth in a thick stream that splashed on the ground. The fist disappeared, and Dirk fell. Behind him stood a nightmare vision of a man, the broken lips of its twisted face turned up in a grin that made Kyle's stomach flop in his abdomen.
Part of Kyle's mind reeled at the sight of his dead friend, but he shut those thoughts down and brought his pistol up. As the gun rose, the nightmare grew larger. A flapping sound hit the air as wind buffeted Kyle's face. He scarcely had time to register what happened before the dark monster lifted into the air and flew at him. Kyle dove to the right to avoid being driven into the Honda and fired two shots. The nightmare didn't flinch or stop, and a heartbeat later it hit the car right where Kyle had been standing. It flipped over the hood to disappear over the other side. The Honda rocked on its wheels, and the women inside it screamed.
Dread coiled in Kyle's chest as Taylor and Morgana scrambled to exit the Honda's back door on the near side, terror lighting up their eyes like stadium lights. Maya, though, was in the front passenger seat, and the dented metal of where the shadow had hit the car held the door shut, so she had to scramble across the gearshift and driver's seat to get out. Her feet just hit the ground as the nightmare appeared behind her.
Kyle opened his mouth to yell out a warning, but he was too late. Maya screamed in a high, keening sound as the monster lowered its head next to hers and sank its teeth into the flesh of her neck and shoulder. Kyle's instinct told him to shoot, but with Maya in the way he couldn't risk it, so he ran around the car to try and wrestle her away. He circled the rear of the car, but a gust of wind slapped against him, pushing him back and driving stinging rain into this face. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he reopened them, the nightmare was ten feet in the air, Maya in its arms, and great bat-like wings holding them aloft.
“Oh yes!” The winged nightmare’s voice felt like nails pounding into his ears. “The ancient blood. She will hasten the raise of my dark lord, her blood the spark that will light the world on fire. Now let the darkness come!”
Though he hated hearing the monster speak, he thought he recognized the voice. When he looked up at Maya's terrified face as she struggled to get away from the arms that held her, he knew from where – it was the voice Maya had spoken with in the car, the voice of the spirit that had taken her over. Now here it was, in the flesh, taking her body yet again.
“Kyle!” she shouted, reaching out for him. “Help me!”
Kyle brought his pistol up and aimed down its sight, but the jerking motion of the wings made an accurate shot impossible. “I can't!”
Maya bit down on the arm holding her, and she dropped as it jerked away. Kyle ran forward to catch her. Before she fell more than two feet, the shadow grabbed her again, and the wings beat fiercely to lift them away. Within seconds they were lost in the dark sky, Maya's fading screams all that remained.
“Kyle, they're still coming!” Taylor shouted as she grabbed his arm, jerking him back to what was happening around him.
With the nightmare monster gone, the gray monsters shambled forward again, their feet tearing through the gravel of the parking lot. They were so close there wasn't enough time to get Taylor and Morgana back in the dented Honda. Kyle dashed for Dirk's dropped shotgun, picked it up, and turned to Taylor.
“You remember how to use one of these things?” he asked, handing her the pistol.
Her eyes were as large as the moon as she looked at it and then at the monsters now just a few yards away. She nodded, her face bloodless.
“Then use it!” he said, shoving it into her hands.
Taylor took the gun, gulped, and started firing. He stood next to her, their shoulders nearly touching as they created a wall of ammunition and sound. Gray creatures that had once been people jerked and sputtered, brackish liquid seeping and spurting as they fell one by one. The monsters drew close, Kyle and Taylor stepped back, Morgana already in the office doorway behind them. The shotgun boomed and the pistol barked, over and over again. Pallid flesh exploded away from bones and muscles to splatter on gravel. Growls boiled the air.
A claw lashed out and ripped through Kyle’s shirt, scratching
his chest. He shoved the shotgun in the creature’s mouth. Chunks blew out of the monster’s head when he squeezed the trigger and emptied its skull.
“Kyle!” Taylor screamed as two monsters lunged forward.
He kicked the one nearest him and drove it to the ground. The thing at the end of his boot thrashed and grabbed at his leg, then took his foot and gnashed on it. The steel toe covering saved him from losing his toes. He mashed down, pressing its skull into the gravel, and gave his boot a vicious twist. The creature’s head split in half, spilling blood and broken fangs.
Next to him, the other monster grabbed his sister and pulled her down as it leaned in to eat her face. As she fell her arms bent, and the gun in her hands pressed against the creature’s ashen chin. When her knees hit the ground, the shock of it made her entire body twitch, and a bullet blasted through the monster’s head. Bits of brain and skull rained down around her. Blood splattered her face.
Kyle barely had time to be thankful she was still alive before more creatures pressed in on them. He stepped close to her and helped her up with one arm while swinging the shotgun around with the other. They fired again once they were standing side by side, but dry, metallic clicks soon replaced the sound of gunfire. By the grace of a God Kyle was begrudging to believe in, only one monster still stood. Feeling his heart pound in his chest like a wild animal, Kyle ran forward and kicked it to the ground, then smashed the butt of the shotgun into its head like a lumberjack trying to chop a tree down. His arms heaved up and down, up and down, and in the back of his mind he heard himself bellowing in rage and fear as he turned the gray creature's head into mush. He didn't stop until Taylor's cool hands grabbed his arm and pulled him away.
“Kyle, stop it!” she yelled, tears streaming from her eyes. “It's dead already! Stop it!”
Kyle's lungs ached as he gulped in air, but then his throat burned when vomit flew from his mouth to spatter the dead creature at his feet. His knees trembled, threatening to drop him to the ground, but he locked his legs and forced himself to stay upright. If he fell he wasn't sure he'd be able to get back up again.
“We gotta go.” Taylor’s voice was high pitched and pleading.
She was right, but he didn't know where they should go to. Without Maya and Dirk, their plan lay in ruins. Nowhere was safe, not in the whole wide world. What was happening in Stillwater was just the beginning. Once the ancient evil in the mine rose, all of them were dead. But, as he thought of the mine, he knew what he had to do. Shutting down his mind, he walked over to Dirk's body, bent over it, and patted his dead friend's pockets. When he felt metal, he reached in and withdrew a ring of keys. Finding the one with a FORD logo on it, he removed it from the ring and held it out to his sister.
“Taylor, I need you to go with your girlfriend to the cabin where the rest of your friends are at,” he said. “Go there and hunker down until I come to get you okay? It should be safe enough.”
“No,” she replied, shaking her head. “We're getting out of here. All of us. Together.”
“I can't. Not yet.”
Taylor's facial muscles flexed as she clenched her jaw. “Why not? There's nothing we can—”
“There is,” he said, cutting her off. He took her shoulders in his hands and stared into her eyes. “We could run all the way to other side of the world and it wouldn't matter. Think about it for a second, and you'll know I'm right. Either we do something to try and stop this, or we wait to die. I still have a chance to stop all this, but I can't do it and keep you safe at the same time. So go, take Morgana, and wait with your friends. Can you do that for me?”
Taylor shook her head and glared at him, but he just looked at her. After a few seconds she cried and threw her arms around him.
“I never thought you'd leave me twice.” Her tone was soft, but her words still cut deep.
“Last time I left for myself,” he whispered into her ear. “This time it's for you. Now go. As soon as I'm done, I'll come get you, and then we'll put this town behind us once and for all. Okay?”
Taylor nodded and stepped back. “Okay.”
Kyle leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “Good. I love you, Piglet.”
“I love you back, big brother,” she replied, tears still streaming down her face.
They hugged once more, and then Taylor waved Morgana over as she walked to Dirk's truck. Kyle watched both girls get in, not moving a muscle until the taillights vanished in the distance. Now with nothing with silence and the stench of carnage around him, he went into the office and opened desk drawers. In the lower right one he found a box of 12-gauge shotgun shells and took as many as his pockets would hold. He then walked back outside to the two crates holding the explosives and detonators. They were lighter than he'd expected as he carried them to the Honda and put them in the trunk. He took one last look at his dead friend. “I'm sorry, man, I really am,” then got in the car and started the engine. As he pulled out of the parking lot he turned the wheel to the right and crossed onto the road that would take him to the dam. He just had one stop to make on the way there.
Chapter 23
The ventilation tunnel for the mine opened like a wound on the side of the mountain. When Kyle and Maya had been there earlier in the day, with the rainclouds backlit by the sun and the true nature of what was happening still unknown, it hadn't seemed that ominous. It was just a hole dug into the rock. But now, in the dark, alone, knowing what waited at the heart of the mountain, the vent opening had a dreadful feel to it, and it took every ounce of his strength and courage to cross into the mine.
The darkness inside the mountain was absolute. He felt it on his skin, like wool stretched across his face and limbs. Before he could stumble into a wall and break his nose, he stopped, set Dirk's shotgun down, and lifted the night vision goggles he'd taken from Maya's car over his head. Once they were in place and powered on, the mine went from twilight to dusk. The roughly hewn stone of the tunnel and the pipes that ran along the floor were vague greenish shadows within shadows, but half blind was better than no sight at all. Now able to at least keep from smashing into the rock, he picked up the shotgun, ducked his head, and scuttled forward.
The chug of distant pumps echoed through the tunnel like monstrous mechanical hearts, their competing rhythms beating the air mercilessly. With every second and every gallon, the world came closer to ending. The beat of the pumps drove Kyle forward, urging him deeper into the darkness.
After a minute of scuttling he came to the chamber Taylor and her friends had been held in. The dead miner lay in the middle of it, his face smashed and his gray mouth open in a Jack-O-Lantern grin of broken, jagged teeth. His sightless black eyes stared up at the shale roof above him in unblinking wonder. Dried blood crusted his chin, cheeks, and the crumpled hunk of flesh that had once been a nose. Kyle shivered at how close he'd come to being the one dead on the dusty floor, and then turned to trudge further into the mountain.
As each foot fell, the chugging of the pumps grew closer and louder. His back ached from bending over for so long, but he grit his teeth and tried to ignore it. Maya was somewhere ahead, and God only knew what danger or pain she was in, so he picked up his pace. Soon the air vibrated from the nearby power of the pumps, the sound of their gas engines hammering against his eardrums as the tunnels carried their unceasing clamor like the horn on an old phonograph right to his head. Half a minute later the tunnel ended, and the darkness beyond it was as deep and wide as outer space. Things moved in it, though, shuffled in the dark, and he stopped before he stumbled amongst them.
To the far right and about ten yards out were the pumps, and several small lights blinked on their control panels like stars. The hoses leading from one end of each were clamped onto pipes running past his feet, while the hoses from the other end led to a wide opening in the rock to their right, the cave's mouth rough and uneven, as though it had been clawed into the rock. A glow emanated from inside the opening, the light wavering as though reflected off water. Something about it
made his heart skip a beat, so he averted his eyes to look elsewhere, but he knew that eerily lit cave was where he needed to go. That was where the water came from, where the ancient evil slept, and if the winged monster was to be believed, it was the most likely place he'd have taken Maya.
Bodies littered the dark stone floor outside the cave and out past the pumps like trash that had been tossed aside and forgotten about. Some looked like normal people, and some were twisted, distorted shells of who they used to be, but all were bloody and savaged in some way, and all gazed out at the world with midnight eyes. A shiver ran up Kyle's back like a frightened cat.
A large machine sat to the left. Kyle had never seen one in person, but he’d heard of them – a continuous miner. Its massive tungsten-tooth covered front end sat still and quiet. The rock floor around it was washed clean by the water it had released when it breached the cavern on the right and flooded the tunnel. Those the water hadn't killed, it had changed. Kyle didn't know if the miner still worked, but on the floor to its left sat a man with its controls in his hands, his gnarled fingers flicking the switches like a child with a toy too advanced for him. The man's face was twisted, his shoulders far too hunched forward to be healthy, and drool hung in thick ropes from his fat, gray lips.
Beyond the miner and the cavern opening lay a long, wide tunnel that led into the rest of the mine. Kyle couldn't tell how deep it went, but what little he could see looked exactly like the mines he'd been in before as a kid. Tunnels crisscrossed the one leading away from him at regular intervals. Several miners moved about in the dark, most of them alone and shuffling around in small circles on twisted legs, their gray heads cocked like they were listening to music he couldn't hear, but they didn't have ears to hear with, just nubs of flesh. Others stood in small, fidgety groups, their bodies stooped as they leaned toward each other talking. Occasionally one of them would look his direction, but their eyes never lingered, and they never gave a sign that they saw him. Their bodies were too misshapen and covered in coal dust to recognize any of them.
