by Tim Curran
“Fucking storm beat the hell out of the Jeep,” Carl said. “She’s drivable…at least for now.”
“We just have to get to Bitter Creek,” I said.
“And where is that?”
“According to Price, it’s north, up in Boone County.”
Mickey nodded. “Okay. And what’s in Bitter Creek?”
“That’s what we have to find out,” I said.
I wasn’t about to tell them what I thought or felt or what Price said about the Level 4 facility there. No sense spooking anyone more than they already were. Because I could see it in their eyes: a combination of excitement and dread and there was no mistaking it. They knew we were nearing our destiny, that something very big was just around the corner.
“Maybe it’ll be paradise,” Mickey said with all due sarcasm. “Maybe it’ll be the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Carl pulled off a cigarette. “Sure, honey. And maybe it’ll be hell on earth.”
“Let’s just ride this storm out for now,” I said.
I left them there hashing it out. I went over to the others. They were sitting on a low stone trough. Janie had broke out some MREs and Texas Slim was regaling them with a story of a tornado at his aunt’s farm in Oklahoma. This was his version of dinner theater. I wasn’t hungry, but I listened to Texas tell of cows getting sucked up into the funnel, their badly worn carcasses getting deposited in the parking lot of an all-you-can eat barbeque joint twenty miles away.
“So at least none of that beef went to waste,” he said.
I walked away, Morse snapping a few shots of me, and leaned against one of the stalls. The smell of hot food made my stomach flip and flop. I stayed there by myself, chain-smoking and wondering if I was leading those poor people to their deaths.
Lost in thought, I looked up and Janie was standing there.
“What’re you thinking about, Nash?” she asked me, though I could see by the set of her face that she had absolutely no interest. “Something important or just musing over Mickey’s tits?”
“I was musing over Mickey’s tits.”
Janie shook her head and turned away.
“It was a fucking joke,” I told her. “C’mon.”
She stayed though it was obvious that she no longer cared for my company and could you honestly blame her? All men lust in their hearts, don’t they? But only the stupid ones let it go any farther than that.
“I was thinking about these people, Janie.”
“What about them?”
I pulled off my smoke, wishing to God I could quit and knowing there wasn’t much point to it at that stage. “They’re following me because they have some kind of faith in me or they fear The Shape or they think it-or I-will keep them safe. For the most part, they don’t question; they accept. And that bothers me. The faith they have.”
“Well, faith of any sort would bother a guy like you,” she said and then noticing that I was oblivious to her barbs, said, “They need something to believe in, Nash. Everyone does. Especially now. And you have to admit, for the most part they’ve been lucky with you.”
“Specs and Sean weren’t so lucky.”
But she had no interest in discussing the dead. “And you’re bothered by this faith?”
“Yes, I am.” I ground out my cigarette. “We’re going to a place called Bitter Creek, Janie. All I know is that somewhere near there Price says there is a storage facility the Army kept its germ warfare agents at. That’s all I know. But I know it’s where I’m supposed to go. I know, somehow, that it all ends there. I have to go there…but I don’t know about the rest of you. I wonder if I shouldn’t tell you people to keep heading west and just drop me off. I don’t like the idea of the rest of you facing what I know I have to face.”
“Hmm. Suddenly you have some overwhelming desire to protect their lives?”
“Yes.”
“It’s too late, Nash. They’ll follow you and you can’t get rid of them.”
“What about you?”
She studied me with her cold blue eyes. “I have my own reasons for staying with you and, believe me, they have nothing to do with love for who or what you’ve become.”
“Why don’t you tell me what I’ve become?”
“What good would it do?”
She turned away and I grabbed her hand. She yanked it away like she’d just touched a rattlesnake. “Don’t touch me, Nash. You don’t have the right anymore. I’ll stay with you like the others. But only because I need to, not because I want to.”
2
“You smell that?” Carl said about ten minutes later.
I stopped brooding. The wind was coming from the other direction, through the half-open door at the far side, and I could smell death on it: hot, putrefying. It was a smell I knew well, the bouquet of every city in the country and the world for that matter. But in that barn you did not expect it. It was high, nauseating and it was getting stronger.
Carl, Texas, and I grabbed our guns.
We tracked the smell to the far end of the barn and each step I took on the way there made my heart sink a little lower. We didn’t need more trouble. We had to get to Bitter Creek. And with what might be waiting there, wasn’t that enough?
“Something around that stall,” Texas said, his Desert Eagle. 50 cal in his hands.
Carl moved forward with his AK. I followed.
Corpses.
There was some kind of trough cut into the floor and its purpose was unknown to me. There were five or six bodies in there. They were greening, going soft with rot. They were all bloated up, that stink so thick it was nearly palpable.
“Shit,” Carl said.
One of the bodies moved. Then another. It was incredible, but I saw it and despite all I knew about horror by that point-which was considerable, I might add-I found myself gripped with an unreasoning superstitious terror at the idea of a moving corpse.
But there was nothing supernatural about it.
The bodies were infested. That’s all it was. A corpse-worm that was perfectly white and perfectly smooth slid out of the eye socket of one of the bodies. It was slimy and steaming, about three feet of it wavering side-to-side in the air, that bulb-like head opening and closing like it was breathing.
Carl shot it, cut it in half before it could spit some of its digestive enzymes at us. The bullets shattered it into a fleshy sauce of black bile. The rest of it slid back into the eye socket.
“We should burn those bodies or something,” Carl said.
“Why?” Texas asked him. “Once those worms are done eating, they’ll just starve anyway with no more meat to be had.”
“True,” I said.
Texas and I turned away and walked towards the others. I called out to them that it was nothing but a worm and they relaxed. Carl was right behind us. He couldn’t help himself, he pointed his AK into the pit and gave the remains a couple of three-shot bursts.
And that’s when we all heard the screaming.
3
A man came charging out at us. He had a shovel in his hands and he planned on using it. I don’t know where he’d been hiding-maybe under the straw-but he charged right at Carl before any of us could intervene and before Carl could get his weapon up. He swung the shovel and Carl ducked out of the way. It barely missed his head. The shovel blade hit the concrete with such force it sparked.
Then Carl cracked the guy with the butt of his AK and down he went.
He was some raggedy old man with a white beard. He was on his knees, breathing hard, blood running down his temple.
Carl got his rifle on him.
“We won’t hurt you,” I told him and he just looked at me with wild, confused eyes. The eyes of an animal. He muttered something, but it made no sense. The others were circled around us by that time. He saw them, panicked, and crawled away on all fours towards the door.
Carl made to go after him.
“Let him go,” I said.
He made it to the big door, slid it open and the rain
poured in. It was coming down in sheets. The old guy was soaking wet in seconds. He cried out something and darted out into the storm. All of this happened in under less than a minute.
We saw him out there, the rain and wind hammering into him. He started first this way, then that, and then…then he screamed. We all saw something huge and undulant move in his direction. It hit him and dragged him off into the rain. None of us could be sure what it was. It just happened too fast. In the back of my mind I had an image of a gigantic snake coming out of the murk.
He screamed again and that was it.
Guns in hand, we watched, we waited, but there was nothing. Just the rain spraying into puddles and lashing the sides of the barn.
Nothing else.
4
The storm ended a couple hours later and by that time we knew without a doubt that there were things out there, out in the pastures and cornfields. We had no idea what they were, but we could hear them. For some time we’d been hearing low squealing and sharp screeching sounds. And once a resounding booming noise as if something had placed an extremely large foot down.
The storm had left a pinkish fog in its wake, but the Geiger told us it was harmless. Still, it was heavy and claustrophobic and I didn’t like the idea of legging it out to the Jeep with what we were hearing. As it was, the Jeep was only a vague phantom in the mist.
“It might be advisable to wait until the fog lifts,” Price said.
I was going to disagree with him because I really had to; we had to get moving. Whatever it was, it was building in me: the need to get to Bitter Creek as soon as possible. The idea of waiting was just not an option. His suggestion was greeted with a stony silence by everyone.
Everyone but Mickey. “I think he’s right, Nash.”
But nobody wanted to wait; I saw that.
“I’ll lead the way out,” Carl said. “Nash, you come with me. Texas, you get my signal, lead the others out.”
I knew then it wasn’t just me. The others felt it, too. They were as filled with anxiety as I was. We had to go. We needed to go.
Carl went out and I was right behind him. The fog felt moist, almost sticky against my face. Ten feet from the door, the barn vanished. It was swallowed by the consuming fog which seemed to thicken by the moment, stirring itself into an opaque soup that began to look less pink and more blankly white and suffocating.
We found the Jeep and sighed.
“Okay,” I called out to the others, wiping a dew of moisture from my face. “Come on!”
Carl jumped behind the wheel and turned the Jeep over. The ignition sputtered a few times and my heart dropped. Sometimes those weird lightening storms will fuse out the electrical systems of vehicles and you’ll never get them running again. The ignition caught finally, the engine holding a fine idle.
I allowed myself to breathe.
I knew we weren’t alone out there. I could hear occasional dragging sounds in the distance. I was aware of ghostly shapes moving through the fuming mist.
Something moved near the back of the Jeep and was gone before I could draw a bead on it.
“Hurry!” I called to the others, trying to watch every direction at the same time.
Something else moved past me. I could have shot it. It was close enough…but what I saw, well it was too crazy. Just a hunched over shape running on all fours. It looked almost like a hog, a huge and barrel-bodied hog, bristled and corpse-white. That’s what I saw. I thought it had the face of a man.
I heard others hopping about in the mist.
Carl got out of the cab. “Are they fucking coming or what?” he wanted to know.
The words barely got out of his mouth when I heard the hopping sounds again and something made a shrill squealing and dove out of the mist, flattening Carl. I ran over towards him and some pig-faced mutation came at me. I put two rounds in it, fired three more into the mulling, hopping shapes in the fog, and something hit me from behind and put me face down.
I came up fast, fired a shot, and heard Carl cry out.
I scrambled over to him and one of those things…whatever in the Christ they were…had him pinned down. It looked like a hog, all right…except that it was swollen a blubbery white. Carl was fighting against it as it pummeled him with its split hooves and tried to get its snout at his throat. I got over there and kicked the thing two or three times until it fell off. I should have shot it…but I was afraid of hitting Carl. It rolled off him, greasy and shining white, and came right up, its face caught somewhere between a hog and a man. Its pink, glistening eyes were on me. It was snorting and squealing madly, its mouth almost like a blow hole and filled with sharp yellow teeth that were curled back like those of a rattlesnake.
It dove and I put three rounds into it, which dropped it but hardly killed it.
Carl had his AK then and he blew its head apart.
It lay there, legs kicking in the mud, splattered with dirt and leaves and splotches of dark red blood that looked almost black against its luminously white flesh. Its head was drilled open in three or four places, jelly-like blood pulsing out with a horrible sputtering sound.
“Jesus,” Carl said turning away.
Texas, I knew, had gotten the others back into the barn for safety. He was calling out to us.
“Yeah, bring ‘em over,” I said.
I saw no more of those hog things.
The others were coming now. I couldn’t even see them, I could only hear them stumbling over the muddy drive, splashing through puddles. That’s what I heard, the Beretta 9mm tight in my fist. And then I heard something else and if the engine coughing dropped my heart, this made it plummet into black depths. It was a deafening, almost primeval roaring sound that shook the world.
I had the doors open and I pushed Janie and Mickey inside, then Texas and I almost made it. Yes, we almost did. Then Price cried out. He’d been coming around the rear of the Jeep to get in on Carl’s side…and then something took him.
I heard him scream.
Something coiled around him like the thing that had taken the crazy old farmer. It was black and smooth and serpentine, flattened, the outer edges set with spikes like the traps of a carnivorous plant.
I fired at it. So did Carl for all the good it did.
I saw Price get taken. He didn’t get pulled off into the fog, he got pulled up into it as if whatever had gotten him was hovering right over us.
Morse started snapping pictures like a combat photographer and I pushed him inside.
Carl jumped into the cab and I made to follow suit, except something like a whip lashed out of the fog and hit me. Not only hitting me, but tossing me ten or fifteen feet away.
Carl called out.
I heard someone in the Jeep scream my name. I wanted to believe it was Janie, but I’m sure it was Mickey.
Getting to my knees, the breath knocked out of me, I looked up.
The thing was right above me. It had to be nearly the size of a mobile home. Huge and swollen and lumpy, covered in greasy mats of fur or wiry spines. It was hanging there like it was buoyant, filled with gas. Maybe it was. First thing I thought-although it makes no sense-is spider. But it was no spider. I don’t know what the hell it was. I saw clusters of orange globular eyes, appendages of some sort akin to legs or tentacles, but segmented like the tails of scorpions, pink and pulsing, the edges serrated with spikes. In the very center of that grotesque, rolling profusion up there was a great black abyss that might have been a mouth.
Those limbs were draped everywhere.
I felt very much like a fly in a spider’s web. I knew whatever way I moved, it would have me. So I did not move…I crouched there, stunned, feeling an aching need to piss. The beast hung above me like some freakish nightmare that had being birthed from the fog itself. Slimy and dripping and bristling. The appendages trembled from time to time with shuddering tremors.
It had something in its mouth.
I think it was Price.
It was working him, rendering him. Sucking
and slobbering and chewing. Something fell from that colossal maw and clattered to the ground. It was a human femur, polished and gleaming.
I felt a wet peal of hysterical laughter bubble in my throat.
Slowly, painfully slowly, I began moving forward, towards the Jeep which seemed about two city blocks away.
I was a human slug, inching and wriggling forward, moving at such a lethargic pace it took me ten minutes to make it five feet. And even then, I kept moving. The beast was still chewing and slurping, but its limbs twitched and quivered from time to time. Perhaps sensing prey or merely flexing their alien musculature.
The Jeep.
It was close now.
When I was within six feet of it, I panicked. Panicked and crawled madly through the mud until I reached it. The beast moved and slithered and its many limbs-Christ, dozens of them-contracted and fluttered and a few of them began to search over the ground like questing fingers.
It was insane.
The beast kept eating, dropping bones and other things.
I could see it pretty clearly. Or at least that part of it that was hanging from the fog.
It looked like something from a 1950’s B-movie, some blasphemy from a Roger Corman flick…a gigantic, hairy jellyfish with those coiling pink appendages.
That’s all I could see and it was enough.
I jumped up and ran to the door of the Jeep. I got it open and jumped into the front seat just as something brushed over the top of my head. When the door was closed, that thing got pissed. It dropped appendages and they slithered over the roof of the van, looking for what had gotten away. For one terrifying minute, those limbs were covering the Jeep windows, squirming and scraping, pink suckers kissing the glass. As crazy as it sounds, it was much like being in one of those car washes with the soft flaps brushing up against the windows. I watched those dozens and dozens of pink suckering mouths. They looked like lips.
