by Brad Munson
The M231, with its thick stock and foreshortened barrel, stayed firmly on Ty’s shoulder. “Kid, you don’t even know how to work it. Besides, you already have a gun. Be happy with what you got.”
The boy was losing his temper, “Stop fucking with me, man, I’m serious. I want the fucking gun!”
He fire a shot from his carbine with barely a flinch. It smacked into the mud a foot in front of Ty’s boot.
“Hey!” Ty said, more outraged than afraid. “Come on! We got enough to worry about, don’t we? Don’t have to start shooting each other!”
“Just give me the fucking–”
“HEY!”
It was a new voice, not all that different from the kid’s, coming from behind Ty and off to one side. He turned to see a kid dressed in a wild, unmatched array of shiny new sporting goods, head to foot: parka, slicker, ski goggles, ski cap and hood, hiking pants, and the coolest waterproof hiking boots he’d ever seen. He looked like he’d dressed himself off the showroom floor –
– Which, Tyler thought, he probably did. Looters have already made it to the mall, I see.
“Hey, Donnie!” the new kid said. He was broad-shouldered and thick-waisted, and he moved with a bow-legged shuffle that was undeniably ape-like. “What the fuck you doin’, man?”
The other kid looked indignant. “Slumpy!” he shouted
Cool name, Ty thought. Totally cool.
“Slumpy, this fucking nigger won’t give me his gun!”
Slumpy stopped midway between the two of them, looking first at one of them, then at the other. “Hey, asshole,” he said. “I’m half Jap. Shut the hell up.”
Donnie got even more indignant. “You know what I mean! Come on! We don’t even know this guy!” He let the gun drop a few inches, but not far enough to suit Ty. He was still too far way to take it from him. “There’s a lot of weird shit going on out there, Donnie. Ever since it started raining. You don’t know—”
“I know. Trust me, I know.” He looked sideways at Ty and gave him a half-shrug. “I’m sorry, man, this guy’s an asshole, you don’t—”
The gun came back up. “I’m not an asshole! I’m not! I just need a fucking gun! This one’s got like two bullets left and it’s shit out here, man! Come on!”
Something moved in the brush behind Donnie. It slipped out into the open and Ty hissed in a breath. It was dead-gray, lumpy, scarred, and low to the ground, about the size and thickness of a bulldog.
It was moving towards the kid.
“You better get away from those trees, dude,” Ty said. The thing was all mouth – a gaping hole wide as a cantaloupe, with two concentric circles of jagged teeth, one in front of the other. As it turned, adjusting its direction to point straight at Donnie, Ty realized he could see right through it, from front to back. It was hollow. It was just a fucking tube with teeth, open almost as wide at the rear as at the front, its rows of teeth slowly rotating all the way through it.
Nothing but a mouth. Nothing but a maw.
Ty lowered his shoulder and slipped to the right as Donnie pulled the trigger a second time. The bullet zipped him, a foot away as the rifle rolled down his arm. He caught it as it fell and brought it up, aiming and firing in one smooth motion.
Two rounds.
The maw exploded into a thousand shards. The shattered bits disappeared into the rain; the rest of it stopped moving.
Donnie turned, saw it, and backed away from the wreckage of the creature, stumbling under the wind-torn canopy of the decorative oak. It was the wrong place to be. Another maw, almost as big as the first, dropped down from the dripping branches just above him and plopped onto Donnie’s shoulder with an audible thwack. He screamed as it writhed and bit into the side of his neck.
Donnie ripped at the thing on his shoulder with his free hand, still bellowing. It moved under his fingers to bite him again. Ty could have sworn it didn’t actually bend at all: instead, the perfectly circular mouth that wasn’t already attached to the boy kind of closed up, disappeared, and a new one gaped open in its side, right under Donnie’s grasping hand, and bit him hard. Swallowed.
Donnie bellowed – a deep, guttural cry of pure agony – and pulled his arm away from his opposite shoulder. The maw came with him, covering his hand and forearm like some hideous glove. It crawled up his arm, an inch at a time, even as he tried to shake it free. The front end was almost to his elbow in seconds. The back end should have shown the boy’s fingers and hand emerging from a rocky, twitching gauntlet, but there was nothing there – nothing but a pulpy black-red mass of chewed and desiccated tissue where his fingers ought to have been. Mummified ground beef.
“Jesus Christ,” Slumpy said and lunged forward. “I got you, man!” he said. He put his hands on the creature without hesitation and started to drag at the maw, tried to rescue his friend. “I got you.”
“Kid, don’t!” Ty said. “Let it be!” He jumped forward himself and shoulder-blocked the crazy kid, knocking him free of his friend.
Donnie was already beyond help, still screaming as he reeled and fell on his back, sending up a low wall of water all around him at the impact. As he writhed in six inches of water, the maw moved up over his bicep, up to his shoulder, biting and chewing as it climbed. There was no arm left at the other side. Just bits of dry red-gray mud that fell into the water and washed away.
“Fuck!” Slumpy said. “We gotta–”
“Get out from under the tree!” Ty backed away, into the open. He’d seen more movement in the branches there. That’s where they were hiding, or growing, or landing or something –
“No!” Slumpy said, nearly hysterical. “No, we gotta help–”
Another maw fell out of the tree. This one landed square in the small of Slumpy’s back. He bellowed more in surprise than pain, and Ty didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward, pressed the muzzle of the M231 against the raddled, rocky side of the creature and fired a six-round burst directly into it. It rocketed away, already cracked and motionless.
Ty didn’t wait for another one to fall. He grabbed Slumpy roughly by the arm and jerked him out into the open, away from the oak. Three more maws fell as they backed away.
He shot all three. He emptied the clip into them, made sure they were dead. When the gunfire finally echoed away and there was only the sound of the storm, he realized that the other kid, Donnie, had stopped screaming.
He turned to where the boy had fallen. There was no boy left there. Just a chewed-over pile of deep red and gray pulp and an empty carbine.
“You … you saved me,” the teenager said. He was staring at Ty as if he’d never seen a human being before.
Tyler shrugged. “Yeah, well, it was gonna fuckin’ eat you, man.”
“Yeah, but … but …” He put a hand to the back of his neck and rubbed. “You … shit.”
“Look,” Ty said, his thoughts spinning. “Let’s get into the mall, think this thing–”
“No. Fuck no, you don’t want to go in there.”
Ty was checking all four points as they talked, on the lookout for more of the maw creatures or anything else. There was nothing but the rain and wind all around them. “Not a lot of choice,” he said.
“No, man, trust me. It’s worse in there than out here.”
Ty focused on him and looked closely. “Seriously?”
“Seriously, way worse.” Slumpy blinked half a dozen times, trying to put it all together. “You heard the cops, right? They cruised through the parking lot, you must’ve.”
Ty nodded. “Yeah, Evacuation tonight from the … what, the convention center or something?”
Slumpy nodded. Rain was sluicing off his fancy new hood in buckets. “Yeah, but that’s too far away. You’d be better off going to the school. That’s where they’re keeping the kids. You can pick it up there.” The teenager scowled inside his parka for a moment and looked exactly like a teenager. “The cops in this town are assholes anyway, but some of the teachers are cool. Not the principal, he’s worse, but Mr. Barrym
ore’s cool. And Miss Trini.”
Ty tried to take it all in. Actually, the school would be perfect. Right where he wanted to be to get his shit done. “Barrymore and Trini,” he said.
Slumpy bobbed his head. “Yeah. Well … Ms. Garcia, actually, but everybody calls her Miss Trini.”
Ty took one last survey of the still-distant mall. It was looking more like a drowning wreck all the time, but still …
“Look, Slumpy–”
“Steven,” the boy said, suddenly looking very serious. “My name is Steven.”
Ty took a beat. “Okay. Steven. Why don’t you show me the way. We’ll get to the school, pick up that caravan, and get the fuck out of here.”
The boy frowned deeply, almost angrily. “No,” he said. “You go ahead. I got to take care of something first.”
“Shit, kid, come on. That whole place is falling apart, you–”
“No. Sorry. I been doin’ some bad shit, man. I … I gotta fix it. I’ll meet you there.” He fired off directions on how Ty could find the school: back to 121, south to the Cottonwood exit. Right on Cottonwood to Bel Air, then down two blocks to the school. Easy. Ty committed it to memory without a second thought.
He gave the kid one last serious look. “You are gonna make it, right?”
Steven’s acknowledgement was slow and thoughtful. It looked to Ty as if he was making the most important decision of a young, tough life. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll be there.”
He turned away and faced the collapsing Emporium. Ty could see him setting his shoulders, squaring up, getting ready to go back inside to whatever horror waited there. Just before he took his first slogging step, he turned twisted his head back, turned his shoulder.
“Hey,” he said. “Thanks.”
Ty nodded one last time. “Yeah,” he said. “See you at the school.”
“Yeah. See you.”
He began his long walk back into the mall. Tyler watched for a moment, then turned back to the road. He gave the copse of trees a wide berth, and set his sights on a new destination.
Highway 121 to Cottonwood. Cottonwood to Bel Air. Bel Air to Dos Hermanos Public School.
Almost done, he told himself, and began to walk.
Twenty
Kerianne’s mother – whose name was Allison – stood at her daughter’s bedroom window and looked down on the sheriff’s patrol car as it wallowed down Market Street, blaring its message about the meeting and the evacuation caravan. It seemed impossible that things had gotten so bad so fast, but she could see it all around them. The water was rising everywhere. The streets were deserted. Even her cell phone and the Internet weren’t working any longer; she was amazed that the electricity was still on.
It’ll all come back, she told herself. Of course it would. But in the meantime, this was like a miniature version of Katrina or Sandy. She would have to prepare for the worst.
She barely noticed the drawings scattered all over her little girl’s room. They weren’t important right now. Nothing was, really, except survival.
Her mind swirled with plans as she moved swiftly out of the bedroom. She could haul all her inventory up here to the second floor. Anything that the water could damage, she could stack in her bedroom and Kerianne’s room and even the hallways. Bolts of cloth, sewing materials, all her patterns and work orders. And the machine, of course. Especially the machine. Once that was done, she could make her way to the school and she and Kerianne would leave town on the busses.
But they would be back. They would have to come back.
Allison had worked hard to build a new life. She’d come to Dos Hermanos, the ass end of nowhere, more than seven years ago, with seven dollars in her pocket, a broken-down Chevy Station Wagon, her sewing machine, and her precious baby girl. Nothing more. Still, somehow, she’d built a place for herself here, a good place. She wasn’t going to let it go without a fight.
“Have to call the school,” she told herself. Let them know that Kerianne would be staying there ‘til tonight, when she would come join them.
It was already past two o’clock. She had to get moving.
She pulled out her cell phone, already knowing what would happen but determined to try again. And sure enough: no signal. Still, the land lines might be working, unless they’d been washed out too. And she had a good old-fashioned phone right downstairs.
Time to get to work.
Allison’s Apparel was a tidy little shop on Market Street. It had been a dozen different businesses before hers, from a TV repair shop to a video rental place to a less-than-honorable massage parlor, which is why it had been vacant and affordable when she’d come to town. Now she had it set up just the way she liked it: a small waiting/display room at the front, inside the doors that led to the street, with some of her best work hanging in glass cases and on stylish manikins she’d made herself. A big glass box bisected the room; it served as a countertop for her cash register and order taking, and right behind it a light canvas flat separated the work room from the display room, so things always looked clean and professional.
Appearances were important to Allison. They had been since she’d first come to town.
As she came down the stairs from their living quarters on the second floor, she saw that serious damage had already begun. Water was beginning to seep in under the back door, the one that led to the alley. The glass door at the front was trembling from the wind; there was a crack at the corner of the plate glass picture window on the left, a little starburst that showed where something heavy had slammed against it the night before.
Allison spent half an hour getting cardboard boxes and textiles – anything that could be hurt by water damage – off the floor and onto high shelves. She tried not to listen to the sounds of the water gurgling and rushing outside, clamoring against the glass. It’s going to get better, she kept telling herself. It’s going to end soon.
It was almost an hour later before she remembered to call the school. She put the last of the taffeta on the metal shelving unit near the back door and then finally tottered to the phone mounted on the wall nearby. It was the same unit that had been here when she’d moved in years ago – one of the first with push-buttons instead of a circular dial.
The phone at Dos Hermanos Public School rang for a long, long time before anyone answered. “Hey,” she said, not even asking who the unfamiliar voice was on the other end, “Hi. This is Kerianne’s mom? Yes. Fourth grade. Look, would you tell Miss Trini or Mr. Pratt or whoever’s in charge that I want her to stay there until the meeting tonight? Yeah. I’ll bring down clothes and all her stuff so we can leave with the … the … yes, the caravan. Tonight. Okay. Thanks.” She started to hang up and then thought of one more thing. “Oh! You still there? Would you tell Keri that I lo— oh. Oh, you’re not there. Okay.”
That bothered Allison a little as she hung up, but not enough for her to call back. Kerianne would be fine; she’d see her soon. And there was so much to do …
It was at that moment when someone knocked on the back door.
It made Allison jump a foot. Her head was full of plans and priorities and lists she hadn’t even had time to write down, and now this. It was a strange knock, too. Somehow meaty and crunchy at the same time, more of a bang-bang-bang than a polite tap.
“Hello?” she said, grateful to see that the dead bolt was engaged.
No answer. She waited for a moment, then started to turn away … and it came again. Thump-thump-THUMP.
Thunder rumbled behind her, out towards the center of town. She heard a new, heaving wave of rain rattle against the display windows. It was bad out there and getting worse.
“Are you all right?” she said, suddenly concerned. “Are you hurt?”
Thump THUMP!
“To hell with it,” she muttered, and popped the dead bolt. She was prepared for the worst. She said, “Look, come inside …” as she pulled open the door –
– and a four-foot wall of water, thick with debris, exploded into the room.
It hit Allison square in the chest and drove her halfway across the room, slamming her back hard against the glass counter-display case. She didn’t have enough breath to scream as the water gushed in, a tidal wave of filth and wreckage, reaching every corner of the shop in seconds, getting higher and more turbulent as it roared and gushed and surged.
“Shit!” she said. “Shit!” She got her legs under her, her arms behind her, and shoved herself to her feet, fighting the sudden, brutal current. A floating bit of plasterboard thumped against her chest and she shoved it away as she took a step forward. Stairs, she told herself. Get to the stairs and get out of –
Something bit her in the thigh.
It wasn’t just a collision with a piece of wood, or the slash of broken glass. It was different – worse. She could feel the chomp, the abrupt and vicious pressure of teeth squeezing her flesh, hard, and she yelped in pain and surprise as she kicked it away.
A gray, knobby hump of … something … curved out of the churning water right in front of her, moving away, towards the back door, then disappeared back into the mud and murk. Allison didn’t look at it – she didn’t want to. She just forced herself forward, three more feet towards the staircase … as a huge silver-black fan made of gristle and bone rose out of the water directly in front of the wide-open rear door: a six-foot-tall arc that swept upwards, popped a lightbulb, and destroyed a hanging plant, then fell back into the water.
Something banged against her ass and tried to grab her long, curly red hair. She jerked away from it. A seven-jointed arm – more like the single finger of a huge, impossible hand – lashed out of the water and spun towards her face. Allison shrieked and jerked to the right barely in time to avoid its cutting edges.
She made a decision in a split second. She lunged to the left, to the heavy-legged work table where her sewing machine sat, now just inches above the rising water. She leaned hard against it and threw her arms up to the high cabinet above it, a cheap unit she’d bought at the hardware store and intentionally had mounted so high she had stand on her tip-toes to reach it.