From somewhere high above, Daniel’s gun went off.
Pat’s head snapped towards the hall that separated the ladder and the big room, wondering what happened, what was happening, and what would happen next. The muffled noise from the weapon echoed a moment before vanishing. Then came trampling noises, lots of them. They sounded worse than gunshots and scary as hell. The work light fell, smashing into pieces on the floor. And still, Patrick stood there. Not wondering what to do as much as wondering what not to do.
One gigantic leg dropped from the shaft, followed by another, and another, and another.
The thing that had eaten Roger had returned.
Putting a hand over his mouth, he watched the beast longer than he should have. Then he ran towards the hallway at the far side of the room. But where was he going? Was he actually running into the hallway? Was that the game plan, or his only choice? The hallway was dark, intimidating, and most of all––he didn’t want to go in there. But did it really matter what he wanted? No, probably not. He had to do something, and hiding out in the hallway seemed to be it.
Boxes were stacked to his left and right. Some were metal; some iron, some were wooden crates. Most had a thin layer of webbing and a thick layer of dust. The spaces between boxes varied. There were a few gaps that he might be able to squeeze into; he wondered if should hide in there. Climbing on top of the crates was another possibility, but it would take time and probably wasn’t worth the risk. So what did that leave?
The hallway was twenty feet away and the obvious choice.
That’s what bothered him. It was so obvious that it begged the question: where did the hallway go? Would it lead him to safety or to a dead end room with no chance for escape? He wanted more choices, different choices. He wanted choices that made him feel like he was going to survive another hour.
Pat turned around, hunting more options.
He saw something the size of a raccoon crawl across a crate, leaving a trail of wet slime, a thin insipid web and a small wake of dust. It looked like two sea-crabs that had been designed by H. R. Giger and sewn together by Doctor Frankenstein. It had long legs and lots of teeth. Pat stared at creature in awe, and when he turned away he then saw another one crawling up a wall. But this one was had bulging globular eyes that hung off its body like feelers, and more limbs, and bigger teeth.
He looked towards the ceiling just in time to see a cocoon split open and six or seven more of these oddly formed crab-creatures plop out of it. Some of them were white. Some were black. All of them were wet and slimy and equipped with too many limbs and more than one set of jaws.
He spun around with his shoulders raised, his eyes wide and his hands opened in from of him. What was he going to do? How was he going to do it? He needed to escape, to get away, and live to tell the tale.
A crab-critter dropped from the ceiling and landed on its back, six feet in front of him. It flipped over and scurried away, favoring one limb.
Then he heard it: SQUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Pat turned towards the sound with his mouth wide open. He saw the big boy, the multi-legged predator that killed Roger. It was scrambling towards him, moving fast, attacking.
Pat screamed but his feet never moved. And when he was done screaming he screamed again––then he moved. He ran into the dark hallway wondering if it was the wrong thing to do. With a little luck he spotted a light switch and clicked it on.
Nothing happened.
“COME ON!” he shouted, flicking the switch on and off unsuccessfully. “PLEASE!”
A heavy looking door with a small glass window was on his right. He threw his fingers around the knob and turned it. Dust fell from the knob to the floor. The door was locked.
The beast galloped faster.
SQUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Pat moved ahead five feet. There was a door on his left. He slapped a hand on the cold doorknob: locked again. He moved ahead another ten feet, dragging his fingers along the walls. The corridor was dark now; it was getting hard to see. There was a door on each side of him. He tried both, one after another. They were locked. And now there was a sinking feeling deep in his gut. He placed himself in a terrible position.
The beast moved closer.
The end of the hallway was less than twenty feet away now. There were two doors on his left hand side. He slammed a hand on the closest doorknob and cursed when it wouldn’t turn. He tried the other door and wasn’t surprised at the result.
This was bad––so very, very bad.
The beast approached the corridor entrance and screeched again. The noise was terrible, sounded like an air horn.
SQUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
With his hands on his ears, Pat made his way to the end of the hallway. Three doors remained: one left, one right, and one in front.
He tried the one on his right.
Locked.
He tried the one on his left.
Locked.
The only door that remained looked just like the others. It was thick and heavy and it had a glass window the size of a tissue box. But this one had to be different, Pat told himself. It just had to be. Because it needed to open, otherwise he’d be sunk for sure.
He took the dusty doorknob in his hand, closed his eyes, and inhaled a deep breath. “Please,” he whispered; his brow furrowed. “Please, please, please…”
His wrist turned.
It was locked.
“SHIT!” He was angry now, angry at his predicament and well beyond terrified. What the hell was he going to do? How was he going to escape?
The beast that killed Roger squeezed into the hallway, one leg at a time. It moved slowly, but it was coming. Oh God it was coming. There was no doubt about it. He could see the beast and smell the beast and soon he’d be able to touch it.
The creature moved closer, blocking the hallway’s only source of light. Now it was dark, completely dark.
Pat’s spirit was crushed; his shoulders were slumped and his head began to lower. Frightened and defeated, he tried the knob a second time, thinking it might turn if he simply tried his luck again.
Didn’t work; the door was locked tight.
This was the end of the road. There would be no evading his fate. And when the creature arrived, as he knew it would, there would be no chance in hell he’d kill it with his bare hands.
He would be devoured.
Pat wasn’t even twenty-two years old and he had kissed his last girl, drank his final beer, and laughed his biggest laugh. There’d be no more television, parties, paychecks, or purchases. He played his last game of poker, baseball, and soccer. This was the end, the absolute end. The fat lady was going to sing and he didn’t want to hear it.
But he couldn’t give up! He was in the prime of his life!
So where did that leave him?
I’ll kick the door down, he thought, rubbing a hand on his chin. I’ll kick down the fucking door!
He leaned his back against the door on the right side of the hallway, lifted his foot, and kicked the door on his left with the base of his shoe. BANG! The door shook in the darkness. He kicked it two more times, harder now that he had a feel for it. BANG! BANG! The door shook twice more.
The creature shrieked: SQUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
He squeezed his hands into fists and kicked the door three more times, giving it all he had. BANG. BANG. BANG.
The creature shrieked again.
How close is it? he wondered. How much time do I have?
He faced the high-pitched sound as the creature shifted its position. A beam of light entered the hallway giving Pat an unexpectedly glimpse of something he had previously missed. It was on the wall, or was it in the wall? Looked like a hole––a small puncture hole about a foot in diameter, too small to crawl into, but it was something. It was––
The creature extended a pair of legs and shifted into position again.
The light disappeared.
Pat dropped to his knees and reached out blindly. His fingers
touched the broken drywall. Could he dig through it? Sure. Breaking drywall was easy, really easy. But there was a problem. The wall wasn’t made of drywall. It was made of plaster. The building was old, made with old-fashioned know-how. This meant that behind the plaster he’d find wood strapping nailed directly into two-by-fours and God only knows what else. Did he have time to tear the plaster down, pull the strapping apart and fight his way through the two-by-fours? Could he reach the other side? Maybe. Maybe not. If the other side of the wall happened to be constructed the same as this side, he’d have to fight through even more strapping and plaster. And what if there was a big desk on the other side of the wall, or a cabinet, or more of those crates? What if he was about to dig his way into a bathroom only to find that he had some nice big tiles to deal with, or some plumbing, or a bathtub?
This isn’t going to work, he thought. This is suicide.
He pulled on a piece of strapping, causing a chunk of plaster to fall from the wall and land on his knees.
“Dig,” he whispered.
He didn’t want to become bogged down in negative scenarios; he wanted to create opportunities. So with that in mind his hands became shovels and he ripped the wall apart like a savage––growling, groaning, sweating, and swearing.
Patience and luck were needed if he were to succeed in the darkness. And although he bled, he did not slow.
Time did not allow it.
12
The car had its nose in the ditch and a back tire spinning. The motor was off. One headlight was wedged into the earth while the other brightened a small region of grass and clay. There was a crack in the windshield and when Beth and William looked through it they could see the hood had been crumpled like a pair of dirty jeans. They weren’t looking at the hood though. They were looking through the passenger window, trying to catch a glimpse of Cameron in the forest, not that they had any intention of chasing her.
She was gone.
Beth tried to open the passenger door but it wouldn’t open.
William just sat there, dismayed to the point of distress. What Cameron had done was beyond him. It made no sense.
Beth wondered if Cameron was on drugs. But what you’d snort, smoke, or inject, to act like that, she did not know.
William spoke first: “You okay?”
Beth flinched at the sound of his voice; her nerves were shot. “Yeah. I’m okay,” she said, putting a hand on her neck. It was sore; later she might find it bruised. “How about you? Are you okay?”
Quite unexpectedly, there was a knock on the back windshield.
Beth and William turned towards the sound in unison.
Nicolas Nehalem was there. The rodent’s intestine had fallen from his hair but his chin whiskers remained caked in dried blood. Fortunately for him it was dark outside and his features were hard to analyze.
He stepped towards the driver’s door. “You guys alright?”
William nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“You need help?”
“Maybe.”
Nicolas placed a foot into the ditch and opened the door. As the car’s interior light came on, he lifted his shotgun and pointed it at William’s face.
“I don’t give a shit if you need help. You’re going to do what I say. Got me? Sir, you need to step out of the car. One fictitious move and I’ll blow your head off, and I’m willing to bet that you don’t want that. Fuck around and I’ll make your brains explode across your lady friend. I can do that, don’t mind at all.”
William couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I assure you I am not.” Nicolas said as he waved his gun up and down, eyes slithering from person to person. When he was done his nose flared. And when he spoke again he bunched his words together, leaving small, dramatic pauses between each sentence. “You have answers. I have questions. How about that? I’d like to introduce those two items, if you catch my drift. But first, I’d like you step out of the car. Please. Don’t make me say it a whole bunch of times. I don’t like repeating myself. It seems wrong, like a waste of energy. So get out of the car. Now, before I kill you. I enjoy that sort of thing.”
William turned towards Beth, mostly to shrug his shoulders in astonishment.
Nicolas didn’t let it happen.
“DON’T YOU LOOK AT HER!” he shouted, causing William’s head to snap around fast. “DON’T YOU DARE LOOK AT HER! I’M TALKING TO YOU; GET IT? LOOK AT ME, PRICK! LOOK AT ME!”
William’s mouth and eyes popped open as if synchronized. If Nicolas failed to gain his full attention a moment ago he surely wasn’t failing now. He had gained supreme control of William’s interest very quickly. Nothing else seemed relevant, only the psycho with the gun mattered. Cameron was on her own. So was Daniel. He didn’t want to admit it, but Beth was on her own too. William had his priorities reorganized in a hurry. It was the psycho’s time to shine. No two ways about it.
“GET OUT OF THE CAR!”
“No problem. I’ll do what ever you say!”
William pulled himself from the wreckage and stumbled up the slope of the ditch.
“Now lay down,” Nicolas barked. “Face in the dirt! Oh, I want to SHOOT YOU! I want to do it so bad! You’re not my friend. You’re not my friend at all. You’re nothing. Do you hear me? You’re nothing!”
William placed himself on the road with his face in the dirt. Half mumbling, half whining, he said, “What do you want? I didn’t do anything to you. I don’t even know you!”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP A MINUTE, WILL YA?”
Nicolas turned towards Beth, aiming the gun barrels at her oversized chest. His neck muscles were bulging. His eyeballs seemed to glow. “GET OUT.”
“Okay,” Beth said. She kept her voice calm. She didn’t want to do anything or say anything to upset the man. “I going to get out of the car just like you asked. I’m not going to try anything funny. I’ll do whatever you say. But this door beside me won’t open. It’s stuck in the grass. You can look if you want, or I can try to open for you so you can see for yourself… I can do that for you. No problem. But the only way I can get out of the car is by getting out on the driver’s side. If I do it really slowly, without any fast movements, is that alright with you?”
“Yeah,” Nicolas said. “That’s okay with me.”
Beth nodded. This was good. Well… not good exactly, but it was better. Nicolas had stopped yelling and that was a start.
“Okay great. Look at my hands. See? They’re empty. I’m not going to try anything here. I’m going to get out of the car, just like you asked.” She crawled across the seat on her hands and knees. When she arrived at the door she crawled onto the slope until her feet were out the door. “Do you want me to stand up or do you want me to lie down? I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Lay on the ground.”
Beth did what she was told.
Nicolas approached his car. His driver’s door was open and the trunk was shut. He unlocked the trunk and opened it. Several flies buzzed around Pauline’s corpse. Larva squirmed in her eye sockets. He smiled at the body before he moved away from it, leaned into his car, slid his engine key into the ignition slot, and made his way back to his hostages with his shotgun held tight.
He said, “Okay girl, what’s your name?”
“Beth.”
“Beth. I like that. Big Beth. Yeah, okay. Listen here, Big Beth. I was watching you guys. I saw the fight inside the car. I saw the accident and I saw Cameron run off naked.”
William said, “How do you know Cam––”
The shotgun sprang to life like a threatened coyote. “SHUT UP, FUCK-NUT! OH SHIT! I WANT TO SHOOT YOU! I WANT TO SHOOT YOU SO BAD! SO FUCKING BAD! SAY SOMETHING ELSE AND MAKE ME DO IT! MAKE! ME! DO! IT!”
Beth took a risk and jumped into the conversation. She still had her eyes in the dirt, and she wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, but something had to be done before William pissed the guy off again.
W
ith her voice loud, yet composed, and calm, she said, “Talk to me! Talk to me! It’s okay. Everything is all right. We’re not going to hurt you! We’re going to do whatever you want. There’s no problem here. Really. There’s no problem here whatsoever. Everything is okay. Everything is great so just talk to me… talk to me. Please. We’re sorry. We didn’t mean to upset you. Please sir, go on. We’re listening.”
Beth could feel the dirt clouding beneath her face as she spoke. It was getting into her eyes and mouth, making her lips dirty and her throat dry.
Nicolas lowered the shotgun, adjusted his glasses, and spat. “Okay then. Like I was SAYING, before I was so RUDELY interrupted.”
Once he stopped talking he kicked gravel at them. Little rocks and chunks of dirt binged off their heads. He was mad, really mad. He kicked dirt at them twice more to let them know it.
While this happened Beth cringed, William assumed he’d be shot and Nicolas pressed his teeth together, looking towards the sky.
The night was implausibly dark, yet the stars were shinning and as a result the sky was gorgeous. The air was warm and the wind was calm. Everything was perfect. And nights like this––perfectly warm nights laced in beautiful stars––always had a way of easing the careless demons that set fires of rage inside Nicolas’ mind, as if the darkness came across the land holding hands with an unknown force of infinite influence that turned an unseen switch, making him calm, in control, a different person.
“Like I was saying,” Nicolas said. His voice was composed now, still crusted with an insane tinge, but there was no getting rid of it that trait. It had been with him for years. “I watched your car crash and I watched Cameron run away and I have lots of questions. Oh yes I do. But my questions and your answers are going to have to wait since I can’t get into this stuff now. Not out here in the open. Not where people can see. We’ve got to get moving before someone comes along and makes things confusing, because if someone comes along… ”
Terror Town Page 14