Backwoods

by sara12356

“I haven’t done anything to her,” Andrew said.

  “Liar.” Moore pistol-whipped him, smashing the gun barrel into the side Andrew’s head. The impact left him staggering sideways, then crashing to his knees, breathless and dazed.

  Moore planted his foot against the base of Andrew’s spine and forced him down onto his belly, his shoe heel digging brutally into Andrew’s kidney. Cramming the pistol barrel against Andrew’s temple, he seethed: “Tell me where Alice is. Tell me right goddamn now, or so help me, I’ll—”

  “Daddy, no!”

  There she is, Andrew thought, recognizing Alice’s voice even as his mind abandoned him and he passed out. She’s right…behind you.

  “Hey, Germ.”

  In his mind, he could hear Beth’s voice, could see his sister in her hospital bed, with death so close and pervasive a thing, it had changed the way the air in the room had smelled to him, felt against his skin.

  “Hey, Bess,” he’d replied, because he’d been able to see it in her face, the gaunt frailty there, her ashen complexion. The shadow of death. That’s what he had thought of when he’d seen her face, her pallor. Wasn’t that something out of the Bible?

  Beth had started to cry, the brave façade she’d affected for their parents crumbling while alone with her brother. Her eyes had flooded, her tears rolling down her cheeks, and her bottom lip had quavered, her voice growing choked and strained.

  “I’m scared,” she’d whispered, and he’d leaned over, letting her coil her reed-thin arms around his neck and cling to him, shaking as she’d wept.

  “Don’t cry, Beth,” he’d breathed, even as his own tears had welled up and fallen. “Please don’t cry.”

  ****

  He opened his eyes, disoriented for a moment, so certain that the dampness of his face, the warmth of tears had come from his dead sister that her name lay poised on his tongue.

  Beth.

  Instead he looked up at Alice as she leaned over him, her dark hair spilling in cascade of tangled waves over either shoulder to frame his face. Her pale cheeks glistened with tears, her slim body trembled and her lips quavered as she hiccupped for breath.

  “Get away from him.” Moore snatched his daughter by the sleeve, dragging her backward.

  “But, Daddy,” Alice began in protest.

  “He’s dangerous,” Moore said. As he spun her around to face him, his expression shifted from murderous rage to sudden, inexplicable shock. “You’re crying.”

  “I am?” Seeming as shocked as her father, Alice blinked, her hands fluttering up to her face. “I am,” she gasped, then began to laugh, as if delighted by the tears she felt on her cheeks. “Daddy, look, look at me! Look!”

  Andrew sat up, grimacing as he cupped his hand gingerly over the swollen, bloody knot on his temple where the pistol had caught him. “I’m not dangerous,” he growled at Moore. “You’re the one who hit me.”

  “And you’re the one who burned my house to the ground,” Moore snapped, pointing the gun at him again. “A woman died in that fire, you son of a bitch. A good woman who was my friend, a better mother to Alice than her own has ever been. You had no goddamn right…”

  There was more, but in his dazed state, it took Andrew a moment to process. “What?” He shook his head. “Wait a minute. You…you think…?”

  Somebody firebombed his house, Suzette’s voice echoed in his mind. They think it might have been a group of animal rights zealots. PACA, I think they’re called. People Against Cruelty to Animals.

  “You think I had something to do with that?” he asked Moore, stricken. “You think I’m part of that group, PACA?”

  “What else would you be doing here?” Moore demanded.

  “I’ve told you. I was working out here. I don’t know anything about your house or this PACA organization. All I know is what Suzette told me. I’m sorry that happened. I’m sorry Alice’s nurse died, but I didn’t have anything to do with it. Why the hell would you think that?”

  From outside, they heard a sharp, sudden burst of automatic gunfire, followed by another, then another. Overlapping these came a sudden, reverberating shriek from somewhere out in the forest, an agonized scream that, like the gunshots, quickly echoed again and again.

  “What the—?” Andrew turned to the nearest window, startled.

  “He sent the soldiers into the woods a little while ago,” Alice whispered, eyes enormous with fright. “He told them you were out there, that you were dangerous, Andrew.” Stricken and trembling, she said, “He told them to kill you.”

  “What?” Andrew asked. “Who said that, Alice?”

  He knew, of course. With a sinking feeling, he knew what she’d say even before she opened her mouth. “Major Prendick. He’s the one who told Daddy you set the fire that killed Martha.”

  “Alice, stop it,” Moore said. He reached for her, but she shrugged him away, scurrying to Andrew.

  “He told Daddy if he let you leave, you’d bring the others back. The PACA people.”

  “Alice,” Moore said, but Andrew stood, blocking his path, positioning himself between father and daughter.

  “He said you’d try to hurt us again—hurt me again—like they did in Boston when they killed Martha,” Alice whispered, curling her fingers anxiously against his shirt.

  Oh, Jesus, no wonder Moore hates me, Andrew thought in dismay. No wonder he’s had it out for me all along.

  “I’d never hurt you,” he said to Alice. “Either of you.”

  “I know,” she replied. “But Daddy believed Major Prendick. The soldiers did, too. Now they’re out there looking for you. And they’re all going to die.”

  Andrew turned to Moore. “What’s out there with them?”

  The older man didn’t answer, simply stood there and angry, Andrew marched toward him. “What the hell is out in the woods?”

  He reached out, jerking the gun from Moore’s grasp. With a frown, Moore moved to snatch it back, and they tussled together, grappling over the pistol, staggering and stumbling in wide, clumsy circles.

  “Andrew, no! Please!” Shoving her way between them, Alice held out her hands like a school crossing guard, tearful and pleading. “Both of you, please stop!”

  In that moment, the lights overhead made a strange sort of noise, like the snap-crackle-pop! from old Rice Krispies cereal commercials, then, with a staccato flickering, they abruptly went dark both inside and out, plunging the entire compound into darkness.

  Alice cried out, a confused and frightened mewl, and Andrew felt her press herself against his side, trembling beneath the shelter of his arm.

  “What happened to the lights?” he asked Moore, tightening his grip on the gun lest the doctor use the opportunity to try and wrestle it from him.

  “They knocked them out,” Alice whispered from beside him. “They must’ve killed all the soldiers and now they’re coming for us.”

  “Who did?” Andrew asked, again directing the question not to her, but to her father. “Who’s coming?”

  When Moore cut his eyes briefly away, back down the hall in the direction of the infirmary, Andrew felt a sinking, sickening horror because he knew.

  The screamers.

  ****

  Andrew ordered Moore to take him to the lab to get Dani.

  “You don’t want to do that,” Moore had said, just as another patter of gunfire echoed from deep in the woods. The sounds had grown sporadic, nearly disappearing in full, and Andrew was of the frame of mind this was not a good thing.

  “Yes, I do.” Andrew had gestured demonstratively with the gun in response.

  “We can barricade ourselves in here,” Moore had said. “Even without the power. We’ve got food, potable water, enough so that we—”

  “I said we’re going to the lab.” Andrew had mashed the barrel of the pistol into Moore’s nose, flattening it. “Now.”

  As it had been earlier, when Andrew had trekked out in search of O’Malley, the woods around them lay heavy, still and silent, unnaturally so. Ev
en the wind seemed to have gone dormant and the air felt cold and thick around them, seeping through their clothes and skin, sinking deep into their bones with an unsettling chill.

  Andrew tried to do some quick math in his head, in spite of his mounting panic and the fact his senses were still somewhat reeling from where he had been struck with the gun. How many soldiers did Prendick send out into the forest? There were twenty-four to start with, Dani told me, less seven from Alpha Squad, and Lieutenant Carter, who were all shipped home. That makes sixteen, then minus one for Prendick, another O’Malley and Dani…

  “Twelve,” Alice whispered to him. He hadn’t realized he’d been thinking out loud until her quiet voice interrupted him. “Prendick sent twelve soldiers into the woods.”

  When Moore tried to take Alice by the hand so she’d walk with him, Andrew pulled her protectively behind him. “She’s with me.”

  “I don’t trust you with my daughter.” Moore’s voice was tight and clipped, his eyes narrowed into slits.

  “Yeah? I don’t trust you period,” Andrew shot back.

  They reached the house of pain, the main door, and Andrew held the gun out, his finger poised against the trigger. “Open it.”

  “I can’t,” Moore replied. “With the power out, the building is sealed.”

  Swinging the gun away from Moore’s head, Andrew aimed for the center of the plate glass door. It was tempered, but not bullet-proof, and when Andrew squeezed the trigger, sending out a sharp, booming report, it punched a single hole, no bigger than a silver dollar, through the center of the heavy pane, with a spider web of cracks and fragments—thousands of splinters and shards—spreading out in a broad circumference.

  The recoil from the pistol shot shuddered through Andrew’s hand, up his arm and into his shoulder, nearly staggering him. Alice had tucked her face into his side at the thunderous shot, hands clamped to her ears, her entire body rigid. She looked up, remaining huddled next to him, coughing on the acrid gun smoke that lingered in a thin haze.

  Cringing, shoulders hunched, Moore blinked at Andrew in wide-eyed aghast. “You’re crazy,” he gasped.

  “I’m getting there,” Andrew agreed, motioning with the gun. “Now help me kick that glass out. Come on.”

  ****

  The entire building was silent, save for the quiet crunch of their footsteps in broken glass and the quiet, insectile buzz of emergency lights sporadically recessed in the ceiling. Running off limited battery power alone, these cast pale splotches of glow in narrow circumferences, lining their path like a dot-to-dot puzzle in a kids’ activity book.

  “Which way?” Andrew asked.

  “I locked her in my office,” Moore replied.

  Good, Andrew thought. He’d been to Moore’s office before and still had a dim recollection of the way. Hopefully enough so that I’ll know if he tries any tricks, takes me anyplace else but there.

  “Move.” He waved the gun again. “Go.”

  With a glower, Moore started off, Andrew and Alice trailing behind him. “You’re not going to shoot me,” Moore said. “Not in front of Alice.”

  “You sure about that?” Andrew asked and he fired the gun again, sending a round into the drywall. The gun shot was deafening in the confined quarters of the hallway and Alice screeched in frightened surprise. Moore whirled, wide-eyed with alarm.

  “I’m crazy, remember?” Andrew said to him. “Your words, not mine.”

  Moore glared at him. “You’re wasting your bullets,” he said at length through his teeth, bristling as he turned and started to walk again.

  They ventured deep into the darkened building for ten minutes. When Andrew had been locked inside by himself, trying to find an exit, he’d easily gotten lost because all of the corridors had looked alike to him. Without the overhead glow of numerous fluorescents and only the dim light of the emergency bulbs to guide them, they were even more confusing. So much so, that when Moore drew abruptly to a halt in front of him, Andrew had no idea if it was because they’d reached his office or not. For all he knew, they could have backtracked to the exact spot they’d started from and he wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.

  “What is it?” he asked. “Why did you…”

  His voice faded as he heard a noise in front of them, emanating from one of the dark, shadow-draped spaces between the faint circumferences of emergency light.

  “…stop?” he finished clumsily, because he recognized the wet snuffling, like the jowls of a water-logged bloodhound dragging against the floor while it tried to pick up a scent. O’Malley had made a sound like that because that’s exactly what he’d been doing, trying to smell Andrew in the infirmary.

  Shit, he thought.

  “Shit,” Moore whispered, backpedaling. Apparently the prospect of Andrew and his pistol didn’t intimidate him as much as whatever lay ahead of them in the hallway, and that fact alone raised the hairs along the nape of Andrew’s neck all the more uneasily.

  Shit, he thought again.

  “Shoot the heart,” Moore hissed at him.

  Andrew cut him a glance. “What?” Then out of the corner of his gaze, he saw movement, and looked back down the corridor in time to see something step out of the shadows, emerging slowly into nearest proscenium of light.

  Ashen and nude, the creature’s neck was indistinguishable from its broad shoulders and hunchbacked spine thanks to bulbous, swollen growths that had erupted from its skin. Like O’Malley, these tumors had threatened to cover its face and upper torso. However, unlike O’Malley, the growths had overtaken its forearms and hands, covering them in heavy layers of swollen nodules and scaly, wart-like growths, almost like tree bark. Its fingers had fused together, leaving it with three unnaturally elongated, talon-like claws. Beneath the surface of its pale flesh, a tangled network of prominent veins were visible, blood vessels that pulsated and throbbed like live snakes or eels.

  “A screamer,” Alice whispered, trembling as she shied behind her father’s hip, her fingers clutching anxiously at his shirt tail.

  The screamer saw them and hunkered down, its grotesquely distended hands dropping to the floor like paws. Its brows furrowed, its eyes red-rimmed and shadow-draped, and its lips pulled back as it bared its teeth.

  “Shoot the heart,” Moore said again, then when the creature sprang at them, leaping from the ground with impossible, cat-like speed and fluidity, he screamed it out, snatching Alice by the hand and scrambling backwards. “Shoot the heart! For God’s sake, shoot it in the heart!”

  Andrew shot it in the head instead, and it snapped in mid-air like a puppet with its strings abruptly cut. A thin arc of blood trailed behind it as it crashed to the floor, landing spread-eagle on its back, more blood pooling around its head in a widening circumference.

  Keeping his gun arm extended, though shaky, Andrew inched toward it, fanning his free hand in front of his face and blinking against reflexive tears as the pungent smoke waned.

  “Did you hit it?” Moore asked, little more than a croak from behind him.

  Andrew nodded, glancing back at him. Moore held Alice in a fierce embraced, shied against the wall, both of them wide-eyed with frightened shock.

  “In the heart?” Moore asked.

  Andrew looked down at the screamer, close enough to take it fully into view. The bullet had taken out a broad, meaty swath from its cheek and jaw, peeling back flesh to leave underlying muscles, tendons and bones all starkly revealed. From there, it had punched deep into the skull, leaving behind a bloody, spongy channel, before apparently exiting the opposite side.

  “Did you shoot it in the heart?” Moore asked again.

  Letting the gun fall limply to his side, Andrew squatted beside it. This was one of the soldiers, he thought. Despite its grotesque appearance, it hadn’t been some sort of horror movie monster. Like O’Malley, it had been somebody’s husband or son, a living, breathing human being.

  And I killed him, Andrew thought, feeling sick.

  “Did you shoot it
in the heart?” Moore screamed, and Andrew looked back at him, startled by both his persistence and vehemence.

  “No,” he snapped, scowling as he stood. “I shot it in the head, took out about half its skull from the looks of things. I think that’s going to do the goddamn trick.”

  Alice ripped herself loose from her father’s embrace, hands outstretched as she shrieked. “Andrew, look out!”

  He pivoted, surprised and bewildered, and the screamer tackled him, sending him crashing to the ground. It had scrambled up from its supine position so quickly and silently, Andrew hadn’t even suspected. Now it landed against him heavily, knocking the breath from him, plowing his head soundly into the floor. In an instant, it had him pinned, one of its enormous, misshapen hands mashed against his face, craning his cheek toward the floor, leaving his throat vulnerably exposed. He’d dropped the gun and could see it on the ground in front of him. It had skittered just out of his reach, and beyond that, pressed in horror against the far wall, he saw Alice.

  Oh, God, it’s going to kill me right in front of her, he thought in a moment of sheer, blind terror. Oh, God, Alice, don’t look!

  “Andrew!” she screamed, rushing forward, shrugging loose as Moore tried to grab her, restrain her.

  “Alice, no,” he cried out, hoarse and stricken.

  “Leave him alone,” Alice shouted, then Moore hooked her by the sleeve and whipped her smartly around, grabbing her again. It was too late, however. Distracted by Alice’s movement, her cries, the screamer scrambled off of Andrew and toward Moore and his daughter.

  Moore’s eyes cut frantically about as he searched for any semblance of a weapon. “Here,” he called out. He pushed Alice into a corner, then stepped away in a broad stride, holding his arms out, waving them madly, capturing the screamer’s attention instantly. “Here,” he shouted again, backing down the corridor, trying to lead it away. “Here I am. Come and get me. Come on.”

  “Daddy,” Alice mewled, clapping her hands to her face. When the screamer lunged at Moore, forcing him to turn and run, she screamed more loudly. “Daddy!”

  The screamer was fast, impossibly so, and Andrew stumbled to his feet, snatching the fallen pistol off the floor. Though Moore cut a frantic, zig-zagging path down the hall, the creature stayed straight on course, bee-lining for him, and when Andrew squeezed the trigger, the bullet plowed into the meat of its shoulder, spinning it wildly, knocking it off its feet.