Things had become so… complicated.
“Anyone heard from Greg? Greg Griddle?” Sheriff White asked suddenly.
Coggins shrugged.
“Last I heard he was at the church, around the same time they grabbed Corina. The bikers could have grabbed him, or he might have just left the county. But, as we all fucking know, you can’t really leave, not for good. For some reason, everyone will be sucked back into this horrible void.”
A silence fell over the group, one that lasted for a full minute.
“What about the FBI? State Police?” Deputy Bradley Williams chimed in at last.
Sheriff White shook his head.
“The FBI sent over some pathologist… all they can spare right now. As for the Staties? I can send a call out, but we saw how that went when Tyler was missing—useless as tits on a bull.”
Coggins massaged his temples.
“Fuck—this is so fucked. I thought…I thought after what happened at the Wharfburn’s that nothing could be worse. And now they have Alice. How wrong was I?” he raised his gaze. “How fucking wrong was I?”
Deputy Williams leaned in close.
“What did happen at the Wharfburn Estate, Coggins?”
Coggins shut his eyes and ignored the question, trying to fight images of the horrible beast, the thing that had consumed Oxford, the thing that had laid the fucking eggs that had given birth to the crackers, that threatened to flood his mind.
Coggins was suddenly reminded of the man that he had seen beside Father Carter outside when the two bikers had tossed the bag.
“Jared? Jared Lawrence—what happened to Jared?”
Father Carter smiled.
“He is with the others, with the congregation. He is on our side, Deputy, rest assured.”
Coggins trapped a scathing response behind his teeth.
Reggie was right, they needed Father Carter and his parishioners to get to Walter. But he didn’t like the smarmy bastard. There was something about him, something that was wholly and completely untrustworthy.
He thought back to when he and Jared had peeled away from the Lawrence home, blasting the crackers that erupted from the culvert with a shotgun.
Father Carter was wrong; Jared was with him.
“You aren’t the only one who has lost, Sheriff White and Deputy Coggins. Lest you forget that Jared’s niece, Corina, has also been taken from us.”
Sheriff White slammed his hands down on the table.
“I haven’t forgotten about Corina! I know that that thing—the Crab—also has Corina!” he shouted.
Father Carter recoiled at this unexpected anger, and even Coggins took pause. Paul was unraveling before their eyes.
Not that he blamed the man; after all, he had come undone long ago, back when he was working on the other side of the law.
“Goddamn it!” Sheriff White cried. “I haven’t forgotten about Tyler, about Kent, about Corina, Mrs. Drew, Dana, Oxford, Cody, god-fucking-damnit I haven’t forgotten about Nancy!” He jabbed a thick finger in his chest. “This is Askergan, and I haven’t forgotten about anybody!”
Just when it looked as if the large, teary-eyed man was about to come across the table and grab the priest, the door opened and the sharply-dressed man that they only knew as Pike stepped into the room.
“We have another problem,” he informed the group, his expression grim. “A big problem.”
Chapter 2
Doctor Eliza Dex prodded the Cracker splayed out before her with the tip of a scalpel. It was a horrible, disgusting looking thing with six heavily jointed legs and a hard, crustacean-like shell measuring about eight inches across. But as strange as it was, and despite not being able to find anything remotely close to it on any website or textbook, she was fairly confident that it was terrestrial and not aquatic.
Where the hell it had come from and what it was doing suctioning to the bodies of the dozens of victims she had seen was another story altogether.
Eliza reached over and took a sip from the aluminum flask on the workstation, wincing at the harshness of the whiskey as it traveled down to her stomach.
Flipping the scalpel around, she used the blunt edge to probe at the orifice, pushing and lifting back the thin membrane that housed the oscillating teeth.
A shudder ran through her at the sight of the hundreds of tiny, razor sharp teeth. She removed the scalpel, and the orifice relaxed, the membrane folding over, hiding the teeth within.
Up to this point, her best guess was that the chitinous creature was some sort of parasite who had remained undiscovered until recent construction had disturbed their habitat.
It was a reasonable, and popular consensus, applicable to either the elimination or the discovery of new species during recent times.
Another explanation was that these creatures had been previously discovered, but that they had surfaced so long ago that the records of such an event hadn’t survived. Eliza was about the furthest thing from an entomologist, and if the shelled-creature before her was an insect, it was by far the largest and most horrible she had ever seen, but she had grown up on a farm. As a little girl, her father had repeatedly warned her to expect that every seventeen years all of their crops would be destroyed in the course of one afternoon.
The devil will awaken from his slumber and reach up and blot out the sun, he used to tell her.
As she grew into a teenager, she would laugh at her father, call him silly for believing in such nonsense.
But then, on the day before her fifteenth birthday, she was in her bedroom reading when a breeze suddenly came in through her open window. A chill ran up Eliza’s spine, and she quickly rose to close it.
She made it just in time.
Billions of cicadas rose from the earth, their wings producing such force that several shingles dislodged from the roof.
Eliza screamed when their dark bodies completely blocked the sun.
But cicadas don’t burrow beneath your skin…
Eliza shuddered, and she took another sip from her flask, unsure if it was the memory of that day, or the creature—what did the Sheriff call it? A Cracker?—that made her so uneasy.
Her eyes flicked to the nearly dozen or so Crackers that were spread out across the table, each having undergone various types of dissection. The table, room, even her tools were a mess, but it was how she worked.
Eliza took another sip of scotch.
It was less than a week ago when she had been awoken in the middle of the night by a phone call. An old friend from medical school turned FBI agent, Frank Ames, had a favor to ask: would she be willing to head North to investigate a crab infestation.
And that was how she found herself here, in Askergan County, a small town with more secrets than Area 51.
“Well,” she said out loud, picking up another instrument. “Crabs these are not, Director Ames.”
Feeling exhaustion begin to set in, she decided that it was probably best to stop reminiscing and pick up the pace. She just wanted to finish the dissections, file her report, and return to her husband and daughter.
And get the hell out of Askergan.
Eliza used the scalpel to hold the top part of the orifice open again, and then used a set of forceps to peel back the lower half. Squinting hard, she peered inside, her lips moving ever so slightly as she counted the tiny, sharp teeth within. None of the eleven creatures that she had dissected to date had the same number of teeth, a variance that she found surprising. It was entirely possible that this difference was due to some having broken off, or that the Crackers might be like sharks, with new teeth pushing forward behind the existing ones when the front ones were lost.
But she didn’t think that was the case. Instead, Eliza had a sneaking suspicion that the number of teeth was somehow related to how long they were attached to their host.
As if they were growing, somehow, or evolving.
The Cracker that she had removed from the boy’s leg had the most teeth—nearly twenty more than the other
s. In fact, all of the creatures that had been extricated from corpses had significantly more teeth than those that had been unceremoniously dumped onto her desk in garbage bags, having been collected from the street and outside the police station.
A strange fact, but everything about these damn things was strange.
Eliza leaned her head closer as she continued to count, subconsciously noting the lack of any scent of decay or any other sign of decomposition.
More oddities to add to the growing list.
She was at sixty when her cell phone rang, startling her.
As she reached for her phone, her elbow knocked the flask and sent a stream of brown liquid onto the cracker.
“Goddamn it,” she muttered, righting the flask. Using a discarded towel, she patted the hard shell dry.
Her phone rang again and Eliza balled the towel up before yanking off one of her purple gloves and answering it.
“Hello?” she said, turning her back to her workstation.
“Dr. Dex? This is Sheriff White.”
An image of the man, a bulky, black man with severe eyes came to her in response to his voice. Although the Sheriff hadn’t been impressed that the FBI had sent her instead of a field team, and perhaps even an army of soldiers, he had done his best to hide his unease from her, to remain stoic in his politeness.
He was a good man, she knew.
“Yes, Sheriff, how can I help you?”
“Look, we are… there’s…” the man cleared his throat. “Time is tight. I need to know if you have come up with anything; anything at all that might help us. Can you tell me how he is keeping it alive?”
Eliza shook her head, remembering what the Sheriff had told her earlier. About how after destroying the source of the Crackers, they had all died.
Except for one; one final cracker that a deranged man was somehow keeping alive beneath his skin and using it to wreak havoc.
She shuddered at the thought.
The last thing she wanted to do was disappoint the desperate man on the other end of the line, but what choice did she have?
It had taken her nearly a week to get sorted, and now that she had… well, she was no further to understanding the Crackers than she had been when he had picked her up from the train station.
“I’m sorry, Sheriff, but—”
A sound from behind her, a dull crack, gave her pause.
Slowly, Eliza turned on her heels, while at the same time backing away from her dissection table. As soon as she saw the cracker, her face went white and she nearly dropped her phone.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
“Doctor? Doctor? What’s going on over there? Everything all right?”
Chapter 3
Seth opened his good eye and stared at the ceiling for a moment, trying to figure out exactly where he was. It was the vaulted ceilings; they kept throwing him for a loop. It reminded him a little of the nightclub that he frequented, but it lacked the strobe lighting, the loud music.
Still, this idea persisted for a moment.
Did I pass out in the club again? Drank too much?
Realizing that he could only see out of one eye, he brought a hand up to probe his face. The pain, along with the strangeness of the mushy texture, like pushing fingers into raw beef at the supermarket, caused everything to suddenly come flooding back.
He wasn’t in a club.
He was with Walter, or the Crab, or whatever the fuck the deformed man wanted to be called.
Walter and his brother, after the voice inside his head—coooome—had instructed him over and over again to bring the girl.
The girl…
Seth grunted and rolled onto his side, realizing that he was alone in a massive bed, complete with large, intricately carved bed posts that stretched upward toward the vaulted ceiling.
He had brought the girl, but what now?
Seth clucked his tongue on the roof of his mouth, tasting dried blood, then tried to open his eye again. It took a few more gentle prods with his fingers before he realized that it was already open. The problem was, he still couldn’t see out of it.
A sound from behind him drew his attention and he turned in that direction. His head was spinning and that, combined with the strangeness of monocular vision made for a toxic combination, and he felt his stomach lurch.
Seth shut his eyes and waited for the sensation to pass.
“Good—you’re awake. The Crab wants to talk to you.”
He reached out and blindly groped for the bedpost. When his outstretched fingers touched the hardwood, he gripped it tightly and ground his teeth, trying to steady himself.
“You alright, man? I mean, your eye looks fucked. We all thought that you were dead for a while.”
A while?
“How…how long was I out?” Seth stammered.
“A good four days. What the fuck happened to you, anyway? Looks like you fought a tiger… and lost.”
Seth thought back to his encounter with the man at the long-term care facility.
No, he hadn’t lost. After all, he had brought the girl just as the voice had asked, hadn’t he?
Seth didn’t bother replying. Instead, he concentrated on trying to stop the spinning.
Eventually, it abated enough for him to dare to open his eyes again.
The man standing before him was lean, sporting an eighties-style jean vest. His bare arms were covered in blue ink, and he had what looked to Seth like some sort of Uzi strapped over one shoulder.
“Well, don’t just stare—best not keep the Crab waiting. He don’t like to wait.”
Seth nodded, a movement that threatened to send him crashing back to the bed again. But he fought the feeling and eventually managed to pull himself to his feet.
His entire body ached, the pain so all-encompassing that it rendered his footsteps minuscule shuffles. As he made his way toward the man, who was staring at him with a look that fell somewhere between pity and disdain, he tried to take in as much of his surroundings as possible with his one eye, trying to remember.
He was in a massive bedroom with a TV on the wall across from the bed, which thankfully was off. There were peach-colored floor to ceiling curtains covering what he presumed was a window, while the rest of the walls were covered by what looked like expensive oil paintings.
Where the hell am I?
A brief memory of a car, of twisted metal, of bikers pulling him out flashed in his mind like a beacon, but when he tried to focus on it, it was gone.
He cleared his throat, once again tasting blood.
And the Crab… what the hell kind of name is that?
Seth reached out for the man’s arm for support, but he pulled away.
“Let’s go,” he ordered, using the muzzle of the gun to indicate that Seth was to head into the hallway first.
So that’s the kind of relationship it’s going to be… mustn’t keep the Crab waiting.
Seth grimaced and shuffled out of the room that he had apparently called home for the better part of a week.
Chapter 4
Eliza’s phone dangled loosely from her fingers, all sensation having fled them.
“What in the fuck?”
The cracker that she had just been inspecting had animated, and now it was poised on its spindle-like legs, the top fluttering spastically as it forced air through the tiny orifices.
Eliza backed up as far as she could, unwilling to take her eyes off the creature.
Her heart was racing in her chest, and her face was flushed.
She had seen what these things could do to a human; the way it could burrow beneath your flesh like an over-sized tick.
When her back butted up against the wall, the phone fell from her hand and clattered to the floor.
She could still hear the Sheriff shouting through the small speaker, but she didn’t dare shout back and risk alarming the cracker.
Eliza shuffled to her right, moving a foot closer to the door, and the cracker mimicked her movement, tilting
the front part of the hard shell in that direction.
How is this possible?
The cracker most definitely had bee dead just a few seconds ago.
For the first time since it had animated, Eliza glanced around quickly, horrified at the prospect that the other dozen or so crackers might have also sprung to life.
A modicum of relief washed over her as she spied their overturned corpses, pale, hard.
Very much dead, unlike the one that started to bloom pink and red, like a sleeping limb suddenly infused with blood.
She slid another inch or two to her left, a movement that did not appear to go unnoticed.
The pumping of air through the top of the shell seemed to become more coordinated, more rhythmic, something that Eliza didn’t take as a good sign.
It’s getting stronger.
The moving air reminded her of the cicadas, of their tiny wings powerful enough to blow the shingles from their farmhouse roof. As she watched, the air made the flask that she had spilled wobble slightly and an idea occurred to her.
Had it? Had the alcohol…
She shook her head.
No—it couldn’t have.
But it didn’t really matter what had caused the cracker to reanimate, what mattered now is what these things had done to the dozens of Askergan County residents when they had been alive.
And what could happen to her.
“Easy now,” she said, raising her palms slowly, as if trying to calm a rabid dog. “Easy now.”
The creature responded by dropping a notch lower, and several resounding cracks echoed throughout the autopsy room that she had converted into a make-shift office.
“Fuck,” she muttered.
It was too late. She had heard the stories, rumors, facts directly from the Sheriff’s mouth. These cracks came only seconds before the thing was going to fly across the room and—
Eliza screamed as the thing reared back, revealing the horrible mouth full of the tiny pointed teeth that she had moments ago been prodding at, and then it pounced.
Or it didn’t.
Eliza brought her hands up protectively in front of her face the instant it appeared that the cracker was primed to launch itself at her. But when she felt and heard nothing for at least another ten seconds, she slowly peeled her hands away from her face.
Knuckles Page 11
