by Jacob Rayne
‘What do you want?’ a heavily bearded man scowled from behind the open front door.
‘Hey, Joe. Sorry to disturb you. We need to speak to Stan about his leg,’ Hennessee said.
‘We don’t want you in here.’
‘If you prefer we can come back with a warrant for you attacking one of my officers outside the Taverner’s Arms last weekend,’ Hennessee said.
Joe’s scowl deepened, like he’d forgotten all about that.
‘You’d best come in then, but I want you out of here soon.’
‘We’ll be here as long as it takes,’ Duggan said, fixing Joe with one of his trademark stares.
Joe held Duggan’s gaze for a full minute before flinching and moving aside to let them in.
Duggan smiled at him as he passed. He could see that Joe was wary of him, and this was stopping him from throwing them out.
They sat on a polished leather couch and a pretty lady came in.
‘Hi, Chief,’ she said. ‘Is this about Stanley?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll go get him. Don’t worry about Joe, he’s just pissed cos someone finally gave him a taste of his own medicine last night.’
She turned to Duggan.
‘Hi, I’m—’ Duggan began.
‘—Jim Duggan. I remember seeing you on TV,’ she said.
‘Yes, I’m Jim Duggan. Pleased to meet you, Mrs Coache.’
‘Please, call me Gina.’
Gina went out and they heard her calling upstairs for her son. He came down, dragging his leg behind him.
‘You alright there, buddy?’ Duggan smiled.
Stan smiled. Hennessee thought the kid still looked nervous but he was soon to get a lesson in breaking the ice from Duggan.
He pulled out his gun, emptied the magazine and handed it to Stan.
Saucer-eyed, Stan took the weapon. It was heavy, but he liked the feel of it.
‘Say, do ya feel like a shootout?’ Duggan asked, making a gun out of his fingers and pretending to fire at Stan.
Stan’s face cracked into a huge grin. He aimed the gun at Duggan and pulled the trigger a few times.
Duggan twitched like he was being hit by invisible bullets then slumped headfirst over the arm of the couch, letting out a deathly gurgle.
Stan started laughing and moved towards Duggan, shaking him to see if he was still alive.
As he shook him, Duggan snapped up and put the finger gun to his temple. ‘Bad move. Got me a hostage now.’
Stan laughed then broke loose and sat on the floor.
Gina and Hennessee watched, fascinated.
‘Used to have one myself,’ Duggan said, his eyes misting slightly with tears. ‘Miss him like crazy.’
‘What happened?’ Hennessee asked.
Duggan waved it away.
‘Looks like you were a great dad,’ Gina noted.
‘Thanks,’ Duggan said, swallowing hard. ‘That means a lot.’ He thumbed a tear from the corner of his eye. ‘So, Savage Stan, you feel like telling me what happened?’
‘We were playing around by the fences and saw someone pop up out of one of the trapdoors. He didn’t look right, he was covered in blood and had these cold, dead eyes. It looked like he had scales.’
Duggan shuddered at the memory of seeing Finn up close.
Stan shook a little, an effect which was mirrored in his voice. ‘S-so we waited for him to pop down again and we followed him through the trapdoor. I don’t know if you’ve ever been down there, but it’s dark and scary. He was dragging a dead body, so he didn’t hear us following him.
‘He dropped the body off in the woods. We watched him from the trapdoor cos we didn’t want to be spotted by the men guarding the reservoir wall. He came back, with blood round his mouth like he’d been eating. It was strange, like he was dropping the body off for something to eat.’
‘Like Hannibal Lecter’s own delivery boy?’ Duggan beamed, unable to help himself. He muttered an apology as Gina and Hennessee both scowled at him.
‘We followed him on the way back and he came out in the shaman’s house. It went wrong then. I was telling Barney that we should go for help. He wanted to try and take him out with his catapult. I told him he was crazy but he wouldn’t let it go. The man heard us arguing an-and he grabbed Barney and started hurting him.
‘I ran but he grabbed my leg. It hurt so bad, but I managed to poke my finger in his eye and got away. B-barney, though, he was…’ he broke down, his tiny frame racked with sobs.
‘Hey, it’s ok,’ Duggan said, wrapping his arm around the boy’s shoulders and squeezing him tight. ‘Mind if I have a look at your leg?’
Stan shook his head and rolled up his trouser leg.
Around his calf was a huge bruise, in the shape of a hand. Duggan winced. It looked sore as hell. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Apparently whoever did it squeezed so hard that the bones were crushed together,’ Gina said.
‘Nasty. Don’t you worry, Savage Stan, we’ll find him. And we won’t be taking him in either, if you catch my drift.’
‘Be careful,’ Stan said, his good mood dissipating. ‘He looked like a monster.’
Hennessee and Duggan looked to each other.
‘Can you think of anything else?’ Duggan asked.
Stan shook his head.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll get him,’ Duggan said, earning another smile from the child. ‘And I’ll need my gun back.’
Stan smiled and pulled the trigger a few times. Duggan twitched again but didn’t ‘die’ this time.
Stan fired a few more times then put the gun on Duggan’s knee.
‘Thanks,’ Duggan said, then slumped as if dead. He paused for a few seconds then got up, winking at Stan as he holstered the gun. ‘Thanks, Stan. Thanks, Gina.’
‘No problem.’
‘Bye,’ Stan shouted.
Duggan and Hennessee left. Joe scowled at them as they passed him.
‘You’ve got a way with kids,’ Hennessee said.
‘Yeah. Just miss Robbie. Try to make up for it like that, I guess.’
‘That leg was a mess.’
‘Yeah. Not a pretty sight. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘What?’ Hennessee knew, but didn’t want to face up to it.
‘We go back to see what the shaman’s got to say for himself.’
‘I had a feeling you were going to say that.’
Mark woke, his head pounding. The last thing he remembered seeing was Abbott being clubbed over the head by one of the guards.
He saw the Texan Captain was still out cold, a thick ribbon of blood running down from a split in the back of his scalp.
Jake was nowhere to be seen.
The light was dim but still blazed too bright for his eyes.
He looked around. They were in a holding cell. He recognised it from one of his and Rick’s ill-advised pranks one Hallowe’en when a young cop had called their bluff and locked them up for the night.
Like that night, there was nowhere comfortable to sit or lie. It’d have been more comfortable lying on the tunnel floor outside the bunker.
A flash of the spider-creature flashed into his head and made him quake with fear.
He shook Abbott awake, trying to be as quiet as he could. There didn’t seem to be anyone watching them in the corridor, but there was a camera in the corner of the cell.
Abbott groaned as he came round and unleashed an incoherent string of vowels.
‘Shh, they brought us in,’ Mark said.
Abbott winced, nodded. ‘That fucking spider thing,’ he said.
Mark shook his head. ‘I know.’
‘That’d make mincemeat of those things we were fighting.’
‘Sure would. So what’s the plan?’
‘Fuck knows. This place is locked up tighter than a nun’s cunt.’
Mark laughed despite the gravity of the situation.
Abbott grinned at him. ‘Make yourself comfy
,’ he said, lighting up his cigar and putting his feet up. ‘We may be here a while yet.’
Finally, the guard who’d saved them returned.
‘Managed to smuggle a sandwich out of the canteen,’ he said, passing a triangle of bread to each of them.
‘Where’s the guy who was with us?’ Abbott said, squinting to avoid the cigar smoke going into his eyes.
‘Sick bay.’
Abbott nodded. ‘He ok?’
‘Bit early to tell,’ the guard said.
‘You’re a fucking terrible liar, son,’ Abbott frowned.
‘He’s still alive, but they don’t think it looks good.’
Abbott nodded. ‘Don’t that feel better?’
The guard ignored him. ‘They’re trying to find the CCTV footage of Adam Jeffries’ death. If you are innocent then they are going to keep you here until the threat has passed.’
‘We are innocent,’ Abbott insisted.
‘If you are guilty,’ the guard said, reacting as though he hadn’t heard Abbott, ‘You’ll be put outside with that thing.’
Duggan and Hennessee stared at the monitor displaying the abomination that had once been the town’s shaman. It seemed to be resting, lying on the floor of the cell. Looking at its face made blindness seem kind.
‘Least it’s in the cell and not roaming around,’ Duggan said.
‘What the hell is it?’ one of the cops asked.
‘It was Finn,’ Hennessee said. ‘But fuck knows what it is now.’
Behind them, the cops were gathered in a horseshoe, their eyes glued to the screen. Some were excited, most were terrified, but they were all transfixed by the monster.
Finn’s skin was now almost entirely cracked, his pale flesh seeming to have separated into quarter-sized pieces. The blood between the gaps had dried in most places, but the occasional bead still oozed from the edges of the wounds.
Duggan noticed, with widened eyes, that the many gunshot wounds were already healing over as if they’d never been there.
In the short time the holy man had been in the cell, he had changed; his nose had all but crumpled completely into his face, replaced with two small slits in place of nostrils. It enhanced the idea that he was becoming more reptilian.
His arms were more heavily muscled, the fingers ending in short but vicious claws. Finn’s feet were the same, only with longer claws. A small bud of a tail was growing at the base of his spine.
‘Is it a vampire?’ one of the younger cops asked.
Duggan couldn’t tell if he was joking. ‘No, I think it’s more like a cross between a man and a reptile.’
‘A dinosaur?’
‘Na, it’s like a man but with some reptile DNA in him. Definitely manmade.’
Finn looked a little less threatening on the TV screen, as they could all pretend it was a monster from a film, but everyone still jolted when he woke up.
‘Time to get some answers,’ Duggan muttered.
They all jumped when Finn roared and stood up. As he stood, Duggan made out the thick musculature on his arms, legs and chest. He seemed to have increased in bulk in the short time since he’d been taken in.
The sight of the mutant made his blood run cold, even more so when he ducked his head and charged at the bars.
‘Now what do we do?’ Hennessee asked.
‘I have no idea.’
The guard took much longer than Abbott would have thought.
In that time he’d already whispered a few escape plans to Mark. The major advantage they had was that neither of them was handcuffed.
The cell was barred, with a lock on the door. Abbott had already scoured the room and seen that there didn’t seem to be anything he could use to pick the lock.
His best plan involved rushing the guard when he came in to get them.
The time passed slowly in the cell, with neither Abbott nor Mark in much of a mood to talk. Both of them found their minds returning to the hideous creature from the tunnel.
‘I think something’s up,’ Abbott said finally, waking Mark up from his sleep. In the underground lab it was impossible to tell if it was day or night, but a quick check of the phone Mark had on him revealed that it was a good few hours since they had set out from the bunker where they’d left Sadie.
‘Yeah, it has been a while.’
The cell was warm but still Mark felt a shudder run through him. ‘Wonder how dad’s doing,’ he muttered.
‘He’ll be fine, he’s a born fighter just like yourself.’
Abbott went over to the door and gave it a push. To his amazement, it came open.
‘Well things are looking up already,’ he said.
His optimism died when he saw a decapitated guard outside the cell and a thick pool of blood spreading across the floor.
Duggan realised that Finn wasn’t going to stop in his attempts to escape. They had thought he’d tire of ramming his head into the steel bars, but, if anything, his efforts had picked up.
What was even more of a concern was that he had managed to bend the bars. Only a little, but enough to be worrying.
Duggan wanted to learn more about what Finn had become, see if it was similar to the test subjects that had made short work of Taunton and its inhabitants. In particular if it had the same weaknesses.
He was not alone in his curiosity; all but one of his companions had followed him to the cell. One of the young cops put his face against the bars for a closer look.
‘Get back,’ Duggan shouted, pulling the rookie back by the collar of his jacket, just as Finn’s jaws snapped shut where the young cop’s face had been a split second earlier.
The cop whistled, a flush in his cheeks.
‘Thanks,’ he said, startled by how fast Finn had moved.
‘No problem. Be careful, everyone,’ Duggan shouted. ‘This thing is extremely dangerous.’
At the sound of Duggan’s voice, Finn looked up and hissed. He opened his jaws and gnashed them together, baring his curved, snakelike teeth.
‘You again,’ he said, his voice cold and menacing enough to send a shudder through all those assembled outside the cell, Duggan included.
‘What are you?’ Duggan said.
‘I am your death,’ Finn grinned. ‘I will bathe in your warm blood.’
The cops all looked at each other, their panic barely under control. Finn made their skin crawl, but they still found it nigh on impossible not to look at it.
Duggan decided to interrogate Finn there and then. If he couldn’t get the answers he wanted with a team of armed cops as backup, he never would. Besides, he’d already knocked the scaly bastard out once.
He reached for the handle to the cell.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Hennessee said, his panic barely concealed.
‘No fucking way, man,’ one of the cops said. ‘That thing’ll—’
Duggan shut him up with a glance.
‘Go on, kick his ass, Duggan,’ Carroll shouted.
‘If you set foot in here I will tear you limb from limb,’ Finn shouted.
‘I doubt it,’ Duggan said, pulling the Taser from his belt.
Finn’s eyes met the weapon and he took an instinctive step back.
‘He doesn’t like the look of that,’ Carroll grinned.
‘Ok, give him a few rounds then I’ll get in there.’
The roar of shotguns filled the small corridor. Thick ropes of blood sprayed up from Finn’s face and chest, covering Duggan, who crouched beneath the blasts. Finn cried out in pain and fell back.
Duggan pulled the door open. Slammed it shut behind him. The shotguns roared again, making vast bloody craters in the side of Finn’s neck. Blood gouted out, spattering the cell walls and floor. Finn bellowed in frustration. Duggan ducked again. More blood sprayed out as the next wave of bullets landed.
Duggan barely avoided Finn’s flailing arms and moved behind him. He jammed the Taser into one of the wounds on the back of Finn’s head.
‘I want to know how you got
in and out of the woods,’ Duggan shouted in Finn’s ear.
Finn laughed and tried to pull Duggan off his back.
Duggan gave him a quick blast of the Taser.
‘Plenty more where that came from,’ Duggan said. ‘Tell me what I want to know.’
Finn bellowed laughter.
Duggan pulled the trigger again, giving him a blast for a good twenty seconds.
‘It ain’t gonna be long before the thing in your head detaches,’ Duggan said. ‘So tell me what I want to know.’
Finn mocked him, despite the fact that he could feel the moth on the back of his head screaming and beginning to relinquish its grip.
There’d be plenty more after him. His death would mean his kin could carry on. He vowed not to speak a word, despite the agony that had begun to swamp his mind and body.
‘Tell me what I want to know,’ Duggan roared, his finger ready on the trigger.
Finn still shook from the effects of the last blast, his breath rasping in and out of his lungs.
Duggan pulled the trigger again, holding it down for a good minute. Finn shook like a shitting dog, sending blood and spittle and sweat flying from his body. He let out a low howl that was so pathetic it almost made Duggan feel sorry for him.
Almost.
‘Tell me what I want to know or I’ll keep this trigger held down till that cold-blooded brain of yours turns to soup and leaks out of your goddamned ears,’ Duggan growled.
Finn’s body was still wracked with spasms. He could feel the thing in his head writhing in pain. Knew this was his last chance. He slumped to all fours, feigning unconsciousness.
‘Is it dead?’ Forbes shouted.
‘No it’s still breathing,’ Jacques shouted.
‘I’m coming in to help,’ Marshall said.
Duggan looked up for a split second to warn them not to. It was all Finn needed, swinging his arm back over his shoulder, catching Duggan in the forearm hard enough to bruise the bone. The Taser flew out of Duggan’s hand and into the next cell.
Duggan let out a startled cry as the quaking creature that had once been Finn hauled itself to its feet and rushed him.
‘Can’t get a good shot in,’ Hennessee complained, fearing he was going to hit Duggan.
The creature picked Duggan up by the throat and slammed him into the wall. The air escaped him in a hurry. Transparent stars danced in front of his failing eyes.