Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3)

by Patrick Logan

  What the fuck?

  So many questions rushed through his mind that he felt his teeth chatter.

  Who the fuck is that? And what is he shooting at?

  The sheriff hurried to the window, indicating to Deputy Williams to remain tucked in behind him.

  It was Coggins—thank God, it was Coggins.

  He scanned the car. When he caught sight of a woman in a yellow dress—albeit a much darker, grimier version of the one he had seen earlier in the day—he felt a weight come off of his considerable chest.

  Nancy.

  Nancy was in the car, which had been driven onto the lawn and pulled over the sidewalk just a few feet from the door. But as he continued to squint, trying to understand the dark interior of the vehicle using only the light from the station, he realized that she wasn’t the only other person in the car; there was a man in the driver’s seat, a man that, despite the twisted sneer on his thin face, looked familiar. And that wasn’t all; there was another man in the backseat, a man so fat that his girth looked to be forcing Nancy against the door, despite the fact that there were only two of them in the backseat. The man had a large, antique-looking camcorder still attached to his shoulder.

  The sheriff lowered his gun and ran for the door. He unlocked the deadbolt and then rested his hand on the push bar. Before swinging it wide, he rapped his knuckles off the glass as stiffly as he dared, trying not to smash the pane.

  Nancy and the driver immediately looked over at him, their expressions matching masks of horror mixed with relief.

  Then he held up three fingers.

  “One… two… three!” He lowered a digit with every word, and on three, he thrust the door to the police station open.

  Nancy opened the car door and leapt across the three or four feet separating the car and the station, and landed directly into the sheriff’s arms. He backpedaled, catching her with one hand.

  Deputy Williams reacted immediately, pushing past the sheriff, leading the way with his shotgun. He squeezed off one blast, leaning the gun out the door so as not to deafen the sheriff and Nancy. The sheriff, now a few feet from the entrance, caught sight of a spray of white liquid through the glass.

  Deputy Williams stepped aside and the cameraman came next, rolling awkwardly from the vehicle before slamming against the sidewalk. The man, his dark hair hanging in grimy strings over his face, scrambled on all fours until he was well within the station. As soon as he had passed, the deputy took position again in front of the still open door, waving his shotgun across the lawn.

  The driver came next, throwing his door open and grabbing another antique rifle from the center armrest and pulling it with him as he crossed the divide.

  Coggins was last, but even when Deputy Williams shouted—screamed—at him to come inside, the man didn’t even turn. Instead, he squeezed off a few more shots with his rifle at crackers that were just out of the sheriff’s limited viewing angle. When the rifle was empty, Coggins switched to his handgun, firing off two, three, and four shots even as Deputy Williams continually yelled at him to come inside.

  Is he on some kind of suicide mission?

  Sheriff White released Nancy and then made his way to the door, pushing Deputy Williams out of the way.

  “Coggins!” he bellowed in his deep voice. “Coggins, get the fuck in here!”

  Coggins turned, a confused look on his face. But when he saw Paul, he smiled—the man actually smiled.

  Suicide. The man was insane and wanted to go out in a blaze of glory.

  Coggins turned back to the lawn and fired off one more shot, then pulled himself out through the window, and scrambled onto the roof of the car, rifle in one hand, pistol in the other.

  It dawned on him that the man wasn’t suicidal, at least not now, and that he was going to jump.

  The sheriff’s eyes went wide.

  “Coggins?”

  Deputy Andrew Coggins leapt from the roof of the car into Sheriff Paul White’s open arms, knocking him backward and onto the ground. With the sheriff’s foot out of the way, the glass door to the police station swung closed.

  The air was knocked out of the sheriff’s chest, and he grunted. When he opened his eyes, Coggins’ red beard was right in his face.

  “Miss me, big fella?” Coggins asked, a sly grin on his face.

  Sheriff White shook his head, trying to clear the stars.

  “Get the fuck off me,” Paul finally managed after catching his breath.

  He shoved the much smaller man to his right, and Coggins rolled off and pulled himself to his feet.

  As the sheriff did the same, he saw blood coming out of both of Coggins’ ears.

  No wonder he didn’t come when Williams was calling him.

  The sheriff went to Nancy first, wrapping his big arms around her and pulling her in tight. Then he kissed her forehead lightly.

  She was trembling.

  A resounding snap suddenly filled the ACPD reception area, and both deputies and the sheriff turned in time to see a large crack form on the inner pane, spreading into a snowflake pattern extending from the center where the cracker had struck it.

  “Get up,” Deputy Williams said to the cameraman, who was still on his back, feet up in the air like an overturned turtle. His awkward camera was still attached to his shoulder, and the sheriff now realized it was actually affixed with some sort of modified sling.

  Confident that Nancy was unhurt, the sheriff turned to the driver of the vehicle next, a thin man clutching the barrel of a rifle that was so old that he was concerned even the man’s thin fingers might crush it.

  “You,” he instructed, “get behind me—we need to get downstairs before the window shatters.”

  The man nodded and helped the cameraman to his feet before heading back down the corridor toward the end of the hallway.

  Coggins was next. Although he still couldn’t hear what the hell was going on, he had seen the crack and knew that it was only moments before the glass broke and they were infested with crackers.

  * * *

  “Wait, what?”

  The sheriff stared at the man across from him, incredulous.

  How could it be?

  “Jared—your name is Jared Lawrence?”

  The man with the short brown hair and the cleft in his chin nodded.

  “Jared Lawrence,” he confirmed.

  The sheriff immediately realized why he had looked familiar.

  “Corina…”

  The words had come out more of a mumble, his mind’s inner workings verbalized, but Jared picked up on it immediately and his expression suddenly changed.

  He stood and took an aggressive step toward the sheriff.

  “What about Corina?” he demanded. “How do you know her?”

  There was pain mixed in with the anger clear in his voice and narrowed eyes.

  The sheriff, taken aback by this outburst, bit his lip, unsure of what he should tell the wide-eyed man before him.

  In the end, he didn’t have to say anything; Mrs. Drew answered for him.

  “She was here,” she said simply, keeping her eyes fixated on the pistol that she still held in her lap.

  There were six of them sitting on uncomfortable folding chairs surrounding the table covered in their collective arsenal: Sheriff White, Coggins, the cameraman, Nancy, Mrs. Drew, and Jared. Deputy Williams was at the top of the stairs, his ear pressed against the thick metal door, shotgun in hand.

  Jared, now standing, turned his venomous gaze from the sheriff to Mrs. Drew.

  “What do you mean, ‘she was here’?”

  Mrs. Drew shrugged.

  “She came in here about six hours ago, looking for Coggins.”

  Coggins was struggling to read lips, his eyes bouncing back and forth from face to face. He was having a hard time keeping up with the conversation, but one thing was clear: Jared was not happy. And he recognized something else, too—his name. Mrs. Drew had just said, ‘Coggins’.

  Uh-oh.

  Jar
ed turned to him.

  “Brad? What the fuck?”

  The sheriff interrupted before things got heated.

  “Sit down.”

  When Jared ignored the order and took another step toward Deputy Coggins, the sheriff repeated the request, this time with more force.

  “She was here… but then she left. She stole”—the sheriff indicated Deputy Williams at the top of the stairs—“Deputy Williams’ car and left about two and a half hours ago.”

  Jared’s face transitioned from anger to shock.

  “She what?”

  The sheriff nodded.

  “But, it doesn’t matter now. What matters is getting the fuck out of here and dealing with those—those things.”

  “Doesn’t matter? Doesn’t matter? My fucking niece is out there with those things and it doesn’t matter?”

  Coggins was getting better at reading lips, and he thought he had a better grasp of what was going on. He recalled a time long ago, a time that he had forced into the deep recesses of his brain, when he had told Jared that they would have to leave his brother Oxford. The man was having none of it then, and was going to have none of it now.

  “We’ll get her,” Coggins said, and all eyes suddenly turned on him.

  Jared made a face.

  “What? We’ll get her,” he repeated with a shrug.

  He wasn’t sure if he had meant to say the words, or if he had intended only to think them; as before, he had forgotten that although he couldn’t hear for shit, his own speech was just fine.

  It was Jared who answered, crossing his arms across his chest.

  “How?”

  “I think you guys should see this,” the cameraman suddenly piped in.

  Unlike the rest of the people around the table, the man didn’t seem that interested in the ongoing discussion. Instead, his eyes were focused on the archaic video camera that he had only just recently detached from his shoulder.

  “How, Brad? How the fuck are we going to get out of here—get by those things—and find her?”

  “Guys?”

  The cameraman again.

  “We can find her,” the sheriff interjected. “All of the cruisers have a tracker in them—we can find her. Getting by those things, however—”

  A loud crash cut off his sentence, a bombastic thud followed by the unmistakable sound of breaking glass.

  The crackers had broken the front window.

  The sound that followed, the sound of hundreds, maybe even thousands of tiny, pointed legs scampering above them sounded as if someone had spilled an entire collection of marbles across a ceramic floor.

  And the sound grated on them; it grated like a jagged fingernail on an exposed tooth root.

  Nancy, who hadn’t said anything since making her way to the basement, suddenly rose to her feet and began backing away from the table, trying to put as much distance as she could between herself and the stairway leading to the upstairs.

  “Nance, it’s okay,” the sheriff said, trying to calm her. The woman’s breathing was coming in short bursts, and he was concerned that she would soon start to hyperventilate.

  “Nan—”

  There was a thud at the door, and Williams instinctively moved down a step. The thud was followed by another, and then another. Soon, the thuds became continuous, like an unwanted drum solo.

  Even the sheriff had been holding his breath, but he released it when it was clear that no matter how many times the crackers banged against the thick metal door, it would hold.

  This wasn’t glass, this was two inches of aluminum.

  It would hold.

  “Guys!” the cameraman shouted, and this time the sheriff finally acknowledged him.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “I think you should see this.”

  The fat man didn’t wait for a response this time. He turned the viewfinder of the camera around and aimed it at the sheriff. It took both him and Coggins a few minutes before they realized what, exactly, they were watching.

  It was Wellwood Elementary, and it was horrible.

  35.

  “Get it off me!” Kent screamed, swatting madly at the leg of his jeans.

  Corina whipped out her phone and quickly flicked it on, the glow from the small screen shining an off-white light on Kent’s pants.

  She caught a glimpse of something moving into the shadows, but it had been too fast for her eyes to focus on it.

  “It’s gone,” she said, her voice tight.

  Maybe it wasn’t one of them. Maybe it wasn’t a cracker.

  But they had both heard the sound; the unmistakable sound of a cracker pushing itself off the dirt floor of the basement.

  Kent took a deep breath and rolled out of her arms, looking up and down his body for any sign of a cracker or anything else.

  “Keep the light on it!” he demanded.

  His hands worked frantically from the top of his worn sneakers up to his knee.

  “Where did it go?” he asked. Like Corina, the boy’s voice was high and tight.

  “Where did—?”

  Kent screamed and clutched at the inside of his left ankle with both hands.

  Corina pushed him off of her and he fell onto his ass. Reaching forward, she shoved his hands away and grabbed the leg of his jeans and roughly hiked it up to his knee.

  She could see nothing in the shaking light of her phone, nothing except his thin, pale leg and…

  “Fuck!”

  A milky white cracker, no bigger than a large moth, was attached to his ankle, just above the bone.

  “Get it off me!” Kent yelled.

  Corina stared in horror at the creature that had wrapped itself around Kent’s ankle like an organic house arrest ankle monitor.

  As she watched, it suddenly clamped down hard and Kent screamed again.

  “Take it off!”

  Corina snapped out of it and reached down with one hand and grabbed the thing. Her intention had been to grab ahold of it and pull, but her hand immediately recoiled. It was surprisingly cold and slick to the touch, and she had felt air rushing through her fingers.

  What the fuck?

  “Please,” Kent pleaded. He turned his round face up to her, and she realized that his cheeks and chin were slick with tears.

  Corina looked away from him and scanned the room. There, within reach, was a foot-long splinter of wood. She snatched it up and turned back to Kent.

  When Kent realized what she intended to do, his eyes bulged from their sockets.

  “No!” he screamed.

  But he was a split second too late; the wood was already in motion.

  Corina brought the piece of wood down on the shell, careful not to break Kent’s ankle in the process.

  A thunk echoed off the moist brick walls, and for a brief moment, Corina thought that she had killed the thing. Its limbs, which were wrapped almost completely around Kent’s thin ankle, seemed to relax.

  But it was not dead, not even close.

  As she watched in horror, the cracker’s legs retracted inward, and then started to push under Kent’s skin, dissecting it.

  Corina’s stomach lurched as blood began to soak the top of Kent’s white sock.

  Corina raised the piece of wood again, but it was too late. The cracker had burrowed itself under his skin, somehow flipping around so that the tiny mouth surrounded the tear in his skin.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered.

  Kent swooned, and his head banged off the dirt ground before Corina could get her hands beneath it.

  “No,” he moaned, and his eyes rolled back.

  * * *

  The pain was mostly gone now; either that, or Kent had become accustomed to it.

  He was lying flat on his back, his head resting in Corina’s lap, his pale face staring up at her. His left leg was straight, the blood filled sock and shoe as far away from them as possible.

  Even though Corina knew she was supposed to comfort him, she found herself unable to look away from t
he hard outline of the cracker buried beneath the tight skin on his ankle.

  It should have been me.

  The irony of the thought was not lost on her as, had it been her left ankle that the thing had latched on to, they would both be fine—it wouldn’t have been able to dissect the carbon fiber prosthetic foot.

  As she stared at those tiny, reciprocating teeth, her mind kept drifting back to Tyler in the culvert behind the house, his skin tightening and then budding as more crackers were birthed from his flesh.

  Why did I pull my hand back? Why didn’t I rip it off?

  Nearly six years of training. Muai Thay, jiu jitsu, boxing. Six years. Six years and she couldn’t even pull off a fucking overgrown beetle from Kent’s leg. Kent… Kent, who she had kidnapped and brought here.

  Corina turned her face skyward, staring into, and beyond, the rotting wooden beams of the floor above.

  “Fuck!” she screamed.

  There was a smattering of movement above as the crackers stirred in response to her voice, but she didn’t care.

  This was fucked.

  When she finally mustered the courage to turn back to Kent, he was still staring up at her.

  He was terrified.

  “Don’t let me end up like Tyler,” he whispered, his eyes welling with tears again. “Please.”

  Corina managed a meek nod even as her own tears started to fall.

  “I can dig it out,” she whispered, once again reaching for the pointed stick that she had struck the cracker with.

  Kent shook his head.

  “It’s too late,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “I can feel it… I can feel it inside me.”

  Corina started to sob.

  “It’s not too late,” she stuttered.

  Kent turned away. It took Corina a moment to realize that he was showing her the side of his neck.

  Corina could not believe her eyes. She put one hand on the side of his head, and used the other to pull down the collar of his t-shirt.

  It looked like his neck was vibrating, but it was not a steady, regular pulsing of his blood through his carotid. Instead, it seemed to be twitching.

  “No,” she moaned.