by sara12356
And then, through that thin haze of gun smoke, he saw something moving on the floor, something wriggling and twitching, like an oversized earthworm caught on the sidewalk on a warm summer’s day, a nightcrawler struggling to make it back to the loam.
A whole nest of them, in fact, Andrew realized, as the smoke thinned further, and he could see more of them now, those peculiar, snakelike things squirming on the floor. Like fingers, he thought. Reaching for me.
“Oh, shit,” he whispered.
The gunshots had at first covered a sound he now heard clearly, like a rotten walnut slowly cracking open to reveal blackened, festering meat within. Snap-crackle-POP went this curious, nasty sound, then something crawled out of the smoke and shadows underneath the wreckage toward him.
It wasn’t Prendick, not exactly, not anymore.
Like they had with Langley, the lower sets of his ribs had broken free from the bands of costal cartilage securing them to the sternum. In Langley’s case, these ribs had grown, protruding through the flesh in new, arm-like appendages. With Prendick, they had lengthened, but also sprouted articulations, like the jointed legs of a spider or scorpion. These spindly limbs fanned out beneath the ruins of his torso, while he used his hands to arch what remained of his spine back, lifting his head, cobra-like, from the ground. Again like Langley, the mess of his eviscerated guts seemed to have come alive, a writhing, intertwining mess of intestines and colon, like the tails of a swarm of rattlesnakes thrumming in menacing admonition.
“You took the virus,” Andrew said. “Moore’s retrovirus. You injected it into yourself.”
Prendick’s remaining eye rolled toward him, a pale blue disk floating in stark, ghoulish contrast to the bloody-red of his cornea. The tips of his rib appendages, squared-off and raw, made wet squelching noises as they tap-squish-tap-TAPPED on the floor, propelling him forward with an insectile efficiency. The popping sound Andrew had heard as Prendick had torn himself in two had been the sound of the base of his spine wrenching free of his pelvic girdle. Although at first the length of it trailed behind him like a grisly tail, he raised it now, as if the vertebrae had become flexible, hinged joints instead of a fused column. His spine arched behind him like a scorpion’s tail, and likewise, capping the tip like a spear was the ragged point of Prendick’s tailbone.
“You stupid son of a bitch,” Andrew whispered and Prendick screeched, lunging at Andrew, the whip of his spine striking, scorpion-like and lightning fast . Andrew ducked sideways, hunching his shoulders, and heard a loud, hollow crash as the tip punched into the side of the truck behind him.
Prendick’s shriek was eclipsed by another, this one high and trilling, as Alice scurried around the back of the truck and caught sight of him.
“Alice,” Andrew cried, pulling the trigger again, grasping the gun with both hands to keep it steady while he sprayed Prendick with a wild volley of bullets. He could hear them ricocheting off the concrete floor. Prendick began to screech and through the gun smoke, Andrew could see the horrible mass of his entrails flapping and flailing.
“Come on!” Wheeling about, floundering with his wounded leg, Andrew grabbed Alice beneath the arm and hauled her in step. Using the gun like a cane, he hobbled, hopped and otherwise hauled ass however he could toward the garage door.
“Wait! What about my daddy?” Alice cried out, then stumbled and fell to the floor. Andrew stooped, getting his arm around her, then they both looked up to see Prendick on the move again, scuttling on those horrific little legs across the tarmac. Alice screamed, and Andrew let loose another crazed round of rifle blasts, shattering chunks out of the floor.
“Hold on to me,” he told Alice, grabbing her about the waist. He felt her arms first lace, then lock around his neck and he stumbled to his feet, supporting her against his hip with one arm, holding the rifle like a crutch with the other.
“He’s still moving,” Alice wailed as Andrew shambled for the door. She was small, but while he might have ordinarily bore her slight weight without a problem, he was half-crippled and hurting, just barely making any headway.
He’s not going to stop, Andrew thought grimly, brows furrowed, teeth gritted, tendons standing out, taut and strained, in his neck. Not going to stop moving, or coming after us. Not until he hunts us down and kills us. Because it’s like Moore said. That’s what animals do, and that’s what he’s become. Hell, it’s what Prendick’s been all along.
He limped past Dani, and thought it was only a trick of his eyes, the drape of shadows, when he saw her move. He paused long enough to look again, then heard a soft moan.
“Dani!” Leaning over, he set Alice on the ground, then hobbled to Dani’s side. She’s alive, he thought, uttering a hysterical, happy, relieved laugh. Oh, God, she’s alive!
“Dani, can you hear me?” There was no time for niceties, not with Prendick behind them. He dropped to his knees and took her by the shoulders, giving a firm shake. “Dani, wake up!”
“He’s coming,” Alice whimpered, pointing. Andrew glanced up, saw a hint of movement among the shadows: Prendick scuttling in the dark. This time, when he fired the gun, he managed to do more than chip olive drab off the Army trucks or knock holes into the floor. One of the rounds hit Prendick high in the remains of his torso, shearing one of the spindly, spider-like legs at the base. With a shriek, he danced sideways, then back-scrambled, disappearing beneath Andrew’s old work Jeep for cover.
“You hit him!” Alice sounded delirious, caught between joy and hysterics.
“That won’t stop him long.” Andrew shook Dani again, harder. “Dani, wake up. Alice, help me get her on her feet.”
Together, they pulled and tugged, and by the time they forced Dani upright, she’d roused somewhat. Dazed and bewildered, she blinked first at Andrew, then down at Alice.
“What’s going on?” she murmured.
Prendick scuttled from beneath the Jeep, dragging the slithering mound of his entrails behind him. He’d flattened the length of his spinal column to crouch beneath the Jeep, but hoisted it now, curling it up behind him, the tapered point of his tailbone poised to strike.
Dani caught sight of this and stiffened, her breath drawing to a sharp, horrified halt. “Oh, my God.”
“Come on,” Andrew said. They lumbered together toward the door, listening all the while to the nasty tap-squish-tap-TAP as Prendick darted after them.
Dani looked over her shoulder, one arm around Andrew’s neck, the other around Alice’s. “Oh, God.”
“Don’t look back,” Andrew said, but Alice did, too, and began to mewl with panicked fright.
“He’s too fast!” she cried.
“Take her.” He didn’t know to whom he was speaking more directly, Dani or Alice, but in any case, he shrugged himself away from Dani and hoisted the rifle again. “Keep going. Don’t stop until you’re outside the garage.”
With that said, he laid down a sweeping burst of gunfire in Prendick’s direction. Prendick danced from side to side, scuttling wildly. He didn’t retreat, however, as he had before, instead darting and ducking around the bullets. The jointed segments of his ribs folded as he crouched, then he pounced at Andrew, hands outstretched.
“Shit!” Andrew shot wildly, missing Prendick altogether in his floundering, backpedaling panic. Prendick hit him hard, knocking the M16 from his hands as they crashed to the floor together.
Prendick clamped his hands around Andrew’s neck, abruptly cutting off his airflow. Andrew opened his mouth wide, straining for breath, pawing wildly at Prendick’s thick, strong fingers. He struggled beneath Prendick’s crushing weight, as the spindly points of Prendick’s ribs dug down to restrain him. From over Prendick’s shoulder, the wicked curve of his tail bone raised again, waggling momentarily before swooping down at Andrew’s head.
Shit! Andrew jerked to his left and felt the rush of wind as Prendick’s coccyx whipped past him. The concrete beneath him shuddered as the tip plowed into the floor. Prendick reared his tail back and Andrew cut his h
ead to the right as again, he narrowly avoided a blow aimed squarely for his nose.
He bucked his hips, kicking his legs furiously, feeling the nasty, wet coils of Prendick’s intestines sliding around his thighs, his knees, tightening around him, holding him down. The need for air was growing desperate and agonizing. Andrew clawed at Prendick’s hands, his vision growing murky, his mind even more so as he struggled vainly for breath.
He heard the sharp report of automatic rifle fire from somewhere close by, then felt Prendick jerk above him, the interlocking clamp of his fingers at last loosening around his neck. Another burst of gun shots and Prendick fell to the side, the looping folds of his entrails sliding against Andrew’s legs. Gagging reflexively, clutching at his throat, Andrew rolled onto his side, whooping for air and pedaling his feet weakly to dislodge Prendick’s guts.
“Get up,” he heard Dani say, and he blinked up in bewildered surprise to see her shouldering the rifle. She leaned over, reaching for him. “Andrew, come on!”
With her help, he stumbled to his feet, hopping to keep his weight off his injured ankle, keeping his arm draped across her shoulders. Even as she dragged him toward the doorway, he could hear Prendick moving behind them, recovering from his latest wounds. He glanced back and could see the convex curve of his tail as it raised once more into the air.
Dani followed his gaze. “Shit,” she hissed, tugging frantically against Andrew’s waist, urging him forward. “Come on. Hurry!”
The only way he could manage to keep in step was to force himself to rely on his wounded leg. Putting pressure down on his shattered heel left him almost instantly reeling from the pain, and he struggled to keep himself from falling over, taking Dani with him. By the time they made it past the threshold, ducking beneath the overhang of the garage door, he was breathless all over again, this time in pain, his body coated in sweat. When Dani drew her arm away, he fell to his knees, swooning.
“He’s coming,” Alice wailed.
“We have to get the door closed.” Shambling under the strain of her own wounds, Dani turned and went back to the garage.
Prendick was less than ten feet from the door. Both her aim and proficiency with the M16 had surpassed Andrew’s, and she’d shot off all but one or two of Prendick’s appendage-like ribs. Without them, he’d lost the advantage of his arachnid-like speed, but none of his murderous ferocity, that feral determination to kill. He crawled now toward the threshold, dragging himself forward inch by grueling inch with his arms, using the stump of his spine to shove him along from behind. When he saw Dani in the doorway, he paused long enough to lock gazes with her, to set the tips of his spilled entrails twitching again.
“Bitch,” he seethed, the only distinguishable English he’d uttered since Moore had plowed into him with the truck.
Dani grabbed the door and grunted, tugging on it. “Alice, help me,” she cried after a futile moment. The little girl hesitated, shied next to Andrew, then scurried forward at Dani’s desperate beckon.
Together, they pulled frantically at the door and Andrew heard it scraping along the tracks as it rolled down an inch or so.
“Bitch!” Prendick snapped from inside the garage, moving faster now, hauling himself forward, peeling his fingernails back, bloody, ragged, raw as he scraped them against the floor.
“Oh, God,” Dani cried, because within two feet, he’d be upon them, and already, the snaking tendrils of his intestines were spreading out ahead of him, nearly reaching her boots. “Pull, for God’s sake!”
With a hoarse groan, Andrew forced himself to stand, to shamble in a clumsy circle and return to the garage. Standing between Dani and Alice, he wedged his fingers in between the metal panels in the door and shoved. Again, the door screeched as it dropped another precipitous inch.
Alice screamed, a high-pitched peal of pure, unadulterated terror, and fell abruptly away from the door, like a cartoon character slipping on a banana peel. She hit the ground hard and Andrew had a half-second to realize one of the looping coils of Prendick’s entrails had wrapped, vice-like, around her ankle, and then she was jerked beneath the garage door, back into the shadows beyond.
“Andrew!” she wailed, the last syllable of his name scraping out, shrill and frantic: “Ooooooooooooo!”
“Alice, no!” he cried and dove after her, turning loose of the door and forgetting that his damn ruined ankle would no longer bear his weight. He ducked beneath the overhang of the garage door, arms outstretched as he sprang, and as he hit the floor, landing on his belly, rapping his chin hard on the concrete, he felt his fingertips brush against Alice’s.
“I’ve got you!” He scrabbled, catching her by the wrist. “I’ve got you, Alice.”
“Andrew,” she squealed, caught now in a tug-of-war as Prendick jerked her toward him. “Andrew, help me!”
“I’ve got you,” Andrew said again, fighting to keep his grasp on her arm. “Let her go!” he shouted at Prendick.
Prendick wrinkled his teeth back in a gruesome parody of grin, then whipped his tail around, striking at Andrew. Alice screeched and Andrew rolled to the side as the tip of his coccyx struck the ground. Prendick may have been injured, but he was strong as hell, stronger than Andrew had anticipated, and in that moment of distraction, Andrew nearly lost his grip on Alice when Prendick gave a mighty heave on her ankle.
She screamed, piteous and panicked, and Andrew looked wildly around for anything he might use as a weapon. He heard the whistle of wind as Prendick drove the wicked hook of his tail bone at him again, and this time when he rolled, he felt the bone scrape against his cheek as it struck the floor millimeters from his face.
Fuck, that was close, Andrew thought, not wanting to consider the sort of damage could incur if one of those vicious strikes hit home. He saw a wink of light against metal to his left—the wrench Dani had dropped when Prendick had shot her. It had skittered across the floor when it had fallen from her hand and now lay within a few feet of his own.
I can reach it, he thought, stretching out his free hand, fingers splayed wide. Shit, almost! He cut a glance at Alice, then cried out, rolling again as Prendick drove his tail toward the base of his skull. The jagged tip whipped past his ear close enough to lacerate his scalp in a stinging stripe.
“Andrew,” Alice cried.
I have to get that wrench, he thought. Another glance at Alice, into those wild, wide, terrified eyes. If I let her go…
He shook his head. There was no way he’d risk it. The only thing keeping Prendick’s attention—and most specifically, his tail—diverted from her at the moment was Andrew, and if he turned her loose, even for a millisecond, it might be all that it took for Prendick to hurt her.
“Don’t let go,” she pleaded, as if having read his mind, clutching at him desperately with both hands. “Please, Andrew!”
“I won’t,” he said, teeth gritted as he strained to reach the wrench. His fingertips fumbled against it, knocked it further beyond his reach. Shit!
“Look out,” Alice cried and Andrew tucked his head and jerked again as Prendick’s tail smashed into the concrete beside him. He’d long since battered the sharpened wedge of bone to bits, but the regenerative capabilities of the retrovirus kept refashioning it, rebuilding it anew. Now more than one point, it had grown into three, a deadly triton of bony spines, each nearly as long as Andrew’s forearm.
Shit! Andrew thought as Prendick struck at him again, then again, forcing him to scramble and flip like a fish caught on a line, struggling all the while to keep his hold on Alice. Desperately, he strained as far as that grasp would allow and grabbed hold of the wrench. He heard the whip of air as Prendick attacked, and swung the heavy wrench around like a baseball bat, smashing the triton tip aside. He heard the definitive, sickening crunch of bony, and Prendick uttered a high-pitched screech.
“Let her go,” Andrew yelled, smashing at Prendick’s intestines with the wrench, bludgeoning the thick coils, pummeling them over and over until they began to squelch open and
burst. “Let her go, you son of a bitch!”
Prendick lunged forward, gnashing his teeth, and from the doorway came a sudden, thunderous burst as Dani fired the M16. Bullets plowed into Prendick’s deformed trunk, punching wet craters into the meat of his torso, splattering the twining tentacles of his guts. He shrieked and thrashed, violent and enraged, and at last, Andrew felt the resistance against Alice slacken.
“Keep shooting,” he screamed to Dani, scrambling backwards, yanking Alice away from Prendick.
“Come on!” Dani cried out over the booming reports of gun fire.
“Can you run?” he asked Alice, hooking his arm around her waist, As he stumbled to his feet, he leaned on the girl to keep from putting his weight on his maimed side.
“Can you?” she gulped back, eyes wide and frightened, all-too aware of the pain he was in.
“Yeah,” he said through gritted teeth. I have to, he thought. Furrowing his brows, he bit back a strained cry as he forced himself to try anyway, in the end dragging his right foot behind him.
“Close the door,” he yelled to Dani as he dove back onto the pavement outside, holding Alice pinned against him, her face tucked into the nook of his shoulder. “Close it. Hurry!”
Once he was clear, Dani threw the gun aside and seized the door again. Even in the dim light and heavy shadows inside, he could see that Prendick was on the move again. The deformities in his face and head as the battered tissue regrew, swelling out in protruding masses, soon swallowed any distinguishable from his silhouetted form. There wasn’t anything evenly remotely human left in that shape.
Gritting her teeth, Dani heaved with all of her might. Andrew limped upright and helped her, falling against the door, putting all of his weight against it as he pulled. With a sudden, shuddering lurch, the door came crashing down, slamming into the plane of concrete beneath it.
From the other side of the door, they heard Prendick screech, that inhuman, furious sound, then the metal plate shook as he barreled into it from the opposite side. Over and over again, he battered into the door, causing it to shake violently in its tracks.