Regardless of the hundreds of crackers that had been rendered but a milky smear, there were still more, and they were still coming, crawling effortlessly over the corpses of their kin.
As Jared floored the car—and it responded by issuing a high-pitched whine of protest—a cracker flew up and smacked Coggins’ window.
Peering into that slimy orifice full of the tiny reciprocating teeth, Coggins shuddered.
Askergan, what the fuck is happening to you?
26.
Corina told Kent to exit the car first and the boy reluctantly obliged, his head hung low. She followed next, shoving the keys into her pocket after making sure to lock the doors.
The Wharfburn Estate looked pretty much the way Corina had pictured it in her mind all these years, despite the fact that she had never seen it in real life. She was not so naïve to think that her imagination hadn’t been impregnated by the blurry image of the house with the blonde news reporter standing in front, but she had obsessed about it for long enough to have formed a distinct visual: ostentatious red brick, overgrown brush leading up to the front, and large Victorian windows blanketing the front. What she hadn’t seen on TV, however, was the front door; it simply wasn’t there. Instead, the opening was wide, the porch leading up to it and the frame itself marred by streaks of charred wood.
As brave as she was, this house scared her.
“Go,” she ordered.
The command was meant for Kent, but it also served to kick her into gear.
When the boy turned his round face to look at her, she was struck by how young he suddenly looked; how young and scared. He reminded her of Henri, who had confronted her when Corina had told her and her mother that she was leaving. The girl’s eyes had looked just as Kent’s did now.
A pang of guilt suddenly shot through Corina at the thought of having left her sister and mother alone—and that she had come here, of all godforsaken places. And had stolen a cop car. And… and… and… her poor decisions kept adding up like gold coins in a purple drawstring bag.
Corina’s eyes drifted back to Kent, who appeared to struggle to put one foot in front of the other as he slowly made his way across the lawn.
And kidnapping, she thought glumly. Don’t forget to add that to the list.
An explosion from somewhere in the distance rumbled through the air, drawing both Corina’s and Kent’s attention.
The sound had come from Corina’s left—about five or ten miles away, she estimated based on the short interval between seeing the orange glow and hearing the sound.
“What the fuck was that?” she asked.
When Corina turned back toward Kent, he bolted.
It would have been impossible for Corina to catch him, what with her prosthetic leg, had he turned and run down the road. But for whatever reason, the boy’s first instinct was to head to the car, and when he found his passenger door locked, Corina caught him and slipped a hand under his chin from behind. The boy struggled, pushing off the car with his feet, but when Corina’s hand met her bicep and she squeezed, just a little, he stopped fighting almost immediately.
“What the fuck! Who the fuck are you?” he gasped through gritted teeth. Spit flew from his mouth and speckled her forearm.
Corina eased the pressure.
“I need your help,” she replied, breathing heavily on the side of his head and ear.
The boy struggled again and she retightened her grip.
“You’re insane,” he grunted, his hands trying desperately to claw her arm away from his throat.
“No,” she said, letting go completely now and spinning Kent around. “Not insane,” she said, staring intently into his eyes. “Angry—I’m fucking furious. This place took so much from me, and now it’s my time to take it back.”
Kent’s eyes went wide, and a single tear rolled down his cheek. Clearly, she was doing a poor job of proving that she wasn’t insane.
“You don’t know what’s in there,” he said, his voice returning to a whisper. “We can’t go in there. I won’t. We don’t even have any weapons.”
Corina looked down at herself. What the boy was saying wasn’t completely true, of course, as they had one weapon: her.
She had spent the past six years training for something—something that she now realized had been this. She was training for Oot’-keban, or crackers, or whatever the fuck else waited for them inside the Wharfburn Estate.
Confident that Kent wouldn’t try to escape again—at least not in the near future—Corina turned her attention back to the looming Estate. Her eyes scanned the house, looking for something—anything—that might give her a hint of what to do next.
That was when she saw it: on the left side of the house, just a foot or two outside the shade that the roof offered, was a small white crab-like creature. Clearly dead, the thing was lying on its back, its six legs pointed like arthritic fingers in the air stiffly gripped by rigor mortis. Corina squinted in the fading sun, trying to figure out exactly what it was.
But she knew what it was: it was one of the crackers, one of the parasites that had affixed itself to Tyler’s skull… according to Kent, at least.
Corina looked over at the boy, and was startled by the way the boy was hyperventilating and his entire body was trembling, as if caught in an eternal shudder.
“Keep it together,” Corina said. “It’s dead.”
Kent seemed not to hear. The only part of his body that wasn’t shaking was his head: it was trained on the dead cracker like a man with tetanus.
Corina felt another pang of guilt, but like before, she forced this sensation aside, burying it into one of the deep recesses of her mind.
“Let’s go,” Corina whispered. “We don’t have to go inside the house.”
When Kent still didn’t answer, Corina moved closer to him. It had been a long time since she had had any friends, but for some reason, like some bizarre inverse Stockholm syndrome, she felt a bond forming with the redheaded boy. She slipped her hand into his, interlacing their fingers, and was surprised when Kent squeezed her hand. Corina squeezed back and started to move toward the house.
Kent reluctantly followed.
* * *
They only saw one other cracker as they made their way around the east side of the house. It was a small thing, even smaller than the dead one that they had passed a minute ago, and it seemed to meander about aimlessly near the back of the property just beyond the swimming pool. Corina was nearly hypnotized by the way the six legs moved up and down in a coordinated manner like organic pistons. It didn’t look so much like it was walking on the uneven ground, but more like it was gliding across it like a liquid.
Kent, on the other hand, couldn’t even look at the thing, and had resorted to burying his head in the back of Corina’s t-shirt. She had removed her sweatshirt and left it in the cop car, as the heat and anxiety, and whatever other bubbling mix of emotions that came at her in waves, had caused her to sweat more than usual.
Without warning, the cracker’s constant movement ceased, and Corina felt her whole body tense, thinking that they might have somehow alerted the eyeless creature. When the cracker suddenly turned and took off like an arrow into the wooded area, clearly headed west, she relaxed. Somehow, this gave her confidence: they had one weapon, and her body was tuned, ready to go, even if her mind was a muddled mess.
They waited for another moment, frozen in silence, but when it was clear that the thing was not coming back, Corina leaned over her shoulder and shrugged, trying to get the boy off her back.
“It’s gone,” she told him in a soft voice, “come on.”
It took two tries to get Kent to unglue himself from her, and when he did, Corina swiftly made her way across the lawn, squeezing Kent’s hand tightly in case he had any intentions of letting go.
Their collective anxiety eased somewhat when they made it completely across the unkempt backyard, following the path of disturbed and broken grass, and stepped into the thinly wooded area.
Still crouching, they made their way toward the back of the property, becoming increasingly aware of a foul smell that wafted toward them like an open sewer pipe.
This is the way, Corina knew. This is the way to find out what happened to my family—to find out about what happened to me.
But when Corina made it to another clearing and stepped in front of a grey culvert with Kent in tow, a crippling fear overcame her.
No curious desire, no vengeance-sated need, was enough to keep her moving forward.
“Oh my God.”
27.
They were too late; Coggins’ warning to Sheriff White back at the station had come too late.
The crackers had already made it into town.
Their first hint was the small store about a mile from the Lawrence house. The converted shed was set back from a blue slatted house with white trim and matching window shutters. The door to the shed was open wide and two legs hung out of the opening, an ‘Open’ sign lying on the grass just beyond the person’s black shoes.
“Stop the car!” Coggins shouted.
Jared, eyes locked on the road, didn’t hear him.
“Stop the car!” Coggins repeated, and this time Jared looked over at him. “Stop the—”
Jared slammed on the breaks so hard that Coggins’ head flung forward, coming within inches of smashing into the dash in front of him. As he recoiled, he pulled at his seatbelt, tearing it off of his chest and breathing deep.
He had one foot out the door when he saw it: there was a cracker sitting squarely on what he now realized was a woman’s bare chest. This one was not so much white as it was translucent; and it was small, too, not much bigger than a softball.
“Shit,” Coggins swore, freezing halfway out the vehicle.
He glanced back down the road, willing away the dust cloud that Jared had made, trying to see if the crackers were following them. When he saw nothing, he turned back to the store and brought his hands to his mouth, cupping it.
“Hey! Ma’am, you okay in there?”
It was a stupid question—an utterly ridiculous question—but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
He dropped his hands and grabbed Jared’s rifle from the floor of the car. Squinting one eye, he lined the sight with the cracker, grimacing at the sight of its glistening, thrumming shell. He was about to pull the trigger, to send the thing back to the hell that it had come from, when he caught some movement from the woman—a slight twitch beneath her skin.
Coggins shifted his field of view. It felt wrong looking at the woman’s bare, sagging breasts that hung on either side of her body, like staring at your grandmother in the shower, but he forced himself to stare.
There.
He saw more movement, like fingers pressing through a tight sheet just above her left breast.
What the—?
A hand stuck his leg and his heart leapt into his throat.
“Get in, man! She’s dead! Get the fuck in!” Jared shouted.
Coggins swatted Jared’s hand away and refocused on the elderly woman again. She wasn’t dead; he had seen her move.
And then he saw more movement; first her chest again, then her right arm seemed to rise a fraction of an inch.
God damn it, she’s alive!
Coggins took a deep breath and turned the rifle back to the cracker, which was now situated just below the hollow of her throat, the faceless shell looking somehow content—smug, even. The rifle barked and the cracker exploded, sending streams of white fluid in all directions. The liquid splattered a row of American flag-bearing teddy bears at the back of the shop, but to Coggins’ dismay, the woman didn’t sit up. And for a brief moment, the motion in her chest and arm ceased.
“Get the fuck in! They’re coming!” Jared shouted, once again pulling at Coggins’ pant leg.
Coggins resisted the urge to look behind the car, knowing that if he saw the crackers coming for them, he might lose any semblance of bravery and tell Jared to step on it.
They couldn’t leave, not just yet; this woman needed help. A lot of help.
Staring intently at the woman’s left arm, he thought he saw movement again.
“Just wait,” he grumbled to Jared, still staring down the barrel of the rifle in case another cracker surfaced.
Then there was more movement, but not subtle gestures as before, but a solid pulsating beneath—and somehow inside—the woman’s wrinkled breasts. A sinking feeling started in Coggins’ own chest, as if an invisible man had decided now was the time to stand on him. This inexorable feeling of dread continued to grow as the frenzied activity beneath the woman’s skin reached a boiling point and her breasts suddenly tore open, releasing at least a dozen of the milky crackers. The crackers spilled from the bloody ruins of the woman’s chest, pausing only to force blood and sinew from the tiny perforations on the top of their shells. It looked like it was raining blood.
Coggins gagged.
Only after the creatures made their way down her body and onto the lawn did Coggins catch a clear a glimpse of the woman’s flesh: her chest was torn open, her breasts reduced to ribbons of blood-splotched skin, her nipples hanging around her navel.
Coggins gagged again and felt bile fill his mouth.
But he couldn’t bring himself to look away.
As he watched, the cavity of her chest seemed to somehow seal back up again, the blood that ran down the sides of her body and pooled beneath her first reducing to a trickle before stopping altogether. The new skin, disorganized, no longer female, was whiter than the old skin, standing out like different shades of a patchwork quilt. The moment the woman’s chest was whole again, the lumpy protrusions, acute angles, started to move beneath the skin of the poor woman’s stomach.
There were more crackers buried in her skin.
Coggins vomited on the grass, and this violent act broke the spell. Still spitting puke, he threw the rifle back to the floor and pulled his body fully into the vehicle.
“Go! Drive!” he yelled, flecks of vomit flying from his lips.
Jared didn’t need to be asked twice.
When they passed Wellwood Elementary, Jared didn’t stop. He simply kept his eyes glued to the road and pushed his shitty Buick to its limits.
Coggins, on the other hand, had his face pressed against the glass, his eyes wide with horror.
28.
“Williams, get down to the armory, now! Bring out as many weapons as you can and put them on the table.”
Deputy Williams looked first at the sheriff and then at the black phone that the man had just slammed down hard.
One of his thin black eyebrows rose up in confusion.
“Sheriff? What about my car?”
The sheriff waved his comment away.
“Fuck your car! Go to the armory, now!”
Deputy Williams’ face went slack and he quickly turned and fled the room with haste.
Mrs. Drew poked her head into the room next, her expression grim. The woman’s always perfectly kept hair, the light grey strands tucked away in a tight bun, was in disarray, with two or three thickets hanging down in front of her face. She didn’t bother to push them away.
“Sheriff? Nancy is still on the line… she is nearly hysterical, rambling about Wellwood Elementary.” She paused for a moment, biting her lip. “I think you should take it.”
Paul nodded and reached for the phone.
“Put her through.”
Mrs. Drew left the room and hurried back to her desk.
A moment later, the phone rang and Paul picked it up with the very first sound.
“Hello? Nancy?”
The woman was indeed hysterical.
“Paul? Paul? You need to get out… oh dear God… it’s a fucking mess, bodies everywhere—and these fucking crabs… Paul? Paul?”
Paul’s heartrate doubled, then tripled.
“Nancy, slow down. Where are you?”
The woman swore and then her breathing quickened. She shouted something to som
eone else, but Paul couldn’t make out the words.
“I don’t know,” she shouted in between breaths. It occurred to Paul that she might be running.
“Are you running? Nancy, where are you? Think!”
“I—I—for fuck’s sake, Jerry, hurry your fat ass up! Sheriff, I just left the school… was heading out there to do some filming of the kids and their new garden… then, Jesus Christ, I saw the worst shit, Paul, fucking horrible shit. The fucking kids… oh God!”
Nancy’s voice exploded into a sob.
“Fuck! Their skin was being sucked by these fucking crab things!”
Sheriff Paul White’s mind immediately went to the story that the Griddle boy had told him about his missing friend. Then his eyes darted to the plastic bag on his desk, the one that contained the dead crab-like thing.
Then he thought of the school—the god damn elementary school.
No.
“Nancy!”
When at first there was no answer, he turned the receiver to his mouth and shouted into the phone.
“Nancy! Listen to me, Nancy, go immediately to Frankie’s Diner… go right there, right now! Coggins will swing by and grab you.”
He heard what he thought was an affirmation between heavy breaths on the other end of the line.
“And Nancy?”
“Yeah, Paul?”
She was sobbing again.
“Stay inside… please don’t let those things near you.”
He felt his own tears starting to well.
“Please.”
* * *
The sheriff hung up the phone again, his hand trembling over the black receiver.
He had just spoken to Coggins, to make sure that he had a car to grab Nancy and Jerry, the cameraman, and his deputy had confirmed what Nancy had told him.
Everyone at the school is dead. And that wasn’t all. There were more dead—many, many more.
The whole town was going to shit and he was left trying to poop-and-scoop.
Deputy Williams laid the final gun on the table—a shotgun, Sheriff Drew’s old shotgun—among the others.
Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3) Page 50