Hawley then saw what had driven the man into such a craze—long, hairy fingers jutted free from within the man’s ear canals. The skin all around the ear blistered and bulged outward until, finally, the flesh tore and the monster within found its freedom. Bony crunches followed as the man split his skull open, then more multi-legged, multi-segmented albino monstrosities poured free.
Hawley raised his pistol and fired. One of the albino creatures exploded, leaving behind a greenish, milky residue. Although he had a number of paper cartridges tucked into an inner pocket, to keep safe from the rain, he had no time to reload the single-shot flintlock. He swung the tomahawk at the approaching arachnids. Their attention firmly glued to him, they leapt toward him, and he swung again, the blade cutting through their soft skin, as he was forced back, already on his heels.
Shouting came from around him as some of the rioters sought to create order amid the chaos, demanding attention and giving orders as they swung their shovels or axes at the unnatural offenders. Hawley’s back hit a door just as one of the spidery abominations sprang at his face. He dodged out of the way. The creature scrabbled against the wood door, aiming itself, again, at Hawley. Quickly, he buried his blade in the spider’s midsection, cutting it squarely in half. He secured the flintlock in its leather holster beneath his coat then opened the door to create more space for maneuvering and fighting. The hallway had become logjammed with opposing forces, the air thick with that devilish vapor and filth besides.
The room he found himself in, however, contained its own share of horrid displays. Naked corpses were arrayed on several tables, butchered in various methods and manners. A man’s sex organs had been pinned on the opposite wall, from the pelt of pubic hair to the flaccid cock withered against the sagging scrotum. Hawley gasped at the anatomical teaching display then put his back to it, turning his attention to the hallway once again.
More spider things were driving back the mob, dozens of them latching onto fleeing bodies and working in tandem to encase them in scorching, blistering gossamer. Hawley hurriedly tore open a paper cartridge with his teeth then set about reloading the flintlock. With the flashpan half full of powder, he closed the frizzen, poured the rest of the powder down the muzzle, and stuffed in the cartridge. He afforded himself a glance at the hallway as his hands worked, quickly removing the ramrod to stuff the ball and cartridge all the way to the breech, then replaced the ramrod. Time was of the essence against the fast-moving horrors, and he needed to keep the pistol ready for use. He holstered it, intending to save his one shot for when it was well and truly needed, and hurried back into the fray.
A woman cried out, red-faced as she beat at the ground with the back of her shovel blade. She pulled back, milky green gore dripping from the tool, and hammered it back down on another approaching wave. She swore, stomping to crush the smaller bugs beneath her shoes.
Hawley cut through another line of those jumping creatures, watching in horror as their brethren took down one more man. They bit into skin then burrowed into the opening. Bubbles rose across his flesh as they dug through his insides. Hawley rushed forward, hatchet raised to finish the man’s suffering and—
He froze, his mind unable to comprehend what lay ahead. A score of tentacles danced in the air, attached to no physical form and without beginning, grabbing a hold of anybody that dared too close, or impaling them with hooked points at the end of their feelers.
A massive alien creature stalked forward on an impossible number of legs, gore and thick drool dripping from its misshapen maw. Mandibles hinged open to reveal a tunnel of teeth and jagged spines, then the jaws clicked shut over the skull of some poor bastard attempting to hack at it with an axe. The creature rose, grabbing ahold of the rest of the man’s body in its alien appendages. A pair of men leapt forward, axes in hand, and took their chances. The spined beast fell upon them, popping their bodies as if the men were little more than too-full blood leeches, then it roared.
Movement snapped Hawley’s attention back to the immediate as the man directly before him fell to his knees, cradling his head in both hands. His screams were worse than anything Hawley had witnessed in war. More bugs exploded free of the man’s cranium, spattering Hawley with blood, bone, and gristle. He saw, too clearly, small white bodies filling and writhing in the skull’s various cavities. He hammered at them with the tomahawk, further destroying the man’s head with each blow, and hoping to take out as many of the creatures as he could. As the bugs shook free of the body, he danced a nervous jig, squashing what he could. More feet danced around him, and he saw the sweating, red-faced woman grinding the bugs into the soiled floor beside him.
“We have to get out of here,” she said, swiping a loose lock of soaked hair from her eyes.
“We need fire,” Hawley said. “There must be something we can use.”
“In the labs, perhaps?” she suggested.
He nodded at the door past her shoulder. “I’ll check in there.”
“I’ll keep them at bay.”
He thanked her as he passed, slamming through the door and into another macabre room. Skeletons lined the tables, the bones arranged neatly for study. He followed the smell of cooking meat to a large pot over the fire. A glance inside showed a head within the bubbling water, the skin boiling off the bone.
He tugged on a pair of nearby gloves, pulled the heavy pot free, and lugged it out of the room. “Watch out!” he shouted then tossed the pot, spilling scalding hot water across the floor. The waxy head rolled through the muck after it.
Better some burned feet than a horrid death, he thought.
The spidery bugs’ squealing as they boiled to death brought Hawley a measure of satisfaction, even as he disregarded the baleful looks of the men caught in the assault. He had made no friends, certainly, but it was of little importance.
Already the woman was following with makeshift torches, swinging the flames toward the spiders and reducing them to cinders. The mob grew wise to the idea and began imitating her tactics.
The hallway grew ripe with the smoldering carcasses of the albino spiders. The fur of their legs smoked as the fat on their bodies popped and sizzled, the flames spreading. Smoke rose as more torches were flung in support of the men still engaged in melee combat against writhing tentacles and the massive, devouring spiny creature.
Hawley took up a torch and strode into the operating theater, stepping across corpses as he went. A muscly limb darted toward him, and he met it with fire. Burned, the feeler snapped away, and he swung at it with the tomahawk but did little more than chop into the thick meat. Leery of the other tentacles snapping through the air, searching and lusting for blood, he pressed his advantage, holding flame to pallid flesh. He buried the blade into the tentacle again, taking out a good bit of meat, and chopped at it again. Fire, blade, fire, blade. The tentacle coiled in upon itself and retreated. To where, Hawley had no idea. The limb had been there then gone. Other men went after other tentacles with axes, spears, and torches. Some stepped too close or grew too cocksure, and that was enough to spell their grisly end.
A flurry of snow blinded Hawley briefly, a thick swirl of white flakes obscuring the thick feelers around him. Strange, he thought for a moment, recalling the early-spring rain that had turned the skies gray. As the snow dissipated, he glanced toward the shattered windows at the fore of the operating theater. Its surrounding drapery burned like Roman candles as men took flame to the cloth. Beyond, though, the rain was still falling. In defiance of this fact, another cold gale wrapped its shivering fingers about him, whipping stinging snow into his eyes. Momentarily, he caught sight of a plague doctor slumped against the wall before a meaty vine snared the doctor about the waist, hauling him off the ground to hoist him high into the air. And then the limb disappeared through the swirling vortex it had emerged from, taking the plague doctor with it.
A bolt of blue lightning drew Hawley’s eyes to the surface of the worktable the doctor had been hiding under. A trio of cages sizzled beneath the
electric current, and he caught a whiff of burnt offal. The display was unnatural even in a hospital, of that he had no doubt. Like the actions of the resurrectionists, this odd construct of cages, batteries, and organs was an affront to God.
Hawley knew what must be done. In but a few long strides, he crossed the operating theater and stood before the table, his tomahawk held aloft. The electric discharge raised the hairs all over his body. Dead and blackened hearts beat with impossible strength, wrapped in coils of bright-blue electricity. He swung the blade, upending the cages and snapping loose the copper wires connecting them to the large battery. The hum of electricity died, and the inhuman screams grew louder in response.
Behind Hawley, the spiny crustacean roared—in pain, in anger, or in victory, Hawley did not know. He turned in time to see its bulk occlude the door, a small portion of its many legs jamming into the space between the frame. Hawley hacked at the legs, slashing above and below the knobby joints. A spray of hot gore splashed him, and where it touched his skin, he grew hot and itchy. His body tingled with a slight burn, and he stepped away from the beast.
An elbow cuffed his ear, and he turned to see a man in combat against the mysterious appendage piercing the void. The man had no awareness of his surroundings as he wildly swung his torch. Flames scalded the side of Salem’s face, and he lurched away in pain before his hair caught on fire. His hand went to his cheek, the skin already blistered. Even despite the pain, one thought arose: Do not linger here. As he fled from the torch, he saw that the impossible window was beginning to close around the otherworldly tentacle. The field of stars behind it diminished until finally it snapped shut, winking out of existence. The disembodied limb fell to the ground with a heavy slap. All around them, the portals were beginning to close and vanish.
The floor groaned as the spiny crustacean moved, its bulk putting cracks in the wall as it lodged itself into the doorframe and attempted to breach hind end first. Barely enough room existed between creature and doorframe for Hawley to pass through, and soon, even that small opening would be gone. The beast let out an ear-rattling bleat, and Salem plowed through the gap, back into the hallway, and to the front of the creature. He prayed for an end to the nightmare.
Smoke wrapped his face, seared his nostrils. His vision was hazy as smoke drew tears from his eyes, and he coughed into the crook of his arm, his breathing ragged and pained. Like his face, his lungs felt on fire as he inhaled gritty air.
At the front of the beast, men clashed with reaching, insectile arms and dodged a lunging, snapping mouth. Hawley put his tomahawk to work in their aid, parrying with the torch. One of the creature’s antennae swung toward him, and he took the blade to it, deftly slicing the thin stalk away from the animal’s head. It screamed, its hot breath a gust stinking of rotten meat. Even over the thick fumes of smoke, the stench immediately turned Hawley’s stomach. The creature lunged forward, and Hawley was barely able to roll out of the way in time. The hallway shook as the monstrosity dislodged its rear from the doorway. Its fore end stabbed toward where Salem had been but a moment ago, but it found only air.
The hospital was growing increasingly hot as the flames spread, and he knew the job had to be finished quickly, or it would be the end for all of them. He jammed the torch into the beast’s gaping maw, where it caught on a long row of pointed spines lining the creature’s gullet. Then he pulled the pistol.
He had only one shot. He raised the pistol, took aim, and—a body collided with him, knocking him off his feet. Both men hit the ground hard, and it took little imagining to realize the man had been flung out of the operating theater by one of those powerful feelers. The distraction was all the spiny monstrosity needed, and it turned toward them.
The monster’s front segment reared up, the jagged hooks of its forelimbs snapping out into the air and stabbing downward to impale the man, along with Hawley, who was beneath him. Both were dragged off the floor, and for a moment, they hung suspended in the air. The pointed limb had run neatly through the man’s spine and bore deeply into Hawley’s belly, where it burned with sufficient agony. He could feel the life leeching away from him, even as he raised the tomahawk and brought it down upon the forelimb, hacking away at it with fading strength.
The crustacean screamed, its very presence foul and malignant. With consciousness dimming, Hawley surrendered the tomahawk and held the smooth-bore pistol before him. He rotated the flintlock’s cock to full-cock and released the safety lock, then he leveled the gun at the alien horror. Hawley steadied his aim by grasping his wrist in the opposite hand, using the dead man’s shoulder before him to help support his weakening arm, and pulled the trigger. Flint struck the frizzen, and a shower of sparks exploded across the flashpan. Past the brass barrel, one of the crustacean’s eyes burst, ejecting a geyser of fluid from its orbit.
Below, a set of men hacked at the monster’s underbelly, stabbing it with fishing spears or chopping at the thin layer of exposed skin with axes, shovel blades, or meat hooks. A rifle sounded then the ball blasted a small hole into the creature, just beneath its parted, seeking mandibles. The rifleman soon followed, the attached bayonet sinking into flesh and cutting upward.
Scipio! The man’s presence flooded Hawley with relief. Abbie had done him well, and for that, he was grateful.
Organs pressed against the openings slashed into the creature’s underside. Then intestines sloughed through and spilled to the wooden floor with a bloody smack and a noxious stench. The creature screamed, rearing back farther, unsettling its innards all the more. It hit the ground with a building-shaking crash, and Hawley was tossed free of the thing’s forelimb. Air burst from his lungs, and as he inhaled, he got another mouthful of choking smoke.
Hands found him, and his eyes jolted open to see Scipio’s stern face studying him.
“Thank God,” the older man said. He put pressure on Hawley’s belly, and Salem winced at the pain. “Can you move?”
“With help, I think.”
Scipio nodded and got one of Hawley’s arms around his shoulder, then he helped Hawley to his feet. “Keep a hand on your gut. Press down real hard.”
“I will,” Hawley said. A perverse thought rolled through his mind. If only there were a doctor around. If not for the pain, he might have laughed.
Jonathan Hereford recalled the strokes of heat singeing his flesh, but it was the lashes of painfully freezing cold that awoke him. His hands sank into the snow up to his wrists, his fingers hitting the hard, unyielding surface of ice beneath. The cold was so sudden and severe that it burned his skin. His teeth clattered uncontrollably and with such violent force, he worried they would break apart. He rolled to his knees, sinking into the achingly sharp bed of snow, and struggled to his feet. His hands were numb and had turned a scarlet red. The fingers took too long to respond as he demanded them to curl into a fist before burying them in the pockets of his leather overcoat. In one pocket, his fingers struck something hard and metallic—the handle of a scalpel. He held the blade in his hand, winning a small sense of security from the instrument.
Looking around, he saw nothing but a freezing white expanse. The wind howled, and he was momentarily grateful for the beaked mask he wore, although the cold penetrated even that. He was not dressed nearly properly enough for such savage elements, and he knew neither where to go nor where he even truly was. All around him was white, crisp and pure. Even the sky was a muted grayish white, and the horizon and the earth blended into a solid wall of murky off-white.
He stumbled forward, already unable to feel his toes, sinking up to his calves in fresh powder. A harsh gale cut through the smoked glass lenses of his mask, stabbing at his face through the stitching and drawing tears from his eyes. He blinked them away before they could freeze, and even that simple movement seemed an exercise in will.
Slowly, he put one foot in front of the other, hauling his legs from the piling snow and forcing his boot to sink back in one step ahead. Move or die. Such were his only options, he realized.
Snow encircled him, thick sheets of it driving through the sky to pummel him. He kept his head lowered against the hard wind, shivering all the while, but occasionally, he raised his eyes to survey his progress, hoping against all of the ill fates in store for him that there was some sign of progress, some landmark he could navigate toward. All he saw was white and white turning to a soft gray.
His gums and jaw ached from his teeth knocking against one another. With each step, his fear mounted, and his unfeeling body froze ever deeper, right down to his core. Still, he walked, preferring to die on his feet rather than on his back.
The more he puzzled over the issues of where he was and how he had gotten there, the more fleeting the answers became. He recalled the flames, the beating of dead hearts, and the shimmering of thinnies just at the edges of his vision. Then the reaching grasp of large, muscular limbs growing toward him from the unknown began to crystallize. The deeper he pushed into the freezing hellscape before him, the more he began to recall of those searching tentacles seizing bodies around him and of the Negro wielding the weapon of a native savage. Their eyes had met ever so briefly. Hereford had loomed over the Negro from an impossible height.
Hereford remember being suspended in the air, then the heat had simply vanished. He had been grabbed up by one of those tentacles, and the oxygen had been sucked from his lungs as he was pulled through the thinnie and into… not here, he knew. This arctic nightmare had merely been the endpoint of his travels. There had been something in between his abduction from the hospital and his delivery in the snow.
He could very nearly feel the heat of his body leeching away, as if it had been given form and flight. Beneath the beaked mask, tears were frozen to his cheeks and the pools of moisture over his eyes had turned to ice. He could no longer blink, and beneath those chips of ice, his vision burned.
The Resurrectionists Page 9