Savage Species
Page 37
Charly let off the gas, let the Chevy settle back, then she depressed the accelerator again. The four-wheel drive fared better this time, the tires slipping some but grabbing enough of the underlying soil to rumble forward. The cornstalks started to thunk down again. She heard a strident scream and realized it was in her mind, the Old One’s surprised voice. In the overhead mirror she saw it coming, hurrying forward now, hands outstretched in eagerness, but the Chevy was gaining traction, mowing down the cornstalks and veering back toward the road. Ahead and to her left the cornstalks thinned, the road fast approaching. She urged the Chevy faster, but the splashing footfalls were very near the truck bed now. The Chevy left the field. Charly heard the screech of a Night Flyer in the distance, but that no longer mattered; only the Old One was near enough to stop them.
“Hang on,” she said to her girls.
Teeth gritted, Charly jerked the wheel. The Chevy hopped over the edge of the gravel road. She depressed the pedal as hard as she could without spinning them out. A white shape hurtled at her in the overhead mirror as the Old One swiped at the bed of the truck, but it was a desperate swipe, the Chevy almost to County Road 1200. If she could make one more turn…
Charly stomped the brakes, cut the wheel. The tires screeched as the Chevy swept around the corner. A ditch on the other side of County Road 1200 loomed closer, a drop-off of nearly six feet. She was sure she’d taken the corner too hard, had consigned them to that ditch. Grimacing, Charly gripped the wheel.
The pickup caught the road. In the overhead mirror the Old One swiped a hand at them, grazed the open tailgate, shuddering the truck but not enough to knock the Chevy off its forward trajectory.
On blacktop again Charly floored it, the big truck moaning with pleasure as it picked up speed. She watched the Old One set off after them again, but she could see she’d beaten it this time. The winged shapes in the moonlit sky looked even farther away. Soon, the Old One was a small white spire on the dark horizon. She allowed herself to breathe.
Then Charly remembered the creature she was sitting on.
The monster that had once been Jesse.
She didn’t want to stop, but she’d seen enough horror movies to know there was always one more scare, one more boo moment when the bad guy leapt at the heroine. It seemed to her that an increasing number of movies ended badly, the woman dying in the end.
Charly slowed the truck. She reached out, pushed open her door. The Jesse-thing had been scrunched against it, its face dripping reddish-black blood onto the beige door fabric, and when the door swung open the head and torso simply slumped backward and hung upside down in the doorway. Charly lifted her rear end, and without her weight, the Jesse-thing slithered slowly over the seat. She got a hand under one of its ankles, shoved, and the whole lifeless body somersaulted onto the road. Charly stepped on the pedal before bothering to close the door, so anxious was she to get away from the Jesse-thing. The door slammed on its own. Watching in the side mirror, she half expected the body she’d just dumped to scramble to its feet and charge after her. But the Jesse-thing lay huddled in the road as the Chevy moved steadily away.
Chapter Twelve
They’d been motoring down Highway 65 for several minutes before Charly finally allowed herself to breathe deeply. She tilted the overhead mirror and peered at her children. Olivia watched her with tired eyes. Charly ached to turn around and stroke her hair.
Kate asked, “When can we stop, Mommy? I’m really thirsty.”
Charly ignored the sandpapery feel of her throat and looked at her older daughter. Despite her thirst, Charly smiled at the way Jake was slumped against Kate’s belly, his chin tilted down as he slept.
“Not for a while, honey,” Charly said.
“Are we safe?”
Charly eyed the road meditatively. She wanted to tell the truth.
So she said, “I think so.”
She and Kate gazed at each other for a long time, the sound of Jake’s breathing audible under the rough hum of the engine.
Charly said, “You want to keep holding him?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s not uncomfortable?”
“I like it,” Kate said.
Charly pressed her lips together and faced the road so Kate wouldn’t see her tears.
“Any sign of them?” Kate asked.
Charly scanned the dark skies. “Not so far.”
“Are we going to Indianapolis?”
“I think we have enough gas.”
“How far is it?”
“We should make it.”
Kate nodded. Olivia said nothing.
A few minutes later, Kate said, “Can we pull over yet? I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Not yet, honey.”
A silence fell over them. Charly kept the Chevy moving at a steady seventy-five. She didn’t want to get pulled over.
Olivia kept watching her with that same speculative look.
To break the silence, Charly said, “The truck sounds like it’s gonna make it.”
Kate said, “I thought the wheels were gonna fall off back there.”
“Me too,” Charly said.
She looked up at Kate in the overhead mirror, discovered that her eyes were happy.
But Olivia wouldn’t speak.
Terrified of the answer she’d get, Charly asked, “Can you talk to Mommy?”
Olivia frowned, the crease in her forehead giving her a careworn expression that hurt Charly’s heart. There were drying splotches of the Night Flyers’ blood on her cheeks, and though the thought of any part of those things touching her children made her queasy, she didn’t think she could pull over to clean them off. Not yet.
“What is it?” Charly asked.
“That man,” Olivia said.
“Which one?”
“You know.”
Charly forced herself to say, “Jesse?”
Olivia nodded.
Charly swallowed the thickness in her throat. “What about him, honey?”
“He changed into one of them, didn’t he?”
Charly said slowly, “He was changing. You saw the cuts on him?”
Olivia nodded.
Charly said, “I think he got…infected.”
Olivia said, “You have cuts too.”
Charly opened her mouth, closed it. She had no idea at all what to say, had not even considered the possibility that what had befallen Eric and Jesse could happen to her.
“Mommy?”
Charly looked at her daughter.
For the first time, Olivia’s lips began to tremble. “I don’t want you to change.”
“I’m not going to, honey. I promise.”
Olivia said nothing.
“Do you believe me?” Charly asked.
After a time, the child nodded.
Kate asked, “Was there a bigger bat?”
Charly frowned at her in the mirror. “What do you mean?”
Kate shrugged. “The white ones…the ones Daddy and Jesse became. There was a bigger white one. A taller one. Like their leader.”
“Yeah?” Charly said slowly.
“What if the black ones—the ones with wings—have a leader too?”
Charly’s stomach did a somersault. I hope to God they don’t have a leader, she thought. She said nothing out loud.
Kate said, “It’s sad.”
“What’s sad, honey?”
“I liked him.”
“Liked who? Jesse?”
“Well, him too. Until…you know.” Kate frowned. “I meant the other one.”
“You mean Sam,” Charly said.
Kate nodded. “Sam. I thought he was nice.”
Charly’s eyes filled then, and she focused on the road to try to take her mind off of Sam.
But she couldn’t do it.
Jake went on sleeping. Kate and Olivia leaned against their seats and said nothing.
Charly drove south.
After
It was a week after Charly and h
er children had escaped.
The creatures had gone below.
Though aboveground there were police, government officials, grieving family members and all manner of media swarming the state park like carrion flies, deep within the earth the Children and the Old One lay in a state of hibernation.
But their sleep was uneasy.
Unlike past feedings, this one had not occurred without struggle. The species on which they fed was still weak and easily killed, but its machines had improved, and many Children had been injured. A few had been so badly hurt that the Old One had been unable to revive them. Even the Old One, for the first time in his long existence, had experienced physical pain.
The Old One’s eyes rolled behind the great white blinds of his lids. He and his Children would not rest for long this time. The Old One’s hunger was too great.
And his anger was even more powerful.
The Old One remembered Sam, the one who had stood his ground, firing pieces of steel into his flesh. He remembered the man’s hubris and the mocking smile he wore even as the Old One ended his pathetic existence.
The Old One’s finger had regenerated, but the wound still throbbed.
He could not understand the young woman’s brazen attack on him. Yes, he had killed her, but now he wished he could kill her a thousand times more. Like the man earlier, the young woman they called Emma had died too quickly. She deserved to be made a plaything of his Children, to die the slow death they were accustomed to granting.
Most of all, the Old One thought of the woman with the yellow hair, the woman who had escaped him and taken her three mewling whelps with her. The Old One had transformed her mate into a useful servant and had done the same to her final companion, the young man with the curly hair. The one that had been called Eric and the one that had once gone by Jesse were his now, and he would use them well. He had acquired over a dozen new Children, but he had lost five of his own. Five too many.
The Old One ground his teeth in his sleep and concentrated. He would find a way to bring the yellow-haired woman back. With any luck, he could give her the death she deserved.
In a different area of the subterranean labyrinth that honeycombed the earth under the Peaceful Valley Nature Preserve, the Night Flyers clung unthinkingly to the ceilings of a dozen large caverns. In number they were roughly equal to the Children, though very few Night Flyers had been awakened by the humans who had so foolishly ventured into their territory. The sleep of the Night Flyers who had done battle was anything but restful, for their desire for flesh and marrow had gone almost entirely unappeased. Worse, they had been routed by their pale rivals because the majority of their winged race had been unaware of the battle and the subsequent pursuit of the humans.
But soon all the Night Flyers would be aware of what had transpired. They would know of it because their dark mother had dreamed of it. In her seemingly endless fever dream, she had witnessed the skirmish in the arena and the escape of the humans that had inexplicably eluded her glorious offspring. This troubled her, but what troubled her most was the fact that there had been human children in the strange blue conveyance, the machine that had coughed and rumbled and ultimately outrun her offspring. Somehow, the succulent young meat had eluded her winged minions, had eluded her.
The thought made her massive, furled wings rustle against the cavern floor. She could not depend from the ceiling like her offspring, of course, not when she weighed nearly two tons. Now those two tons of stygian malevolence trembled with wrath and yearning.
Nearly a mile under the Peaceful Valley Nature Preserve, in one of the largest and deepest undiscovered cave systems on the planet, the great mother dreamed of her revenge.
Her slumber would soon come to an end.
And when it did, the bloodshed that occurred a week ago when the humans had attempted to declare the valley their own would prove less significant than a single drop of rain.
The great mother sighed in her sleep and imagined the storm that would soon rage. A tempest of carnage and wailing. A blood feast that would prove forever which species was truly dominant.
A demonstration of why humans were right to fear the night and to shudder at the darkness.
A mile under the earth, the great mother dreamed.
And prepared her revenge.
About the Author
Jonathan Janz grew up between a dark forest and a graveyard, and in a way, that explains everything. Brian Keene named his debut novel, The Sorrows, “the best horror novel of 2012”. The Library Journal deemed his follow-up, House of Skin, “reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Peter Straub’s Ghost Story”. Samhain Horror also published his third novel, The Darkest Lullaby, in April. Savage Species is his fourth full-length work. Look for his fifth novel, a vampire western called Dust Devils, in early 2014. He has also written three novellas (The Clearing of Travis Coble, Old Order, and Witching Hour Theatre) and several short stories. His primary interests are his wonderful wife and his three amazing children, and though he realizes that every author’s wife and children are wonderful and amazing, in this case the cliché happens to be true. You can learn more about Jonathan at www.jonathanjanz.com. You can also find him on Facebook, via @jonathanjanz on Twitter, or on his Goodreads and Amazon author pages.
Look for these titles by Jonathan Janz
Now Available:
The Sorrows
House of Skin
The Darkest Lullaby
Coming Soon:
Dust Devils
Beware when the vampires come to town.
Dust Devils
© 2014 Jonathan Janz
When traveling actors recruited his wife for a plum role, Cody Wilson had no idea they would murder her. Twelve-year-old Willet Black was just as devastated the night the fiends slaughtered everyone he loved. Now Cody and Willet are bent on revenge, but neither of them suspects what they’re really up against.
For the actors are vampires. Their thirst for human blood is insatiable. Even if word of their atrocities were to spread, it would take an army to oppose them. But it is 1885 in the wilds of New Mexico, and there is no help for Cody and Willet. The two must battle the vampires—alone—or die trying.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Dust Devils:
Cody peered over the rim of the cliff and felt his throat tighten. Jesus Christ, he thought. Jesus Christ Almighty.
There, cupped in the rocky basin far below, were the devils. Stripped of their acting garb, the five powerful men capered about the fire like cackling demons. Blood slicked their chests, their rugged chins glinting like sloppy jewels. Over the fire revolved the corpse of an old man, spitted from anus to mouth on a cottonwood pike. Price, their leader, was thrashing something on the basin floor, pounding it as though in the thrall of some childish tantrum. And though Cody’s mind revolted at the very thought, he realized the object Price wielded was a human leg. As the scene wavered out of focus, the fire heat shimmering the naked men, Cody saw the pale ragged bone stub jutting out of the severed leg. It was all he could do to keep his gorge down.
He was so transfixed by the grotesqueness of the scene that he hardly noticed the boy on the ledge below him. Small, frail-looking, aglow with moonlight, the boy resembled some creature of the desert, a lizard or a scorpion washed pale by the sun. The boy crawled forward, toward the lip of the outcropping, and Cody realized how skinny the kid was. A slender cage of ribs stood out under a shirt that might once have been white. The wool pants didn’t come close to touching the ratty shoes. Cody figured the pants for hand-me-downs.
Below, one of the men—Horton, Cody now saw, the youngest of the devils—kept time on a metal wash drum, dust puffing from his strong hands as he slapped out his arrhythmic tattoo. It was a damn good thing the men below were occupied, for the boy on the ledge was sitting straight up and peering openly at them now, making no attempt at all to conceal himself.
Cody thought, What’re you doing, kid? Get down before they see you.
The distance between Cody and the boy was only fifteen feet or so, yet it was a sheer drop down bald sandstone. He could no more make it to the boy unobserved and unhurt than he could bring Angela back from the dead.
The thought of his wife blurred his vision, made his nose run. He ran a savage wrist along his upper lip and choked back the tears. No, by God. Now wasn’t the time for that. He’d come all this way to study them, to learn their tendencies. Not to shed more tears over the woman who’d betrayed him.
The little boy below—the stupid son of a bitch—had rolled over onto his stomach, head toward Cody now, clearly intending to slide down the verge on his belly. And then what? Cody’s mind demanded. Become their next meal? Serve yourself up on a platter? If they spotted the kid, they might well spot Cody too, and he knew that once they saw you there was no escaping.
Not knowing why he was doing it but knowing he had to do it just the same, Cody mimicked the boy’s movements, lay flat on the stone ledge and lowered himself down, hoping to God the drop wasn’t as sheer as it looked, hoping he’d slide down and land gracefully instead of freefalling toward a broken leg or much, much worse.
As Cody’s hips grated over the scabrous edge, he did his best to cling to the rock wall, but the perpendicular drop eluded his reaching legs. Damn it all, he thought. Here I go.
The blood of the innocent is the ultimate sacrifice.
The Darkest Lullaby
© 2013 Jonathan Janz