“You thought we wouldn’t make it?” Ted said.
Tom laughed as Carla, shorter than Ted but not by much, set the bowl of potato salad on the table. She grinned and for a second, he saw the spitting image of their daughter Jenny. Carla had long, straight hair, the same kind of curves Jenny inherited from her, and a generally sunny disposition. He could see in her where Jenny would be in a decade or two and decided that any man lucky enough to end up with her was a lucky man, indeed.
“I’m sorry about the top,” Carla said, pointing to the aluminum foil. “I just couldn’t find it. I guess I lost it somewhere.”
“Would you quit worrying about that lid?” Ted said. He shook his head and laughed. “You should have seen her. She nearly turned the whole kitchen upside down looking for it.”
“If you’re going to bring something to a party, it should be presentable,” Carla said.
Tom grinned. That’s what he loved about these get-togethers, the way everyone got to show their true selves. He really liked Ted and Carla, for instance, but they were as fake as it came when they were in public. Get a few drinks in them, though, and they let loose. And guys like Ted, he didn’t really have a good side, not to Tom.
“So, headed out on a cruise, I hear,” Ted said. He swung an arm around Tom’s shoulders.
“Yep,” Tom said. He wanted to knock that arm right off his shoulders. He flipped the burgers one more time, instead. It was time to get them off the grill. He slipped from Ted’s arm and grabbed an empty plate on the table behind him. Working quickly, he scooped up the burgers with his spatula and dropped them on the plate.
He turned to the folks gathered in his backyard and held up the plate of steaming burgers.
“Got another round up! Who’s ready for more?”
Cries of jubilation rang in the air. He set the plate on the table next to Dolores’ barbecue sauce as people began to gather around. He stepped away from them and headed to the house.
“Where are you going?” Ted said.
Tom turned and thumbed over his shoulder towards the house. “Got some more meat inside,” he said. He really wanted to get away from Ted.
It wasn’t that he hated Ted, it was just that he didn’t care for the man, really. He was nice enough, Tom supposed, and it wasn’t because they were competition for each other, because they weren’t. He couldn’t put his finger on it but something about the guy bugged the hell out of him. He liked Carla just fine, and Jenny, too, but their husband/father was a pain in his ass. To be honest, he hoped they didn’t show up tonight, even though Dolores had invited them and he knew they weren’t going to miss it for the world. Still, as each minute ticked by and they hadn’t shown, his hope had grown. Faced with the reality they had, he wanted to get away for a minute, catch his breath, and get ready to face the rest of the night.
His hand touched the doorknob when someone screamed behind him. Tom turned, but he couldn’t make out what was happening or why. It all unfolded like a dream, like some kind of nightmare, the way everything moved so slow and seemed so unreal.
The Bone Sniffer burst from the trees lining the back of Tom’s property and charged into the party guests. It stuck its big muzzle out and chomped Barney Graybeal’s arm, snapping it and yanking him up into the air off his feet. Barney screamed and dropped his beer, the bottle hitting the ground as the liquid fizzed into the air. The creature jerked Barney around like a dog shaking a toy and he flopped about, his legs and free arm kicking out and scraping at the air. The creature bucked, dipped its massive head, and whipped its neck back, ripping out Barney’s arm and sending the poor man crashing to the ground ten feet away. The Bone Sniffer crunched Barney’s arm, cracking it in two, before spitting it on the ground. It lifted its head and sniffed the air.
The people around Barney erupted into a cacophony of screams and panicked flight. The Bone Sniffer leapt forward, crashing into Gretchen, Lana, Bobby, and Betty, bowling them over and scattering them like a handful of flung jacks. Lana fell on her face, shattering her nose and scraping her skin on the grass. She looked up, her mouth full of dirt, as the Bone Sniffer’s jaws crunched down on her head. It gnawed on her neck and tore her head off, spitting it high into the air. Lana’s body flopped on the ground, blood squirting from the stump where her head had been.
Bobby tumbled to the ground, rolled, and came up on all fours in time to see his wife beheaded and the Bone Sniffer snort and charge him. Bobby didn’t have time to scream before the Bone Sniffer crashed into him, caving in the left side of Bobby’s skull. He fell on his ass as the creature ran him over, its feet and legs churning, pulping Bobby’s body underneath it.
Gretchen fell on her side, cracking two ribs. One stabbed her lung, puncturing it, as she gasped, her hands clutching at the empty air in front of her. The Bone Sniffer, having stomped Bobby, circled around, sniffed Gretchen, and charged her. She looked on helplessly, unable to breathe, as the monster slammed into her. She rolled across the lawn like a bowling ball, slapping the stand of trees behind them and snapping her back. Gretchen lay, gasping for air and incapable of moving. She watched with blood-filled eyes as the Bone Sniffer made its way through her friends. She died moments later, suffocating to death.
Betty collapsed to the ground from the initial crunch of people. She stumbled to her feet in time to see Gretchen slam into the tree and hear her friend’s back snap like a brittle stick. She turned to run, twisting her ankle, feeling the earth rumble as the Bone Sniffer stampeded towards her. Betty limped forward, as hard and fast as she could until she felt its hot breath on her heels. She screamed and dove to the left, ramming into the grill and knocking it over. Sparks, hot coals, and frying burgers flew into the air and landed on the grass as Betty’s hands fell into a pile of hot coals. She smelled her flesh sizzle and the worst pain she’d ever felt shot up her arm like streaks of lightning.
Behind her, the Bone Sniffer had missed, slipped and fell, then came up again, a roar ripping from its throat, so loud it rattled the windows of Tom’s house. It ran over to Betty, jumped up into the air and slammed down on her so hard that her left leg popped free from the joint and her pelvic bones shattered. Betty shrieked in agony, raising her burnt palms up to the darkening sky as the Bone Sniffer grabbed her hair in one of its tiny fists and yanked a handful from her scalp. It climbed off Betty, leaving her lying helpless on the ground, to move on to its other victims.
This entire time, Tom stood at the backdoor to his house, hand on the knob and jaw hanging open. He was frozen in place, entranced by the horror unfolding in front of him.
When the Bone Sniffer first appeared, Mayor Reed turned and ran. He was around the corner and at the door to his Cadillac by the time Barney was dead and he had his door open and was inside the moment Gretchen was killed. He fumbled for his keys, sticking his hands into his pockets, his panicked fingers scrabbling around, searching for his escape. It took him a few seconds to realize that he didn’t have the keys, that his wife Hazel had driven them tonight and she was still in the backyard, where the monster was.
Carla Dobson flew through the air and crashed on the hood of his car with a sick thump. He looked up as Carla raised her head from the hood and gazed in at him like a confused child, her face dripping with blood, the left half of her skull missing. He stared in horror as bits of her brains dribbled from the open wound, little gray pieces of her mind falling in chunks, tangling in her hair and raining on the hood of his car.
He studied Carla’s face as she kept looking at him, dazed and blank-eyed. Her lips opened and shut, any sound from them drowned out by the screams from the backyard. And then, just like that, Carla laid the right side of her head down, gentle as a feather, and closed her eyes. Her body quivered and she died. Mayor Reed kept staring at the divot in her head, where her brain pulsed for a moment like a plate of shivering Jello. He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white as tears ran down his cheeks. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Carla and the hole in her head.
&
nbsp; A loud slap hit the side of his window and he screamed like a little girl. He fell over in the seat and wet himself as he looked up and saw Hazel, mascara running down her face, pounding on his door.
“Let me in!” she screamed. Her hair, once curled and tight against her head, sprung from the sides of her head like the wiry, wild hair of a clown. He stared at her, stunned, as her fingers found the door handle and yanked it open. Cool night air rushed in and he screamed again as she climbed into the car and pushed him over.
“Shut up!” she yelled. She had the car keys in her hand and stuck them in the ignition. When his eyes saw the glint of metal he kicked Hazel in her side. She doubled over as he kicked her again and again, shoving her out the open car door, and he didn’t stop kicking until she fell out and hit the ground, crying. Mayor Reed sat up, looked out at his sobbing wife, and started the car.
Her face was ashen and streaked with tears when she looked up at him.
“I never liked you much,” he said. He slammed the door shut, clipping Hazel’s shoulder and knocking her down again. He jammed the car into reverse, screeched out into the street, and drove off, tearing through the night like a vengeful banshee.
Hazel rolled onto her side and held her wounded shoulder with her free hand. She stared after the taillights as they disappeared down the block around the corner. She climbed to her feet and stumbled off after him, cussing under her breath.
In the backyard, the guests that were still alive had run off or were scattered, knocked down, and injured or dead, as the Bone Sniffer made its way from person to person, ramming and kicking and biting until a dozen bodies lay sprinkled across the ground.
Carla Dobson had tried to flee only to get the side of her head chomped and as she stumbled around the corner of the house, her daughter Jenny screamed and fell to her knees, so petrified she couldn’t move. Ted had flung himself at the Bone Sniffer in an attempt to save Carla but had gotten kicked to the side. He rolled across the grass and slammed into the side of the house.
Dolores ran to a still-stunned Tom and shoved him inside the house, slamming the door shut behind them and locking it. She pushed him back and turned off the lights in the kitchen and living room, plunging the house into darkness. Tom stepped to the window and peeked through closed curtains into the backyard and watched as the Bone Sniffer stomped over to Ted and bit his arm. It picked him up and slung him to the right, tearing Ted’s arm out at the socket. Ted hit the ground and landed on the hot coals from the spilled barbecue and screamed as blood jetted from his shoulder. Across the yard, Jenny watched, face white with terror, as the Bone Sniffer ambled over towards her father to complete the kill.
Dolores slapped her hand on Tom’s shoulder and he almost screamed before her free hand slipped over his mouth and muffled his surprise.
“Be quiet,” she said softly.
Tears sprang from Tom’s eyes. He turned to his wife and grabbed her and held her tight.
“You saved me.”
“We have to get out of here,” Dolores said. She wriggled free of Tom’s grip and jogged back into the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” Tom said, following her. When he rounded the corner he saw she was on the phone.
“Calling the sheriff.”
Dolores held a finger up to silence him and looked down into the corner, concentrating on what she was hearing on the phone.
“It’s the fucking answering machine,” she said. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and wild. “How the fuck does it go to an answering machine?”
Ted’s horrible screams filled the air, cutting between them. Tom ran back to the living room and peeked through the curtains. The creature had stomped on Ted’s legs, snapping them at the knees and hips as Ted watched, blood still squirting from his shoulder. It wasn’t flowing as much as before, Tom noticed, and he figured Ted didn’t have much longer before he bled out. He stared as the blood pooled and soaked into the ground, glittering in the light of the tiki torches. He watched as the Bone Sniffer tore Ted’s other arm off and snapped it at the elbow.
Back by the woods, Jenny still swooned on her knees, watching as her father was torn to pieces. Ted had stopped screaming now. He instead looked around, his eyes searching for the final thing he was going to see before he died. They settled on Tom, standing in the window between the parted curtains. Ted winked, coughed, and his eyes glazed over as he stopped breathing.
Dolores yanked him from the window.
“Stay out of sight,” she said, her voice the hiss of a snake.
“I just watched Ted die,” he said. He felt numb all over. He wanted to sit down and stare at the blank wall for a while.
He heard a crack and suddenly he was facing off to his right. Another crack and now he was facing left, both his cheeks stinging. Dolores grabbed his shirt in her two fists and shook him.
“Wake up!” she said, her voice low and threatening.
He took a deep breath and felt the numbness wearing away.
“You were going into shock,” Dolores said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m better now.”
She pushed around him and dashed to the window. She stared out as the Bone Sniffer did his work.
“Did you get a hold of the sheriff?” Tom asked.
“I left a message.”
“God help us,” he said.
“We need to get out of here,” she said. “Before it comes for us, too.”
“Let’s get in the car,” he said.
She nodded and stepped back from the window, following him down the hall. She stopped in her tracks as a thought struck her.
“Hold on a minute,” she said. She went back into the kitchen and came out seconds later with two big knives, one for each of them. She handed one to him as they crept to the front door and opened it slowly. Nothing moved outside. The night was quiet but for the dying screams in the backyard.
The whole house shook as something exploded in the back. Dolores screamed and Tom fell down. Behind them, wood splintered and shattered, cracking so loud it was like dynamite going off. She ran out the front door as he stumbled to his feet. The Bone Sniffer roared, freezing him in place. It was in the house. It had smashed through the backdoor, and now it was coming for him.
He grabbed the knob of the open door as the floors and walls of the house shook. He turned to see the Bone Sniffer rounding the corner into the front room, snorting and screeching. Tom felt the knife, still in his hand, and realized how useless it was. This thing was going to trample him and then tear him apart just like all his friends. And it probably would have, too, if not for a soft female hand grabbing the back of his shirt and jerking him outside.
He stumbled and tripped, falling down the small concrete stairs leading up to the front door as he watched Jenny slam the front door. She reached down and pulled him up just as the door cracked and split down the middle. The Bone Sniffer was ramming it, trying to break it like he had the backdoor.
Tires screeched behind him as Dolores drove up into the front yard and skidded to a stop in front of them. The door shattered behind him. He flung himself into the back seat as Jenny piled in the front. Dolores jammed on the gas and they spun out, spraying dirt and grass into the air, and roared off across the lawn, onto the street, and down the road.
The Bone Sniffer hopped out of the house and stopped. His nostrils twitched in the air as he smelled his prey get away. He paused there a moment, considering, then finally turned and trotted back around the house. He had plenty of food to keep him busy for the time being.
VI
Martin
Martin pulled over the car, threw the door open, and ran out by the side of the road. He puked out his dinner at the foot of a pine tree on the other side of the guard rail. He heaved and vomited again, the food and stomach acids churning up his throat, over his tongue, and between his teeth. They splattered against the ground as the foul taste of meat and copper filled his mouth.
He wiped his chin with the sleeve of his j
acket and stumbled back to lean against his car. This was the first time the visions had come on him while he was awake.
Normally, it was through his dreams but this time, driving down the highway, soda by his side and the radio tuned into some stupid conservative prick railing against anything that wasn’t white and Republican, the visions hit him square between the eyes. It had been all he could do to pull over before he vomited.
What he saw was as disturbing as what happened to him and his friends. It was maybe more disturbing because it came unbidden, out of the blue, as he was driving. What if he hadn’t pulled over in time? What if it had gotten so bad that he wrecked? He’d be dead now, for sure.
He’d left the interstate a half hour ago and taken a small, two-lane highway into the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. He was currently another forty-five minutes out of Constance and was now questioning whether he was going to continue on or not. That thing that had killed his friends was in Constance now, killing other people. And that creature, clearly, was in his head. He might try and deny it or ignore it, but it was there, and it was no longer in dreams but now in his waking life.
He was beginning to think he was more fucked than he’d first realized.
He took a deep breath and looked into the dark woods before him. The sun was setting and the beautiful landscapes surrounding him were fading into the night. The dark green grass was darker still, the trees cast shadows and then became shadows themselves, and the rolling fields were lost in pools of black.
What was he really hoping to accomplish out here? Sure, he’d fooled himself into thinking he was coming out to see the sheriff, to get some closure, but he knew the truth and he knew it all along. The creature was coming to Constance. The Bone Sniffer, that’s what it was called, wasn’t it? It was already there, in fact, as his vision just told him, and it was killing people and would continue to kill until everyone was dead and until…
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