Savage Species

by Jonathan Janz

  You’d have died anyway, and you know it. Just pray it doesn’t rape you the way it did Tiara Girl.

  Jesse whimpered, his chest heaving, as the creature reached for him. He realized with amazement that it was clutching a branch with its bottom feet and dangling bat-like over him.

  The taloned hands reached the mat of pine needles next to his shoulders, and the sighing jaws swam nearer. He closed his eyes and waited for the end.

  Something clutched Jesse’s wrist. Then he was yanked out from under the creature, his head smacked by fluffy pine branches.

  He opened his eyes and stared up at his savior.

  Colleen.

  “Look out!” she screamed.

  The creature emerged from the pine tree, its eyes slitted with rage. Colleen backpedaled, and Jesse, still on his ass, dug with his heels and palms to scuttle away. He bumped something, gasped and turned to see a pale figure towering over him. He was sure for a moment it was one of the beasts, but then he saw the toga, the beefy arms.

  Goliath.

  The gigantic man wielded a wooden baseball bat—Goliath was apparently a purist of the game—and was fending off a snarling beast.

  Colleen bumped into Goliath’s broad back; he shot a glance back at her and saw the creature who’d nearly killed Jesse approaching.

  “Smash it,” Colleen said.

  Goliath gave her an exasperated look and raised the bat. The creature closest to the huge man was snarling and snapping at him. The creature closest to Jesse was still watching the trio of potential victims with a confident, calculating look that was somehow worse than the other creature’s feral one.

  Goliath swung, and the snarling creature ducked with a quickness Jesse wouldn’t have thought possible. Then, cobra-like, it darted forward and hopped back, and Goliath was holding his chest in dismay. Jesse caught a brief glimpse before Goliath’s enormous paw covered it up, and he was able to see the ragged clump the creature had chomped out, half of Goliath’s pectoral muscle gone, the nipple replaced by a flowing scarlet bed of hamburger.

  Goliath raised the bat, but the pain in his chest arrested the motion midway.

  The creature didn’t hesitate.

  Leaping forward, it fastened its feet in Goliath’s sheet-covered hips and with its fingernails began shredding the sides of the huge man’s face. The ears were gone in an instant, the temples flayed. Goliath’s high-pitched screaming was terrible, and almost as bad was the drizzle of blood that sprayed over Jesse and Colleen.

  The mixed odors of raw meat and feces made Jesse ill. He felt himself mentally retreat, his body suddenly a nerveless husk. His knees buckled.

  The creature from the pines crouched over him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jesse kicked it in the face. Its head barely moved, but its slitted eyes darkened in outrage.

  It lunged for Jesse’s face. He whipped his head to the side, felt the whoosh of the creature’s mouth as it missed him by inches. He flung his arms up to ward it off, then they were both crushed by flailing bodies.

  In the melee he took an elbow from Colleen, who’d been knocked down by Goliath and the creature feasting on him. The huge man was a goner, but somehow he was still struggling for life. Something limp smacked Jesse’s face and he realized with revulsion that it was the beast’s pendulous breasts, apparently the first female creature he’d encountered. As he scrabbled away from the mass of twisting bodies, he discovered it also had more hair. The filthy black strings pendulummed as the female beast shredded Goliath’s chin. He was swatting the creature in the head, but it seemed unaffected by the club-like blows.

  Jesse pushed to his feet, took a few jogging steps before glancing back and seeing Colleen fighting for her life in the pile. Goliath and the female creature had somehow interposed themselves between Colleen and the creature who’d attacked Jesse, but the cadaverous monster was extricating itself, would be free in moments. Colleen, however, was hopelessly pinned under Goliath’s hemorrhaging body.

  Go back! She saved your life, asshole!

  Jesse moaned, knowing the voice was right. Acid boiling in his throat, he drew closer, bent and grasped the bat. Its handle was slick with sweat, the barrel speckled with black ichor, but it nevertheless felt good in his hands. The rapist creature burst loose from the pile, pounced on Colleen. Before she could get her hands up, the creature pinioned her wrists to the ground and slid its long wormy tongue up her throat. Jesse saw tears squeezing from the sides of Colleen’s eyes, and without further hesitation he brought down the bat like he was splitting a cord of wood. The barrel thunked solidly against the back of the creature’s skull.

  It slumped on top of Colleen, but Jesse could see immediately it hadn’t lost consciousness. Far from it, the creature was cupping its dripping pate with one taloned hand and pounding its other fist in anger on the playground mulch.

  “Again,” Colleen croaked.

  Jesse gave her a baffled look, and she pushed up on the writhing creature as hard as she could. Teeth bared from the strain, she growled, “Hit the bastard again!”

  Jesse did. This time he crushed the side of its face. The creature yowled in agony, and Jesse brought the bat down again, the Louisville Slugger cracking the forearm covering its face.

  He swung again, thinking, Not so tough now, you gutless rapist, but Colleen seized his arm, yanked him backward. Stumbling after her, Jesse saw why Colleen had dragged him away.

  The female creature had paused, Goliath’s now limp body messy with gore, and was watching its fallen comrade intently.

  “Run!” Colleen yelled.

  Jesse followed. He couldn’t believe how fast Colleen ran. They shot by the seesaw, headed for the concrete sidewalk that led out of the playground. Jesse glanced to his left and was immediately sorry he had.

  Three of the creatures had swarmed over the jungle gym, reminding Jesse very much of lizards sunning themselves on a rock. Yet it wasn’t even noon, and the sky had grown dark. A couple more droplets of rain pattered on his arms, and the western thunder rumbled. Bad Company had ceased its ballad, and in its place Jesse heard the first few notes of AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long”.

  The kids trapped inside the jungle gym didn’t seem to notice the song change.

  There was a short, red-haired boy and three girls in bikinis, one of whom Jesse now remembered as Light Blue Bikini Girl. Under any other circumstances, he was certain the red-haired boy would’ve thanked his stars to be trapped with three gorgeous girls in skimpy swimwear, but this wasn’t being snowed in at a cozy mountain cabin or being marooned on a tropical island.

  This was being trapped in a cage by monsters.

  The creatures, Jesse realized with sick understanding, were taunting their prey. One creature would curl his freakish tongue out at Light Blue Bikini with lascivious menace and actually chortle whenever she’d recoil. Another creature—this one was shorter and broader than the others, its skin a dingier shade of white—was dangling its arms through the gaps in the jungle gym, making halfhearted grabs at the girls as they evaded it.

  Before they made it past the jungle gym, Jesse witnessed one more atrocity.

  One of the creatures had sneaked behind Light Blue Bikini. Quicker than Jesse could believe, it snagged her by the calf and dragged her screaming through a gap in the bottom bars. She clawed the mulch to return to the safety of the barred dome; her braying screams were the loudest Jesse had yet heard.

  Her shrieks must’ve agitated the creature because it gave her body a rough shake. Her blond hair jostled as her head smacked the ground, but she only screamed louder. Lips drawn back in a snarl, the creature grasped her by the ankles, pivoted, and swung her entire body through the air in a whipping arc. Her face and shoulders smashed the ground, the sound of her snapping neck cutting off her screams.

  The last thing Jesse saw as he tore his eyes away were the two other creatures dropping inside the jungle gym and setting upon the other victims in a flurry of claws and teeth.

&n
bsp; They neared the sidewalk, the shrill screams of Angus Young only partially masking the death wails erupting all around them. The number of creatures seemed to have grown. A frenzied scan of the playground revealed at least a dozen of the beasts, every last one smacking and chewing on the body of a victim. Jesse was also sure the number of college students had diminished, and not just because they’d been eaten. There appeared to be about half the number of people there’d been only minutes earlier, and very few of those present were still alive.

  Still, somewhere in his muddled thoughts, he understood there might be hope for them. If so many had escaped from the playground, he and Colleen might too. The creatures were too concerned with devouring their victims to worry about the ones who were getting away.

  He was thinking this when a creature stepped onto the sidewalk in front of them.

  Ten feet tall at least, the creature was also more muscular than the others, its green eyes larger. A fine specimen, some voice within Jesse’s mind commented, a remnant perhaps of all the crappy sci-fi movies he watched at three in the morning.

  It extended its arms as if barring their way. Or perhaps it was about to embrace them both. A surge of panic so bright it nearly blotted out all other thought flooded through him, but an object resting against Jesse’s leg seemed to nudge him back to reality.

  The bat.

  Jesse raised it, called out, “Get down!” to Colleen. The creature’s hungry grin widened in amusement, and Jesse realized how feeble his weapon was. The creature leaned closer as if offering its face up for batting practice, but before Jesse could swing, a noise erupted to their right.

  The creature turned, and at the last moment Jesse realized what the sound had been.

  A blatting horn.

  The black pickup truck steamrolled through the high weeds and smashed into the creature, which flipped sideways onto the windshield before tumbling over the roof and flopping into the bed. The truck skidded sideways just as it reached the pines, and for a moment Jesse was sure it would tip. But the wheels jounced down, the creature in the back bouncing up and landing limply, dead or unconscious.

  He and Colleen shared an amazed look.

  Then the door opened and they discovered who’d saved them.

  Musclehead.

  Jesse had forgotten all about the night before, when he and Emma—

  Jesus Christ, he thought. Emma!

  He’d completely forgotten about her, and on the heels of that thought he remembered Greeley, the two of them disappearing at the same time.

  Maybe they got away, he thought and was immediately ashamed to find he only wanted one of the two safe.

  Musclehead gestured toward the open door. “Get the hell in!”

  Colleen grabbed Jesse’s wrist and dashed with him to the black truck. Colleen lunged inside first, and Jesse followed. As he did he caught a glimpse of something black at Musclehead’s side.

  A handgun.

  Jesse knew nothing of firearms, but the gun in Musclehead’s hand filled him with a sudden flash of hope. So did the dark crew cut, the square jaw, and the bodybuilder’s muscles. The guy looked more like a Marine than ever as he slammed shut the door and jerked the truck into reverse. They halted, Musclehead’s strong hand reaching up to shift the truck into drive, and an alabaster shape plummeted down from the pines and crashed down on the hood.

  Snarling, the creature drew back a fist and punched through the windshield like paper, its talons whickering through the air an inch from Jesse’s face. As calmly as if he were a cop positioning a radar detector, Musclehead leaned out the window, the black gun gripped in his left hand, and squeezed off four deafening shots. The first missed, but the next two made the creature twist sideways, a spray of black blood misting the webbed windshield. The fourth shot knocked the creature off the hood. As if he did this sort of thing every day, Musclehead drove over the creature with a dull crunch, and in a moment they emerged from the sidewalk and into the parking lot outside the playground.

  Jesse’s windpipe constricted. He realized why the creatures had let so many people escape the playground.

  Jesse stared gape-mouthed.

  The entire campground was acrawl with the beasts.

  On the main road alone Jesse counted twenty or thirty. In the sprawling, primitive camping area he beheld twice that number. The creatures were all running people down, feasting on them, or scouring the darkening day for more victims.

  When the black pickup bounced onto the main road, half a dozen sets of huge, green eyes fixed on them. Rain pattered the windshield.

  “Can you see?” Colleen asked.

  “Good enough,” Musclehead responded. Staring at the square jaw, one corner of the man’s mouth rising with the tiniest glimmer of mirth, Jesse realized the man was enjoying this. Had probably daydreamed about it all his life. Of course, Jesse had too, but deep down he’d always known if there were an outbreak of vampirism or a zombie plague, he’d turn into a quivering jellyfish. Thinking of Tiara Girl, he supposed that assumption had already proved true.

  Not fair, a part of him protested. I did go back and try to help her.

  Not soon enough, his conscience declared, not nearly soon enough.

  Musclehead turned to Jesse. “You know how to shoot?”

  “With that?” Jesse asked.

  Musclehead smiled. “This one’s mine. There’s a shotgun under the seat.”

  Colleen got on the floor, said, “My dad taught me guns.” She came up with the shotgun. “Shells?”

  “There’s a live one chambered and five more inside. There’s more in the glove compartment.”

  Jesse longed for a better weapon. He’d positioned the bat between his legs with the handle sticking up, and now it made him feel like a child on the way to little league practice.

  The rain was falling steadily. Through the passenger’s window, just beyond Colleen’s grim face, he watched a creature rip a man’s head off.

  Jesse shut his eyes and leaned against the seat.

  “Where’re we going?” Colleen asked as the pickup accelerated.

  “Where you think?” Musclehead asked. “The fuck outta here, of course.”

  Mercifully, they passed the last of the primitive sites and the wholesale murder occurring there, and into the stand of forest separating the two main camping areas. Jesse caught a glimpse of a pale figure hunkered over something obscured by the underbrush, but the bobbing of the creature’s head told him all he needed to know.

  Musclehead asked, “What the hell are they?”

  Colleen only stared.

  Jesse said, “It’s like they’ve been waiting for this.”

  Musclehead glared at him but said nothing. Then the truck emerged from the canopy of forest. Colleen gasped.

  The RV area was overrun by creatures.

  Chapter Twelve

  In a movement Jesse suspected was wholly involuntary, Musclehead eased off the accelerator and let the pickup drift down the lane. There’d been fifteen or twenty RVs and other assorted camping vehicles when they’d come in; now there were double that.

  And nearly all of them had been overturned.

  Jesse had no idea how many creatures there were in the deluxe section, but his mental estimate was somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred. Like gaunt, fairy-tale trolls, the figures marauded over the campground, ripping and maiming as they went. Jesse beheld an old woman, her neatly permed white hair swinging wildly from side to side, being devoured by a creature with its face buried in her midsection. Moving away from the same campsite, another creature dragged a white-haired man through the grass. At first Jesse thought the creature was grasping the man’s belt, but then he realized the object was too long for that, that it was a string of the man’s intestines the creature was clutching.

  Get us out of here, he thought. Just get us out of here. But to his horror, the pickup was still decelerating.

  “What’re you doing?” Colleen asked.

  Musclehead was staring at somet
hing ahead and to their right. “Gonzales,” he whispered.

  Squinting through the cracked windshield and the metronomic sweep of the wipers, Jesse discerned a man swinging a crowbar at an advancing creature. The man backpedaled, his mouth twisted in a deranged grin. As the truck crunched to a halt, Musclehead said, “Wait here.”

  “What are you—” Colleen began.

  “That’s my friend,” Musclehead said and climbed out.

  Jesse wished Musclehead had shut the door. He and Colleen watched as the creature slapped the crowbar away from Gonzales and then whacked him in the side of the head with an open hand. The blow sent Gonzales flying, his puny-looking body crashing against an iron fire pit. As the man rolled over—not dead, but not exactly flourishing either—Jesse noticed the black facial hair and recognized Goatee from the night before. Poor son of a bitch, Jesse reflected. Guy came out here for a little fun and is going to be eaten alive by a white-skinned monster instead.

  Before the creature could rend Goatee’s flesh, however, a gunshot cracked, then another. The creature stood rigid and actually glanced down to assess itself, the runny black liquid leaking out of its chest and belly.

  Its face came up to stare at Musclehead. Seeing the monster’s wide green eyes, its lips stretched wide, Jesse couldn’t breathe. He’d never seen such unbridled viciousness in a face.

  Musclehead shot it between the eyes.

  Jesse was stunned to see it tumble backward.

  Without pausing to make sure it was dead, Musclehead hoisted his friend in a fireman’s carry. Then, Gonzales’s shaggy black head jiggling pitifully, Musclehead hustled him over to the truck. With a gentleness that would have moved Jesse under other circumstances, the big man placed Gonzales in the driver’s seat and eased his head against the seatback.

  “These two are gonna take care of you,” Musclehead said. “They owe me.”