He crept behind the rocks at the edge of the crater, knowing the bitch would be his.
4
The figure leapt at AJ from the blackness, massive and wolf-like. It kicked Kate in the chest, sending her spinning through the air. AJ watched her tumble to the ground, her backpack clanging off of a nearby rock. He waited for the whole thing to blow, but it didn't.
Mason spun towards him, his mouth frothing. AJ looked down at his own hands and the MP38 went off of its own accord, aiming itself towards his attacker. Mason was on him in two strides, taking the lead to the stomach. The burst should have bowled him backwards, but it didn't. He kept coming. He kept coming straight through it.
In one swift stroke, Mason swatted the gun, knocking it away like a toy. He grabbed AJ by the wrist and twisted, forcing the man back. AJ punched him in the balls, but there was nothing. No response save for a cold, dead-eyed stare. Mason brought him to his knees, laughing silent, gruesome laughter.
Behind him, Kate was getting to her feet, but she couldn't use the thrower, not unless she wanted to kill them both.
Mason pulled out his knife, a long steel blade streaked with gore. AJ caught his hand as he brought it down, but he was outmatched.
“Now,” the Mason-thing said. “Now, you seeeeeee!”
There was movement all around them as a fresh wave of Carrion shapes rose from the pit. There had to be at least twenty, all moving with feral ease. The figures began to fan out at the top, not attacking, but moving to surround.
“They're coming,” Kate called. “What do I do? AJ, what do I do?”
He felt his knees buckle, the knife inching towards his face. “Wait!” he coughed.
“They're getting closer!”
“Wait!” he choked.
Mason brought him down to the ground, pushing the knife lower... and lower. It was an inch from his eye.
And then behind him, AJ saw a new figure rise from the darkness. It stood tall, the insignia of an army lieutenant etched on its chest. Without warning, it pounced, leaping onto Mason's back. It began to tear at him, and in seconds, the other Carrion joined it. They were pulling at the big man, yanking him off of his target.
“Mineeee!” the thing screeched. “My dreaaaammmmm!”
“Get off me!” Mason yelled. “Get off of me, you fools!” He slashed with the knife and cut two of them deep, but the one on his back kept on. It was clawing at Mason's neck, digging with fingernails as long as daggers. With one final grunt, Mason threw the thing off of him, sending it crunching onto a pile of rocks. He looked back at AJ and snarled, his face covered in blood.
AJ's legs wobbled and then slipped, his feet sliding on slime. As he hit the ground, something flickered far back in the guard tower... then a thunder crack echoed through the air, and all of a sudden, Mason's shoulder snapped backwards, the knife flying from his hand. When he turned back, he had a hole above his heart the size of a ping-pong ball. AJ could see green flame on the other side of it. Bringing his hands to his chest, Mason pawed at the hole in disbelief. He took one stutter-step forwards and then toppled back into empty space. Where there should have been earth, there was only the void.
His body fell with no sound.
AJ looked towards the base—towards Dutch—and then back to the pit. “Bad luck day for you, my friend.”
The surviving Carrion figure got back to its feet, and AJ stared at it. It was an old, old thing. He fumbled for his backup pistol.
“Watch out!” Kate yelled.
The thing leapt... and AJ fired. He sidestepped, watching its limbs go dead in mid-jump. It hit the ground and twitched, its body thudding onto the hard earth. He stood up and shot it again, blasting its brain into oblivion. Whatever it had seen in him, whatever it had hoped to accomplish was gone in the span of a gunshot.
Kate looked at him, her face pallid.
“Now!” AJ yelled. “Whatever you got, burn them to Hell!”
5
Through the scope, Dutch watched the conflagration, dozens of them screaming and falling as Kate hosed them down. He watched AJ open fire, cutting through mob after mob. But for every dead Carrion, two more rose from the pit. Or dropped from the tentacles. Or slithered from the dark.
The flames burned them to nothing, and they came. The submachine gun cut them to pieces, and they came. Dutch shot them one after another, reloading an endless stream of cartridges, and still they came.
He shot one in the chest, cutting its heart in two. He shot another in the leg, blasting it off at the kneecap. He shot one in the stomach and another in the back, watching as they twisted and fell.
And yet still, they came.
His fingertips began to sizzle, reloading round after round into the hot steel of his rifle. His side was dripping now, a distant pitter-patter of drops on his boots. Every shot was a meat tenderizer, the rifle opening the slash in his side. His head began to swim. He had no idea how long this had been going on or how long it would last. The world beyond the gates began to shrink and grow in the dark.
When his head cleared, he realized his last two shots were dry-fires. He reached down and groped at the ammo box. Then the tower began to shake, and he stumbled. A few of the figures had broken from the group and begun to jump on the lower supports. He'd kicked the ladder down and shot a few stragglers, but they were getting bolder.
By the pit, he could see AJ and Kate fighting back to back, inching along the path. He'd never been much for praying, but he prayed now. Just a little faster. Hurry up and get back here so we can get the hell out—
Something grabbed his foot, something that had climbed up the supports.
“Get off me!” He turned the rifle and fired, fully expecting the thing's head to explode, but he hadn't reloaded. He hadn't reloaded!
Fingernails tore into his calf, and he toppled to the floor. The thing at his feet laughed dark hysterical laughter, and instantly, he knew who it was. It was Melvin, come back to drag him into the great beyond. The thing's head was distorted, its skin blotched with pond-water stains, but there was no mistake: it was him.
Dutch stumbled backwards, and the Melvin-thing pulled himself through the trap door. It was on Dutch in a second, thrashing, clawing, biting. Dutch grabbed it around the throat and held it back, but when he looked at the trapdoor, he saw they were no longer alone. Melvin had broken the dam. There were four or five of them scrambling up the sides now, all clambering towards him with that crazed, insatiable anger.
Feeling his strength give out, his arm sunk beneath the drive and adrenaline of his attacker. His side was fully split now, his blood running thin. He tried to throw Melvin over the tower, but the thing smashed him in the side of the head, and Dutch collapsed. His face landed next to the ammo box, and he looked at the shells mournfully. But the box wasn't only full of bullets.
He reached inside and grabbed an oblong shape just before Melvin turned him over, and the other figures crested the top of the tower. They did not wait on ceremony. He felt four new mouths attach to his clothes, ripping and tearing the cloth.
“You think you got the Dutch boy?” he screamed. “I got you! I got you!”
He twisted the top of the object, and the cord dropped. He pulled it just before Melvin tore his hand away and bit off two of his fingers.
Dutch remembered how Gideon had sounded in the machine shop at the docks. He remembered how horrifying his screams were, how he couldn't imagine what his death could have felt like.
Then they bit through his clothes, and he understood.
6
The tower exploded in a white flash, discharging a lightning-quick blast of sunlight over the wastes. It revealed the shadows of dozens more figures, rising and crawling over the mass of corpses. Kate looked at AJ and saw his face was stone, his eyes shining in the light of the fire. Then a shadow played across his features, and she saw how porcelain-thin that mask was.
“There!” she yelled. “There's the entrance to the docks!”
She pulled him after
her, knocking another one of the Carrion figures into the pit. If they had a chance, it was now.
A mass of tentacles twined over the exit, blocking it as they had blocked the base entrance. The two of them came to halt directly in front, the fisheries now visible through the cracks.
AJ tossed the smoking MP38 to the ground, but his face had cleared. “I'm out. Do your thing, honey. Melt them down.”
When she squeezed the trigger, the nozzle produced a dry coughing sound. “Empty!”
“What?”
The weight of the canisters was still obscene, and suddenly, she was very anxious to get them off. Dropping the hose, she unbuckled her waist straps and wriggled free of the harness. The backpack clanged angrily to the ground.
“I can't see. Where are they?”
AJ fired the last flare into the sky, and suddenly the hordes were there, sprinting from the edge where the two of them had been only moments before.
He tossed her a pistol.
“What are we going to do?”
“Shoot as many as we can.”
“Don't you have a grenade?”
AJ started to open his mouth, but she reached into his overcoat before he could speak and pulled out a Model-24, the same beast Dutch had used, the same Seiler had tossed onto the pirate vessel in the long ago. To her surprise, he produced a second grenade and handed it to her. “This is all I got! Make it count!”
She yanked the cords and tossed them both beneath the mass of tentacles, praying they would do the job. They had no room for error.
“Did you—” AJ asked, but that was as far as he got.
The earth detonated behind them, showering dirt and fungus in all directions. AJ dove over her, using the trench coat as a shield for the debris. A second after it was over, he was yanking her up and sloughing off the coat.
“Run!” he yelled. “Run like the wind!”
They passed through the gate and into the heart of the docks, the army of shapes mere seconds behind. Kate's eyes scanned the warehouses, searching for the one Dutch had described. Then, she saw. Down by the water stood a metal shack with signs of the recent fire. It hadn't burned, but there were scorch marks around the roof and the side door. Again she thought of the odds of the boat being incinerated, and again, she closed her mind to it.
The horde was gaining on them, pacing up the shore as if they knew what the two of them were planning. AJ fired one more round over his shoulder and then chucked the rifle, catching up to Kate and then surpassing her. He plowed through the door to the machine shop, and when she followed, he slammed the door behind her. His hands fumbled around the entrance until he found the wooden bar serving as the lock. He threw it into place, sealing them from the outside.
A second later, something large and heavy slammed against it, rattling the thin metal walls. Kate could hear them pawing and humping at the door, screaming to get in. She and AJ didn't have long. The boat bay was open to the water, and as soon as those things figured that out, they'd forget the door, circle the exterior, and get inside.
The ceiling was full of skylights, but without the sun, it was almost too dark to see. The moon illuminated two or three dim patches of room, and they were small.
“Where's the boat?”
A flame flickered to life as AJ produced his lighter. She breathed a sigh of relief; the boat was there, and it looked intact.
Something slammed into him in the dark, and AJ was suddenly flying into the floor. Kate heard his back crack into the concrete and winced. The figure on top of him hissed, its hands tearing at him with lawnmower speed.
“Your gun!” he called. “Kate, shoot this fucking thing!”
She reached into her waist band and hoisted the Luger. “You have to get it off of you!” she cried. “Get it off!”
AJ looked at her, then planted a boot in the thing's chest and pushed, sending it flying across the room. It landed almost perfectly in a square of moonlight.
“Shoot it!”
She fired, the gun thundering in her hands not once, but three times. All three shots connected, the blackened thing twisting and spinning under the force of the shots. It slumped to the ground, either dead or dying.
AJ jumped to his feet and began running to the boat. There was no time for thanks. She heard splashes in the water and knew the horde was moving towards the bay doors.
“Come on!” he yelled.
But she found her mind wasn't totally numb yet. “The water! We have to lower it into the water!”
“Find the release!”
He ran to the engine and thumbed the engine primer, five presses inside a second. After giving the rest a quick look, he pulled the rope. The engine shuddered but didn't start.
Kate shuffled around the perimeter, searching for something that might look like a switch or a hoist. “I can't find it!”
AJ pulled the starter one more time. “Look! You're probably looking for a rod or something mechanical.”
She saw it then, a thin, brown shaft sticking out of a pulley mechanism. She ran to it and pulled. At first, it didn't give, but when she put all of her weight against it, the thing creaked and slid downwards. The boat dropped with a sudden ferocity, slamming into the water at full tilt. AJ lost his footing and fell, the lighter going dead. I've knocked him out, she thought crazily. I've knocked him out, and in so doing, killed us both!
But then, he was standing up with the lighter in hand, giving her a look that was two parts gratitude and one part exasperation.
“Help me!” she said, trying to get across the gap.
“Help yourself, or we're not going to make it!”
Something splashed in the water not ten feet from the bay doors. She took his advice and jumped, landing just inside the walls of the boat.
AJ pulled the starter and the engine turned over, the propeller spinning up to full speed. He slammed the engine throttle down, and before she could sit up, the boat was flying forwards. It clunked against something soft and organic, and then suddenly, they were in open water. The machine shop was disappearing behind them, the island looming behind it. She watched as the blackened hordes swarmed after them, but it was too late. They were away.
They were far away.
Chapter 24: Cheruta
The Island:
February, 1939
1
They arrived to pandemonium. Doctor Grey's Carrion had come, and the whalers did not stand a chance.
Lucja's companion pulled the bike up to the wooden docks, hoping to get them close to the nearest departing ship. As they dismounted, she saw they had come too late. The ship was overloaded with seven or eight blackened figures, all clutching and climbing from the water. It began to sink under their weight, and in seconds, the men on board were torn apart.
“Over here!”
She looked further up the walk and saw a man standing outside one of the warehouses, beckoning.
“The last ship is over there! If we hurry, we can—”
A shape pounced off of a nearby roof and landed on top of him. Lucja thought it had once been a dog. It tore off the man's face in two quick bites.
Jan drew his pistol and fired his last three shots, then tossed the gun into the water and began to run, dragging Lucja behind him. The dog-thing, hurt but not dead, started limping after them.
Dead littered the walk. The ships had gone, leaving the stragglers to fend for themselves against the oncoming horrors. She could hear screaming as men were dragged from their hiding spots into the dark. The wood beneath her feet lay stained with blood.
“Keep going!” Jan said. “With me!” He was breathing hard but still outpacing her.
Several men clung to life at the edges of the docks, reaching towards the sea and the brothers who had left them behind. One such man grabbed a bone saw to defend himself but could do nothing against the horde, and soon found himself pinned to a deck bollard, his legs disappearing in a whirl of claws and teeth. He looked at Lucja, his eyes glazing over, then used the saw to cut hi
s own throat.
“It's too late!” she cried, hot tears running down her face. “They're going to get us!”
“They're not going to get us! Look!”
Lucja saw one more boat, and it was a big one, a catcher ship. It had left the pier but was drifting slowly from the shore. It looked just like The Adalgisa, and for a moment, she thought it was The Adalgisa, but that couldn't be.
As they turned onto the final deck, the last straight line to the water, Lucja heard footfalls. She looked over her shoulder and saw three humanoid shapes running after them. They had caught their scent and were tearing up the deck.
“Jump!” Jan yelled. “Into the water!”
They leapt from the end of the pier, flying into the murky dark. An instant before she hit, Lucja remembered her sister and what the water had done to her. And then the cold washed over her, freezing her bones solid. Against all odds, she kept her mouth closed, willing herself not to drown. An instant later, she was swimming. Jan had never asked if she could swim, but it wouldn't have mattered; it was swim or die.
A moment later, she felt her arms grow sluggish, the cold overwhelming her. She wanted to cough but knew if she did, she wouldn't be able to stop. She kept going, focusing on the back of the ship and the name etched into the metal: The Cheruta.
Hands were suddenly around her waist, and before she knew what was happening, she was being hoisted into the air. A man from the ship had grabbed her and was now lifting her on board. The man set her feet down to the wood, and before she could blink, she was safe... safe!
The man went back to the rails and reached down for Jan. “Give me your hand! Come on, reach!”
But Jan was too far away; the cold had almost taken him.
On the side wall, she saw a lifebuoy tied to a rope. No one else had thought to grab it, so she did, taking the heavy object in her hand. She moved to the side of the ship, and the men parted for her.
“Let her pass!” one of them said.
“Toss it to him!” yelled another. “Before it's too late!”
As Lucja looked over the side, Jan stopped struggling. He saw her there, standing with the thing in her hands, and waited. His eyes seemed to know what she was picturing. She was seeing Jan as he really was. Not just her savior, but the man who had helped take her mother, the man who had kept her father imprisoned, the man who had stood by when her sister was killed. She was seeing the man who had pushed her father away when only two of them could fit on the motorcycle.
The Aeschylus Page 34
