“I take my guitar off and I go to hit the hissing freak to my left but I just can’t.”
Amanita hugged herself tighter. “Why not?”
“Because it was Kevin. He was all yellow-eyed and covered in blood and he was reaching for me. I knew he was gonna try and eat me, but I just couldn’t hit my friend, you know. I couldn’t do it. The bass player maybe, I didn’t like him so much, but not Kevin. And not George, who was also standing back up now, one eyeball missing and his tongue dangling down to his chest owing to the fact his bottom jaw was gone. Which was a sad situation, even for him being dead, because he had a good singing voice. Could sing like Morrissey or Dion if he wanted to.”
“I’m not even going to ask.”
“Please don’t. Anyway, I just lost it, you know. I just started screaming because here are two of my best friends, now dead, ripped up and dripping gore, and they want to kill me.”
“So you ran.”
“I did. Used to play football in high school. Made all state three years in a row. So I just plowed into them and sent them flying as I ran backstage to the green room and locked the door. Last thing I saw as I slammed it shut was George’s lower jaw now stuck to that bass player’s shoulder. Like it was fused there. They always roomed together and were close, but this wasn’t natural, you know? Somehow they’d joined body parts.”
“Yeah, that seems to be part of the process. I saw a woman with a foot sticking out of her head. It kicked at me.”
“I made it out through a back door to my truck. Been trying to stay ahead of these things ever since. Can’t call nobody, ain’t got Internet, and everyone I do meet is just running to nowhere. But I know there’s got to be safety at one of the military bases.”
“I’m telling you there isn’t,” Amanita said.
“And I’m telling you, I served a few years with Air Force Search & Rescue, and American soldiers don’t leave people hanging. Not if they can help it. You just haven’t found the right base.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know. But this thing is spreading outward, like ripples in a pond after you throw a stone in, and those ripples haven’t reached as far as they can go yet. We’re still in them. So we gotta get beyond them to a base that’s prepared for what’s coming.”
His words made sense, even though Amanita loathed the thought of running anymore. She just wanted to lock herself in a bunker somewhere and close her eyes and maybe not ever wake up, or at least not until the world made sense again. But of course she knew that was not going to happen. Not without some sort of weapon of vaccine for the plague. Naturally, her thoughts went to Connor, and what he was carrying on him. The drive that may or may not have the most up-to-date information regarding the virus that created the hissers.
She wanted to see him again. She missed him. With her parents dead and Nicole and Seth and all her other friends gone, there was no one left in the world who really knew her. But Connor could be anywhere right now. She knew he was going to San Diego, but that was a ways off, especially with those monsters out there and a society that had broken down into some sort of apocalyptic free-for-all.
“Penny for your thoughts, darling,” Doug said.
“I don’t know. Just thinking. Is there a base in San Diego?”
“San Diego? Yeah, of course. Mira Mar, Camp Pendleton, Coronado. Yeah that place is like military central. But that’s a long drive, dear, and there’re closer places around here. Maybe not as big but I’m hoping they’re fighting back and recruiting American citizens willing to fire a rifle.”
“They won’t give us rifles. They’ll quarantine us. They bombed my fucking town, for God’s sake. But if you’re set on finding a base, let’s go to San Diego. I’d at least like to see a real beach before I die.”
“Long way to go for a beach, too.”
“Yeah, but it’s not a long way to go for a friend.”
“Sounds like you’re keeping something from me.”
“Kind of,” Am said, “I can trust you, right?”
“Sure can. Now spit it out.”
WEDNESDAY, 2:34 AM
The incessant hissing carried on the night breeze, still everywhere and nowhere at once. Sometimes, if all was absolutely silent, Connor could hear the screams of dying people in the hills and the distant pops of gunfire as America’s situation grew worse. Occasionally, a helicopter or fighter jet would pass by not far away and he’d hope the cavalry was coming, but then he’d pray for them not to. If they came they’d just fire bomb everything.
It’s just America, Connor realized, and that thought somehow angered him. He was not unpatriotic at all, but last year’s social studies class had focused a lot on wars and America’s involvement in them. The teacher had continually tried to open up lines of discussion with the students concerning America’s involvement in the Middle East and South America and the Eastern Bloc and other places. Truth be told, Connor didn’t really care. The only war he’d ever found worth waging was against the noobs online with modded controllers. Cheaters.
He could see it now, though. All those people on message boards across Europe, bitching about how America had screwed up the world. It certainly wasn’t a fair accusation. It wasn’t the American people who did this. That stupid general, Davis or whatever his name was, he’s the one that screwed it up. And the geneticist who created the virus. At least, that’s who he blamed now. Even if the research was meant to help wounded soldiers, it was still the error of a few people, not the entire country.
But the military nuked your whole town, jerk.
That much was true. Someone had given the order to destroy Castor, and the men in MARPATs had followed orders without question. And that was why he was going to San Diego with the drive, and not handing it over. That is, if San Diego still existed and wasn’t overrun by human spider beasts.
Thinking of all that reminded him yet again of Nicole, of her assurance that finding her dad would somehow get the data into the proper hands. He hoped to God she was right.
Thoughts of Nicole led to thoughts of Amanita, the only friend he had left that was still alive. At least she had been when he’d last seen her. She’d changed after making it out of the Jefferson River Gorge, become less concerned with attention and pissing people off. Became more introverted. Or maybe just disgusted with life. Something in her eyes had died, and as he’d looked into them before jumping out of that transport truck, he’d wanted to tell her to hold on, that things would be okay. He should have, even if he didn’t believe it.
She’s a strong girl, though, he thought, she’s probably fine.
It was as good a pep talk as he could muster.
He rolled over in the bale of hay that was doubling as his bed and tried to get comfortable. This sucks, he thought. Despite what the movies had led him to believe, sleeping on hay was not conducive to sleep. For one, it was very hard, a condensed packed-up square. And two, it was sticking him in all manner of places. But it was better than sleeping in the car, which was down on the ground in this barn, below the hay loft.
Olive had spotted the farm from the state road a couple hours ago. The barn’s doors had been open and some kind of large farm vehicle, a tiller of sorts, was exposed. Olive had said she was too tired to continue for the night and she didn’t trust a fourteen year old to drive the roads while she slept, least not with the roads as they currently were, all bottled up with abandoned cars and corpses.
So she’d driven the car into the barn and shut the doors, which were corrugated metal, not some kind of red clap board like in a bad TV show, and locked it from inside with a bunch of levers that slid into the metal frame. She also found a chain which she jury rigged with some tools to form a latch. If nothing else, Olive was proving to be a handy person to have around. So much for people thinking women couldn’t hold their own in a war. Women like Olive would probably win the war.
Connor pulled a sharp bit of hay out from under his leg and tossed it down to the car. He could see moonlight comi
ng in through the dusty skylight above him. The farmhouse was just up the hill a ways, but they hadn’t bothered to check it out for people. Times were changing now, and asking permission for a safe haven was put aside in favor of not waking up any possible undead that might be wandering around inside. Besides, so far no one had come out to investigate, and there were no lights on at the house, not even candles, and so it was most likely that whoever lived in it was dead or running around trying to eat people.
Next to him, almost touching him, lay Olive. Her breathing was somehow soothing to hear, but her frame was like foreign land to him. He had never slept so close to a girl before. It was weird. And not just because she was older and attractive and a stripper—which his sexually maturing brain still couldn’t let go of—but actually, yes, that was exactly why it was weird. She was a real girl. A woman, he guessed, if you wanted to look at it that way. Young but mature. Sexy but scary. And so close, lying next to him, her warm body like a little heat lamp against his side.
As if reading his thoughts, she rolled over and put her arm around him. He gulped. His face flushed and he felt heat waves race up and down his flesh.
“Um, Olive?”
“Mmmm.” She lifted her head, realized what she was doing. “Oh, sorry, thought I was home. I keep a teddy bear in that spot, usually.” She withdrew her arm and lay on her back, looking up through the skylight.
“You have a teddy bear?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I don’t know. You don’t seem like a girl who would have one.”
“Because I’m not a kid or because I know how to shoot a gun?”
He gulped again. “Both. Sort of.”
“Even a girl who can fire a .12 gauge gets lonely. But don’t worry, kid, you’re still too young for me. Whatcha thinking about?”
“I was thinking about my friends. The ones who died while we were getting out of Castor. I miss them. I miss everyone. My parents, my friends. I—”
“Shh!” She put her hand over his mouth, put her other finger to her own lips. With her eyes, she motioned for him to listen outside.
It took a second, but then he heard it, the sound of the ground rumbling, the high, multi sibilant hiss that accompanied the spider monsters. One of them was close, outside on the farm land. Together, they stood up, grabbed their guns and moved to the small window overlooking the pasture between the barn and the farmhouse. There it was, a mass of skulking death. The creature was moving up the walkway toward the house, its gratuitous arms, legs and heads all swiveling about as it searched for something to kill.
“It’s rogue,” Olive whispered.
She was right, it was alone, not the common sight for these things. “Why?” Conner asked.
“Beats me. Gave up hanging out with its friends? Got lost?”
“I think all its friends are part of it. I mean, this little area is small and just farms, right? Just a few dozen people. Probably killed every farmer within ten miles and there’s your result.”
“You might be right, kid. Might be why it’s come back here. It’s all it knows. Either that or it’s trying to follow the sounds of those helicopters off in the distance.”
“So what do we do?”
Olive bit her lip. “Let’s just wait and see what it does. Maybe it’ll just go away.”
“We can’t fight that thing if it gets in here.”
“Sure we can, that’s why we came in here, remember? That’s why we’re in the loft. We’ve got the high ground, we’ve got the weapons. If it wants us it has to climb and we can knock it down.”
It was a good strategy, Connor thought. He and Seth had used it themselves in first person shooter video games many times. “But if we make loud noises, gunshots, it’ll bring more.”
“Not necessarily. If that’s all the residents of this village rolled into one ball of fun then we might be okay to risk it.”
As they watched, the monster approached the house. Human heads, like eye stalks, maneuvered about looking for prey. It ambled up the front porch and stopped to look into the front picture window. After a moment of scratching lightly against the house’s façade, it merely pushed through the window, shattering the glass, and shoved its way inside.
Its dim shadow passed back and forth a few times, then disappeared. Connor could just barely hear things breaking inside the house as it moved from room to room.
“It’s looking for something,” he said. “Like it’s got a something specific in mind.”
“Food. People. Who knows?”
They continued to watch but saw no further signs of movement for several minutes. Then, it suddenly appeared on top of the house. It sat there like a gargoyle and looked out over the land, watching, occasionally turning, but mostly looking at the barn and beyond it toward the state road.
“Ah shit,” Olive said. “It’s waiting for cars to pass by.”
In the moonlight, Connor could now make out certain faces that formed the creature’s eyes. An old African American man with a white beard. A teenage girl with dyed streaked hair. A small girl with pigtails. A chubby white man who was balding. There were other faces too but that bottom line was they were all dead, and all the type of faces that formed Small Town America.
“It’s a big one,” he said. “I count about fourteen heads”
“That we can see,” Olive replied. “Might be more underneath or on top. But yeah, that’ a big one. Might be two of ’em became one.”
There was a thought Connor had not considered. If the fusing body parts of a dozen undead humans could make thing monstrosity, what was to say a dozen monstrosities couldn’t make a giant beast as big as a dinosaur.
On top of the house, the hissing creature sat still now on nearly twenty human legs and arms. Off in the distance, another gunshot rang out. The creature appeared unperturbed, but its heads continued to swivel as it kept watch.
It was another few minutes before it moved again. “Where’s it going now?” Connor asked. “I didn’t hear any cars.”
“Me either.”
The spider monster crawled down the front of the house, its multiple mouths hissing like a ruptured air hose, and crawled onto the front lawn. It continued walking, heading for the barn, coming straight for the back side of it.
“Fuck,” Olive said. “Get away from the window.” She yanked Connor back to the bales of hay and made him squat down. “I think it can smell us or something.”
With that many noses and that many ears, Connor thought, it was bound to have some sort of sensory augmentation.
They remained silent, guns at the ready. Outside, the ground rumbled ever so slightly as it drew closer. Then, the hairs on Connor’s arms stood up as the creature touched the side of the barn. With the sound of groaning metal, it hugged the outside walls and began walking the perimeter of the building. Its shadow soon passed the sliding front doors, stopped for a second, then continued on. Sweat broke out on Connor’s body. Olive again put a finger to her lips to tell him to be quiet, a useless gesture at this point since Connor could not even find his voice to scream. Now it passed by underneath the window they’d been at just moments ago, returning to the back of the barn.
What the hell is it doing, Connor thought. Does it know we’re in here?
Then, with the obnoxious sound of twisting metal, it began to climb up the side of the barn.
Connor raised his gun, tracing its movement, following it toward the skylight above them. Olive did the same.
So much for having the high ground, Connor thought.
They needed to get out of here now. With a stabbing finger, Olive relayed the same understanding, motioning Connor to get down the ladder to the barn floor and into the car. But before he could even move, the beast was over the sky light, and four yellow-eyed dead faces were staring down at them. Those eyes went wide and the accompanying mouths opened in snarls. Then immediately arms came down on the Plexiglass and broke it into chunks that rained down on Connor and Olive.
“Shit! Move!�
� Olive shouted.
Connor leapt up from behind the hay and slid to the ladder, turning himself as he hit the hand rail and getting his feet over the edge.
Above him, dozens of arms reached inside and began tearing back the corrugated metal roof. The metal cut into the creature’s hands, slicing them open and spraying blood down onto the bales of hay. Connor was halfway down the ladder when he heard Olive fire her gun. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space. Above him, the beast hissed louder and tore more frantically at the roof.
“Olive!” he yelled.
“Move it, Connor! Go!” she fired again.
Connor judged the jump down from the midpoint of the ladder to the car. It was a long way, long enough to twist an ankle or even break his foot. But what choice did he have. He turned and let go just as the monster came through the roof, bounced off the edge of the loft, and landed on top of the car. It all happened so fast in Connor’s mind: seeing the beast land before him, feeling himself let go of the ladder, knowing he was falling right next to it, knowing he wouldn’t have enough time to right himself before it grabbed him.
Hissers II: Death March Page 6