Floater

by Gary Brandner

  Rip! The blue bikini panties vanished as he snatched them away with one hand.

  “So here we are again, Lindy. You and I. You naked again, I the onlooker. Full cycle. Except this time is different. This time I am not ashamed. And this time looking is not enough.”

  He spread a hand over Roman’s bloody groin. “But what shall we do? Roman is no longer equipped for what he did to you here that night. The night Frazier Nunley was sucking in water, unable even to call for help.”

  Lindy tensed, putting all her strength against the wires that were twisted around her wrists and ankles. No use. She could not achieve even the slightest play.

  “I know,” he said, the voice harsher and more charged with violence than ever.

  The nerves jumped all over Lindy’s body as he planted a hand on each of her knees and forced her legs apart. She felt cold and exposed and terribly, terribly helpless.

  “I think I’ll eat you.” He waited. “Maybe it isn’t what you’re thinking. What I’m going to do is eat you bite by bite. And chew you up and swallow you.”

  He laughed again, the hoarse maniac’s laugh. Then the mouth that had been Roman’s opened until the jaw creaked. The strong white teeth came toward her.

  CHAPTER 32

  Lindy turned her head away and squeezed her eyes shut as the gaping face that had been Roman Dixon’s descended on her. She felt the heat of his breath and braced for the pain to come.

  The gentle patter of the rain was nullified suddenly by the roar of an engine outside the cabin. Lindy opened her eyes and turned toward the door.

  Roman, the thing that was Roman, raised his head, a terrible scowl distorting the features.

  Outside a car door slammed. Running footsteps slapped across the mud and thumped on the wooden porch. Something heavy hit the crooked door, and it split from the single hinge and slammed to the floor of the cabin.

  “Brendan!” Lindy cried.

  Brendan Jordan came to a stop in the doorway and looked around at the scene, garishly lighted by the upturned flashlight.

  “What the hell is this?”

  Roman moved back a step from the table where Lindy lay bound. Using the Roman voice again, he said, “I just found her like this. I think she’s hysterical.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Roman Dixon. I’m a schoolmate of Lindy’s.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Lindy cried. “He’s not what he seems.”

  Brendan looked from one of them to the other. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “She needs medical attention,” Roman said. “If you have a car we can get her to a hospital. Mine is outside, but it’s not running.”

  “She’s tied up,” said Brendan.

  “Yes, I know. I was about to set her free. She hasn’t been able to tell me what happened.”

  “Brendan, don’t believe him! He’s lying. He did this to me.”

  “She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” Roman said, his voice beginning to crack.

  “You just back off, mister,” Brendan said. “I’ll take care of her.”

  “Sure, pal. Anything you say.”

  Roman moved back away from the table where Lindy lay. Brendan eyed him carefully, then stepped forward and began working on the wire that bound her wrists.

  A shadow fell across her eyes. “Look out, Brendan!”

  He half turned, moving just enough to deflect the full force of the blow that was aimed for the back of his head. He stumbled across the room, finally righting himself and turning to face Roman.

  “It’s your bad luck that you found us,” Roman said. The voice was again the rasping growl of the Floater. “I have nothing personal against you, but now there is no choice. You are going to have to die.”

  Brendan set himself and, as Roman charged in, slammed a fist into the middle of his face. Roman’s nose broke with a loud pop and blood spilled down over his lips.

  Roman laughed, spraying blood and spittle. “You can’t hurt me. Nothing you do to this body can hurt me.” The laughter died, and Roman’s eyes burned with anger. “But I can hurt you. Watch.”

  He began windmilling blows at Brendan without any attempt at science or defense. Most of the punches missed, many were taken on the arms, but some got through and smacked against Brendan’s face.

  From her helpless position, bound on the table, Lindy watched as the men fought.

  Brendan was easily the harder hitter and the more accurate puncher of the two. With Roman putting up no defense, he smashed blow after blow into his unprotected face and body. Although the skin swelled and split under the attack, and blood from Roman’s face spattered both men, nothing slowed him down. The mind of Frazier Nunley, ignorant of the skills of physical combat and impervious to injury, kept flailing away, careless of the damage to Roman’s body.

  Lindy could see that Brendan was weakening — growing tired from the sheer effort of hitting the other man. Roman’s wild punches were getting through more often, and were beginning to take a toll.

  Seeing his adversary slowing down, Roman lowered his head for an all-out charge. As he thundered in, Brendan sidestepped and wrapped both hands around Roman’s chest. With a groaning effort he lifted the other man off his feet, spun halfway around, and threw him against the wall.

  Something crunched as Roman bounced off and the point of his shoulder hit the floor. He dragged himself erect and stood unsteadily with his left arm dangling. He grasped the wrist with his right hand, lifted it, and dropped it. The arm fell lifeless against his body.

  “You seem to have broken something in there,” he said. “But that doesn’t matter. I still have one arm, and that should be enough. You see, you can’t stop me, no matter what you do to this body.”

  Brendan stared. He looked over at Lindy, still bound on the table. “What is it?”

  She could only shake her head as the tears ran down her cheeks.

  Roman stumbled across the room, and with his good right hand snatched up the rusty ax from where it leaned against the wall. He smiled through bloody lips as he raised the ax and started forward.

  Brendan ducked low, and the ax whistled just over his head in a deadly arc. The handle slipped from Roman’s bloody grip and pinwheeled across the room, banging on the frame of one of the broken windows before falling outside the cabin.

  While Brendan’s eyes followed the flying ax, Roman stumbled to the table and seized the flashlight. With the beam making crazy dancing patterns of light and shadow, he rushed at the pilot.

  Brendan heard him coming. He turned and started to raise an arm to ward off the blow. He was a fraction too late. The metal flashlight case banged hard against his temple. He dropped heavily to his knees, seemed about to speak, then pitched forward and lay still.

  Roman stumbled back and replaced the still-glowing flashlight on the table next to Lindy. Standing in the light, he looked down at himself. He nudged the useless arm. He wiped his still-functioning hand across his bloody mouth, probing at the broken teeth in front.

  “I’m afraid Roman’s body is no longer equipped for what I intend to do to you,” he said. “Fortunately, we have another body I can use. One that appears to be in fairly good shape.”

  “No!” Lindy cried. “Don’t hurt Brendan any more. He wasn’t any part of what happened to you twenty years ago.”

  “Then it’s too bad he intruded here tonight. While he is unconscious like this, it will be easy for me to move out of Roman’s poor battered head and into his. You might prepare yourself for some screaming when I let Roman feel the pain of all that’s been done to him. He won’t be able to move around much, but he will hurt. Oh, yes, he will hurt.”

  “Don’t do this,” Lindy said. “It’s wrong.”

  “Wrong?” he repeated, drawing the word out into an ugly growl. “Do you think I share your concept of right and wrong? Frazier Nunley might have done so once. When he was a boy. When he had a body. Now I make my own right and wrong.”

  Lindy realize
d then how hopelessly mad was the creature in Roman’s body. She understood that there was no way to reach him on a human level. No way out.

  “That’s right, Lindy,” he said. “There is no way out. Not for you. But before I am through, you and I still have things to settle. Things to do to you. It may make it easier for you if I use the body of your friend here. Now if you will excuse me for a few moments while I make the transfer …”

  He limped over in Roman’s ruined body to stand above Brendan. As he looked down, an apparition appeared in the doorway.

  Lindy screamed.

  Roman turned slowly to face the thing that stood there in the muted glow of the flashlight.

  It stood upright on two legs, it had a kind of head and two arms, but was barely recognizable as human. Tatters of clothing hung from ragged flesh that had been torn, gashed, slashed, and otherwise violated over every visible inch of the body. The face was a quivering mass of bloody bone and muscle. One misshapen eyeball hung like a congealed egg low on the torn cheek.

  Lindy’s throat tightened in horror as something in the way the bloody figure stood brought recognition.

  “Alec!”

  The grisly head turned slowly toward her. The remaining eye fixed on her for a moment. Slowly he raised a hand in a ghastly greeting — a terribly mangled hand with the fingers twisted and smashed. She saw then that the other hand gripped the ax.

  The voice from Roman’s body said, “You surprise me, Alec. In the condition I left you, I never expected you would find the strength or the courage to — ”

  With startling suddenness Alec swung the ax up over his head and brought the blade down with splitting force in the center of Roman’s skull.

  Roman fell, the split-open head smacking the floor in a splatter of brains and blood.

  The ax thumped down beside him, and on top of it the ragged remains of Alec McDowell. Alec quivered for just a moment, then was still.

  From where she lay Lindy sensed another presence in the cabin at the moment Roman’s skull was cleaved by the ax. Something ephemeral and lost. It floated for an instant as though looking for an exit, then exploded forever into nothingness.

  Someone groaned.

  Slowly Brendan Jordan pulled himself up. He stood for a moment staring around him at the carnage in the room. Then he stepped over the mangled bodies on the floor and came to Lindy.

  Gently he began to unwind the wires from her wrists.

  CHAPTER 33

  The drone of the Cessna’s engines and the warm sun coming through the cockpit windows relaxed Lindy to a point just this side of falling asleep. She reached over and touched Brendan’s arm. He smiled back at her, the sun glinting off his tinted glasses.

  “What’s our E.T.A., Captain?” she said.

  “We should touch down in another three hours.”

  “God, it will be good to get home. It’s hard to believe it’s only been four days. I don’t think I’m ever going to leave again.”

  “We might have to go back to Wolf River for the inquest, you know.”

  Lindy frowned. “Do you think so?”

  “No, not really. The local police seemed willing enough to write the cabin scene off as two drunken tourists killing each other.”

  “Nobody really believes that,” Lindy said.

  “Maybe not. But nobody wants to think about the alternative, either.”

  Lindy suppressed a shudder. “I don’t blame them.” After a moment she said, “I don’t know if I ever properly thanked you for coming to my rescue.”

  “Some rescue,” he said. “I was flat on my back unconscious at the finale.”

  “All the same, you were magnificent.”

  He grinned at her. “I guess I was, wasn’t I?”

  • • •

  They flew on in comfortable silence for twenty minutes, then Brendan, looking straight ahead said, “So, now that your twentieth reunion is out of the way, I suppose you’ll be making plans for the twenty-fifth.”

  Lindy allowed a full minute to pass before she answered. “Flyboy, the only reason I am still sitting here next to you is that you didn’t give me a parachute.”

  He reached over and pulled her close. They sat like that the rest of the way to Los Angeles.

  Serving as inspiration for contemporary literature, Prologue Books, a division of F+W Media, offers readers a vibrant, living record of crime, science fiction, fantasy, and western genres.

  If you enjoyed this Horror title from Prologue Books, check out other titles by Gary Brandner at:

  www.prologuebooks.com

  The Brain Eaters

  Quintana Roo

  Carrion

  Doomstalker

  The Players

  The Boiling Pool

  Rot

  Offshore

  A Rage in Paradise

  The Sterling Standard

  Walkers

  This edition published by

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  Copyright © 1988 by Gary Brandner

  All rights reserved.

  Cover image(s) © bigstockphoto.com

  Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-5837-X

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5837-5