Suddenly Cat was the epicentre of a swell in the atmosphere, then the pressure broke and rushed away from her, and the atmosphere became calm and still once more.
Chapter Forty Six
Kelly could feel Ian’s hands on her neck, he was staring into her eyes, his lip was trembling with sadness at what he had done to their relationship or fear at how she might react to him kissing her. Kiss me. Her thought shocked her. Is this what she wanted? She wanted Craig. That meant trusting someone new. It would be so easy to kiss Ian, to give in to him. She closed her eyes. His grip on her throat was firm, if it was anyone else it would be uncomfortable, but with the electric promise of a kiss, of their love being rekindled it only made her want him more.
A sobering gale forced itself over her, except she didn’t feel it disturb her clothes or hair, didn’t feel it on her skin but in her mind. Something rushed through her thoughts, and the tingling anticipation of Ian’s kiss was swept away with it leaving only the sensation of her throat being gripped too tightly.
The shrill sound of the fire bells crashed back in on her senses in a jarring tumble of noise that reverberated through her head and into her teeth. There was no longer carpet underfoot, no longer a rose in her hands. She opened her eyes and stared into twin wells of green light glowing from a rotting face inches from her own. Its noxious stench in her mouth and its slick fingers at her throat, the undertaker stood close to her with its knife drawn back ready to stab. From beneath the shadow of its tall hat, its dark rotten grimace drew over its teeth in a wicked grin.
She squirmed and squealed, but couldn’t break free from its hold. From abject panic she pitched herself into anger. She brought the head of her axe up sharply under the creature’s chin, with its concentration shattered its knife arm flailed wildly and the creatures grip on Kelly’s throat flinched. It was all she needed. She pushed herself backwards and broke free.
The undead creature recovered and stabbed at her. She ducked to one side and swung her axe back at the undertaker. Its grimace didn’t break as its head and hat tumbled over the banisters and into the smoke, it ricocheted noisily as it fell to the basement and landed with a muted crash.
The creature’s knife slashed down at her. Somehow the thing was still being directed. Unprepared for the creature to still be fighting, she was slow to react, the blade missing her by millimetres. She hacked again and the knife clattered to the floor, the hand still holding the blade but the arm no longer attached to the body. With all the power and bitterness she could summon from the nightmare she had just experienced she pitched the axe behind her and swung it forward, hacking at the twitching body that stood before her in denial of its own mortality.
Its remaining arm dropped to the ground. Another hit cleaved down through its neck into its chest and the cadaver fell clumsily to its knees. She stepped aside letting it fall onto its front. It was motionless. She had seen too many horror films to be fooled by that. She hailed down six more blows, almost quartering its body. She rested on the hilt of her axe and swiped a slick of sweat from her face allowing her aggression to subside into satisfaction that the creature would not be resurrected any time soon.
“Craig it’s me.” And this time it was Cat. Vicki was gone and there was no disturbance of the dust and dirt of the floor that suggested she had ever been there. He dropped the nail-gun to his side and rubbed his head with his other hand. “I’m sorry.” He was suddenly certain that Vicki had been a victim of this thing. His finger ached from his sustained draw of the tools trigger. “Cat, I’m so sorry.” He clenched his eyes against his grief for Vicki and the thought of nails slamming into Cat’s head, shredding her face. He had come so close to pulling the trigger. His stomach lurched and he doubled over and wretched, but couldn’t be sick. He could feel Cat rub his back.
“It’s okay; it was in your head. Trying to trick you. Using your fear and imagination against you.”
“Yes.” Rachel’s voice was thick, her face twisted up with a rage and hatred he didn’t understand. What had it done to her? She held up a Molotov. “Let’s burn it.”
A green glow lurched from the back of his eyelids. A triangular shape that angled up into horns, a demonic Rorschach head with seven dark gashes torn into a face of burning energy. Sharp mandibles flicked open from under its head in a jagged jaw and it screamed an unnatural voice of a thousand infants and it burned with a sudden painful intensity. He dropped his weapon, gripped his head and fell to his knees, dimly aware that Cat and Rachel had also been felled and were also clutching at their heads.
The pain subsided and the ghost image receded. “What was that?”
“A cry of anger from the thing that had been in our heads,” Cat answered.
“That face… It was so big. Just how big is this thing?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Rachel stated blankly. “Were going to kill it.”
Craig and Cat grabbed a bottle of petrol each; their home-made Molotov’s, and lit them from the piles of smouldering rubbish about them. All three hurled them in unison between the lockers; the only place their attacker could be hiding. The glass shattered and the combustible liquid ignited spreading violent fans of gorging flames across the broken uneven floor within.
Craig took up his nail gun again and levelled it at the lockers. Cat stood with her flare gun, Rachel brandished her sword with both hands. They watched the gap and waited. The maelstrom of flames reduced the darkness in the gap and the room beyond to a relief of shifting blacks, yellows and oranges. Each tumult and movement of colour threatened to be a glimpse of the thing they waited for. Braced in readiness they glanced about themselves warily, he was prepared for the very air around them to suddenly manifest the evil they had come to face.
“Now what?” Craig found himself asking after some time had passed.
Cat suddenly doubled over and cried out in pain. “I can see it, in my head. It’s breaking out of its chrysalis. It sees me.”
“Shut it out Cat.” Rachel demanded with concern carved across her face.
“It’s in my head. Ripping. Clawing at my mind.” She screamed.
“What can we do?” Craig shouted to Cat then Rachel.
“Attack it. Distract it from its attack on Cat.” Rachel stated.
The idea was madness. Rachel was already moving towards the gap, her sword held before her. Craig followed, but hesitated, glancing back at the crippled Cat, she was their main weapon. What chance would Craig and Rachel have? “I don’t think this is such a good idea…”
“It’s COMING!” Cat suddenly shrieked at them.
The lockers either side of the gap flew through the air, he saw a locker smack Rachel to the ground a second before lockers slammed into him, knocking the air out of him and carrying off his feet. He hit the hard ground several metres from where he had been standing with a tremendous weight on top of him. The world blacked out then, the blackness was shifting and flowing across his eyes and he realised he was on his back staring at the ceiling with its flow of smoke.
His forearms burned with pain from where they had been skinned and grazed in his slide across the gritty ground. He couldn’t move his legs or his lower body under the crushing weight of the locker pinning him to the floor. He struggled to catch his breath then lifted his head off the ground to check his situation, the locker looked to be lying across him, pressing down completely on one leg and the top of the other one, the top of the locker ended just below his ribs. There was another locker fallen across that one. He wondered how many ribs had been broken from the impact but didn’t want to check. He was grateful to not be feeling any pain from them at the moment.
Craig turned his head within his limited degree of freedom and saw that Cat was struggling to her feet. Hopefully recovering from the psychic attack she had experienced. He looked for Rachel and saw she was lying on the other side of the room, propping herself up on her elbows. One side of her face was a mask of blood, her loose perm flattened and matted to her head on that side. She saw that C
raig was looking over to her but she didn’t react, her face stayed blank with shock as she began to drag herself backwards. He saw that her feet were turned out from each other and were limp against the floor and he understood why she couldn’t get up; the locker had crushed her pelvis. He wept for her. Then he saw that she wasn’t dragging herself to safety but to her sword.
The lockers had been smashed aside. He couldn’t see that part of the room for two the lockers piled on top of him. Whatever had tossed the lockers aside like skittles was now in the room with them.
A loud sound entered the room; a click click click click, sound of things being stabbed at the concrete floor and the slurp slurp sound of something heavy and slimy being dragged across the ground. He turned back in Rachel’s direction and saw that her efforts to drag herself across the ground had grown more desperate. He gritted his teeth against the pain of moving and he lifted himself up onto his elbows to increase his field of vision.
It staggered out of the enlarged hole on six spider-like legs and glowed with an internal green luminescence. It had two other legs at the front, folded back onto the creature’s body and instead of being used to walk they thrashed and stabbed the air before it like javelins. Its abdomen wasn’t like the firm body of a spider raised from the ground, but it was a ribbed gelatinous sack bloated with fluid that dragged behind the creature. The thing was taller than the low ceiling of the basement would allow, and its elongated spine-like neck hunkered so that its cumbersome angular and horned head could duck down. Its seven empty slash-like eyes scanned the room. Each eye was like a black hole consuming all light, even the light from its own body seemed to flow and pour into the holes. Above the middle eye there were two scars shaped like interlocking V’s. The creature was branded with the rune that Rachel had told them represented the harvest. This was the result of the harvest; the creature that had been created from the people that had been taken.
It looked at Craig and he felt his own energy weaken, as if his very essence was being drained from him through its black hole gaze. He tossed his head from side to side looking for his nail-gun. Finding it between him and Cat he stretched out his arm and fingers, ignoring the pain of his raw skin rubbing at the dirt and grit of the floor, and dragged it to him with his finger tips. He took a hold of it, but as he lifted it its unbalanced weight tugged the tool free of his awkward grip. He quickly tightened his fingers only for it to kick and buck in his hand, almost shaking itself free again as he accidentally pulled the trigger and pumped nails wildly into the air. Cat clapped a hand to her head and fell to the ground, her flare gun skittering away from her grip.
His stomach flipped and he cursed, cried and dropped his own weapon a he realise he had shot her. “Cat? Cat!”
The creature let out an awful sound, a roar, a shriek, a laugh all at once.
The spider-creature lurched back on its six legs and reared its lance arms back, and Craig knew it was ready to pounce on Cat. Cat who had been laid out by his own weapon.
Rachel suddenly cried out and he saw that she had her sword. Despite her injuries she swept the hefty weapon behind one shoulder then swung it before her in a wide arc until it was over her other shoulder. It cut at the creature’s ribs and knitted flesh, renting it open and loosing a flow of thick lumpy fluid from the wound. The creature roared and reared upward in pain from Rachel’s attack slamming its head clumsily against the ceiling.
Craig crawled sideways, fingering the ground, trying to grasp the nail gun he had dropped just out of reach. As he did so he saw Cat roll onto her back. Maybe she wasn’t seriously injured? Before he could think any further he saw the creature descended fiercely upon Rachel.
Rachel swung her sword back in the direction it had just come from and it cleaved through one of its six legs below its second knee joint. The shortening of its leg caused the creature to crash awkwardly to the ground, but it instantly scrabbled to regain its footing and it shifted its weight onto its other legs. Rachel slumped, apparently spent from the force of her attack, but kept a tight grip of her weapon.
Don’t give up! Craig willed.
She raised the sword weakly and swung it in a wavering arc behind her for another hack. While the sword was pointing away the creature leapt forward and lunged both of its javelin arms downwards. The sword wilted in Rachel’s hands before it found her target and clattered heavily to the floor as it slipped from her loosened grip, the tempered metal sang out as it struck the concrete floor.
The creature stood proud over its kill, its arms staking Rachel to the ground through her abdomen and chest. Craig clutched the nail-gun tightly and swung the heavy tool onto the creature with a bitter rage. He squeezed the trigger in rapid succession, sending a steady stream of nails shooting through the air like miniature arrows or spinning like vicious death-stars.
It didn’t react. With Rachel gone it stared back at Cat. Craig watched sections of the spider’s abdomen split under the hail of fire. Able to see where his nails were hitting he steadied his aim and concentrated his fire on one area. A large section of the sac shredded, then tore open under the pressure of whatever filled the creatures abdomen. Now the creature screamed. Glowing green goo pattered out onto the concrete along with misshapen lumps that looked like internal organs. A large object fell out and it resembled a partly dissolved or deformed limb of some kind. Parts of the people it had harvested.
The creature was staring at him with its seven black eyes. Staring into him. Drawing the life and energy from him. He knew he was next. He shifted his aim and watched a line of wounds trail up from the sac to the creature’s chest and he held his aim steady there. The force of the gun rattled the bones in Craig’s hand as it slammed the nails through the air one after the other in a rapid succession of blurry metal hyphens. The creature shook its javelins free of Rachel’s body and waved at the nails but couldn’t stop Craig shattering a section of its ribs.
The creature howled, but what Craig saw stopped him finding any satisfaction or hope in his attack. The wound that Rachel had inflicted on the creature squirmed. Bony emaciated fingers sheathed in slime split out from the flesh each side of the wound, and the two hands clasped together over the gash, it glowed and was then no longer a wound. The thing could heal itself. It carried around a store of harvested organs and body parts in its sac so it could regenerate.
Craig pressed on with his attack. It was all he could do. They had to damage it quicker than it could heal itself. Had to exhaust its harvest. The creature leapt forward on its six legs. Its sixth leg had re-grown! In a single bound of its legs it cleared half the gap between the creature and Craig. The shock movement sent his aim wild again, nails ricocheted off the concrete ceiling in a shower of sparks and masonry dust before they fell tinkling to the ground around him. The lower part of the creatures face opened up as it lunged at him, its mandibles snapping wide leaving a trail of thick mucous stringing from its gaping maw. Its two jointed arms reached from the base of its long neck and prepared to puncture Craig’s chest and snap off his head with its jaws.
He turned his face away from the imminent attack and kept pumping his finger on the trigger. He saw Cat get up from the floor. The toy-like flare gun rushed across the ground, leapt up through the air and into her waiting hand as if pulled by an invisible force. Her jade eyes glowed with an internal green furnace.
Craig still had a head. He wasn’t speared to the ground. He dared to look back at the creature and saw it was held fast in its striking pose, thrashing violently like a great crane fly trapped in an invisible web. Was Cat doing that?
There was a pop and Cat’s hand was kicked back by her gun as it expelled its load in a fizzing whoosh of smoke and light. Individual colours were suddenly burned away by a red fire as the smoking flare leapt the small distance from the weapon into its targets chest to the left of its neck. The creatures rib cage rocked with the impact and tendons and muscle burned away with the intense heat. The creature staggered backwards screaming the loudest Craig had heard it
scream. Its legs and arms clawed frantically and uselessly at the lodged flare as the ball of intense heat continued to turn its flesh into flame.
Kelly appeared in the doorway, and nearly stumbled back out when she saw the creature. Craig called for her to help him. She didn’t even hesitate, and rushed to his side. She pulled the top locker away, and Craig found he could push the other one away himself. Thankfully the one that had covered most of his body must have been fairly empty. Movement was painful, but he was getting used to pain with his recent injuries. He just had to find the right way of holding himself to avoid triggering the pain. Kelly dragged Craig to his feet and he soon found there wasn’t a way of avoiding the pain. Both of his legs hurt, and his chest ached with every breath.
He continued to pump nails into the creature while he hung off Kelly. “We have to get out of here.” Cat stood and stared into the creature that thrashed wildly but it couldn’t get through the invisible wall that seemed to be there. “I don’t know how long Cat can keep that up.”
“Where’s Rachel?”
Kelly’s face twisted in anguish, and tears streamed down her face before Craig could explain. She could see Rachel’s body.
“No. No, Craig. Tell me she’s injured.”
“Kelly we have to go.”
“We can’t leave her.”
Craig grabbed her and was dragging her now. “We can and we must. If we don’t get out of here now we will lose our only chance of killing this thing. We have to make Rachel count.”
The flare faded and the darkness fought its way back. Free of pain the creature stopped thrashing. Cat held the creature in her continual stare but now it stared back and began to walk forward. Its pace was slow, one leg then another. The air was still clearly holding the thing back from rushing them somehow, but it was steadily gaining ground against them. There was blood streaming from Cat’s nose and eyes and her head and shoulders trembled with the effort of whatever she was doing to hold the thing back. Craig dragged Kelly out of the door and up the stairs to the lobby. Cat didn’t have long. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and thumbed speed dial through to Jason’s phone. The ring would be the signal that Jason was waiting for.
Harvest Page 41
