by Ryan Notch
Behind him Terra tried the door next to her, and finding it unlocked opened it. Jack thought it better to keep backing up towards the stairs but she pulled him in after her.
Terra turned on the lights and shut the door after him, locking it.
“Looks like we found Mrs. Cunningham’s dog,” she said.
It took Jack a moment but then he nodded in understanding.
“Yeah, I guess that is what it had to be. I don’t think anyone else here has pets about that size. But why did you pull us in here? I really think we should get off this floor until tomorrow, until sunlight can help us out some.”
Terra glanced over at the sliding balcony doors, where it was pitch dark out in the courtyard. The light inside the apartment wasn’t much better, with apparently only one intact lamp bulb in the entire place. The rest were broken, in fact broken glass was everywhere.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just kind of thought we should hurry and search these places before things like that can find all the water. This is Felix’s apartment, isn’t it?”
Jack looked around. Most of the broken glass seemed to come from different liquor bottles. Felix taking his work home with him maybe.
“Looks like it. Let’s secure the area before we check for water. Stay with me this time, I have a bad feeling about this place.”
Felix’s apartment had the simultaneous sameness and alienness Jack always felt seeing anyone’s place for the first time. Black leather couch and big screen TV, proof of Felix’s claims of the tips he made as a bartender. Large framed nature photos on the walls, the glass from these also broken and lying on the floor. The glass crunched loudly under Jack’s shoes as he walked and he worried about a piece poking its way through. But it was unavoidable, it was everywhere.
The hallway light was out, shattered with the rest. The bathroom light was intact though dim, the tentacles also having invaded and blocked most of it out. The bathroom itself was empty. It was the bedroom where they found him.
Felix was dead, very obviously. By the beam of the flashlight Jack could see him on his bed backed up against the corner. There was a terrible gaping hole in his chest, and his face had been cut up as well. He was bloated and the room smelled sweetly of early rot. Jack felt a terrible churning in his stomach and dizziness, and pushed past Terra to run to the bathroom. He wanted to retch into the toilet, but stopped himself. He forced himself to calm down, to breathe deep. He hated the economy of it, but didn’t want to waste the water. He sat on the edge of the bathtub and put his head low.
He thought about how this was the first time he had seen a body, though wondered if Mr. Cooper counted.
I really wish that I’d never gotten to a point in my life where I wasn’t sure if something counted as a dead body, he thought.
After a bit he heard Terra crunching down the hallway towards him. She looked pale, but was in much better shape than him.
“Are you all right,” she asked.
“Yeah,” he replied instinctively, not really meaning it.
“Well, I think I can kind of guess a few things from the body.”
Jesus Christ, he thought. Americans and their fucking CSI.
“Those gouges on his eyes were kind of healed a little. I think something scratched his eyes out. Then he put down this broken glass so he could hear it coming. Only somehow it got to him anyway. Kind of ate its way through...”
“Yeah,” Jack interrupted, waving his hands for her to stop. “I got it. Let’s just check the fucking kitchen and get out of here.”
“OK”, she said. She offered him a hand and helped him up.
The kitchen was too small for two people to comfortably root around at the same time, so she let him look while she poked around the apartment.
“Looking for more clues, Nancy Drew,” he asked as he found some canned fruits in the cabinets.
“Yeah I guess so,” she replied. “I’m just wondered if I can find any indication of what happened during the time you were knocked out and I was locked up.”
“Well things definitely went to hell in a hurry,” Jack said as he put the canned food in a plastic bag from under the sink. Terra moved off down the hallway as he checked the fridge.
Inside was half a jug of cranberry juice, which he gladly took a deep swig from before putting it in the bag. The tart liquid burned his soar throat and made his stomach even more upset.
Also in the fridge was an extremely tempting container of water. It was the kind with a filter on top that you filled from the tap. Jack found himself wondering first if A: it had been filled before the tentacles got in the pipes and B: if whatever possible contamination those things caused was cleared out by a filter.
In fact I don’t even know for sure if the tentacles cause the mutations, he thought. Could be something a secret government agency put in the air. Say what you want about the Queen, no one accuses her of experimenting on her citizens...
Jack was thinking it over when he heard a noise from up above. He jumped back and looked up, but saw nothing. It was only a moment before he heard it again. Up in the ceiling, a scratching noise. Something moving up there.
“Terra,” he called as he moved out from behind the kitchen counter. “Terra it’s time to go.”
He heard it scratching again, moving down the apartment. It didn’t sound any different than rats in the walls, but he had a bad feeling.
He came to one end of the short apartment hallway just as Terra came to the other. They glanced at each other. Before either had a chance to say anything they heard the scratching noise make its way to the bathroom, then a thumping sound from inside there. Jack thought of the open access hatch in Jeanie’s bathroom.
This thing had a way in.
The open bathroom door stood midway down the hallway, between them. Terra looked at it and looked at Jack. He knew just what she was thinking. Sneaking past whatever was in there would be impossible with the broken glass, and if she tried to make it in a dead run she’d be just as likely to slip on the unstable and razor sharp footing.
She started to inch forward but he held up his hand. He held his finger to his lips warning her to keep quiet. Setting down the bag and grabbing the cricket bat, he made his way carefully to the bathroom door. He slid his feet along the ground so as to make less noise, though it was only partially effective. His plan was to shut the door on the thing, trapping it in there until they could get out of the apartment. It didn’t seem hostile so he figured he had a pretty good chance of it.
He edged close enough to peek into the dimly lit bathroom, keeping as far away from the door as he could. He didn’t see anything at first so edged closer. It seemed empty.
Maybe it’s still up in the ceiling, he thought.
He reached slowly into the bathroom towards the doorknob to pull the door closed. His unwillingness to step closer forced him to lean, leaving him off balance on his bad leg.
He felt it before he saw it, slamming into his head and latching on with its claws. It had somehow been perched above the door, pouncing when he leaned in. It was heavy and hit him hard. His leg gave out and he fell face first onto the floor, the thing falling on top of him. He felt his broken ribs pull loose and jab deeper into him and several pieces of broken glass peppered his chest and face.
The thing’s claws ripped at him from behind where it held his head down. It was trying to reach around, to get at his eyes. Jack let go of the bat and reached his arms up, trying to protect his face. He couldn’t reach around and grab it or get up for fear of giving it an opening. He was trapped, couldn’t think of what to do. He started to panic.
“Coo...coo,” it said and Jack felt its tongue and hot breath as it wrapped its teeth around his right ear.
Jack screamed but before it could bite down it jumped away, making a screeching noise like an injured alley cat.
Jack was up quick, swatting his hands in case it was close. He stumbled back right into Terra, who had cut at the thing with her knife to get it off him.
She was knocked back by him, loosing her balance and falling back into a sitting position against the far wall.
The creature was upon her in an instant, moving too fast for her to kick away. It ran up her legs and she had just enough time to get an arm up to block her face. The thing bit into her arm again and again, trying to reach past it to her eyes.
Jack regained his balance and grabbed at it, using his longer reach to yank it away from her and clumsily threw it down the hall. It landed sprawling, its claws not being able to get much purchase on the smooth wood floor. Jack grabbed his bat and went after it in a desperate lunge.
He swung down at it but it managed to dodge the blow, the cricket bat bouncing off the wood floor with a loud Crack.
Jack swung again and again, rounding the apartment with the thing. He backed it back into the hallway, with Terra on the other side of it, knife ready. It stood between them, looking back and forth. Both Jack and Terra were loath to approach it, but couldn’t retreat. They were back in the same positions they had been when it first arrived.
“Coo...” it said. But the soft begging tones belied the undeniable look of raw hatred in its eyes. It was a human expression on an alien face. Jack saw a cunning caution there, but absolutely no fear.
It made a fake at Jack then doubled back at Terra. Only the slippery glass prevented the move from being more effective. Terra ran towards the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. The creature leaped and almost made it, but instead one of its arms was caught in the door. It struggled and clawed, but Terra held the door hard. It was trapped.
Jack walked slowly towards it. It looked up at him, its lower lip quivering. By the dim light of the bathroom he could see tears running down its cheek from its massive black eyes. It looked plaintive, hurt. It looked betrayed. As Jack raised the bat above his head it mouthed a word at him.
Jack understood it perfectly.
He smashed the bat down as hard as he could, hoping to kill it in one quick blow. He wasn’t so lucky though. The bat made a wet snapping impact on the large head, denting it in. But the thing kept twitching. It took four more blows before he was sure it was dead.
Terra opened the door. With the thing no longer being held up by the door it fell lifeless to the floor, its skull crushed. The only sound was Jack and Terra’s heavy breathing. Jack brushed the glass from his chest and face, knowing it was cutting him even more but not really feeling it. He couldn’t feel anything.
He walked away without a word, grabbing the bag of food and the filtered water on the way out. Terra followed him silently as he limped out the door and up the stairs and back to his apartment.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, walking to her apartment instead.
Jack left the bat leaned up against the kitchen counter. It had a black liquid on it that didn’t look like blood, but he knew it was. He stood in the kitchen, staring at the floor. He heard a kind of buzzing in his ears, a dark rushing sound as of a black river far away. After a while look found himself looking up at the intercom speaker. Almost on autopilot he walked over to it and used his knife to pry it open, ripping the screws out of the old wood and drywall. Once he got the assembly out he put his ear close to the speaker. He wasn’t sure but he thought he might have been able to hear the faintest buzzing from it. He yanked at it, then yanked again and again until the wires tore free.
He felt better immediately, as if his head had cleared.
I have to try and put on a brave face for Terra, he thought just as she walked back into the apartment. She looked down at the intercom assembly in his hand, which he tossed nonchalantly off to the side.
“That’s probably a good idea,” she said. She was carrying some bandages and hydrogen peroxide. “Lets go to the bathroom and get you cleaned up.”
He sat on the toilet and she sat on the bathtub facing him.
“Take off your shirt,” she said. He did, feeling glass pull out of his chest with it. He felt the wetness of the collar as it pulled over his head and looked at it after he got it off. It was soaked in blood from gouges at the sides of his head and face.
Terra wet a washcloth with peroxide and started to clean them out. He looked down at his hands, which were shaking bad. He couldn’t stop them. She looked down and saw them too.
“I’m sorry, I know it hurts. I’ll try and hurry,” she said, mistaking the reason.
He stared down steadily as she pulled the remaining glass out of his chest and arms. He felt himself wince as she applied the peroxide to his head wounds, though still didn’t really feel it.
“I need to put some of this on the bites on my arms,” she said. “God only knows what kind of infection we could get.”
“Here let me,” he said. But when he tried to reach for the bottle he found he still couldn’t stop trembling.
“That’s ok. I can do it.”
He heard her breath hiss as she dabbed the peroxide on the wounds, which luckily had only barely broken the skin. Jack starred at the bite marks, immediately recognizing them for what they were. Terra was starting to notice their odd shape as well.
“They’re kind of funny little marks,” she said as she thoughtfully traced her fingertip along the half crescent of one. Half crescents, all of them.
Jack saw it coming like a car wreck, but couldn’t think of what to do. Frozen and forced to mutely watch it happen, unable to stop it. He saw the truth about to dawn in her eyes. A truth Jack already knew, even before the thing mouthed its last word. The bits of scalp in the bathtub, the expression on it’s face...
“These are all half a bite’s worth. For some reason that thing could only bite me with the right half of its mouth. It must have only had teeth on one side, like little Beanie...”
She trailed off, her eyes going wide. She looked up at Jack, hoping to see a denial in his eyes. But he couldn’t hide what he knew. The memory of it shown plain on his face. The last word mouthed by the hurt creature that had recognized him.
“Jacky,” it had said, before he smashed its face in.
“Oh God no,” said Terra. “Tell me no, Jack! Did we kill him? Did we kill the baby?”
He didn’t say anything, and didn’t need to. She shook her head and ran from the room. He could hear her crying, but couldn’t seem to go and try to comfort her. She cried for a long time as he sat there feeling blood trickle down his neck and staring at his hands.
They wouldn’t stop shaking.
Chapter 33
********************
Shaw dreamt he was on an empty road. He knew he was dreaming, but was still afraid. He had the sense that this being a dream in no way diminished the amount of danger he was in. He felt he should try and wake up as soon as possible to get out of danger, but couldn’t for the life of him remember how he was supposed to do that.
He looked around himself. The sky was yellow, tinged with black smoke coming from the nearby church. The road itself was long abandoned, the asphalt dry and cracked. The few cars were rotting away, not like metal rusts but like how a body rots. He knew he was supposed to go to the church, though he also knew something terrible was waiting inside. He thought about going the other way, or walking into one of the dark decayed buildings around him. But those were an unknown quantity, he knew there would be no point to them. The dream had an organization, and that included him walking towards the church. So walk he did.
He wondered as he walked at how long it was taking. Not like a normal dream where intention translates into reality. He really was walking that road, was breathing that stale smoky air. Heard his sneakers rasp on the dry asphalt. Had plenty of time to think about the horrors he was walking towards, but tried not to.
He eventually made his way to the courtyard of the church. The courtyard was walled, and the church itself was gothic. Sweeping towers and an arched entrance with a massive round stained glass window above it. The window long covered with dust to the point where the colors were a mystery. The wall of the courtyard had the words “Ad Noctum” written on
it. Shaw wondered if it was advice or a warning.
He thought about walking to the back of the courtyard, look for points of interest in this horrid plane. To see the parts of the dream world that weren’t laid out to see. But no, there was a plan. The road lead into the church, and into the church he walked. There were no doors to block his way.
He was afraid it would be dark inside, but it was merely dim. Dark light filtered through the dirty stained glass, dust motes sinking through the air. Pews lead the way up to the front where there was a large wooden cross. Jesus was not upon that cross, he could tell that even from the back. But something was.
He walked slowly towards the front, compelled to get a better look at the thing. Because it really was hard to make out, made him a little nauseous to stare at. About halfway up the isle he thought he could make it out though. A spider. A spider on the cross. But he couldn’t see all of it yet, it was unfolding. Unfolding its sharp black legs, chitinous shell glinting weakly in the dim light. Legs were all he could see of it, no body yet, unfolding slowly more and more from somewhere...
A man walked out from a doorway to the right of the cross. He was human, normal, and his normality was jarring in this place. He wore nice clothes, had clean cut brown hair, and eyes like a hawk. He wasn’t tall, but carried himself as if he was. Confident to the point of arrogance as he walked to stand by the cross. He looked at Shaw with a sort of half smile of expectation, as if he had just played a joke on Shaw and was waiting for him to catch up. A look of intense interest. Shaw couldn’t help but feel he was being studied. The spider continued to unfold, larger and larger. More and more legs.
“Do you know who I am?” the man asked.
Shaw tried to remember. He had had dreams of people who said they were dreaming as well before, and always woke to sadness at the fact it couldn’t have been true. This time he guessed the opposite would be true in more ways than one.
