The hybrid’s “lips,” the labium and labrum contributed by the insect cells, opened suddenly in a mock sneer, the hissing sounds got louder. Suddenly the hybrid shot forward and grabbed the boy’s arm in its mouth. David tried to rise, tried to fight, tried to save the child, but could barely keep himself conscious as Steven was pulled away, back back back into the throng of squirming horrors even now squeezing in through the back door. More of them had human heads. In seconds the child had disappeared, lost somewhere among and under the slug-like monstrosities that were rapidly filling up the room.
David finally rose to his feet, wondering where he had dropped the knife, still determined to save the mother and child, not willing to admit that they were now beyond saving. Something crashed through the window above the sink, and knocked him back into the hall. The strength of the hybrids was amazing. The force of the impact of the body as it came through the glass had served to push David temporarily out of danger. More chimeras wiggled through the cracked panes above the sink, dropping like lice to the floor. David turned his back on the unholy mess in there and ran down the hall, knowing they’d be following any second.
Anna was at the foot of the stairs, her hand to her mouth, her eyes and body rigid with horror, staring in the opposite direction. David’s eyes followed her gaze. The hybrids were clinging to the windows of the living room! David saw Madeline’s mother fast asleep on the sofa, completely oblivious to the impending danger. He ran’ in there and tried to pull her off the couch. The old woman woke up, but was still dazed from the sedative. She squealed and fought as he grabbed her arm, trying to dig his one hand under her so that he could more easily lift and carry her.
“Leave me! Leave me be!” the woman screamed. “Why are you manhandling me? Leave me alone!”
“Please. I’m not trying to hurt—”
“Madeline!” the old woman yelled. “Why won’t he leave me alone?”
Anna placed one foot into the room, but held back, obviously horror-stricken by the sight of the things on the windows. Although their slimy bodies stuck at first to the smooth glass, they soon started sliding down the panes, unable to keep a firm grip. It wouldn’t be long before one of them—particularly one of the smarter, part-human hybrids—got the idea of jumping through the window, as one had done in the kitchen. David ignored the woman’s protestations and kept right on pulling. Anna started forward to help.
Then what David had feared came to pass. Together, several of the creatures jumped through the living room windows. Pieces of glass flew in every direction. As the chimeras smashed through, David dropped the old woman’s arm, and shielded his eyes against the flying shards spitting out from the wall. One piece cut into his arm, leaving a jagged gash dripping blood. One of the monsters landed flat on the old lady’s stomach, shoving her back down onto the couch, and started burrowing into her chest. Anna hung back by the hallway, screeching at the top of her lungs. David had nothing to fight with but his hands. He curled up his fingers, preparing to dig into the monster’s back, to pull it off the old woman’s bosom. But as he looked down at its squirming and undulating mass, he found that he simply couldn’t touch the thing. He closed his eyes for a second, knowing that every moment he delayed brought the woman closer to eternity. He forced his hands down until his fingertips, were immersed in odorous grease. He opened his eyes again, adjusting to the feel of the beast. He could not get a grip on the thing. He knew that whether they had been put together by careful design or by astonishing fluke, they were incredible creatures, so swift and adaptable, capable of killing in any number of ways, almost impossible to hold onto or to capture, virtually impervious to harm. The perfect things to fight wars with, he thought. Easily dispensable, as they were, after all, only “things”—without rights, without moral constrictions, without fear.
His fingers slid helplessly down the back of the animal as the old woman cried out in pain. Then he felt something prick at his shirt. One of the hybrids was behind him, twisting its body so that the spikes in back poked upwards in David’s direction. He stepped away, feeling his shirt tear. Sensing her weakness, more of the animals climbed onto the couch and fed on the old woman, whose struggles and cries had finally ceased. David jumped over another one lying in his path, and reached out for Anna. She had grabbed up a chair. As soon as David was out of the way, she threw it at the things on the couch consuming Madeline’s mother. It was a useless gesture, as nothing would move them now. David saw that more of the things were inching their way carefully down the hall from the kitchen. As savage as they were, they moved slowly, as if unsure of their footing, not entirely trusting the area they were in. Once they realized that humans were no threat to them at all, they would move forward swiftly, utterly unstoppable, completely assured of their own invincible power.
Desperately, David’s eyes looked around for an avenue of escape and spotted another door halfway down the hall. He and Anna were caught between two groups of hybrids, and that door was the only possible exit, if they managed to reach it in time. He grabbed Anna’s hand and pulled her down the corridor. She struggled to get free. She hadn’t yet noticed the door in the wall, and thought David was blindly taking her towards the kitchen. Had she seen the hybrids at the top of the stairs—some had obviously climbed up to the second story—she would have realized why that route was off limits. Luckily David reached the exit and got the door open before she could wiggle free.
He pushed her into a darkened garage and slammed the door behind them. It was only when they were behind the wall, the sounds from within rather muffled, that they realized how loud the hybrids had been, how intense and nerve-wracking were the noises they made. On every level they were the perfect weapon. The sight, the sound, the feel of them was repellent to their victims, giving them a psychological edge. If the villagers had guns, weapons of some sort, they might have fought back, but David wasn’t sure how much damage they could have done against the invaders even then.
He found a switch hidden in the shadows and turned on the light. He would have to find a weapon. Even now the tips of their back pincers were cutting into the wood of the door from the hall. Cracks started to appear, forming outwardly spreading lines that deepened and grew as Anna watched. The only thing that kept them from smashing through the door directly was the fact that the hall they were in was too narrow for them to achieve enough momentum or leverage.
David looked around frantically. The light he had turned on was yellowish and weak, illuminating only the front part of the garage, the area near the wide door through which the car would exit. The back part, where there was a workbench and shelves full of paint cans, was still in shadows. Assorted implements hung from hooks on the walls.
He noticed a shovel leaning against the nearby wall and handed it to Anna. “Here. Start beating back anything that protrudes from that door. I’m going to see if I can start this car.” Anna took the shovel, her fear-filled eyes already fastened on the cracks, waiting for something hideous to emerge from the wood. From the look on her face, David couldn’t tell how far gone she might be. She seemed to be functioning on the most minimal level.
The sight of these things drove Harry London insane, David thought. Why am I still functioning? David could not have known that Harry had felt himself responsible for the deaths of his friends, that Harry had had no idea of what the chimeras were nor where they came from, that Harry’s blood had been pumped full of a debilitating enzyme. Harry London had been figuratively blind in every way that mattered.
David was just about to open the car door when he heard a rustling sound in the back, coming from under the tool shed. He reached out and lifted an axe off its hook on the wall, holding it steadily, although everything in him wanted to cry out and run back into the light, wanted to stand by and with Anna. If it was one of the hybrids, how did it get in here? Then he saw. Windows in back. Over the worktable. Shattered. Clouds drifted, moon light came in. From under the table, one of the monsters slid out and approached the spot wher
e David was standing. It was one of the part-human hybrids.
It stopped a few feet away, inching carefully closer, sizing up its victim. What was it waiting for? David asked himself, knowing that even with an axe his chances for survival were limited against such a foe. What would become of Anna if anything happened to him? His fingers found a better grip on the axe and began to raise it slowly.
The chimera inched forward, lifting its head.
David could not believe his eyes. That face! It was not possible. Not that face! Anything but that face!
It was his father’s visage that looked up at him, waiting, just waiting for a false move, a sign of weakness.
That’s not your father, David told himself wildly. It isn’t human! Look at its body, like a seal, like a sea lion, for pete’s sake! It doesn’t even have a human brain. Instinct. Survival of the fittest. Hunger. That’s all it is. Destroy it. Destroy it! What are you waiting for?
That is not your father. It just borrowed his face, used some of the cells from your father’s body. It has no mind, no memories, no capacity for love or human emotion of any kind.
Destroy it!
He thrust out furiously with the axe. The blade came down with a terrible force, severing the head from the slimy and hideous body. The head plopped down onto the floor. David felt as if he had decapitated his own father. Only the unnatural mouthparts kept the dismembered head from appearing entirely human.
David had not idea how the Corporation could have accomplished it. He knew very little about cloning, recombinant DNA, gene splicing and all the other terms that had been bandied about this evening. He only knew that they had progressed, as Bartley had suggested, far beyond where the public, and other scientists, could ever have expected. And he hated them with a deadly, all-encompassing hatred. He hated them for murdering innocents. He especially despised them for using the face of his father. He could never look on his real father’s face again without being reminded, without staring at the old man’s lips, wondering if they would open and instead of teeth he would see . . .
God, would any of them ever recover from this? No wonder London had lost his mind!
David looked in the car and saw that the keys were in the ignition. Good!—they still had a chance. He looked over at Anna. Pieces of wood were flying away from the door. She was beating at the needles sticking through, but her blows only served to damage the door even further. She was gasping, out of breath, crying, screaming, all at once. Others would have long since lost their grip on reality, but Anna had sunk deep into the soul lying underneath the pampered veneer, and had found a well of strength and courage to sustain her. So, too, had David.
And both of them wanted revenge. A terrible revenge.
The door exploded in a frenzy of wood chips, collapsing onto the floor of the garage. David grabbed Anna and pulled her back, away from the things coming in from the hallway. The chimeras flopped into the garage one by one, too disoriented to attack just yet.
“Get in the car!”
She did as she was told, while he ran to the front of the garage and pulled up the overhead door, heedless of whatever might lie on the other side. It was their only way out.
The door was fully opened. One chimera was clinging to it and hung soundlessly above David’s head, about to drop onto the floor. He still held the axe, and swung it in front of him from side to side as he moved backwards to the vehicle behind him. Anna had turned on the engine and driven the car forward to meet him. She leaned over and pushed open the passenger door, urging him to get inside. The chimeras from the hall were almost upon him. He got in quickly. From all over came the hybrids —through the shattered window. From the door to the hallway. From outside. Dozens began creeping over from the other houses, their grisly missions there fulfilled, their hunger still unsatiated.
Anna smashed down on the gas petal, and the car shot out of the garage, horribly crushing three of the creatures lying in its path. She turned the wheel and pointed the car towards the path out to the main highway, Not sure of what was happening, several of the hybrids that had jumped onto the car at the last minute dropped off onto safer, steadier ground. Others were flung off helplessly by the speed and twisting motion of the car, splattering against the trees.
Anna’s tears were renewed as they neared the highway. “All those people dead,” she sobbed. “Those things killed Jeffrey, too, didn’t they?”
“Things very much like them, yes.”
“It was easy to figure out,” Anna said bitterly. “What do we do now?”
“Drive on to the Wallingford Hospital. I want to get this arm looked at.” The gash on his forearm was still bleeding and throbbing. “We have to get their police force out here, too, just in case some of the villagers were able to hold off the chimeras.” He realized that tears were pouring unbidden from his eyes. Stop, he told himself. Later! Time enough to mourn later. There was still work to do.
Both of them concentrated on trying to keep away the memories of what they’d seen and heard, the deaths they’d witnessed. But David kept seeing the severed head, the uplifted face of his father. They both stared at the monotonous white line of the road ahead of them.
And behind them in the back seat something stirred.
* * *
David and Anna were a mile away from the Walling-ford Hospital, both fighting to keep hold of their sanity, to exorcise the nightmare images etched permanently it seemed on their respective retinas, as the sides of the road began to fill with the small shops and service stations that sprung up on the outskirts of a city. They felt a bit more at ease, at last approaching civilization, the horror permanently behind them. Anna broke the silence first.
“I didn’t believe you,” she said. “I’m not sure if I believe it even now. I’ve never seen anything like that!” She paused and added softly, as if afraid the very act of saying the words would bring an affirmative reply, “Do you suppose everyone was killed? “
“I don’t know,” he said, although he knew it was unlikely anyone other than themselves had managed to get away. His mind kept going back to the child, the little Dunsinger boy, the terrible way he had died. Mercifully Steven had been unconscious through most of it, unable to see or hear what was happening to himself and to his mother. How many other children had they sacrificed? And tomorrow, how many more again, when they released the chimeras on the town itself? It must not happen!
He hoped and prayed that Bartley had done what he had threatened and promised to do. Otherwise . . .
There were no other cars on the road in either direction. The stores and hot dog stands they saw were all closed. Even in, summertime, when school was out and the children needed entertainment, the towns up here seemed to pull up their rugs and fold up their tents after dark.
Anna slowed down as they neared the town’s border. Behind them on the back seat, a head began to rise from out of the darkness. The lips worked, the mouthparts moved, but the noises were too soft to be heard over the sound of the engine. Anna might have seen it had she glanced just then in the rear-view mirror, but she was concentrating only on the road ahead, on reaching the hospital, on getting to the police. They had passed no houses, no phonebooths, nothing that looked either open or hospitable. Anna did not want to stop until they were far away, surrounded by bright lights and brick buildings and people, instead of dark forests teeming with monsters. No, she would not stop for anything.
David was completely oblivious to the head as it lifted itself upwards and opened its thick, foul lips. The long, stiletto-like labium shot out as the mandibles grasped David’s shoulder. He wrenched around in his seat, caught tight by the seatbelt and the harness. Anna turned to see what had startled him and screamed; the car wobbled as it sped down the road, as Anna tried to steer without taking her eyes off the struggle going on beside her.
David’s face was only inches from the face of the animal in the back seat. It was a woman’s face—despite its lack of hair he could see the femininity of the features. His
finger pressed the release button on the seatbelt, and he tore away from the head just before the sucking tube could insert itself into his shoulder. The creature grimaced and hissed, angered by the defensive movements of its prey.
Anna moved the wheel back and forth, back and forth, hoping that the jerking sideways movements of the automobile would jar the creature onto the floor. The maneuver didn’t work. The thing got one of its claws firmly entrenched in the upholstery of her seat; she had to lean forward to avoid it, and her view of the road was diminished by the suddenly constricted vantage point. She was not even sure where they were going now. Her foot pressed down on the brake pedal.
“Keep going!” David screamed. “We’re helpless out here! We’ve got to get to town!” He was right. They had no weapons at all to use against the hybrid. Even if they were to stop the car and get out, what would prevent the chimera from coming after them, killing one or both? They had to get to Wallingford, but would they make it in time?
The creature lashed out with its other limb, claws scraping into David’s cheek. Blood dripped down over the webbed, finger-like appendages. He began to beat at the head with his hands, feeling bones under the slimy skin. The chimera loosened its grip on David’s face. One hand kept hitting the creature, while David used his other to open and explore the glove compartment, searching desperately for any kind of weapon. His fingers found and grasped a flashlight. He pulled it out and turned it on, shining the light into the monster’s eyes. The thing backed off a bit, but showed no sign of giving up the assault.
David swung the flashlight at its head, but it ducked and turned its body over, sticking the deadly pincers up in the air. The light was useless against them. David didn’t dare flail out with it, for fear that one of the needles might pierce his wrist. The monster flipped over again and aimed the pincers at Anna, who was completely defenseless. She pressed closer to the wheel and the car shot completely out of control, smashing into a picket fence surrounding a country store, careening through the front yard, knocking a pile of empty boxes and trash-filled garbage cans every which way before returning back to the road as it curved around to meet them.
Spawn of Hell Page 36
