by Jacob Rayne
‘We don’t know, sir. Morgan Sands was shipped out before he got to that stage.’
‘So how soon will we know if this one is better than Morgan Sands?’
The scientist looked down into the test area, where the test subject was looking around like a man waking up from a three day drinking binge.
‘A couple of days. Maybe a week.’
‘Jesus wept. Can’t you do it any quicker than that?’
‘We’re doing the best we can, Sir.’
‘I know. I know. We just need everything speeding up.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘It’s this one here, on the right,’ Mark said, pointing to his home.
Duggan stomped the brake and was out of the car before it had even stopped moving.
‘We’re gonna have to be quick,’ he told Mark, pointing out the blue lights that were beginning to flash in the distance.
With that, he pulled the shotgun from under his seat and rushed to the house.
He grimaced as he noticed the door standing open.
‘I don’t wanna scare ya, kid, but this sure doesn’t look good,’ he said, his concern plain to see. ‘You wanna wait in the car?’
Mark shook his head.
‘Your funeral,’ Duggan said, then winced at his inappropriate choice of words.
Mark didn’t seem to notice, so intent was he on the house.
Duggan looked cool as fuck as he kicked the door open, holding the shotgun at stomach level. Mark would have bet his life’s savings that this wasn’t the first time he’d done this.
‘Anyone in here?’ he called out.
His heart sank as he saw the blood spatters up the wall and the dark pool of blood spreading from beneath the body’s shattered skull.
Mark frowned and gulped hard when he saw the blood.
‘I can handle it,’ he insisted upon seeing Duggan’s concerned face again.
‘Let’s see if your ma is here,’ Duggan said. ‘But I gotta tell ya, this ain’t a good sign.’
Mark stepped over his stepdad’s corpse, pausing to glance at the crater in the top of his head that still seeped thick gore.
They searched the whole house but found no sign of Mark’s mother.
Reluctantly they left, as the blue lights and sirens began to converge on the house.
Abbott staggered into the old silo and took a quick glance around. The place was carpeted in bottles and cans. Wino territory. With his busted ankle and sour demeanour he’d no doubt fit right in.
He used his crutches to propel him through the entire silo, finding it empty.
If there were winos, they’d all gone in search of the next drink.
He unfurled the deluxe sleeping bag which he’d picked up from the Walmart at the edge of town and laid down for a sleep, his guns tucked down by his feet.
Hammett was not a man to whom the opportunities provided by the internet were lost.
Within an hour he had Jeffries’ address and the location of their headquarters. He memorised the addresses and got into his car.
Outside the security fences of the house he realised how deep he and Abbott were in it; there were armed guards everywhere.
Despite the ranks assembled against them, he took heart from the fact that so many guards in one place meant something important was being protected.
He uncoupled a grenade from his belt and waited in the car, unsure of his next move.
Duggan pulled up into a side road.
‘You ok?’ he asked, studying Mark’s face carefully.
‘I think so.’
Duggan’s lips floundered, looking for the right words. ‘I’m sorry, kid. For what happened and for what you saw, everything.’ He patted him on the shoulder, not quite sure what to do. He wanted to be there for the kid but didn’t know where to begin comforting him.
‘I didn’t even like my stepdad. He was a complete dick. So I don’t really… I mean he didn’t deserve that, but it’s no great loss, y’know.’
Duggan nodded.
‘But my mom,’ Mark said, tears filling his eyes.
‘I know, kid, I know,’ Duggan said, pulling Mark into a bearhug.
His body shook with sobs, his tears making tiny plopping sounds as they landed on Duggan’s jacket. Duggan glanced around. He shared Mark’s pain, having recently lost his son, and knew that kind words – even from a stranger – could make a huge difference.
‘There’s a motel some place around here,’ he said, squinting at the roadside signs. ‘Why don’t we go and get good and drunk?’
Mark nodded. ‘You know where we are?’
‘Not a fucking clue, but there’s gotta be a motel this close to the highway though, ain’t there?’
‘I guess.’
Duggan crawled along for a few miles until a garish neon motel sign appeared. ‘Told ya,’ he said, a grin on his face.
He pulled off and parked up in the motel’s lot.
Sensing movement next to him, Abbott woke with a start. He pulled out his handgun and aimed it in the direction of the intruder.
A pale faced, bearded man stared back at him.
‘You’re in my spot,’ the man said.
‘Find a new one,’ Abbott said, waving the gun for emphasis.
The tramp looked at the gun like he suspected it was a trick, like maybe a camera man was going to appear from the shadows in the corner of the room.
‘I’m new round here,’ Abbott said. ‘But I ain’t taking no shit.’
The tramp stared at Abbott unable to believe this was happening.
‘Keep on walking,’ Abbott said.
The tramp stared at the gun for a second, then his hand shot to his pocket.
Before he even saw what the tramp was reaching for, Abbott shot him right between the eyes.
The tramp fell, blood seeping out of the hole in his skull.
Andrews, the scientist in charge of monitoring the test facility, watched Subject I wake up. Already the subject seemed to be much more lucid and responsive.
The creature attached to his brain stem was starting to grow, giving the back of his head a bulbous appearance.
Andrews smiled as he checked the vital signs to discover that Subject I was functioning normally.
He reckoned this good news should be enough to get his boss off his back.
Duggan checked himself and Mark into the motel. For the sake of their finances, he had paid for a single room. The desk clerk had looked at them like they were faggots, which angered Duggan greatly. But he let it go for now.
He and Mark had drunk a shitload of beer and talked into the early hours – though Mark was still none the wiser as to what had happened to Duggan’s son – and had barely been asleep an hour when the door to their room flew open to reveal a gas-masked man spraying bullets in a wide arc.
Most of the bullets missed by a country mile, but one thudded into the pillow beside Mark’s head.
The bullets that hit Duggan’s side of the bed were a waste, for the biker had slept in the bathroom in case of just such an occurrence.
He calmly inched open the bathroom door and fired his shotgun at their attacker.
The blast caught the guard by surprise and he dropped his gun with a cry of dismay.
‘Don’t even think about going for another gun,’ Duggan said. ‘Or I’ll blow your balls out through your back.’
The gas-masked man raised his arms above his head.
‘Now, kick the door shut and sit your ass down on the bed. Nice and easy.’
The intruder did as he was told.
Mark got out of bed and grabbed the machine gun off the floor.
‘How many more are on the way?’ Duggan said.
The man shook his head. Muttered something that was inaudible due to his gas mask.
‘Take that mask off him, Mark. I can’t hear a fucking word.’
The man struggled, clearly not wanting the mask removed.
‘Hold still or I’ll blast you,’ Duggan sa
id.
The man did so. Without his mask the man looked scared, almost boyish. His blond hair was mussed across his face.
‘There’s just me,’ he said. ‘They said there was only the boy and an old man. Didn’t see any need for backup.’
‘Well they got that wrong,’ Duggan said. ‘Now, you want to explain what’s going on here?’
The man closed his mouth and shook his head.
‘Don’t make me beat it outta ya, son,’ Duggan said.
The man said nothing.
Duggan slammed a fist into the man’s collarbone, making an awful crack that seemed to echo off the walls before lodging in the minds of all three of the room’s occupants.
‘There’s plenty more where that came from,’ Duggan said. ‘You’d better just tell us what we want to know.’
‘What if he’s lying and there are more on the way?’ Mark said.
‘Good point. They’ll catch us unawares while we’re fucking around with this dog’s dick. Get him to the car.’
Duggan smacked the shotgun into the man’s chin. He went limp and rolled back onto the bed.
Duggan frisked him and found a hunting knife, a handgun and a pair of handcuffs.
He secured the man’s arms behind his back and dragged him out to the car.
‘Get the weapons and let’s get out of here,’ Duggan said, wedging the boot lid down on the hapless gunman.
They looked around, expecting lights and sirens to be on the way after the gunfire, but this neighbourhood looked like it was used to hearing gunshots.
It seemed unlikely anyone had called the cops.
Duggan pulled out of the motel’s lot and back onto the highway.
A noise woke Abbott in the twilight. The strange dream he’d had where some hideous creature had crawled into his skull was still prevalent in his mind as he scanned the shadows in the silo.
The sound seemed to have come from his right, but it was hard to tell.
He didn’t make too much of it as he reckoned it was just Hammett coming back.
A strange scraping sound came out of the darkness.
He looked again and was amazed to see the dead tramp dragging himself across the floor towards him, making a low moan deep in his throat. His eyes were rolled back in their sockets, his face streaked with dried blood and spatters of skull and brain. The dark hole in the centre of his forehead was like a sinister third eye.
He thought he was still in his strange nightmare, but something told him this was really happening.
Beneath the long straggly hair on the tramp’s head was a bump, spreading from just behind his temples to the base of his skull.
It was familiar but it still took Abbott a second to place it, then he remembered that Morgan had had a similar bulge on the rear of his head.
Aiming at the bulge, he emptied the magazine into the tramp’s head at close range.
The bullets made a ragged mess of the tramp’s head and face.
Congealed blood fell like jelly from the man’s wounds.
Still the tramp crawled on.
The bulge on the back of his head seemed to be moving, making ripples beneath the blood-soaked skin and matted hair.
As Abbott reloaded, the old man’s ruined head separated in a shower of gore. The mass of hair at the back fell away and fell to the floor.
In the dim light he saw a translucent mass attached to the back of the tramp’s skull. The light shimmered off it in the same way it would from the surface of a mass of water.
He stared at it in wonder for a moment then the translucent mass moved. It looked like a huge moth.
As he watched, the creature raised its wings, removing sections of the tramp’s skull as it did so. He saw small barbs around the inner edge of the moth’s wings.
The moth’s body moved now as the wings flapped. There was a sickly slurping sound like a blade being pulled out of flesh, then the creature lifted away from the tramp’s body.
Gaining his senses, Abbott raised his gun and fired at the floating creature.
The bullets hit it, drawing small splashes of a dark liquid. The creature let out a strange chittering cry then flew at his face.
He thrust his hands at the flapping mass in front of him, trying to knock it away, but it was heavier than he had anticipated.
Its barbed wings tore at his flesh.
Finally, he got a solid left hook on the creature and knocked it away from him.
It spun, seemingly disoriented by the blow, and disappeared into the shadows in the corner.
He followed, firing at where he guessed it to be from the sound of the thrumming wings.
After a few direct hits, the creature flew out of a hole in the silo’s wall.
‘What in the hell was that?’ he pondered aloud.
Andrews used a pulley machine to load Morgan Sands’ body onto the autopsy table and lined it up with the stump at the base of his severed head.
The gas mask and a thick hazmat suit were a vital precaution, to prevent the creature inside the terrorist creeping into his body.
He stared at the severed head that Abbott and Hammett had brought in with them.
The body had been flown in from the island for examination.
Using tongs to turn the head over, he looked for the tell-tale bulge at the back of the skull. The ruined skull had many wounds from the bullets, but the creature was nowhere to be seen.
He nervously looked around to see if the parasite was on the floor or the walls, and gulped when he could see no sign of it.
That meant the creature was either still on the island or hiding somewhere on the base.
The idea of it loose on the base was not an appealing one.
‘Need to discover if creature dies after host is destroyed,’ he wrote on his pad and underlined it three times for emphasis.
Before he went to investigate this, he examined Morgan’s head more closely.
There were small puncture wounds around the rear and sides of the skull, from where the creature’s spiked wings had clamped to Morgan’s bone. There were larger holes around the base of the skull, as a result of the creature’s clawed limbs digging in and attaching to the spinal column.
It was impossible to tell what had happened to the brain, as it had been ravaged by gunfire, but it looked like black ink had been injected into it.
Andrews put down the head and turned to the body. Like the head, the body was full of bullet holes, although it was easier to tell what was going on in here.
After making an incision from groin to gullet and using a bone saw to cut the sternum, he prised the ribs open.
At around chest height slim black tendrils came away from Morgan’s spinal column. The tendrils were approximately the thickness of a ballpoint pen and seemed to be made of the same type of flesh as human blood vessels.
He picked up one with his tongs and cut into it with his scalpel. Liquid with the colour and texture of molasses dripped out.
‘Is it incorporating its own circulatory system?’ he wondered aloud.
It certainly looked that way. He jotted the question down on his pad, feeling genuine excitement and fascination for his subject.
There was still so much to learn about this life form.
Jeffries’ phone started to vibrate on the table next to him. He debated over whether or not to answer as he was halfway through a meal with his family.
The vibrating stopped and he smiled. He couldn’t be bothered with disturbances now.
Again the phone began to vibrate, dancing across the table.
Must be important if they’re calling again.
He picked up. It was Andrews, talking very fast.
He listened then said, ‘Hold on, I’m coming.’
His wife scowled at him. The meal had taken almost an hour to prepare and he was going to leave most of it to grow cold on the plate.
‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ he promised.
He didn’t hear his wife’s furious reply as he was already
rushing out of the door.
‘So, what’s of such importance that you feel the need to make me miss another family dinner?’ he asked Andrews when he eventually reached the facility.
‘It’s the moth creature from Morgan Sands, Sir. It’s missing.’
‘What do you mean, missing? I thought they died once the link between them and the host was severed.’
‘So did I, Sir. That may be the case, but we don’t know. There’s a possibility it may still be alive.’
‘Jesus. What would happen if that was the case?’
‘I have no idea, but I imagine it would probably try to obtain a new host.’
‘Fucking hell, man. This is bad.’
‘I mean, let’s not freak out. It may be dead somewhere. But the best thing we can do is find it and make sure.’
‘Right. I’ll get every available man onto it.’
Duggan pulled into a layby twenty yards from the motel.
‘That should be far enough,’ he said. ‘Let’s get this fucker out of the boot.’
He applied the handbrake and dove out of the car.
The man in the boot was awake and struggling against his cuffs.
Duggan dragged him out by the scruff of his neck and pushed him into the field by the side of the road. There was a large drainage tunnel beneath the field.
It would make as good a place as any to interrogate the guard.
‘Now, Mark, this is not going to be pretty, and I’m sorry to have to expose you to this, but I can’t leave you out there on your own.’
‘I understand. And it’s fine. This bastard tried to kill me. I want to get even.’
The guard looked puzzled and scared as Duggan shoved the gun into his belly.
‘Loads of nerve endings in there,’ he said. ‘It’d take you a long time to die. So, do you want to tell us what’s going on here?’
The man said nothing.
Duggan shrugged and pulled the trigger.
The guard’s belly erupted in a cloud of gore. His screams echoed around the tunnel.
‘Y’know, you look in a lot of pain already. Just tell me and this will all stop.’
Mark pulled the handgun he’d taken from the guard he killed in the mall and put a bullet in the guard’s knee. The recoil of the gun was much more severe than he’d expected.
