“That’s it,” the man said.
The clinking of the metal of gun on gun drew the sheriff out of his own head.
“We need to get ready… they’re coming here.”
The three of them, the sheriff, Deputy Andrew Williams, and Mrs. Drew, all stood around the table of guns, staring at them as if they expected them to stand up and move on their own.
“We need to get ready,” the sheriff repeated.
Get ready? How the fuck can we prepare for… for this?
This time, the deputy nodded.
“We have two shotguns, four nine millimeters, four grenades, and two Kevlar vests. Lots of bullets, mostly for the nine mils,” he said.
The deputy raised his eyes after speaking and stared at the sheriff with his dark eyes.
“How many are there, Sheriff?”
The sheriff lowered his gaze and shrugged.
A hundred? A thousand? More? Neither Coggins nor Nancy had been clear about that.
“Many,” was the answer he opted for.
Sheriff White reached out and grabbed one of the shotguns off the table. With his other hand, he unclipped the protective latch on his holster and pulled out his own gun. Without another word, he tossed it onto the table with the others.
“Five nine mils,” he corrected his deputy.
A shout from the other room drew his head from the rather meager table of weapons—a low-level drug dealer had a better stash than this. But this was Askergan County, population one thousand and twelve, not Detroit.
It was Walter screaming again. With all of the phone calls and horrible revelations of what was happening on the outskirts of town, the sheriff had completely forgotten about him.
“What do we do about Walter?” Deputy Williams whispered.
The sheriff turned to Mrs. Drew.
“How long has he been locked up?”
The woman’s bright green eyes flicked up to the clock and then back to the sheriff.
“About six hours. We can keep him another six without charging him.”
Paul nodded. The woman looked so tired in that moment that he felt a pang of sadness. Mrs. Drew had lost her husband and her adopted daughter, and she was slated to lose even more if things kept progressing the way they were.
A school… a fucking elementary school.
Paul shuddered.
When Walter shouted another insult, this one clearly directed at him, the sheriff thought about keeping him in the cell for as long as possible. But twelve hours was the maximum he could keep him without charging him, and even though the man really was a piece of work, he figured it best not to charge him. After all, he had just lost his son.
And rules were rules, no matter how much Coggins made fun of him for keeping them.
The window behind the sheriff suddenly exploded inward, showering the desk he had just vacated with glass. Sheriff White turned with the shotgun leading the way and caught sight of two shapes scampering across and then beneath the desk. He cocked the shotgun.
“Get out of here,” he instructed Mrs. Drew and Deputy Williams, who were still behind him. “Get out of here, now.”
“I’m not leaving,” Deputy Williams replied, and Paul heard him picking up a gun off the table.
The sheriff ducked down and scanned the area below the desk, moving the gun back and forth in a slow arc, searching for any sort of movement. “Go back to the front, Mrs. Drew, and close the door behind you.”
The sheriff heard the sound of metal on metal again as another gun was taken from the table, then he heard Mrs. Drew slowly back from the room.
The door closed behind her, and the sheriff and the deputy were alone with the crackers.
It was the deputy who spotted it first, a white crab-like creature huddled in the far corner beneath the sheriff’s desk. It seemed to be thrumming in a rhythmic pattern, its shell rising and then falling every few seconds, a movement that was accompanied by the sound of forced air.
Williams, his eyes trained on the thing, gestured with his hand not holding the gun for the sheriff to come to his side.
The sheriff slowly slid over to him and followed his pointed finger. Paul had a good four inches on Deputy Williams, so from his vantage point he could only see six pointed legs pressing into the floor; the body was just out of sight. The sheriff motioned for the deputy to keep his gun trained on the thing as he slowly lowered himself first to one knee, then onto his stomach.
Now in full view, he could see its disgusting white shell and the horrible perforations on top pulsating. The sheriff lined the center of the shell up with his shotgun. A second later, he fired.
At first, Paul thought that he had missed the thing as he could no longer see it, or anything, below the desk. He quickly scrambled to his feet and shouted at his deputy.
“Where’d it go? Where’d it go?”
The deputy, lowering his gun, said, “Blamo. You got it.”
The sheriff shook his head and leaned down again, trying to catch any sight of the thing.
“You sure?”
The deputy nodded and slowly strode over to the desk. He cautiously bent down and peered beneath it, then came back up, his nose scrunched.
“Splat,” was all he said, gulping hard. The sheriff could see that the man was trying to fight back vomit.
The sheriff nodded.
“Good. We need to board—” The words caught in his throat when a funk hit him square in the face. “Oh God,” he muttered, bringing his arm up to cover his nose and mouth. “What the fuck is that smell?”
Deputy Williams, his own arm covering his face, didn’t reply; he simply gestured to the underside of the desk with his pistol.
“Let’s board up the window and get out of here.”
Thankful for being dismissed from the now toxic smelling room—an odd mix of chili powder and sewage—the deputy immediately rushed by the sheriff and made his way to the door.
Opening the door alleviated some of the stink, and the deputy took this moment to lean out of the room.
“Mrs. Drew? Come put one of these on,” he shouted, meaning the Kevlar vests, “and let’s put one on Walter.”
Upon hearing his name, the man in the cell perked up.
“I get a gun? I get a gun?” His eyes were wide with excitement, and he started pulling at his long white beard in anticipation.
The sheriff’s eyes met his for a moment, but he said nothing. With the stare, the man quieted.
The sheriff’s hand drifted to the set of keys—front door, car, cell door, armory door, and handcuff keys—on the large ring on his belt loop and he played with them for a while, enjoying the way the teeth dug into his palm.
We can keep him locked up for another six hours.
Those were the rules.
But based on the shit that was happening in Askergan, could he be sure that he would be around in exactly six hours or fewer to let him go? He thought not.
The sheriff pulled the key to the single cell from his belt and made his way to the cage.
“You are going to listen to me. If you want out, do exactly as I say.”
It wasn’t a question, or a suggestion; it was a command, an order.
Walter, who was still lying on the floor of his cell, immediately pulled his thin body to his feet. He made his way to the front of the cage, grabbing one on either side of his face with mottled fingers. His eyes were wide, his lips a pale shade of pink that matched his cheeks and forehead.
“Yes, Massa,” the man uttered in his best Southern accent.
Walter Wandry’s breath was foul, his rotted teeth one hard candy short of falling out of his head.
Even as the sheriff put the key into the lock, he knew that he was making a mistake.
But rules were rules.
* * *
Sheriff Paul White had only pulled the door open a quarter of an inch when he heard two sounds happen at almost exactly the same time.
There was a shriek, one that was high-pitched and could ha
ve only originated from Mrs. Drew, and a series of successful cracks, culminating with a resounding snap that echoed off the narrow hallway.
Instinctively, the sheriff turned and as he did, he dropped to one knee. The key that he had used to unlock the door was still attached by a thin metal string to his belt, and it was stuck in the lock. When he turned, the door swung open.
A blur of brown and white flew past the sheriff, missing the top of his crouched head by mere inches. There was a whoosh of air, and then the cracker flew into the open cell, smacking the back bars with a dull thud.
Walter wasted no time; he quickly spun away from the front of the cage and ran from the cell without any thought of stopping or hesitating. He made his way past the crouched sheriff and into the room that housed both the sheriff and deputy’s desks.
Collecting himself, the sheriff whipped back around, forcing the cell door closed again. He reached for his gun on his hip, but swore when he realized that he had tossed it onto the table with the others. And after he had shot the cracker, he had left the shotgun on the table as well.
“Mrs. Drew! Downstairs! Now!”
The woman didn’t move; she was hypnotized by the creature that was stunned, lying on its side at the back of the cage.
Paul turned to the woman.
“Drew! Move!” He shouted the last word with such vehemence that the woman snapped to action. She quickly bolted, moving quickly for a woman of nearly sixty years wearing a tight black skirt and cream-colored pumps.
When the sheriff turned back to the cage, the cracker had recovered from colliding against the bars. It had propped itself back up on its legs, and now the front part of its shell was tilted toward the sheriff.
Then the legs began to snap into place, each of the thickened joints cracking as it lowered close to the ground.
The sheriff prepared himself, holding his meaty hands out in front of himself.
He would tear the fucking thing’s legs off with his bare hands if he had to.
“Bring it, motherfucker.”
29.
The sun had dipped low in the sky, but even the long shadows cast into the culvert did nothing to hide the horror within.
Corina Lawrence has somehow propelled her numb body behind a tree, and was now leaning around the side trying to get a clear look at the interior of the culvert. Every once in a while, she glanced over at Kent, who was also crouched behind a tree, but unlike her, his face was buried in his hands. There was a dark stain around the crotch of his jeans—the boy had pissed himself.
Corina didn’t blame him.
The naked, cowering boy had revealed himself just after the last of the crackers had fled west. Then the moaning had started.
The boy in the culvert was thin, bordering on skinny, and he was on one knee, his bare back and buttocks facing them. At first, Corina thought that the fading sunlight reflecting off the culvert was casting weird patches of light on the boy’s glistening back, giving it a patchwork appearance, but as the light continued to fade and the patches remained, she couldn’t be sure.
Another moan from the tunnel, and Corina glimpsed the profile of the boy’s mouth go wide. And then she saw it: a quiver of movement beneath his skin, just to the left of his bare spine.
She felt like she was going to be sick.
The movement continued to become more intense, like a writhing horde of maggots consuming a final cube of beef just below the surface. As they pushed harder and harder against his skin, gradually forming a singular, coherent outline, the moan intensified.
A second later, the boy’s skin split and a milky white cracker—a palil—erupted in a bloody gush. It fluttered for a moment, a strange word to describe a creature that had no wings, and small specks of blood seemed to expel from the top part of the nearly translucent shell. It was breathing; it was taking its first breaths.
Corina’s stomach did another barrel roll, and she forced herself to stare at the ground in an attempt to keep from vomiting.
Watching the birth of the palil was too much even for her constitution.
A stream of tears suddenly marked her red cheeks.
What the fuck are we doing here?
Closure, revenge, fucking vengeance, none of it mattered now.
Her eyes darted to the boy across from her. Regardless of her own selfish motivations, Kent didn’t deserve to be here; he had done nothing to deserve this.
After somehow managing to once again keep the puke at bay, Corina looked up again and was taken aback by the fact that the bloody wound on the boy’s spine had somehow sealed itself.
She blinked hard, squeezing the last vestiges of tears away.
Did I imagine it? Did I imagine the cracker?
Corina squinted hard, and realized that while the blood was gone, the skin on the spot that she swore the cracker had erupted from was different; it was lighter than the rest of his pale skin, a milky white membrane that resembled a patch of vitiligo. A flicker of movement drew her eyes to another shape just below where the previous cracker had emerged. Something was moving beneath his skin again.
And if Corina needed further proof of what she had seen, it was the cracker itself: after spraying all the blood away, the cracker stood poised on the boy’s shoulder. A moment later, it scampered over the new protrusions on the boy’s back and made its way to the front of the culvert, its pointed appendages tinkling quietly on the metal surface.
The shape in the culvert moaned again, more loudly this time, and Corina dared another glance at Kent. To her surprise, he had pulled his face from his hands and was now peering into the tunnel, his own jaw slack, tears and saliva dripping from his face in such thick rivulets that she could have been convinced that he had just washed his face.
His entire body was shaking.
“Tyler?” Kent whispered.
Corina’s heartrate doubled and she gestured wildly at Kent, mouthing the words, Be quiet, get behind the tree!
It was no use. The boy stood and took one step into the open.
“Tyler?” he asked again. His expression was oddly blank, as if he were possessed.
The moaning stopped and again Corina, still crouched behind the tree, tried to will Kent back into hiding.
What the fuck are you doing?
When Kent repeated his friend’s name a third time—and this time the newly birthed cracker at the front of the tunnel tilted backward, as if it had just acknowledged their presence—Corina had no choice but to stand and make her way to the boy’s side. After all, it was her fault he was here; he deserved none of this.
The horrible moan, a low-octave sound that was coming from deep within the crouched form, returned when two new palil burst forth in a bloody show.
Kent was now repeating his friend’s name over and over again in a wet whisper, sweat, spit, and tears dripping from his chin.
Corina hooked her arm through his, knowing that they had to run, while at the same time aware of how difficult a venture that would be given the uneven forest floor and her prosthetic leg. She doubted that she would be able to navigate it on her own, let alone dragging Kent with her.
The crouched figure in the culvert suddenly twisted, its neck craning toward the opening, toward them.
Corina saw his face, and this time it was her bladder that let go.
Tyler’s face was a horrible mess, the skin on the entire left side an opaque, featureless white, too smooth to be that of a boy or a man. It looked like he had received an albino skin graft, one that was much too tight and pulled the corners of his eye and nose out of true. There was a scar that ran down the right side of his face, and it was this scar, oddly, that made him seem human. If it weren’t for the scar, Corina wouldn’t have been so sure.
The boy’s eyes were sunken black pits, and his mouth was ragged, his lower lip reduced to bloody strips of dangling flesh. The blood that coated his teeth suggested that he had inflicted this damage on himself.
As her gaze drifted lower, she realized that his entire b
ody was covered in patches of the strange off-white skin, beneath which she saw the stirrings of at least a half dozen more crackers. Tyler’s body looked like a stained tube sock filled with a family of rats, all desperate to get out at once.
The face suddenly turned and lined up with hers and Kent’s.
When the mouth opened, Corina expected another of those horrible moans. With the three crackers having made their way to the opening of the culvert, all leaning forward slightly, puffing air through the tops of their shells, she prepared herself to run, knowing that, prosthetic leg or not, she would likely have to drag Kent with her.
A lumpy hand—one that looked nothing at all human, just a solid fist of white calloused flesh—thumped against the interior of the culvert as the thing—the boy—continued to turn its body.
It wasn’t a moan that came out of the ragged hole of a mouth, but words. The sound was garbled, and the words ran together like those of a drunk preacher, but she understood them nonetheless.
“Help me,” the boy whispered, flecks of spit and blood spraying from the orifice. Another cracker budded from his chest and flopped into his naked lap before scampering to the front of the culvert with the other three creatures.
“Help me, please, God, help me.”
30.
Sheriff Paul White didn’t have to use his hands after all; the cracker was much bigger than the one that he had blasted with the shotgun beneath his desk and it didn’t fit through the bars.
With a thunk, it fell to the ground again, landing on its side. It tried to scramble to its feet, but it was stunned and careened to one side for a brief moment before finally righting itself.
Sheriff White stared in disgust, unsure of what to do next. The cracker turned and squatted, its joints locking into place as it had done before. Again the sheriff held his large black hands out in front of him, just in case it managed to finagle a way through the bars. But this time it didn’t jump. Instead, it simply remained locked in place, motionless.
Deputy Williams came running from the back of the hallway, tearing his way up the stairs two at a time, two small sheets of plywood in his hands. When he saw the sheriff, the boards dropped noisily to the ground and he quickly pulled his gun.
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