by J N Duncan
A swell of energy began to fill the room. Jackie rolled away from Charlotte and sprang to her feet. To her right by the fireplace lay the shotgun and one of the Glocks. Another was a few feet away toward the broken window. She could dive for one and be firing in two seconds, even with a burst of speed. Outside people were calling out for Charlie.
“That all you got, Sis?” Charlotte asked. “It was more fun when you were alive.”
Pistol by the fireplace, Rebecca said. Now.
Jackie jumped without thinking twice. Charlotte lunged as well. She landed next to Shelby and slid forward by the fireplace that still crackled with glowing embers. Jackie brought up the Glock to find something huge and dark swinging through the air toward her in a swift, downward arc.
Jesus Christ! Jackie reflexively turned away, raising an arm to shield herself from the sofa that whirled around and slammed her into the wall at the corner of the fireplace. Her skull cracked against the brick mantle of the fireplace and everything exploded in a momentary, blinding flash, dropping Jackie to her knees.
An immediate flood of cool, dead energy washed the stunning effects away, and Jackie found herself buried under the sofa. More worrisome, though, was the greater chill of energy that was enveloping the room, filling everything around her. Her head still throbbed, but she worked her hands up under the couch to throw it off. That was when the first disturbing groan and crack sound echoed through the room.
“Was it worth the wait, Sis?” Charlotte yelled at her, her voice full of rage and tears. There were more cracking sounds, and Jackie felt the floor shift subtly beneath her. “You betrayed me!”
The house had literally begun to shake. Jackie shoved the sofa aside. “Nick? We have to move.” He had pushed the chair aside, but Jackie could see now that he wasn’t running anywhere fast. A shotgun blast had torn his foot all to hell. Shelby still lay crumpled on the floor behind her, blood oozing out of her hair and running across her neck to soak into her shirt.
“Get out of here,” he said, “while you still can.”
“Damn it, Nick,” Jackie replied and then had to dodge to the side to avoid a piece of plaster falling from the ceiling.
Charlotte had already moved. She stood in the entry, shotgun back in her hands. Jump right, Rebecca said. She’s going to shoot.
“Good-bye, Sis,” Charlotte said and raised the gun.
Jackie leaped as the shotgun went off. The strength in her legs sent her over the coffee table that sat in front of where the sofa had been, and into the other chair, tipping it backward and sending Jackie tumbling across the floor to the back of the room. When she stood back up, her leg burned like someone had jammed a hot poker into her thigh. Jackie began to run back when the living room ceiling split in half, a crack in the plaster opening up like a fault line running the length of the house. Sections of ceiling began to fall. The windows behind her, looking out into the back, exploded in a shower of broken shards as the frame abruptly went trapezoidal with the shifting house.
Nick was trying to pull himself back to his feet with one leg. The foot on the other dragged at an awkward angle, leaving a smear of blood across the floor.
Jackie reached him and pulled him up. “Out! Now.” She let him go and stepped over to Shelby, finding her body quite easy to pick up in her dead-fueled arms. Then the wall on that side of the house buckled inward, knocking her forward into the room and into the broken sofa. The chimney, unable to withstand such a change in structure, collapsed somewhere above, sending bricks down the flue and into the fireplace. A shower of sparks and tiny embers showered the living room floor.
Fire. Jackie struggled back up to her feet with Shelby, seeing the smoking orange lights scattered over the room, most of them on the area rug that sat beneath the chairs and sofa. Nick limped toward the window, only a few feet away from being able to jump out.
“Nick, you better jump—”
The end of her sentence got cut off by the sound of another shotgun blast. An instant later, the north end of the house filled with flame, and Jackie could see that it would likely billow right on through to their side in a second, maybe two if they were lucky. She crouched and sprang forward, hoping to dive the fifteen feet she had left to get through the broken window in the front of the house, but never made it. The first floor walls buckled under the concussion of the propane blast, and the window, once five feet high, folded in on itself, and Jackie crashed to the floor, landing against the mayor’s body.
She cradled her arms around Shelby’s head, closed her eyes, and focused everything she had on keeping the second floor from crushing them to death as it pancaked down on top of them.
Oh, Sweet Mother of us all, Laurel said.
No! Rebecca screamed. She cannot get away with this. No, no!
No, she could not. Charlotte and Jessica could not get out of this town. Likely, they would never see them again, and they would set themselves up in a new place and start over, creating a new Thatcher’s Mill. Charlotte enjoyed running things too much to just live quietly in the background sipping on the blood of the occasional wayward person unfortunate to get on her radar. The team was out there as well, unless McManus had been smart enough to get the team out, and now a couple hundred townsfolk were gathered around, wanting their pretty little leader to be safe. Of course, half the house had just blown up. There could be a bunch of dead or dying people out there now. Jackie turned her focus inward and opened the door to Deadworld.
Hon, what are you doing? Laurel asked, worried.
The only option they had left was what she was doing. The door between the living and the dead opened wide, and as she expected, Jackie saw the familiar, alien figure standing there.
“Hello, Nix,” she said, trying her best not to sound scared shitless. “I need your help.”
Chapter 29
“Jackie Rutledge,” he said, in that hollow, nasally voice that made Jackie think someone was speaking through Nix via a speaker from somewhere else. “I have awaited your return.”
“I’m sure you have,” she replied. “Look, I need your help. You want to come through my door? I’ll let you through if you get that girl who came here and attacked me earlier, and you save my friends.”
“Save?”
“A house just fell on us,” Jackie said. “Get us out and stop the girl. If you agree to do that, I’ll let you through and open whatever stupid door it is you want me to open.”
Laurel gasped. “We can’t let that thing through. Who knows what it’ll do.”
“Laur, we’re doing this,” she replied. “No options left. Nick and Shelby are dead if we don’t, and Charlotte will be gone.”
“It might kill everyone there.”
Jackie looked back at Nix. “No, I think it just wants me for something. At least I hope that’s all it wants.”
It stared at her with its unblinking, green orbs for so long that Jackie was not sure it had understood her. Finally it nodded once. “Agreed.”
Jackie stepped away from the house, on the south side where the garage stood off the back corner. “Here. You’ll have to act quickly. She’s about to leave.” Now get the hell over here before I lose my nerve. Jackie opened the way back. “After you, Spindly Man.”
Nix walked over, reaching across himself to pull out a pair of spines from each arm. He stopped at the door and Jackie swore he sucked in a huge breath of the living energy that came through. The lipless crease of its mouth curled into a smile and it jumped through the door.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Laurel said.
“Can’t be any worse than everyone dying out there now,” Jackie said. How could it?
She stepped through, coming out in the drive just as Charlotte gunned the motorcycle out of the garage. Jessica crouched low in the sidecar. Nix stood out in the gravel drive no more than twenty feet in front of them, crouched low with its spines held ready. It looked like a freak-show ninja.
Charlotte’s eyes went bug-eyed with terror. She swerved the m
otorcycle away, sliding the motorcycle across the gravel. People standing in the drive, apparently safe on that side of the house from the explosion, scattered and dove out of her way. Some were already fleeing from the monster that had suddenly appeared before them.
With a smooth, catlike grace, Nix sprang, arcing through the air a good thirty feet before landing on the motorcycle, one foot in the sidecar, the other on the back of the motorcycle. Jessica, who had been trying to wield the shotgun, got off an errant shot, screaming in the process. Charlotte yelled out as Nix attacked, turning the motorcycle hard to the left toward the mill building. The momentum tipped the motorcycle up on its side, throwing her and Nix off into the puddled gravel drive.
Charlotte did not even have a chance to get back up before Nix was on her. Jessica crawled out of the sidecar as Charlotte beat furiously at the alien, who ignored her powerful punches, batting away her blows until his long, thin fingers finally clamped around her throat. Jessica sat up on her knees bringing the shotgun around to bear on Nix, an action Jackie knew would doom her.
She called out to her. “Jessica! Don’t!”
Nix turned, flinging his one free hand toward her. The gun went off and Jessica staggered back and fell on her butt. It was too dark for Jackie to see, but she had obviously been hit with one of its spines.
The crowd backed away. Either they knew better or Charlotte’s charms did not include messing with monsters. Her pleading became garbled under the pressure of its fierce grip. Nix plucked another spine, and despite Charlotte’s frantic punching and kicking, plunged his hand through her defenses, burying the spine in her chest.
The warbled scream that came out of her mouth made Jackie cringe. “N-n-no. Please.” She screamed again. “Sis ... nooo.”
Jackie turned away. Just like that, it was over. Inside her head, Rebecca sobbed quietly. It was not the end they were hoping for, that’s for sure. She moved quickly around the corner, hoping to see Nick at least lying on the ground. There were dozens of people down, some not moving, others groaning and crying in pain. “McManus! Damnit, get your ass back up here.” Red tail lights were backing up the drive as she said it. They were going to need ambulances for twenty-five to thirty people at least. People were also screaming for reasons other than pain. Seeing a real, live monster tended to do that.
She turned back to Nix, who stood up from Charlotte’s lifeless body, eyes so bright they set the ground out in front of him aglow. Jackie raced up to Jessica before it could step over to her and found her staring up into the rain, blinking away the drops that hit her eyes. The spine protruded from her neck, where blood was dribbling out on to the ground.
“Damn it, Nix. I didn’t want you to get her, too. She’s innocent in all this.”
Something sounding like a sigh escaped its mouth. It bent over and grabbed the spine between two of its fingers and eased it back out. Jessica spluttered and whimpered, trying to say something, but quickly fainted. The spine then took on a faint, green glow, and Nix held the tip in the wound for a moment before finally taking it out. The wound was gone.
“Live, perhaps,” Nix said. “Friend?”
Jackie pointed at the house. “No. In there. They’re trapped.”
The SUV slid to a stop as it reached the circle before it could run into anyone trying to flee. McManus stepped out, Glock swinging out over the open doorframe. “Jack! What’s—?” He stared wide-eyed at Nix.
“Help the injured over there. Nick and Shelby are trapped inside.”
“Shit. They still alive?”
“They better be,” she replied. “Just ... go handle the injured. I’ll deal with this thing here.”
“Is that ... ?”
“Yeah.”
Pernetti had stepped out of the car as well, but he looked like he was about to piss himself. The Glock braced over the frame of the door shook in his hand. Jackie could not blame him for that feeling. “Pernetti, it’s fine. I think. Just go. Wait! Actually, get Jessica there in the car.”
“Fucking-A, Jack. Seriously?” He stared at Nix’s spiny, glowing form and did not move.
“He’s not interested in you, Pernetti. Get over yourself and get Jessica in the car,” she snapped back. “Nix? We have to clear this rubble to get to my friends.” She pointed at the collapsed wall, where the wood had splintered and broken into pieces and lay half buried in bricks from the chimney. On the north side of the house, smoke still billowed up into the drizzling rain. “Maybe we can get in through the front window if anything is left there.” Nix gave her a blank stare. “Come with me.”
It followed Jackie around to where the living room window had once been. People still standing in the circle drive in front of the house scampered away, but Jackie did not have any more time to soothe their fears. She had wasted enough already.
The front wall had fallen inward and the second floor had fallen down on top of it. Only the lower edge of the window could be seen in the ruins. “Nick!” Jackie shouted. “Nick, can you hear me?”
She strained to hear something, anything to give a sign that he was alive in there. Several seconds passed.
“Friend?” Nix asked.
“Friend,” Jackie replied.
Nix stepped forward and surveyed the ruined wall, his eyes illuminating the wet wood with a reflective, green light. “Insufficient structure.”
You think? “Can you just hurry, please?”
It bent down, looking up under the crumpled second floor, now at shoulder level, and then stuck its head through the squashed window frame. “I smell it there.”
It? “What are you talking about?” Jackie asked.
“Friend,” Nix replied. “Its essence dissipates.”
Jackie felt a chill run through her. Was Nick dead? The way it was talking about him creeped her out. “Can you get him out or not?”
Nix carefully placed one spindly leg through the remains of the window and squatted down, placing the palms of its hands up under the second floor. Jackie eyed it with disbelief. Seriously? It was going to just lift the damn floor up? Her eyes widened with incredulity as it did just that, its body beginning to glow all over. Wood splintered and pieces of plaster split and fell, but inexorably, the floor eased up off of the broken walls of the first floor until it had hoisted it back up over its head.
How many thousand pounds had it just casually put over its head? Jackie closed her open mouth. “Holy shit. How’d you do that?”
“Friend?” it said.
“Right,” Jackie replied and walked up to the shattered opening.
The front wall had folded over and in, a broken heap of wood, insulation, and plaster. Jackie stepped into the broken window and then straddled over the wall. Carson was on the ground next to her, a cracked chunk of plaster laying over the upper half of his body. A few feet behind him, the plaster shifted and moved, and then Jackie heard a familiar voice groan and then cough.
“Oh, thank God. Nick!” She crouched down and made her way forward, pulling aside hanging pieces of ceiling to get to him. He was covered in dust and chunks of plaster, pushing up onto his elbows, when she knelt next to him. “Can you move? Is anything broken?”
He coughed again, wiping dust from his mouth. Blood was smeared across the back of his hand. “Where’s ...” His gaze froze, focused behind her on Nix. “Damn. It’s here.”
“I know,” Jackie said. “Desperate measures and all that shit. Let’s get you out of here.”
“Shelby?” He coughed again, spitting out blood across his hand, and made a pained sound as he got to his knees.
She lay a couple of feet further back from Nick, a few pieces of plaster and wood lying across her body. Her body was perfectly still. “She’s behind you.” And please be alive. “Still unconscious.”
“Get her first,” Nick said. “I’ll be all right.”
“You’re coughing up blood,” she said. “You’re not all right. Can’t you just ... fix that or something?”
He nodded. “Get Shelby.”
Jackie stepped around him and pulled the debris aside. “Shelby? Can you hear me?” She still lay in the fetal position formed when Jackie had wrapped herself protectively around her during the house’s collapse. She reached down and touched Shelby’s face, finding it colder than it usually was. She could not even tell if she was breathing. Laurel gasped.
“Oh, hell,” Jackie muttered and hooked her hands beneath Shelby’s arms. Drawing upon the energy still coursing through her body, Jackie found it quite easy to move her, though the low ceiling made it awkward.
She’s still alive, Laurel said. She’s still there. Oh, Jackie! Hurry. Get her out.
“Trying,” Jackie huffed. Nick had half limped and shuffled his way to the opening and was pulling himself out, stumbling to his knees as he made his way over the debris. “Have to be careful here. Don’t want to bang her on anything.”
She was forced to sit on the pile and swing one leg over in order to get the leverage needed to pull Shelby out of the opening. Her feet flopped lifelessly to the ground after Jackie got her out. Jackie dragged her a good ten feet away before setting her down on wet gravel of the drive. Behind her shouts and cries continued to echo in the cold November air. Once she was clear, Nix stepped out from under the ceiling and let the second floor drop, toppling it down even further onto the first floor. If Carson or the Mayor had been alive in there, they were not likely now.
“There were others in there, Nix,” she said.
“Friends?”
“No, but—”
“Then agreement done,” he replied. “Is friend living?”
Jackie tried for a pulse, but could not find one. “I don’t know. Her head got bashed in.”
Nix stepped over and squatted down on the balls of his bare, elongated feet. “It is linked to other side like dead one.”
“Don’t you dare do anything to her,” Jackie said, jabbing a finger at it. “Kill her and our deal is off.”
“Already gone,” Nix replied simply.
“What!” Jackie cradled Shelby’s head toward her chest. “No, wait. She can’t be!”
