She flung him away as easily as one would toss aside a rag doll. His body struck the engine a glancing blow and flopped over the stern. The splash barely stirred the water. Angel rocked gently as ripples lapped along her sides.
In the cockpit of a twenty-three foot boat, you’re never far from anything. Marcy stood less than five feet from me. Yet I could have been in another galaxy as far as she was concerned. Her gaze never left Gabriel.
“You have been dead for days now. Why do you fight it? These pitiful drugs they want to give you will make no difference. You belong to Him.”
Gabriel still clutched something at his neck. He jerked it away, and pushed himself upright. “Then come get me, bitch.”
Rage swept across her face.
“You are HIS,” She hissed defiantly. A babbling chorus of voices erupted from her again, the sound conjuring images of the lost and the damned, souls poised at the edges of a deep, dark chasm that swirled with pain and insanity.
“You are us. We are you. Our name is Legion.”
She leapt up on to the cockpit seat, landing in a crouch like an animal with her knees splayed wide apart. Long yellow fingernails clicked against the fiberglass as she balanced herself. Muscles rippled along her legs as she leaned forward and sniffed at Gabriel’s leg like a dog.
The thing that had been Marcy bared its teeth in disgust.
“You stink of human.”
“You have my revolver, William,” Gabriel said without taking his eyes from her. “Shoot her.”
Her eyes darted toward me. “Yes, Wee-lee-um. Shoot me.”
She said my name in the same sing-song tone the demon had used, the word sounding high and childlike, coming out with emphasis on all three syllables.
The dead weight of the gun had been lying heavy against my thigh ever since I’d put it there. All the way across the inlet, I’d been conscious of the thick bulge in my pocket, but somewhere in the process of loading the boat, the rational side of my mind had shoved the feeling away. The instant he spoke, the thing felt huge against my leg.
At the same time, I knew I’d never get it out. She sat poised and trembling with anticipation. She would be on me the moment I reached in my pocket. I didn’t know who she was, or even what she was, but the little demon that had eaten Zachary had moved with inhuman speed. If whatever had taken her was anything close to it, going for the gun would be the last move I ever made. The name she used wasn’t lost on me either.
“It’s not afraid of the gun,” I said. “It’s afraid of whatever you have in your hand.”
He held his hand up and opened his fingers. Something glittered gold and bright in the fire light.
“This?”
I had to look three times before my brain turned the medallion into the image of Saint Gabriel hovering over a cross.
The woman snarled and edged backward, eyes locked on the tiny bit of gold hanging from his fingers. For a long moment, she hesitated, then lifted her head and howled in frustration. Before I could move, she disappeared over the stern in a white blur.
“Give me the gun,” Gabriel said quickly.
I worked it free, but shook my head. Even little demons splashed when they hit the water. I edged to the back of the boat and looked out over the stern. What I saw was impossible. She lay flattened out against the rear end, hanging on the vertical rise with nothing but splayed out fingers and toes holding her in place.
She glared at me and bared her teeth. I raised the revolver and pulled the trigger. Fire spat from the end of the barrel. The bullet struck her in the neck, snapping her head sideways and knocking her loose. She half fell, half jumped, and hit the water with arms and legs still scrambling for purchase.
The boom of the shot reverberated through the cockpit and echoed across the sound. The distinct odors of burned powder and gun oil swirled amid the stink of burned flesh. I watched the surface, holding the gun ready for another shot. I knew the depth at the edge of the dock was less than five feet. As shallow as that sounds, I still couldn’t see anything past the first couple of inches. The incoming tide, had stirred the mud, leaving the water murky and dense. She could have been a foot below the surface and I wouldn’t have been able to see her.
I turned and handed the gun to the older man. His hand shook when he reached for it.
“Pull the nets back on the side facing the dock,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Unsure of what he had in mind, I worked the edges of the nets loose from the cleats where I had tied them in place. Once they were free, I threw the ends up over the boom.
He struggled upright, groaning in pain as he shifted his leg and slid over into the starboard-side seat.
“She might not be afraid of the gun, but I can sure as hell knock her for a loop with it. Get the lines in. I’ll watch for her.”
The stern line didn’t bother me. I could lean over and pull it in. The bow line was the problem. I’d have to go forward nearly twenty feet from the cockpit to unhook it from the dock. Pulling back the nets would give him an unobstructed shot. But, I had no intention of clambering up over the top of cabin, working my way around a crate of chickens, and then hoping a man dazed with fever wouldn’t shoot me instead of an abomination whose last tie to humanity might very well be a dozen cartoon girls grinning from its panties.
“I’m going through the cabin,” I told him. “I’ll open the forward hatch, cut the line, and lock it back behind me. The hatch is hinged on this side, so you won’t be able to see me when I lift it up. Just watch everything else - including your back.”
His fever-glazed eyes shone bright in the darkness. I looked at them, waiting for some type of confirmation. None came.
Sighing, I stepped down into the cabin and raced forward, using the bunk as a guide. The hatch sat above the edge of the V-berth and stretched just wide enough that I could crawl through in an emergency. I’d climbed through it once before, on the trip I’d made to Portsmouth with my father. The wind had come up strong out of the south. Dad had yelled for me to take in the jib. Rather than trust the footing across the cabin top, I’d used the forward hatch to come up next to it.
When I reached the end of the bunk, I felt along the mast support, fingers searching for the switch that flicked on the cabin light over the forward bunk. I found it and flipped it over. Nothing. I flipped it back, again nothing. Then I remembered taking it out to use in the station.
I cursed and felt along the overhead until I found the little twist knob that held the hatch bolted in tight. It came loose easily. I held the handle in one hand while I worked deep in my pants pocket for the little knife I always carried. Armed with it, I pushed the hatch open and stood up through it. I didn’t need to crawl completely out on the deck. The cleat holding the bow line lay barely two feet away.
The instant I thrust my head up through the opening, I spun left then right, trying to cover as much ground as fast as possible. I half expected her to be there, but found only the empty black of the sound staring back at me. Satisfied that nothing mean, nasty and toothy waited, I leaned over and sawed at the line. The knife was sharp. The line parted quickly, the ends fraying as they came free.
“We-lee-um?”
The whisper came from behind and to the right, so close it seemed I could feel the breath that drove it. I jerked, trying to turn in the small, narrow opening.
The face peeking up over the edge of the gunwale looked nothing like the woman who had walked down onto the dock minutes before. Her eyes had gone white. Most of the long frizzy hair had fallen out. Only splotches if it remained, clinging to her skull in greasy little clumps. The pale white skin had vanished, transforming into a hide mottled with brown and purple bruises. Grotesque lumps bulged on her face and head. They moved and squirmed in flickering firelight as if something alive grew just beneath the surface. Great wrinkles gouged deep canyons in her flesh. A long, green strand of mucus dripped from one watery nostril. What had been fingernails had grown into inch long claws.
A black hole gaped in the side of her neck, leaking blood as thick and dark as burned motor oil.
She opened her mouth and spat phlegm on the deck.
“Time you die, We-lee-um.”
She came across the gunwale faster than I thought possible, scrabbling up over the side with hooked claws that dug flecks of fiberglass and paint from the deck. Tiny, immature legs sprouted from her sides, poking through the thin material of the gown and digging at the air in frustration. She paused inches away, her body undulating and evolving even as I watched. Two lumps high on her head burst open, pus and blood drooled down her face as thick, ringed horns emerged.
I let go of the hatch and dropped into the cabin, landing hard on the edge of the starboard bunk. The impact drove the air from my lungs even as my momentum threw me sideways into the floor. The little knife I’d used to cut the bow line clattered across the deck, skittering away in the darkness. I rolled sideways and looked up at the square of stars cut into the overhead.
I’d have to reach up and through it to pull the hatch cover back in place. The thought of sticking my hand outside carried about as much pleasure as the idea of shoving it under a rock and feeling around for rattlesnakes. I studied the opening, trying to work up the nerve.
Two seconds. Out, grab the handle. Jerk it back. I steeled myself and reached upward just as the thing shoved its head through the opening.
“We-lee-um, where you go?”
I lurched backward and heard the slither of her body coming through the hatch rather than saw it. Air swirled as something sped by me.
“Where are you, William?” Gabriel called from the cockpit.
“She’s in the cabin.” I yelled back, holding my hands out in front of me in the darkness. The only light came from the open hatch that led to the cockpit. It cut a long rectangle out of the black ahead of me.
I had no idea where she had gone, but knew it couldn’t be far. That much I knew for certain. The open part of the cabin stretched for maybe fifteen feet. What lay beyond ran back under the cockpit. I edged forward slowly, kicking my foot out in front of me with each step in case she had slid off into the floor. The switch to the one remaining cabin light sat near the open hatch. I had no intention of turning it on. If I got that close, I’d make a dive for the cockpit.
Only one thing kept me from bolting for the hatch. I had to round the edge of the bulkhead that divided the cabin in half. Other than the fact that I’d have to come around it blind, that point offered the only ambush spot in the whole boat.
I needed light and needed it desperately. All I had was the lighter I’d picked up earlier. I dug in my shirt pocket and pulled it out. Taking a deep breath, I held it out in front of me and flicked the wheel. Fire burst from the end of the lighter, casting a weak yellow light through the cabin.
The thing that had been a woman clung upside-down to the ceiling like a giant white spider no more than six inches from my hand. Yellow strings of mucus dripped from her face. Her mouth split open in a wicked, evil grin.
“Hey-lo, We-lee-um,’ she whispered as she puffed her lips and blew out the flame. Her breath washed over my face in a rush of hot, fetid air that reeked of death and corruption. For a split second, neither of us moved. I stood frozen in the dense black, the image of the flame burned across my retina. In the thick silence, fiberglass creaked as fingers dug for purchase. My mind registered the sound like a visual image, painting the picture across my senses of a cat gathering itself just before it pounced. I cried out and threw myself backward at the same instant she launched herself from the cabin roof in a wild scrabble of claws.
Billy Ray saved my life. I hadn’t seen him in thirty years, but that night he saved me as surely as he had once been the one person I hated most. Billy Ray stood close to six feet tall in the sixth grade and outweighed any normal kid by at least forty pounds. He used every inch of his size too, and not in good ways. Everyone feared him. Most found a way to go around him. The few that didn’t learned the hard way that being near Billy meant suffering in some painful and usually humiliating way.
I don’t know why he decided to kick the books out of my hand the day it all started, but he did. They sprayed out in front of me, papers fluttering off to the side into a space that magically opened up in the mass of bodies ahead in the same way that schooling fish suddenly disappear when a shark swims through them.
Teachers came running from both ends of the breezeway, but not before Billy decided that the new guy needed a little more embarrassment. He swung. I ducked and came up with an upper cut that lifted him clear off the concrete. A gasp slid around the ring of people watching.
Three days later Billy came barreling toward me in the gym. I let him come, let him bull his way into me, and fell with him, pulling him on top of me and rolling with my feet planted in his stomach. Half way through the roll with the gym floor against my back I shoved both feet up as hard as possible. Billy took flight, sailing across me in a high arc and into the bleachers beyond. I spent the next twenty or thirty seconds beating the living snot out of him. He was already dazed and bleeding from the impact. That wasn’t good enough for me. All the humiliations, the fears, the days of walking around the little knot of tormentors on the breezeway coalesced in those few seconds. By the time the gym teacher pulled me off him, his face looked as if he had laid under a jackhammer.
The instant the woman hit me, I fell with her, planting my feet in her midsection the same way I had with Billy Ray thirty years earlier. Her breath surged hot against my face. Claws ripped down the sleeves of my jacket, but the same physics that sent Billy sailing through space, sent her flying across and into the shelves built into the forward bunk.
She howled in pain and rage. I heard her spinning around, heard the shelves splintering and falling.
I didn’t wait for her. I shot up and ran for the open hatch. Five feet away, claws raked across my back, digging at my jacket but failing to find a hold. The bitch growled in frustration when I slipped through her grasp.
I flung myself forward, leaping as hard as I could. Air roared in my ears as my body burst from the darkness of the cabin and spilled into the cockpit floor beyond. I had one glimpse of the surprise on Gabriel’s flushed features before she exploded out of the cabin, snarling with rage, her mouth open and her white eyes glaring and hot.
In the split second that her body hovered in the space above mine, the terror vanished. I don’t know where it went, but something cold, hard and determined slid in to replace it. I couldn’t even call the metamorphosis a thought as much as a feeling. Turning it into words, however, was easy. If I’d had time to speak them, what would have come out of my mouth would have been a simple “Fuck it.”
I twisted when she hit, throwing myself sideways enough that she landed mostly on bare fiberglass. Throwing a leg up over her back, I forced myself on top of her. She squirmed beneath me, tendons writhing like snakes under her skin. Reaching across the top of her head, I dug my fingers into her eye sockets and jerked backward.
She screamed. White, hot oily liquid burst from her eyes and spewed across the engine in front of her. I pinned one hand against my side and pulled the other up inside the sleeve of my jacket. Using it like a glove, I reached around and shoved the whole mess in her mouth. The move surprised her. She gagged. The reflex gave me enough room to wrap my fingers around her lower teeth. As soon as I had them in place, I jerked my arms apart, pulling her head back with one, and forcing her jaw down with the other.
She wriggled underneath me, struggling with inhuman strength as she tried to spin around. I wrapped my legs harder around her midsection, ignoring the little arms growing out of her sides that pinched and grabbed at me.
I pulled hard, intending to rip her face in half. We fought on the floor of the cockpit. I had her in a vice grip, but she was too strong. It took every ounce of strength I had to keep her jaw pulled down and even then, I could feel her mouth closing bit by bit. I was losing. I knew it. The instant her teeth came together
, they would start slicing through my jacket and the fingers beneath. I’d pull away a stump and she would be on me.
Gabriel’s clenched fist slid above the gaping maw of her mouth. He held it there for a moment, and then opened his fingers. Gold flashed, carving a long trail downward as medallion fell. She gagged and twisted. A heavy shudder swept through her body, rippling through the muscles like a tiny earthquake.
The woman writhed underneath me as if possessed.
“Close her mouth!” Gabriel shouted. “Don’t let her spit it out.”
Even as I hesitated, I could feel her thick tongue trying to shove the medallion back out. Smoke boiled from her mouth.
I let go, jerking my hand back and using the heel of my hand to slam her jaw shut. The woman, or rather what had been the woman, went berserk under me, scrambling, flailing and twisting herself into a tight ball. Like an eel, she squirmed in the slick, foaming mass composed of her own drool and the fluid that had erupted from her empty eye sockets.
I couldn’t hold her any longer. The instant I let go, she jerked upward, her mouth opening wide in a soundless scream as fire burst from every orifice in her body.
She stumbled and fell against the outboard, teetering on the edge. I kicked out in fear, the image of her burning body flailing on top of me strong in my mind. The impact sent her tumbling over the side. Water splashed this time, splashed, hissed, and bubbled.
I crawled to the stern and pulled myself up to peer over the side. Bright light burned through the muck, fluttered and then faded. Steam drifted off the surface of the water.
Somewhere in the sudden silence, I heard Gabriel pulling the stern line free.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here, man,“ he said hoarsely.
I didn’t argue. Five minutes later, we were streaming out across the sound. I stood in the back and the wind wash away the stink. The air had felt comfortably cool before. The stream whipping across my sweat-drenched hair and face left me shivering. I didn’t care. For the first time in what seemed an eternity, I felt wonderfully alive and deliciously free.
The Island - Part 3 Page 9