Then peace shattered as a horrible green face blasted out of the water, coming at Harold with bared teeth.
CHAPTER 14
He fell into the blackness with a splash.
The face had a human-like quality to it, like it had once been a normal human being who enjoyed fine restaurants on special occasions, music with a pleasant beat, cigarettes after sex, and pancakes on Sunday mornings, but it was just the shell of that simple person now.
The skin was a chemical-green color, and the teeth were long, splintered yellow pieces of bone, and they came straight for Harold’s face.
The eyes looked like uncooked, cracked eggs. Black yolk floated around a sea of red like mercury in a broken thermometer. The thing had no hair, just a tiny bald, green pate that caught a reflection of the flaming sky.
Harold screamed. The black water flooded his mouth, tasting of sludge and tar and rusty metallic death.
The creature’s hands splayed out, webs dangling unnaturally between each finger. And the nails hung from the tips about as long and as thick as pencils. Yellow, too.
Harold swore he counted two or three extra fingers. The thing might’ve been unnatural and a product of chemical waste, but it was not weak. As it thrashed down at Harold, he saw its muscles ripple.
But Harold managed to roll out of the way, kicking the water in the mutant’s face, causing it to mistime its next swing, and when it raised its arm up, Harold didn’t hesitate.
His fist exploded into its ribs. Harold felt them bend like a weak floor board underneath his knuckles, then snap. The creature bellowed like a dying rhinoceros.
“FRENNNNNNNNN!”
Harold didn’t care to find out who “Fren” was, and didn’t have time to be battling monsters anymore. He struck the beast again, under the chin, knocking the creature onto its back. Skin slapped the water, sounding like a jet breaking through the sound barrier.
Harold looked at it floating in the water, a fresh stream of blood, greener than its unnatural skin, dripping from its lips, running off into the black sludge.
“Fren,” it whispered, before it closed its eyes.
Something in Harold’s stomach squirmed, and his eyes opened a little wider with the possibility of accidentally swallowing some kind of mutant symbiont when the toxic water splashed into his mouth. But he didn’t have time to worry about that, and instead forced himself to look away from the mutant-monster thing, and head back to Sahara, to the Audi.
Then he heard the water trickling.
Harold looked back, seeing another head emerge from the water, then another. Two more. Ten. Twenty.
“Frennnnn!” they groaned collectively. Their voices like forks raking across glass plates, multiplied by fifty.
His heartbeat pumped blood at an alarming rate, could actually hear it over the moans of the monsters.
“FRENNNNNN!”
Jesus Christ, if he had just had his Deathblade — the weapon he had thought of as a curse — he’d feel a little better about his current situation. Hell, if he had any weapon for that matter. A gun, knife, even a lawnmower would do.
But he was empty handed, and the creatures’ upper torsos soon broke the surface of the water. They all varied in size and deformities. One had an arm growing from his head the same sickening shade of green, and it dangled loose and rubbery like a flaccid antenna. Another’s eyes were set into its droopy cheeks — skin that hung like mucus from infected sinuses. Harold backtracked taking it all in.
One thing was for sure, the new life of his wasn’t without its surprises, or without its horrors.
He bolted for the car, feet kicking up bits of sand, nearly as naked as the day he was born. There was no time to pick up his clothes left in a pile to his right because the mutants now trotted the beach behind him. He could hear their wet feet slapping. The groans. The labored breathing, breathing that was somehow more unnatural than green-skinned freaks with limbs growing from their heads and webbed feet and superhuman strength.
Fingers slipped from the door handle then scrabbled at it again.
They were closer now. He could smell their toxic sludge.
“FRENNNNNNN!”
“FREEEEEEEEEEN!”
He got a good grip and jerked the door, but was stopped short. The door was locked, windows cracked small enough for Sahara to get some fresh — toxic — air. His hand could barely clear the opening, but he tried anyway, stuffed his hand into it like a child trying to dig out cookie crumbs from a too-small container.
The keys were in the pocket of his trench coat about thirty feet away from him. He could’ve ran and got it had the mutants not formed a bright green wall that seemed to get tighter with every step they took, closing in on him the way his throat and his lungs felt like they were closing. He could hardly breath, yet the hot, garbage-tinged air burned through his torso regardless.
“FRENNNNNN!”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck. Sahara! Open the door. Sahara!”
But she didn’t stir, too far off in a world flooded with Demon venom, and monsters and nightmares beyond Harold’s wildest imagination.
But dying, giving up, that was the old Harold. The new Harold acted. Protected. And Sahara needed protected.
He quit scrambling at the locked door, closed his eyes, took a deep breath. Let that ice-cold calm wash over him like the black waves, like he would if the Wolves still ran in his head.
“Frennnn?”
He ran, tried to draw them away from the car.
“Frennnnn? Frennnnn?”
He swirled his head around. Three different, yet equally as unsettling eyes stared. Then one giant eye planted in the middle of a scaly face.
You don’t belong here. Come home, Harry — that voice inside of his head.
And the mutants shrieked. “FREEEEEEENNNNNNNNN! NO, NO, NO!”
Up ahead, something caught his eye, something he’d not noticed as he drove down the long cracked asphalt of the road that led to the industrial toxic wasteland.
A beautiful wooden cabin jutted from the land across the road, surrounded by lush, green trees — the kind of trees that hadn’t been around those parts for decades. From the open doors, music played. Pop music from the late 80s; at least that’s how Harold heard it. His smile grew wider as he let the beat take him. Then the lyrics to Africa by Toto formed on his lips, and soon he bobbed his head, ignoring the burning in his lungs, the aches from running in his legs. Then the smell of a cookout invaded his nostrils, and his mouth started watering.
He came closer. Over the muffled beat of the music, people talked, plates and silverware clattered against each other.
The mutants were still behind him.
Closer.
Closer.
His eyes rose to the sign above the entrance to the building. Written in blocked, white letters: THE LAKE BAR & GRILL. And a banner rippled underneath the sign: FIRST DRINK’S ON US!
God, Harold could use a drink, could use whatever they cooked. The music, the atmosphere, the people that weren’t suffering or already dead — he needed it all.
With the mutants behind him, what choice did he have?
CHAPTER 15
The black blood stood out on the concrete of the Motel 8’s parking lot, and even Frank, as old as he was and as stuffed as his head had felt, still saw it. The world might’ve been on its way to Hell, but the city got it first. For the most part, the outskirts had been untouched except for the piles of abandoned cars lining the highway out of the city. And even then, it wasn’t that many. Whatever dark magic spilled into the city had done a good job at clamping down on the citizens from escaping.
Frank wondered just how far the witchcraft extended — how far it would extend when it was all said and done. But then he chuckled, bending down to stick a finger in the liquid which looked an awful lot like black tar on the light gray of the cracked concrete, because it didn’t matter what happened after Hell ate away the Earth. Frank had two goals, and he reckoned achieving one would lead him directly int
o the other.
The voice in his head had grown much more prominent. Driving down the highway, going the only plausible way the Burnt Man would’ve gone — away from the city — and steering through the parked cars, debris, bodies, the voice had whispered to him with such intensity, he slowed down, had to double-check the passenger’s seat for any stragglers he might’ve accidentally picked up back in Vampire country.
Of course, there was nobody there. The whispers came from his own head, and he couldn’t accept that at first, just like he couldn’t accept Travis’ death, his mistake, or the terrible nightmares as of late. But now as he stood there in the parking lot, a string of sticky, black blood dripping off between his fingers, he started to accept that voice.
Go to the Motel 8, it had said.
A voice he welcomed in the world’s gloomy silence. Well, except for the screams. He could always hear the screams. Whether they came from the city or from his head, he wasn’t sure. But they were there, that much remained true.
And the voice hadn’t been wrong.
But now where? Sure, Storm had been to the Motel 8, and judging from the warmth of the blood, from the freshness, it hadn’t been too long ago. He needed the voice again, needed direction. Storm was close, he could smell it. And Frank wouldn’t live long enough to be deemed a failure.
He walked back to the truck, crossbow slung over his back. He left the truck idling, afraid the old horse might keel over on him if he turned it off. Like Frank, the Ford was old, on its last leg, lived a good life. But unlike Frank, the truck’s youthful exuberance hadn’t been refueled by the idea of a Hunt. Machinery was machinery, no simple way around it. The attachment Frank felt for the aging truck wasn’t reciprocated.
Frank jumped as the door slammed shut, the engine kicked into gear, and revved like a pissed-off lion. It had happened so quick, he didn’t have enough time to dive out of the way before the truck hit him. He jumped as it did though, softening the blow. But he screamed regardless, felt his kneecaps buckle, the red-hot pain, then a momentary numbness of nerve overload.
A frazzled looking young man, with wild hair that probably hung down to his asshole had he been standing, sat behind the wheel waving his hand, mouthing the words “Get the fuck off! Move! Move!” which Frank could hardly hear over the engine.
He had no intention of letting go as the truck picked up speed. His hands gripped the steel hood, right beneath the rotten windshield wipers he had meant to replace five years ago. The truck creaked and groaned, engine sounded much worse on the outside than the inside. Sounded like death lurked right behind the next speed bump.
But that theory quickly dissolved as the truck hit the curb and lifted a few inches off of the ground. The driver’s side, where Frank’s right leg wrapped around the left headlight, smacked through the long-forgotten bushes. His jeans ripped, skin whacked with needles and thorns. He looked over his shoulder, saw the phone booth coming, gulped, fearing for his truck more than he feared for his well-being. But he managed to move out of the way before the glass exploded near his right ear and rained down upon him, sticking into his hair, poking his skin, falling down the collar of his shirt.
He almost let go then. If he had, he’d’ve been as flat as the phone booth.
The driver, as his last option, slammed on the breaks. But Frank’s upper-torso strength wasn’t as old and worn as he originally thought, plus his fingernails practically dug into the metal of the hood, like a frightened — he liked to think, determined — cat. He wasn’t going anywhere. And he reached deep down inside of himself, every muscle in his body bulging to the maximum, every joint yelling, and pulled closer to the windshield.
He screamed as he brought his right hand back in a fist. An open-mouthed gape stretched on the driver’s face.
And Frank’s fist struck the glass sideways the same way a judge’s gavel would strike a sound block before requesting order in the court.
It only took one clean hit for the glass to buckle, for the spray of glittering shards to fly inward and rain down on the driver like the destroyed phone booth had. But the driver hadn’t been as lucky. The glass hadn’t just stuck in his hair — most of it had landed in his open mouth, or his widened eyes. Blood streamed down his face like tears. Both hands shot off of the wheel, moving towards the wounds. His whole body lost control, foot slammed on the gas, making the engine whine and wheeze. And the truck veered off of its track like a derailed train.
Three columns held the awning of the hotel in place, made of brick, each one about five feet wide. The truck careened straight for them.
But the man jerked the wheel at the last second, sending the truck on two wheels, slowing it down. Frank held on tight simply by reflex, knowing he’d regret it.
Through the chaos, the man’s face was a bloody mess. His hands held onto the wheel, knuckles white, mouth wide open screaming bloody, glass-choked screams.
Frank saw where the vehicle headed, and slipped off, willing every tendon in his hands to let go despite the fear freezing his body.
His head cracked against the pavement, caused his vision to go fuzzy, blank out like a television that had lost its signal, and he rolled a few feet until a chipped yellow parking block stopped him. He heard a snap and a great spike of agony somehow louder than the rest of the pain, which quickly fizzled away with utter shock as his eyes adjusted.
The truck barreled into the Motel 8 sign that shot straight up into the black sky, flagging tired cross-country drivers as a welcome place to stay.
Frank’s heart broke when the hood of the Ford screeched up like an accordion. So much for ‘Built Ford Tough,’ even though the truck had been nearly half Frank’s age.
It sounded like a garbage masher mating with a wood chipper. And each heart-wrenching screech brought Frank closer to tears. For a second, he thought the tears came, until he realized it was just fluid that had sprayed from the hood, or possibly the blood from the carjacker.
Above him the sign creaked, tottered, and finally fell. Frank watched it happen in slow motion, and didn’t think about moving until the black Shadow passed over his face, coming straight for him.
He forced himself up into a low crouch, then crawled away like a kicked dog. MOTEL 8 split down the middle, leaving MOT to come down like a guillotine. It crumbled the pavement when it hit; shattered it like a hammer striking a piggy bank. A long dormant electrical wire popped out, slicing through the air, white lightning spewing from it.
Frank watched as the sizzling wire touched the hood of the car, and it lit up like a Christmas tree. If the man still sat in the driver’s seat, he’d be nothing but charred flesh. Frank heard him scream. The blood-curdling screams that curdled Frank’s blood.
Then his father’s voice came into his head again, and so did Rule Number Four: Look out for your own, Franky. You never know when you’ll need an ally.
But that’s not why he rushed towards the car, with his newly cracked ribs and bruising — possibly fractured — shin and knee bones. He ran because he wanted to watch the man suffer. Wanted to watch him burn for stealing his car, for hurting him, and most importantly, for ruining his truck — the only vestige he had to his normal world, before Travis left him alone and cold, so cold.
He remembered taking him to school on his first day of kindergarten, though Travis, as stern and hard-headed as he was, wanted to ride the bus, wanted to meet new friends, show off his little G.I. Joe action figure he carried everywhere with him. But Frank shuddered at the thought of letting his little guy ride the bus alone. He knew how the other kids were — like blood-thirsty animals, willing to kill any weakling to fit in. He’d been one himself back in the day.
That first day had been so hard, just the thought of being alone at the house — no Travis, no cheesy kid’s cartoons. No one to make lunch for. No crusts to cut off of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Those thoughts had nearly killed him.
Travis’ mom had passed when he was two — car accident. But Frank and Lori had been separate
d at the time — pretty much hated each other at that point — and he’d only seen Travis when she wanted him to, which was not much.
The three years after Lori’s death had Frank lying awake at night, mentally punching himself in the face for not making more of an effort to see his son those first two years. But he couldn’t go back and change the past. What’s done is done; it wasn’t one of his father’s rules, but it should’ve been.
Rule Number Eleven: What’s done is done. Move on. There, you happy, Franky?
The thoughts washed over him in a blur of rage. He smelled the burning flesh, felt the heat of the flames blasting his face, singeing his gray-speckled eyebrows. No, the thief wouldn’t get off easy. Just like the creature with those dark, dark eyes who’d killed his son; just like Harold Storm.
He edged around the truck, saw the man writhing in flames like the fire had been made of lightning. That wild hair was all but stubble. The blood that had streaked his face was now just a mess of tender flesh and raw meat. Still, the man bucked and rolled, knocking an elbow against the back left hubcap.
Frank kicked a boot into the man’s gut, stepped down, feeling the man’s beer belly squish beneath him.
“Davey,” he moaned. “He’s sick. He’s dyin’. Back by t-that big rock…”
Frank laughed. “If you haven’t noticed, the whole world is dying. Get over it. And you ain’t any exception either, buddy.”
When he felt the heat cooking his sole, he removed the boot, and knelt down next to the man, still twitching. He reached a hand out, covered in blood, and patted the small flames that danced on his dirty, once pale jean jacket.
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