But then Derek said, “Did you feel that?”
The tremor grew in intensity. They could see the cars that were parked along the street shaking.
“Maybe it’s an aftershock? Because of the refinery.”
“You’re thinking of an earthquake.”
A seam appeared in the street, winding toward them as the concrete split open like the fragile shell of an egg. A fire hydrant on the corner across the street torpedoed into the sky and a geyser of water spewed forth, quickly flooding the sidewalk. Trees were uprooted from the ground in little explosions of dirt, toppling over onto cars, houses, and whatever else happened to be in their path.
At the intersection directly before Main Street and the convention center, the asphalt heaved upward as though the Earth itself was exhaling, and then the chunks succumbed to gravity, pulled downward into a fathomless pit, forming a sinkhole that was at least thirty feet wide.
A single thick tentacle slithered out of the sinkhole and slapped against the street. Another appeared, and then another, until there were too many to count, some as thick as the toppled trees. A mass rose from the center of the sinkhole. A flesh-colored pillar that looked like it had been fashioned using human skin and melted candle wax.
“Watch out!” Kevin yelled as a quivering tentacle as wide as an economy car rose from the ground and then came smashing down onto the spot where Kevin had been standing only a moment before. The sidewalk rippled. Kevin picked himself up from the ground and grabbed his shotgun.
“What the hell is it?” Derek said, diving for cover behind an overturned car.
It’s got a human head, Kevin thought as his mind sought an explanation. That’s a man’s face! Crazy-looking as all fuck, but that thing was a person once.
Kevin brought up the shotgun and fired, blasting the creature at the base where the tentacles flopped up and down anxiously. The bullet struck home, and white pus oozed from the wound. The creature screamed, but it wasn’t really a scream, it was an alien screech that made Kevin want to clap his hands over his ears and curl up into a fetal position.
Another tentacle jumped into the air, stretched taut, and then whipped down toward Rhonda. Kevin tackled her and they narrowly avoided being crushed.
Derek popped up from behind the car. He fired the rifle, tearing another hole in the creature’s flesh. Pus oozed, but the shot didn’t have a discernible effect on the quivering mass of jelly. The creature seemed to be one giant gelatinous sac of white pus. It reminded Derek of a semi-transparent sausage casing, but instead of being stuffed with meat, it was filled to bursting with the chalk-colored goo.
Kevin pulled Rhonda to her feet, yanking her after him as he made a dash for the car Derek was hiding behind.
“Now we’re fighting aliens?” Derek said, firing another shot before he crouched down again.
I don’t think it’s an alien, or at least it didn’t start out that way, Kevin thought. His panicking mind tried to reach back into some far back compartment, searching for a shred of memory. Something one of the others had said when the entire fiasco had started; there was an answer, but he couldn’t quite grasp hold of it.
Rhonda wore a grimace of pain. She had rolled up the left leg of her jogging pants high enough to expose her ankle. It was swollen and discolored. She glanced up and caught Kevin’s worried gaze. “I don’t think it’s broken,” she said. “I came down on it wrong when you tackled me.”
“I usually hold off on the physical abuse until later in the relationship,” Kevin said.
“Very funny,” Rhonda said, doing her best to smile through the pain.
Derek had his back against the cold metal of the car’s driver’s side door, staring at Kevin with a flabbergasted look that seemed to say, Are you really fucking joking right now?
Kevin caught him staring. “Are you okay?”
Derek nodded, his mouth hanging open as if frozen in a permanent state of shock and surprise. “Our guns won’t hurt it. We need a bazooka or something.”
Glass exploded, raining down on their heads as a tentacle smashed down on the car they were hiding behind. A thick tentacle slithered across the ground like an eyeless snake and wrapped itself around Kevin’s leg, yanking him out from behind the car. His face smashed against the pavement; he felt the warm rush of blood gush from his nose. He clawed at the asphalt as he slid backward on his stomach, the tentacle pulling him toward the quaking pillar of flesh with the once-human face.
As he was being dragged backward, Kevin caught the metal pole of a street sign and clung to it for dear life, thinking it was a matter of holding tight and perhaps being torn in half, or letting go and being sucked up into the thirty foot blob of some distant planet’s version of Silly Putty.
“A little help here for Christ’s sake!” Kevin yelled.
The tentacle wrapped itself around his lower leg more tightly. Then came the sickening sound of a branch being crushed under a boot as his tibia snapped in two. Kevin screamed. His head swam with fuzzy black dots like Rorschach inkblots being held too close to his eyes.
Derek leaped forward, bringing out a gleaming Bowie knife. He brought the knife down and stabbed it into the tentacle, severing it. The creature let out an eardrum-shattering howl of pain and retracted its severed tentacle, spewing pus like an out-of-control fire hose.
“Take that, bitch!” Derek yelled, relishing the small victory, which turned out to be short-lived as a tentacle shot forward and struck him in the chest. He was slammed against a car and slid to the ground, unconscious.
Kevin crawled over to Rhonda, dragging his broken leg behind him, a toddler step away from losing consciousness. “We’re goners.”
“We can’t be,” Rhonda said in defiance, squeezing the trigger of her Beretta over and over again until it made nothing more than a dry click. She sank down beside Kevin, letting the gun fall from her hand. “I don’t understand. We were so close.”
“Life’s a bitch,” Kevin said. “And then you find out you can’t even escape it after you’re dead.”
“This is serious!” Rhonda said, but it was a feeble argument.
Kevin felt himself fading, starting to clock out, lights going dim, and he discovered he was too tired to fight it. It was easier to let the cozy warmth wrap around him like a thick blanket. Who cared if he wasn’t awake for the grand finale? God willing, he would sleep right on through being eaten alive or absorbed or whatever fucked up shit the creature had in store for them.
I know! his mind insisted. It looks like a giant penis! A cock with a face!
He let out a half-hearted chuckle, resting his head in Rhonda’s lap as his eyes grew heavy.
And then he heard the music. Was it the sound of angel’s singing? Beckoning him to the afterlife perhaps? If that’s angels, Kevin thought as he began to slip off, then they can’t sing worth a shit.
Chapter 23
The truck was blackened with scorch marks. All that remained of the colorful plastic ice cream cone that had formerly bobbed atop the truck’s roof was the metal coil and an amorphous dollop of melted plastic that looked like a dog had taken a shit immediately after eating a rainbow.
Miraculously, the truck’s sound system was functional, and a jingle warbled from the truck’s speakers.
When they rolled back into town, the truck canting to the side noticeably due to a nearly flat rear tire, Ryan slammed the brakes when they saw the massive creature that had crawled up from beneath the street.
“Oh my God, what is that?” Becky asked.
“The 50 Foot Woman’s dildo?” Fred offered. He had managed to remain conscious despite his ghostly appearance, and stood between the driver and passenger seats, gazing at the creature through the truck’s shattered windshield.
“The firefighter,” Ryan said.
“Huh?”
“Patient zero. The firefighter that was at the shuttle crash. The first one to get infected.”
“How the hell do you know that?” Fred asked.
“
Well, for one, that’s the likeliest explanation, and two…it’s wearing his face.”
“That’s one nasty space bug to do shit like that to a guy.”
“Look,” Becky said, pointing to the side of the street in front of the creature. “Kevin and Rhonda.”
“Do you have any exploding tips left?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Give me the crossbow.”
Becky didn’t need to ask what he was planning to do, but she did anyway. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to drive this ice cream truck straight up its ass,” Ryan said.
Fred had the crossbow, his handless left arm wrapped around it awkwardly as he knocked one of the bolts. “Maybe I should do it,” he said. “You haven’t used one of these before. I’m the better shot.”
“I’ll be close enough that it won’t matter. Besides, both of you have given enough already. Now I’m going to end this.”
Fred smiled, handing Ryan the crossbow. “That makes hero speech number three.”
“Figure I might as well get in as many as I can.”
“I’d argue that this is one damn stupid idea, but somethin’ tells me your mind’s made up.”
“And you’d be right.”
“Well, I’m going to argue about it with you,” Becky said. “This is crazy. I know you think you’re proving something right now, that you’re cool or macho or whatever, but it’s just you being stupid. Nobody is going to think you’re cool when you’re dead.”
Ryan leaned over and unbuckled Becky’s seatbelt. Becky immediately drew it back across her chest and buckled it back into place.
“If you want to be stupid, then I’m going with you.”
Ryan unbuckled her belt again and said, “This isn’t the time to be stubborn. I’ve got about ten seconds before that ugly-looking thing squashes our friends, so I really need you to get out.” Ryan’s eyes flicked toward Fred.
Fred grabbed Becky’s shoulder gently. “Let’s do like he says.”
“And you – I can’t believe you’re just going to let him do this!”
“I don’t like it any better than you do, but I think we’re all out’ve bubblegum.”
Becky stood up in a huff. For a second, Ryan tensed himself, fully expecting Becky to slap him, but instead she grabbed the front of his shirt and kissed him. It was sloppy and wet and he felt his lips pushed back hard against his teeth. When she pulled away, she said, “You better come back to me alive. Otherwise, I’m going to kick your ass!”
Fred ushered her toward the back of the truck and nodded to Ryan after they had jumped out. Ryan nodded back. He brought his foot up and kicked out what remained of the shattered windshield, resting the crossbow on top of the dash.
Ryan took his foot off the brake and stepped on the gas.
He was thinking that in the movies the hero would jump out at the last minute, roll away, and wouldn’t show up again until his friends were weeping over his incinerated body. The hero would step out of nowhere and ask them what they were crying about, and they would all jump for joy and relief, and then they would cut to the hero and his girl lounging on the beach somewhere. He would make some witty remark and next thing you knew it was fade out and the credits would start to roll. Everybody loves a happy ending.
Although Ryan was acutely aware of the difference between real life and make-believe, what he was about to do was straight out of the movies. He would shoot the exploding bolt at the creature, ram the truck up its ass, which would cause it to explode like an oil tanker on fire…only he would abandon ship half a second before impact.
And he wouldn’t reappear until Becky and Fred and the others were weeping over him, thinking he had perished in the fire.
He played it in his mind. It seemed doable.
But that’s not what happened.
The needle on the ice cream truck’s speedometer spiked at fifty-five, and Ryan was within thirty feet of the towering creature when he squeezed the crossbow’s trigger. The bolt hit its mark, only lower, piercing the creature’s fleshy exterior and exploding. The creature let out another piercing howl as gallons of pus exploded outward, splashing onto the truck and drenching Ryan in the foul-smelling goo.
The truck barreled forward. Ryan held the steering wheel with one hand, got ready to bail and –
A massive tentacle shot forward, wrapped itself around the truck, and plucked it off the ground as though it weighed no more than a box of Kleenex.
Ryan peered over the side of the truck and suddenly saw the street twenty feet below him. The tentacle coiled, bringing him closer to the creature until he had an up-close view of its face. Then he saw the tattoo that depicted a grinning skull wearing a black fire helmet, only it was stretched and warped almost beyond recognition.
The creature’s lower jaw came unhinged, revealing rows and rows of needle sharp teeth that disappeared into the darkness of the thing’s throat. It brought the truck closer, tipping it forward so Ryan was thrown forward into the steering wheel.
It’s trying to eat me like a fucking Tic Tac, he thought, pushing himself into the seat and buckling the seatbelt, unwilling to let gravity do the creature’s work for it.
“If you want to eat me, you’re going to have to eat the whole damn truck, you ugly alien fuck!” he yelled. He pulled the Glock from its holster and fired.
Fred and Becky watched as the tentacle lifted the truck off of the ground. Behind them, a horn blared, and when Fred turned to look, he saw a three vehicle cavalcade racing toward them. He yanked Becky out of the way just as the vehicles sped past them; a black SUV, followed by a black Lincoln Towncar with darkly tinted windows, and a second SUV bringing up the rear.
“What are they doing?” Becky asked, her eyes never diverting from the ice cream truck suspended thirty feet in the air, the tentacle rocking it back and forth as though trying to dislodge an uncooperative piece of candy stuck to the bottom of the box. Except Ryan is the candy, she thought.
“A better question would be ‘who are they?’”
The vehicles stopped a short distance from the creature. A stocky Asian man wearing a black suit stepped out from the passenger side of the lead SUV, holding what looked like a rocket launcher. He rested the launcher on his shoulder and pulled the trigger. A large transparent cylinder filled with amber fluid burst out of the launcher, a long needle protruding from the end. The dart whistled through the air, its needle tip sinking into the creature’s quivering flesh.
For a moment, nothing happened. But then the creature began to shake; at first, it was an almost imperceptible shiver, but then it became more pronounced and the creature began to undulate wildly.
The tentacle holding the truck released its grip and flopped to the ground. The truck dropped, coming down hard but upright, the remaining windows blowing out in an explosion of glass when it hit the pavement.
“Ryan!” Becky screamed, running forward without thought to her own safety. Fred hurried after her.
The stocky Asian man stepped back into the SUV and closed the door. When they reached the vehicles, Fred saw the SUV’s windshield wipers were on.
Becky rushed over to the ice cream truck and threw open the driver’s side door. Ryan was still buckled into the seat with his eyes closed. Becky shook him, and he gradually began to stir. He blinked his eyes, moaning when he tried to move. He managed a smile. “Next time I try to be the hero, do me a favor and talk me out of it.”
“I tried. It’s not like you listen.”
“Guys,” Fred said. “I think you should save the tender moment for later.” He pointed to the creature. It had begun to howl, large bubbles expanding and contracting on its rippling skin. It shuddered madly and seemed to shrink in on itself as though it were imploding. The creature let out a final insane screech and exploded.
An ocean of pus poured down on them, splattering across everything. Fred thought: that’s why they have their wipers on!
Chunks of flesh and bone rained down onto the p
avement.
Chapter 24
They hobbled over to Kevin and Rhonda, who were also drenched in sticky white pus. Fred roused Derek from unconsciousness and helped him over to the others.
“What is this stuff?” Derek asked, holding up his hand and watching the pus slowly drip from his fingers.
“Giant evil alien semen,” Fred said.
Derek scrambled to wipe the goop from his hand. “Gross.”
“Is everybody okay?” Ryan asked, eyes going to the bone protruding from Kevin’s leg.
“I’ll live,” Kevin said.
“We need to get him to a hospital,” Rhonda said, wiping pus from her face.
Ryan stooped down, grabbed Kevin under one shoulder and hauled him to his feet with Rhonda’s help. “That’s at the top of the list, but first I want to have a word with our mysterious saviors.”
Ryan was walking toward the SUV when the doors opened and two men stepped out; the same stocky Asian man that had fired the strange-looking canon, and from the driver’s side, another Asian man, taller and thinner than his companion. They stood stoic-faced outside the SUV. Behind them, four men exited the rear SUV.
The phrase “diplomatic immunity” went through Ryan’s head, and he thought he had a handle on just where this might be going, but if he had learned anything in the last twenty-four hours, it was to expect the unexpected.
It had stopped snowing. The first signs of dawn were painted on the sky.
The back door of the Lincoln opened and a man stepped out. He was tall and Asian, his face wrinkled and serious, and he wore a designer suit that even Ryan, who wasn’t an expert on such things, knew must have cost more than two month’s worth of his salary at the sheriff’s department.
The Z Club Page 14