Feast

by Jeremiah Knight

  Pain was his answer, throbbing at the back of his head along with a spreading liquid warmth.

  A foot stepped into view, barefoot and feminine. A decorative butter churn dropped to the floor beside it. A woman dressed as a maid crouched down between him and Anne. She shook the girl gently, whispering before turning to the door and yelling, “Help! Someone help!”

  Eddie could hear movement in the house.

  People shouting. People screaming.

  Gunshots rang out, inside and outside. Something bigger than his bedroom scuffle was going on.

  Get up, he told himself. Get up and get out.

  While the maid was focused on Anne, he slid across the floor, reached beneath the bed and took hold of the dropped knife. His body ached with every movement, but he fought against the pain. Save it for later, Eddie. Just fucking move!

  Eddie swung the knife.

  Metal slipped through skin, muscle and tendon. The maid shrieked and dropped like Achilles, but without the legendary build up. He wanted to kill her, but he sensed there wasn’t time. While the woman writhed in agony, Kenyon got his feet beneath him and stood.

  Footsteps approached the doorway, rapid fire, coming to help.

  He threw the knife.

  A woman walked into it, taking the blade in her chest. She toppled over beside the maid, still alive, but not even close to putting up a fight. Kenyon pulled the assault rifle over his head and laid it on the bed. He then hoisted Anne off the floor and slung her over his shoulder, balancing her limp form. Next he retrieved the weapon and turned to the window, prepared to kick it out. But there were bars on the far side of the glass.

  Mason had turned the place into a prison.

  Kenyon stepped over the women on the floor and into the hallway.

  Ahead of him was the staircase to the first floor, which sounded like a battle zone, and the staircase to the third floor. Would the windows up there be barred as well? Kenyon replayed his memory of the home’s outside. The windows were barred, but he had also seen a small deck with a door. People fleeing Mason’s prison might not be able to get past the door, and if they did, they probably wouldn’t throw themselves from a third floor balcony. But Kenyon had a keychain made of bullets, and he wouldn’t have to jump.

  He took a step toward the stairs and stopped when his name tore through the air. “Eddie!”

  He glanced down toward the first floor. Ella was there, covered in blood, rifle in hand.

  “You’ll come with me now,” he said. “You have no choice.”

  “There’s always a choice, Eddie,” she said, and she raised the weapon to fire.

  Eyes wide, Eddie dodged to the side as a fusillade of bullets chewed up the banister. He ran up the stairs for the third floor, propelled by the sound of Ella Masse, charging up after him, out for blood.

  34

  Jakob acted without thinking. He realized it two steps into his sprint, but there was no going back. And he was pretty sure that meant he was toast.

  The Riders stood close enough to pounce on him, though they seemed a bit overwhelmed by the number of people, the three helicopters and Kenyon’s disappearance inside the house.

  Then there were the choppers. One had stayed a safe distance back, slowly circling the house, high above. They’d no doubt spotted Hellhole Bay’s residents hiding in the unfinished dome, but hadn’t opened fire on them. The Black Hawk was on the ground, its rotors churning slowly, ready to speed back up, but it wasn’t defenseless. A man stood behind the large machine gun, moving it back and forth at the house, looking for targets, of which there were many. And then there was the Apache. Its ominous insect-like cockpit was turned directly toward him. He wasn’t an expert on attack helicopters, but he knew this one had a machine gun, or two, and a crap-ton of rockets hidden inside the tubes mounted on either side.

  He heard the whine of a chain gun spinning up. He recognized it from video games, though the real thing was far more metallic and grating. His eyes crushed shut while his legs kept pumping.

  A Rider roared.

  He heard it charging.

  Bullets scorched the air.

  Hot wetness splashed against him. He was struck hard, all at once, the pain everywhere, just as he’d imagined.

  Except, he kept on feeling the pain.

  He’d been struck, but not by chain gun bullets.

  He tried to move, but found himself locked in place.

  Couldn’t see anything.

  Am I paralyzed?

  Am I dead?

  He decided he wasn’t. Because despite the darkness and immobility, he could hear. Everything was muffled, but he could hear the thrumming machine gun beating out a steady rhythm. He could hear shouts, and screams and small arms fire. All of it mixed with the hooting of angry Riders.

  He could also smell. Noxious and visceral. Meat and blood. Then he tasted it, slipping through his lips and along the side of his tongue.

  His thoughts returned to death. The scent of his own gore. The fading audio. The darkness.

  But through it all, the pain continued. If his soul was slipping into the hereafter, wouldn’t the pain fade, too? Or was that hell?

  I’m alive, he told himself, focusing on his limbs. Now get up and deal.

  Jakob pushed with his arms. His body shifted upward, but only moved an inch off the ground before falling back down beneath a massive weight that stole his breath away and sent stars dancing in his vision. He might not be dead yet, but he soon would be.

  During that second of momentum, a sliver of light illuminated the fleshy prison pinning him to the ground. Marbleized gore and bones wrapped around him. A corpse. He could feel the hot organs slipping over the back of his legs. He kicked and found his feet free to move.

  Fighting back his emotional percolation, Jakob bent his knees and shimmied them up toward his chest, creating a gap. Fresh air billowed in, but it served only to coil more of the stench deeper into his nose. His stomach lurched and dry heaved. He used the motion to slide out of the slick weight. His progress slowed as something sharp, like a set of claws, raked his back, lifting his shirt. The fabric peeled off over his head as he spilled back into the light of day and saw three Riders, or what used to be Riders, piled up where he’d been lying. Then he saw what had been clawing at his back and dry heaved once more. They weren’t claws. They were jagged, exposed ribs. His shirt, removed from his body, hung from the longest of them.

  The creatures had launched an attack only to be mowed down by the Apache, who had also been firing at him. Their bodies were shredded and turned inside out, inadvertently protecting him from the bullets.

  Rider’s weren’t stupid, but they weren’t exactly smart.

  Or lucky.

  Jakob’s intelligence was debatable. Anne reminded him of that every day. But his luck...his luck was undeniable.

  The Apache peeled off around the side of the house as gunfire from the second floor pinged off its body. The helicopter could tear the home apart, but with three men inside, they were holding their fire.

  The Black Hawk was spinning up again, prepping to leave the ground and its dangers behind.

  The Riders that hadn’t been cut down had thrown themselves into action. Two were chasing after the Apache. One was headed for the Black Hawk, and three were assaulting the second floor of the farmhouse, shaking the bars mounted over the windows and trying to reach the people inside, peppering them with bullets and screams.

  The path to the first floor was open, right up to the door. That’s where the last of the Riders was, pounding its fists into the porch and shrieking like a deranged chimpanzee.

  Jakob took only his third step toward what was supposed to be an impulsive rescue attempt, but was stopped again, this time by the realization that he was now unarmed. He looked at the leaking mass of ExoGenetic flesh and saw the butt of his AK-47 sticking out. He crouched down and grasped the wood stock, eyes up, hoping no one would spot him.

  If not for the massive amount of blood lubing th
e bodies, he wouldn’t have been able to move the weapon, but it slowly came free until the rifle was birthed, covered in blood, mucus and who knew what else. Jakob quickly tried wiping the weapon clean, but he realized his entire body was equally covered in gore.

  That didn’t mean the weapon wouldn’t work. His father had taught him about common weapons over the past few weeks, and one of the best things about AK-47s was that they were virtually weather proof, functioning despite sand, and dust and water. So the rifle might still fire.

  Might.

  He found out a moment later when a battle cry turned his eyes up. One of the Riders had spotted him, covered in the blood of its tribe, standing over their bodies. It flung itself off the farmer’s porch roof and dropped down toward him, fists raised.

  Jakob raised the rifle, tripped back over a Rider’s severed limb, and pulled the trigger. The weapon barked like a faithful dog, cutting a line of red splotches up the Rider’s body. The creature looked undeterred until the line reached its head. All of its coiled rage disappeared, and the beast fell at his feet.

  Pushing himself up, Jakob ran for the door this time, his legs shaky, but his determination surging. “Hey!” he yelled at the Rider blocking the door. It spun around and lunged, claws reaching. The thing had been waiting for a target and found one in Jakob, but he had already fired. Four rounds struck the diving monster head on. It fell to the porch and tumbled down the stairs next to Mason’s corpse, as Jakob vaulted up them.

  He raised the weapon, clutching hard against the slippery film coating it. But he didn’t fire.

  Couldn’t fire.

  Like the Rider before him, there was too much going on to attack one side or the other without killing friend and foe alike. The man named Hutchins had Ella around the waist, his back against the hallway wall, his face red with the effort of trying to control her.

  “Ella,” the man shouted. “It doesn’t need to go down like this.”

  But Ella had other ideas. She had one leg extended up against Crawford’s throat, pressing him back against the opposite hallway wall. With her free arm, she swatted at his hand, which held a pistol he was attempting to point in her direction. Beyond the brawl, he could see people rushing about, some keeping track of the choppers, some fleeing, but no one helping Ella.

  They don’t know who to help, he realized. Ella was as much a stranger to most of them as Hutchins and Crawford.

  But Jakob knew who was who, and what he had to do.

  He shifted the AK-47’s dripping barrel toward Crawford, who was close to turning that gun on Ella, and who posed the greatest threat to Jakob as well.

  When he heard a fight further up in the house, and what he thought was Anne’s voice, he nearly pulled the trigger. Not wanting to shoot Ella’s foot off, he shouted, “Drop it!”

  Three sets of eyes turned toward him and simultaneously widened. Even Ella looked horrified by his appearance. Then she snapped back to the struggle and used the distraction to her advantage, slamming Crawford’s gun hand against the far wall, pinning it in place.

  “Jake,” Ella said. “You don’t need to—”

  “They need us,” Jakob said, and Ella knew exactly who ‘they’ were: Alia and Anne.

  Ella looked confused for a moment, but then Anne’s voice filtered down from the second floor. “Asshole!”

  “Do it!” Ella shouted, all of her concern for what taking a human life might do to Jakob evaporated by a single word from her daughter. Anne was upstairs. Alia was upstairs. And so was Eddie Kenyon.

  Jakob pulled the trigger, firing a single round that punched through Crawford’s head and into the wall behind him. His head left a red streak as his body slid to the floor.

  Covered in the remains of things that once were human and having borne witness to countless horrible deaths, including his own mother’s, Jakob felt very little over taking the man’s life. It was justified, he thought, when doubt started creeping into his thoughts.

  Ella wasted no time debating right and wrong. No longer contending with Crawford, she twisted and drove an elbow into the side of Hutchins’s head. Once, twice, three times. The third strike hit his temple and his grip wavered. Ella tore free and raised an open hand to Jakob. “Weapon!”

  Without thinking, Jakob tossed her the AK-47. She caught it and turned toward the stairs, just as Eddie Kenyon stepped into view. Anne hung limp over his shoulder.

  “Eddie!” Ella shouted, and aimed up at the man.

  He stopped and looked down at her, something like a smile on his face. “You’ll come with me now. You have no choice.”

  “There’s always a choice, Eddie.” Ella raised the weapon and fired as Eddie ducked to the side. When Ella took her finger off the trigger, Eddie’s footfalls could be heard pounding up a flight of steps. Ella raced after him, taking the steps two at a time.

  Before Jakob could follow, he was struck in the leg. Off balance, he had no defense against Hutchins, who got back to his feet and flung Jakob into the staircase. The man shouted, “You crazy bitch!” after Ella and then he retreated out the front door.

  Jakob groaned and rolled back to his hands and knees. Moving slowly at first, he started up the stairs after Ella.

  At the second floor landing, he turned to head up the next flight when he heard crying. He turned toward a closed bedroom door. “Alia?”

  He pushed the door open. Alia was on the floor, clutching her face, covered in blood. She shrieked and winced back.

  “Alia!” He rushed in and fell by her side. She yelped in fright, but fell into his arms.

  “I’m sorry.” She quivered against him, broken. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he told her. “You’re okay.”

  She wasn’t, not really. She’d been injured, maybe not mortally, but it wasn’t something that would heal fast, or that she’d ever forget. And they were nowhere near out of danger yet. But he couldn’t think of anything else to say. So while she continued to repeat, “I’m sorry,” again and again, he countered each apology with, “It’s okay.”

  As they fell into the tennis match chant, Jakob heard a familiar deep and rumbling machine gun, coupled with a roaring engine.

  Beastmaster! Jakob thought, a trace of hope returning.

  But then there was something else.

  Something bigger.

  Its arrival shook the house.

  Something much bigger.

  35

  In every conflict, there was a point of no return. When a soldier had to take action, damn the consequences, or things would get FUBAR faster than could be corrected. That moment was rapidly approaching Peter, about fifty feet per second, as the galloping horror closed in on the immobile truck.

  But what could he do, really? Shooting the creature wouldn’t have that much effect, unless his aim was impeccable. And that would be nearly impossible. Despite the long legs, the gator’s long body and snout made it run in a kind of awkward vertical slither, like a reptilian ferret.

  He could run, but there was no way that would extend his life beyond a second or two, and it would mean abandoning Boone. They could attempt to scale the gate, like Feesa had, but that would likely end with them being plucked off the wall and gobbled up.

  If we survive this, I’m picking up some grenades, Peter thought. He’d passed on the explosive devices before, because unlike most projectile weapons, they couldn’t be sound suppressed. The best way to kill ExoGenetic creatures was to not invite more to the party. The machine gun mounted in the back of Beastmaster was the one exception to that rule. It was a weapon of last resort, and was generally used on the move.

  Peter looked down the machine gun’s sights, shifting his aim up and down, attempting to match the rhythm of the gator’s gait. But its head moved in jerky circular motions, so he held his aim steady. He timed his trigger finger with the moment his small target slipped back into the kill zone, or in this case, the wound zone. He had no illusions about killing the beast. He just wanted to slow it down.

/>   Fire, he thought as the gator’s black eyes slipped in and out of view.

  Fire.

  Fire.

  He let his finger twitch with each pass.

  Fire.

  Fire.

  He pulled the trigger, letting loose a burst of bullets that started low and traced a line upward. He saw the gator’s skin bend and ripple as the large rounds punched against it. The eye snapped shut for a moment, but it was just a flinch. The thing didn’t even slow down.

  As he looked down the sights again, Peter’s ears perked up. He could hear the gate’s locks sliding away, one by one. Feesa was doing her job, but maybe not fast enough. Then, over the din of helicopter blades, he heard gunshots. And shouting. He felt a moment of confusion, as his mind backtracked. The battle inside the compound had begun, while he was aiming at the gator, but he’d filtered it out.

  The hell is going on in there? he wondered, but he already knew. Choppers meant ExoGen, and if they were here, and Kenyon was here, Anne and Ella were in grave danger. They might not be killed, but they would certainly be taken. For Peter and the rest of humanity eking a living outside San Francisco, that was a very bad thing.

  He pushed all his worries aside and focused once more on the gator.

  He had just seconds before its arrival.

  Fire.

  Fire.

  He pulled the trigger again, this time holding it down and following the gator’s circular motion, peppering its face and snout with three rounds every second. Four seconds in, and just four more from being bitten in half, the gator convulsed.

  Mid gallop, the monster pawed at its face. With the limb raised up, the body crashed down to the road, grinding to a stop just forty feet away from Peter. It scratched at its face, trying to dislodge what had caused it such sudden pain. But the bullet was too deep and too small to retrieve. The gator just ended up smearing the gooey remains of its ruptured eyeball.

  The creature opened its jaws wide and let loose a guttural growl of frustration, plastering Peter with a wave of fleshy breath. Tufts of Woolie fur dangled from its traffic cone-sized teeth. The mouth snapped closed, the sound clapping against Peter’s ears. Then the beast death-rolled with nothing in its mouth. It flailed across the road, churning into the swamp, where loosely rooted trees toppled beneath its girth.