by Tim Waggoner
Someone knocked on the passenger door.
Kevin and Olivia exchanged looks, but they made no move toward the front of the van. The knocks came again, louder this time.
Olivia stood and, hunched over, made her way to the passenger door. She opened it and said, “Yes?”
A hand reached in, grabbed her by the front of her shirt, and pulled her out of the van.
Kevin didn’t hesitate. He slid open the van’s side door and jumped out. Olivia lay on the ground, looking up at a man who stood over her, pointing a pump-action shotgun at her. The barrel was only inches from her face, and her normally composed expression was gone, replaced by desperate fear.
The man looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. He had a boyish face, making his age difficult to determine. He had a high forehead, short brown hair, and was clean-shaven. He wore a green button-down shirt, brown slacks, and black shoes. His features were set in a grim expression, and Kevin noted that the man’s finger was on the shotgun’s trigger, ready to squeeze.
“Are you one of them?” the man demanded.
Despite her obvious fear, Olivia’s voice remained steady as she replied. “It depends on who they are.”
Kevin recognized the man from the files Research had provided for them. This was Wes Bishop.
He held up his hands to show he was unarmed.
“It’s okay, Mr. Bishop. We’re not here to hurt you or your wife.”
Wes looked away from Olivia as soon as Kevin started speaking, although he kept his shotgun trained on her. His eyes widened in surprise when Kevin spoke his name.
Kevin went on. “Maybe we could go inside and talk?”
Wes scowled. “How do I know you’re not one of them? One of the Durg?”
“Because neither of us is trying to chew your face off,” Kevin said.
Wes thought about that for a moment before finally lowering his shotgun.
“Fair enough,” he said.
* * *
The inside of the Bishops’ shack was only marginally better than the outside. The floorboards were warped, the ceiling needed patching, and everything smelled of mold and rotting wood. There were only three rooms—a living-dining area, a small bedroom, and a closet-sized bathroom. The Bishops had nothing in the way of decorative touches. No photos, art, knickknacks or curtains, and the walls were unpainted. Now that they were inside, Kevin could see that the windows were boarded up with thick pieces of wood. Their furniture was minimal and so ratty it looked as if it had been salvaged from a dump: a small table with two chairs, a stained and threadbare loveseat, and a faded throw rug in front of the door. They had no kitchen, only a chipped basin sink with a rusty faucet and handles, and a counter with a hot plate on it. Instead of a refrigerator, they had a large plastic cooler resting against one wall. The place was so primitive-looking that Kevin was surprised they had electricity, but they did. The single floor lamp that provided the shack’s sole illumination proved it.
Allison Bishop sat at the table. A pretty woman with shoulder-length black hair, she appeared to be around the same age as her husband. She wore a white dress with a light gray sweater over it. Like her husband, she eyed Kevin and Olivia with suspicion.
Wes stood behind his wife, shotgun held at his side, ready to bring it up and fire at a moment’s notice. Olivia sat at the table with Allison—at Wes’s insistence—leaving Kevin to stand on the opposite side of the table from where Wes was. Wes had excellent shots at both Kevin and Olivia, but this hadn’t been difficult to arrange. The inside of the shack was so small and bare, there wasn’t any cover or any place to hide.
As soon as the four had gotten settled, Wes had demanded to know who Kevin and Olivia were and what they were doing spying on him and his wife. Kevin was fully conscious of the fact that both he and Olivia still wore their smart glasses, and while the Analysts were most likely not watching a live feed from them at the moment—the real action was at the Lantzes’ home back in Ohio—he knew everything they said and did was being recorded for later review.
Maintenance employees had one directive above all others that they had to obey, regardless of the circumstances, or they would be, as it was referred to in official Maintenance parlance, voided. Kevin didn’t want to die, euphemistically or otherwise, and he didn’t want Olivia to die, either. By answering Wes’s questions, Kevin would put both himself and Olivia in danger from their own people. But then again, Wes was the one holding the shotgun, and Kevin figured if he didn’t tell the truth—all of it—the man would kill them here and now.
So he began talking.
Olivia kept shooting him dark looks as he spoke, and he thought that if Wes hadn’t been armed, she might well have attacked him to shut him up.
He did his best to give Wes the short version, but he was nervous and it took him the better part of thirty minutes to finish. Neither of the Bishops interrupted or asked questions. They listened quietly, and when Kevin was finished, Allison said, “It’s happening faster than I thought it would.”
She sounded sad as she spoke these words, and her husband stepped closer and put a hand on her shoulder. She smiled wearily and reached up to cover his hand with her own.
“What’s happening?” Olivia said.
Allison continued as if Olivia hadn’t spoken.
“We didn’t have a choice. He made us do it.”
“He watches,” Wes said. “Not all the time, and he can’t always see clearly from where he is. But that’s the thing. You don’t know when he’s watching.”
“Or how much he can see,” Allison said. She looked at Olivia and Kevin. “You can’t know what it’s like.”
Kevin didn’t say anything, but he reached up and touched his smart glasses.
“That’s why we moved here,” Allison said. “This whole area is entropically compromised, and we thought the negative energy would conceal us from him—especially since the bulk of his attention would be on Joan.”
“Before we moved out of the house, we put up some wallpaper,” Wes said. “It wasn’t much, I admit, but we were afraid to do anything more.”
Kevin and Olivia exchanged looks. So far, neither of the Bishops were making much sense. Kevin wondered if their time exposed to the negative energy in the house back in Ash Creek had caused their minds to degrade.
Allison looked at Wes. “I told you it wouldn’t work.”
He shrugged.
Olivia furrowed her brow and pursed her lips tightly. Up to this point in their brief working relationship, she had struck Kevin as unflappable. But it looked like her patience was finally reaching its end.
She slapped a hand on the table, the sound making the Bishops—as well as Kevin—jump.
“Who in the hell is he?” she demanded. “What’s wrong with you people? Why can’t you speak plainly and clearly?”
Allison scowled and she opened her mouth to reply, but she was cut off by a sound—multiple sounds—coming from outside the shack. More precisely, from all around the shack. The blood drained from her face and she bolted from her chair, grabbed hold of her husband, and held him tight. She buried her face in his chest, but Kevin could still make out her words when she said, “They’ve found us.”
This time neither Kevin nor Olivia needed any explanation. The sound coming from outside was both familiar and extremely unsettling.
Clack-clack-clack-clack…
* * *
“What is this?”
Jon was looking down at his plate with a bemused expression.
Joan looked across the table at him.
“It’s a new recipe I thought I’d try out. It’s called spaghetti.”
She waited for him to say something back to her for being a smart-ass, but instead he leaned his face closer to his plate and inhaled.
“Smells…interesting.”
So his response to her was to be a smart-ass back. It wasn’t like him to be playful, but she decided to play along. She could do with a distraction after the crazy bomb that ha
d suddenly exploded all over her life.
She took a sip of Shiraz. There’d been enough left after this afternoon for them both to have a glass with dinner. Jon hadn’t touched his yet. That was a bit strange too. He wasn’t an alcoholic or anything, but he usually polished off half a glass before starting his meal in earnest.
“Use that metal thing—the one with the three tines? You need to kind of wrap the spaghetti around it first, though. It can be a tricky maneuver, so if you don’t want to work that hard, you can just lift the plate to your mouth and dump it all in at once.”
He straightened in his seat and looked at his silverware. He reached a hand toward the fork, but then he hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure he’d identified the correct utensil. He eventually picked it up and held it to his face, turning it this way and that as he examined it.
She’d made garlic bread, broccoli, and salad to accompany the pasta. Normally Jon would wolf down a piece of garlic bread before eating anything else. But he’d paid no attention to the rest of the food. Tonight it seemed he only had eyes for the spaghetti.
She smiled. It was nice seeing him goofy—on purpose—for a change.
He glanced from the fork to the spaghetti several times before finally putting the utensil down, picking up the plate, lifting it to his mouth, and doing as she’d suggested, dumping it all in at once. Marinara sauce and pasta spilled to either side of the plate, striking his shirt and pants with thick wet plaps, leaving large clumps of sauce on his clothes before the mess finally fell to the floor.
Jon lowered his plate. The bottom half of his face, nose included, was smeared with sauce, and big strands of spaghetti hung from his mouth. He frowned and spit a large mouthful of spaghetti and sauce onto the table, then tossed the plate after it.
“This mouth is too small for that technique to work,” he said. “It would be more effective if the long things were cut into smaller segments before being served.”
Joan had been about to take another sip of wine when Jon dumped the spaghetti all over himself. Her mouth hung open, the glass touching the edge of her bottom lip. She sat frozen, struggling to process what had just happened. She could imagine Jon being silly and playful, sure, but only to a certain degree. But she could never have imagined him doing something like this. Was something wrong with him? Was he sick? Had he experienced some sort of stroke? Was he on drugs?
But as he looked at her, sauce dripping from his chin like bright blood, gaze unreadable, expression neutral, she realized that whatever had happened to him, it was part of everything else. Her dream, Mark Maegarr, Placidity, the pages from The Book of Masks…
The glass slipped from her hand, forgotten. It hit the floor and shattered in a spray of red wine and glass shards.
“I-I’m sorry,” she said, not taking her eyes off him. “I’ll clean it up. Why don’t you take off those clothes and toss them in the washer? Don’t start it, though. Those stains will have to be treated first.” She spoke rapidly, words tumbling out of her mouth seemingly of their own accord. She moved away from the table as she spoke, facing Jon the entire time. He continued to sit, but his head swiveled to follow her as she continued moving away from him and into the kitchen. She had no specific plan for escape. She just needed to get away from him—now.
Jon stood and turned toward her. He smiled then, his teeth a slash of white cutting through red marinara.
She almost ran then. She wanted to—God, how she wanted to! But this was her home, and ever since she’d had that dream last night, it had been under assault. She didn’t know why it was happening or what force was behind it, and she didn’t care. She’d lost homes twice before, and she’d be damned if she was going to let it happen a third time.
Part of her mind thought, Twice? It was only once.
But another part, the one that spoke with Debbie’s voice said, Forget about that. The fucker’s coming for you!
It was true. Jon was walking toward her.
Her first instinct was to grab the biggest, sharpest knife she could find, but despite how bizarre he was acting, Jon was still her husband, and she didn’t want to seriously hurt—or even kill—him if she didn’t have to. She’d used a pot to boil the spaghetti, a steamer for the broccoli, and a cookie sheet for the garlic bread. They were all still out, all within reach, but none would make an effective weapon. But she knew something that would. She knelt in front of the cupboard beneath the stove, opened the doors, reached in, and withdrew an old-fashioned skillet. It had belonged to her grandmother, who had raised her after her parents had been killed—at least until she’d died two years later. After that, Joan had lived in a series of foster homes until she’d turned eighteen. She didn’t use the skillet that often, only on special occasions, and this seemed like a pretty damn special occasion to her. She stood and hefted the skillet in a two-handed grip—she’d forgotten how heavy it was—and brandished it before her like a weapon.
Jon, still smiling, continued toward her, walking in a measured, unhurried pace.
“Don’t make me do this, Jon.” Inside she was screaming, but the hands gripping the skillet’s handle were steady.
His smile widened.
“I’m not Jon anymore.”
And then he came at her.
* * *
Kevin wished he had a gun. And when the Durg began scratching and biting at the outer walls of the shack, he wished he had a whole fucking armory. A fire extinguisher wasn’t going to cut it this time.
Olivia looked at Wes.
“How much ammunition do you have for that gun?” she asked.
“Not enough,” Wes said. His mouth was set in a grim, determined line, but his gaze was that of a man who, while willing to fight, knew he didn’t have a chance of winning.
Allison released her husband and started toward Kevin. Her face was streaked with tears, but fury blazed in her eyes.
“This is your fault!” she said. “He wouldn’t have found us if you hadn’t come here! He followed you!”
“Allison…” Wes said.
She spun away from Kevin to face her husband. “Don’t call me that! Don’t call me Ashley, either! My name’s Monica!”
Wes Bishop looked at his wife, and his entire body seemed to sag, as if what little fight remained to him had fled. He walked over to Olivia and handed her the shotgun—which Kevin couldn’t help feeling was more than a bit emasculating for him, even though he’d never fired a shotgun before in his life.
Wes then went to Allison and enfolded her in his arms. A hitching sob racked her body, and she said, “I don’t want to die again, Brian. Not because of him.”
Wes held his wife as he looked at Kevin and Olivia. “He figured out what we did to try to protect Joan, pathetic as it was. He doesn’t forgive.”
The scratching and gnawing sounds grew louder as the Durg’s efforts intensified. Kevin feared they didn’t have much time left. They needed a plan, and they needed it fast. But before he could even begin to start thinking, the first Durg broke through the wall near the couch. The human-sized insect came scuttling toward them, mandibles snapping, eager to tear into flesh. Olivia aimed the shotgun, pulled the trigger, and the Durg’s head disintegrated in a burst of black ichor. Olivia chambered another round.
“How many rounds left?” she asked.
“Seven,” Wes—or was it Brian?—answered. “There are more shells in the drawer under the hot plate.”
“I’ll get them,” Kevin said. As he ran toward the not-quite-a-kitchen, another Durg came through a hole the first made. Olivia shot that one too, as well as a third that broke through next to the door.
Five rounds left, Kevin thought.
He found a box of shells where Wes said they’d be. He was disappointed at how light the box felt, though. A half-full box was better than nothing, but a full box would’ve been best.
He hurried to Olivia’s side as three more Durg broke into the shack. She managed to kill two of them, but only blew a single leg off the third. The loss of a lim
b didn’t slow the creature down, and it avoided them and scuttled straight toward the Bishops. At first Kevin thought this was because the Durg feared the shotgun, but then he realized the creatures had been sent by the mysterious Him to kill the Bishops. That didn’t mean they would spare Olivia and Kevin, but they wouldn’t attack them until Wes and Allison were dead.
Wes pushed Allison aside and stepped forward to the meet the Durg’s attack. The insect slammed into him, almost knocking him down, but Wes managed to stay on his feet. He grabbed hold of the creature’s head, fighting to keep its furiously snapping mandibles from cutting into his flesh. The Durg flailed at him with its five remaining legs, which—while not as deadly as its mandibles—had small but sharp spines protruding from them. The spines shredded Wes’s clothes, raked his skin, and blood flowed.
Kevin knew what had to be done—the only thing that could be done.
“Kill them,” he said to Olivia.
Olivia had the shotgun aimed at Wes and the Durg, but she hadn’t fired yet, presumably fearing she might accidentally hit Wes. She turned to look at him, disbelief on her face.
“We can’t stop the Durg,” he said. “They’re going to kill them no matter what. But we can make their deaths easier.”
Olivia looked at him for a moment, then she nodded, aimed the gun, and fired.
Wes’s head became so much shredded meat, and the impact of the blast knocked him—and the Durg—to the floor. The insect immediately climbed on top of Wes’s body and began gouging out large chunks of flesh and ingesting them.
