Savage Species

by Jonathan Janz

  Clevenger let the gun dangle from his hand, as if the touch of it made him ill. “Where will you be?”

  Ron fetched the shotgun from the grass, checked its chambers and handed it to Colleen. “Saving as many as we can,” he said.

  Jesse and Colleen followed Ron to the RV window. Jesse cast about for some sort of weapon, but all he could see were rocks, shards of broken glass. Finally, he spotted a slender steel rod, about two feet long. It looked like it had come off of the motor home, but he couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t much, but it was better than going in empty-handed.

  “You got four shells left in the Remington,” Ron told Colleen. “Be smart about how you use ‘em.”

  Jesse was wondering what Ron’s plan was when the man stopped in front of the missing windshield, bent and produced a black pistol from an ankle holster. The man’s mustached upper lip rose as if he were about to shout something intimidating, some cool piece of movie dialogue perhaps—“Yippee-kay-a, motherfucker”—when the man’s face seemed to drain of color, the black gun drooping to his side. Jesse and Colleen pulled up alongside him, and Jesse saw why he’d reacted the way he had.

  The interior of the RV was a bloodbath.

  There weren’t three creatures in there, but five. And there hadn’t been ten or eleven victims, at least not by Jesse’s estimation.

  Of course, it was difficult to tell.

  There were at least twelve headless bodies piled up at the bottom of the overturned motor home. Some of these looked like refugees from the playground massacre; the rest were elderly, the black socks and leisure wear giving them away. Two of the creatures were in the process of slaughtering more victims, both elderly women. Jesse saw with benumbed horror that there was a small child’s headless body in the pile too.

  “Oh my God,” Colleen said, and for the first time since he’d known her, she looked and sounded absolutely powerless.

  One creature was painted with blood, its iridescent green eyes the only things that weren’t crimson. It was on its knees, immersed in hammering the bathroom door beneath it, clawing at the plastic to get to whatever poor soul was hiding on the other side.

  Another of the creatures who was feasting on an old man ceased burrowing into the guy’s belly and opened its bloodstained maw in their direction.

  “Dammit,” Ron said. “Dammit all to hell.”

  One of the creatures was in the rear of the RV, barely visible beyond all the carnage, but its current occupation was clear enough. The victim appeared somewhere between seventy and eighty—it was tough to see from this angle. The mattress had fallen off the frame and was lying diagonally in the rear of the RV, and it was atop this canted mattress that the creature was raping the old woman.

  Colleen said, “Are any of them…”

  Jesse glanced at her, his mind a jumble of disordered thoughts. Then he remembered.

  Emma.

  He made himself reexamine the pile of corpses in an attempt to identify Emma. But how, without their heads… Jesus, this was insane.

  “Here it comes,” Ron was saying. Jesse whipped his head around and saw the DNR officer backpedaling. Ron was staring up at something, and when Jesse turned again he beheld the creature stalking toward him, the thing so damned tall it had to crouch despite the fact that the shell of the RV was so huge.

  It’s crouching because it’s treading on corpses.

  Jesse shot a glance at its spindly legs and realized this was true. Each time the creature took a stride, the headless bodies shifted like broken dolls in the bottom of some kid’s closet. Then it was looming over Jesse, Colleen shouting for him to run.

  Jesse reared back with the metal rod and swung. The bar smacked the creature in the side of the face and lashed its skin open. The messy wound immediately rose in a livid weal, and the creature glowered at Jesse in ravenous fury.

  Then something cracked behind him, the creature’s gaunt frame jerking as Ron shot it twice, three times. It listed to the right, then fell.

  It was at that moment that the red-painted creature pried open the bathroom door.

  Jesse heard a high-pitched wail.

  Oh God. Emma.

  He surged toward the shattered windshield, unmindful of the creatures feasting just inside.

  Ahead, the creature lowered inside the bathroom, and Emma’s screams grew frantic.

  Jesse reached the creature, peered down over its shoulder and saw Emma lying in the shower stall kicking at the beast. It was standing in the stall too, chortling at her, its bloody talons flashing out now and then at her flailing tennis shoes. A weird vertigo swam over him as he struggled to process the bizarre angles of the overturned motor home.

  Jesse fought it off, gritted his teeth. Emma was weeping freely, the creature actually squatting over her now, daring her to inflict damage. Toying with her, the sadistic bastard.

  “Hey,” Jesse yelled. The creature’s crimson back froze. Emma shot a glance at him and through her panic and her tears he saw recognition and what might have been hope.

  Wish there was a reason for it, he thought.

  The creature spun on him, snarling. Before Jesse could react, it exploded out of the stall, slammed him into a hard surface. It seized him by the seat of his shorts and flung him toward the rear of the RV. Jesse hit the back wall hard. Dazed, he turned and saw the creature stalking toward him like some freakish jaguar. Jesse pushed away from the blood-covered creature, but that meant nearing the tilted mattress, where the unholy copulation was still taking place. As he scuttled toward the mattress, something slid beneath his knee. Jesse glanced down and realized he was sitting on a sliding closet door. He endeavored to pry the door open, but his weight prevented it from moving. God, with the motor home on its side, his physics were all off.

  The crimson creature snared his ankle, reeled him in. Jesse grabbed the closet door and scraped it open. Something thudded against Jesse’s grasping hand. He shot a look back but the other creature was still on the mattress, still making violent love to the old woman’s corpse.

  Jesse looked up and beheld the crimson creature’s dripping fangs.

  His fingers happened on an object by his hip.

  A yellow pencil.

  Jesse pumped it into the side of the creature’s face and actually watched the lead tip puncture the thing’s cheek. It yowled in surprise and pain. It clutched the pencil with one hand, and with its free hand it backhanded Jesse a terrible blow that sent him somersaulting backward, his feet rising and his head going gray. He thought for a second he was tumbling into unconsciousness, but he realized too late he was literally tumbling through the open sliding closet door.

  He struck the back of the closet with a muffled thud. Something gasped and slapped at him, and he thought, Oh hell, not another one. Then he opened his eyes and felt the wooziness and terror burn away.

  Marc Greeley.

  Hiding in the closet.

  “Whatever happened to women and children first?” Jesse asked.

  But Greeley wasn’t listening, didn’t even seem to be aware Jesse was human instead of monster. Greeley gibbered and sobbed and hurled piles of clothes at him.

  “Greeley,” Jesse said.

  Greeley whipped him with the cuff of a sports coat.

  “Greeley,” he repeated, but the man only burrowed deeper into his fortress of senior citizen casual wear.

  Jesse dug through the layers of clothing until he beheld the man’s frightened face. Grabbing him by the chin, Jesse shouted, “You’ve gotta help me!”

  The anesthesia of terror finally seemed to dissipate. Greeley blinked at him in a look that wasn’t quite recognition. Greeley opened his mouth to respond, but as he did his eyes flashed to something over Jesse’s shoulder.

  Jesse knew without turning what it was.

  The blood and saliva pattered down into Jesse’s hair.

  He whirled on the creature, aimed a haymaker at it, but it jerked its head back and Jesse’s fist crashed into the side of the closet door.

/>   Broken, he thought. It hurt like hell, but the pain was the least of his worries.

  The monster was lowering into the closet with them.

  Chapter Two

  The sound that issued from Greeley’s mouth was scarcely discernible as human. The maniacal squall crescendoed louder and higher, a rictus of ultimate terror inscribed on Greeley’s once-handsome face. Methodically, almost delicately, the creature stepped inside the closet with them. Greeley clambered away until he was bunched in the roof of the closet, his quaking limbs gathering as many items of clothing as he could to cover himself. The creature’s satanic face leered with delight. Then, clearly unconcerned with Greeley, it turned its attention to Jesse.

  The crimson beast seized him by the chest of his T-shirt and hoisted him aloft.

  Jesse rose out of the closet, borne higher and higher, mesmerized by the hideousness of the creature’s face. The scimitar teeth opened, and above them he watched the huge green eyes glaze in anticipatory delight. Jesse felt doom spread over him, his entire body going slack. He had no weapon, no hope against this beast. He rose higher, higher, the creature’s mouth opening farther than he would have thought possible.

  Thunder exploded to Jesse’s left. He and the creature turned that way and saw Colleen holding the smoking shotgun. Movement from the back of the motor home drew all their attention.

  Only then did Jesse realize that the monster raping the dead woman on the bed was the Big Nasty.

  The creature holding Jessie growled at Colleen, but Jesse scarcely heard it. His only thought was of the Big Nasty, which had jolted at the gunshot and was now climbing off the old woman. The raping creature hadn’t detected Jesse yet, but when it did…

  Panicked, Jesse grasped the crimson beast by the arms. Surprised, the creature turned to face Jesse just as he whipped forward and headbutted the creature as hard as he could. It was an insane ploy, but it worked, at least for the moment. Its nose shattered; the creature uttered a clipped scream, released him and stumbled away. Jesse landed on Greeley, who let loose with a wet-sounding fart.

  Emma climbed out of the bathroom. She had a terrific bruise on her cheek that had already begun to purple. The look she gave him would have, under any other circumstance, sent him into a giddy euphoria. But her gratitude and respect for his suicidal rescue mission was extinguished in the flood of menace filling the front of the RV.

  The feasting creatures had risen.

  They were stalking toward Colleen.

  Colleen was nodding her face upward in quick, secretive jerks as she backed away from the approaching creatures. He frowned at her, until he heard Emma whisper, “Lift me.”

  The side window was open above them. If they hurried…

  A guttural growl sounded from the back of the RV.

  The Big Nasty was coming.

  He bent, grasped Emma by the waist. Whimpering, she climbed up his body and got a shoe on his left shoulder.

  The Big Nasty was ten feet away. Beside it, Jesse saw the crimson creature rising, a look of depthless rage twisting its face.

  Emma had reached the aperture, had her elbows on both sides of the shattered window. She glanced down at Jesse. “How will you get out?”

  “Go,” he commanded.

  With a pained look, she obeyed, slipping easily through the opening and peering down at him on hands and knees.

  The Big Nasty’s growl had morphed into a continuous drone that sounded half-canine, half-insect. Jesse wanted to follow Emma, but he knew he’d never make it. The long, cadaverous beast would snatch him out of the air. Jesse had a nightmare image of the Big Nasty raising its face to rip out Jesse’s genitalia in one giant chomp. Even if he were able to evade the creature, he didn’t know if he was athletic enough to jump that high or strong enough to draw himself through the window if he did make the jump.

  The shotgun exploded. The Big Nasty’s eyes shifted to the front of the RV.

  Colleen had lured the creatures outside.

  Impulsively, Jesse bolted to the left corner of the shattered windshield, heard the Big Nasty’s livid cry of surprise. Jesse dove through the opening, and as he did his shoe clipped one of the beasts in the calf. Out of the corner of his eyes, Jesse saw the creature give a little jolt, but he didn’t wait to see if it was going to pursue him. Emma was sliding down the rain-swept roof of the RV. Jesse met her as she hit the ground. She threw a terrified glance beyond him, and he knew one or more of the creatures had followed, would pounce on them if they hesitated. Clenching Emma’s hand, he compelled her around the corner of the overturned Seabreeze and pelted toward the Buick, which had its lights on, a figure sitting in the driver’s seat. He thought at first it was Colleen, but that was impossible. She’d been just as far away from the Buick as he had been.

  But who—

  The Buick rolled toward them and through the rainspattered window he discerned Clevenger, his eyes huge with fright. Jesse’s first thought was that the man was abandoning them, saving his own skinny ass. Then the window lowered and he shouted, “Back seat!”

  At the same moment, Jesse glimpsed Colleen scampering toward the Buick, four of the beasts right behind her. He got the back door open, practically shoved Emma inside. He made to climb in as well when he looked up again and saw that Colleen wasn’t going to make it.

  “Gun!” he shouted.

  Colleen threw him a frenzied glance, then lobbed the shotgun toward him in an awkward chest pass. One creature reached out, snagged the tail of Colleen’s shirt. She faltered, her face a mask of horror. Jesse caught the shotgun, shifted it, fired, and was amazed to see the creature bearing down on Colleen jerk back in pain and consternation.

  He’d gotten it in the mouth.

  It went down, long fingers slapping over its mangled face. The others, however, ignored their fallen comrade, and kept up the pursuit of Colleen, who still looked like she’d never make it to the Buick.

  Jesse drew a bead on the creature nearest her.

  Within the car beside him, Emma screamed. He whirled out of instinct to see the Big Nasty charging at him, a look of triumph on its demon’s face.

  Jesse aimed at its gaping mouth and fired.

  Its face snapped back and the rear of its head exploded.

  It landed on Jesse and slammed him into the car. They crumpled together beside the Buick, the unearthly stink of the creature invading his nostrils like a pestilence. God, like dirty diapers and flyblown meat. Jesse gagged, a dry heave rolling through him, but Clevenger was shouting something, Emma clenching the waistband of his shorts and hauling him inside. A blur of bodies scudded past, Colleen pursued by the beasts, one of whom had barred her way to the Buick.

  Jesse thumped down beside Emma. She shouted something at Clevenger, who’d begun to reverse the Buick.

  “…can’t leave her,” Emma shouted.

  Clevenger had his arm around the passenger’s headrest, was staring fiercely out the back window. “Not…leaving…anyone.”

  They angled toward where Colleen was sprinting, the pursuing creatures toying with her now, enjoying her helplessness. Clevenger swung the car sideways, the Buick skidding to a halt. He lunged across the seat and threw open the passenger’s door.

  Colleen was nearly to it, but a pale creature was almost upon her.

  Clevenger brought up the gun Ron had given him, fired. The beast doubled over, wailing, but another creature surged past it. It reached for Colleen, too, but Clevenger unloaded on it, squeezing Ron’s gun until it clicked empty.

  But there was one beast left, and they were out of ammo.

  Jesse’s bowels froze as a horn blasted from their right.

  He glanced that way in time to see a red pickup truck, the one that was still blaring classic rock, bounce over a campsite and barrel into the creature chasing Colleen. The creature’s thin body crunched against the windshield. The pickup slammed its brakes, sending the limp, skinny body tumbling into the grass. Then, as the creature raised its head in a daze, the pickup lurched for
ward and ran it down, one front tire crunching over its bony shoulders. Jesse had time to identify the driver of the red truck: Austin, the blond-haired beer guzzler.

  Wheezing, Colleen plopped down in the passenger’s seat and rammed home the door.

  To their amazement, the other creatures set off after the pickup, which circled toward the overturned motor home.

  Jesse watched a figure emerge from the top of the RV, wave its arms madly at the red pickup. It was Greeley, of course. The coward.

  Jesse eyed Emma to see if she’d seen the tall man on the RV, but she had a hand on Colleen’s shoulder, was asking if she was okay. Colleen nodded weakly.

  Ahead of them, the red pickup slowed enough to allow Greeley to leap into the bed. But two dozen creatures were converging on the truck.

  “Get us the hell out of this campground,” Colleen moaned.

  Clevenger shook his head. “Have you seen the road?”

  Jesse did and felt his stomach clench.

  The creatures were pouring out of the forest, the way out of the RV park a squirming mass of white limbs and bared teeth.

  Colleen saw the creatures coming, said, “Please get us moving.”

  Knuckles pale on the wheel, Clevenger nodded to the east. “What’s beyond there?”

  Jesse said, “That’s where we camped, remember? The playground—”

  “I know that. What I’m asking is what’s on the other side of that? Roads, trees, what?”

  “There’s nothing,” Colleen said. “Just forest and marshes. Now can we—”

  “Frank Red Elk lives back there,” Emma said.

  Clevenger opened his mouth, perhaps to ask who the hell Frank Red Elk was, when something hammered Jesse’s window. They all shrieked, and Jesse practically climbed into Emma’s lap. He shut his eyes, certain it was the Big Nasty somehow returned from the dead to take its vengeance on him. The snarling lips, the eyes as round as full moons, the—

  “Got room for two more?” a man’s voice asked.

  Jesse opened his eyes to see Ron the DNR officer grinning through Clevenger’s window.