by Joe Hart
Adam wore a polished set of steel jaws that protruded from his face where his mouth should have been. Gleaming fangs interlocked amongst one another and fitted plates covered the man’s jowls. Two black straps ran from where the mask met his face and stretched back around his neck and over the top of his skull. As Gray watched, the jaws opened revealing Adam’s real mouth and teeth behind the steel.
Adam opened his mouth wider and the mask did the same, the wickedly pointed teeth stretching like the yawn of a lion. Gray saw Adam shut his mouth just as the steel jaws followed suit and slammed together creating a horrible crunching sound that rang like clashing sabers. In that moment Gray knew what had made the bite marks on the bodies of the Jacobs family.
Adam stepped forward, kicking the knife down the hallway. He leaned down, bringing his face to Gray’s in a semblance of a kiss, the shining maw widening again. Gray kicked the younger man in the chest, shoving him backward. There was a flash of movement and Lynn lunged forward, swinging the scalpel down in a stabbing motion. The instrument plunged into Adam’s shoulder as he tried to block the attack and he issued a muffled yowl from behind the device. He shoved Lynn and she flew back, tripping over her feet as she went down and landed in a heap. With a hiss, Adam withdrew the three inches of steel embedded in his shoulder, a flower of blood blossoming on the material surrounding the wound.
“Oh bitch, you’re gonna pay for that one.” The jaws snicked together and apart as Adam spoke. “I’m gonna bite you to pieces, and then I’m gonna eat some of you.”
Adam aimed a kick at Gray as he scuttled backward, trying to regain his feet. The blow caught him in the thigh and he cried out, numbness shooting down the length of his leg. Rachel stepped forward, holding Gray’s knife out before her like a pointed offering. Adam began to giggle.
“What are you gonna do with that, bitch? You don’t put things into me, I put things into you, remember?” Adam laughed again and Rachel lunged forward with a yell. He caught her arms as she tried to drive the knife into his stomach and held her there while she squirmed.
“I’d bite your face off, but I like it too much,” Adam said. He tightened his grip and began to force Rachel’s arms down, his mask rubbing against her cheek, until she issued a hoarse sob and dropped the knife. With a backward kick, Adam sent the weapon sliding behind him on the floor and shoved Rachel away. Gray began to stand, his leg threatening to drop him and Adam sent a looping fist into the side of his head.
The hallway dipped as if it were inside of a plane caught in turbulence. Gray stumbled back, running to keep upright. His hand went out in a final effort of balance and he found the edge of the rolling cart. He fell and took it with him, its heavy top thudding to the floor beside him. One of the Tin-Snippers escaped his pocket and rolled out, bumping against Rachel’s shoe.
“He’s gonna be so proud of me,” Adam said, stopping to look at them. “Why don’t you all be good and just go back to the hospital room. Hey, how did you get out anyway?”
Gray reached for the ball bearing but his fingers wouldn’t grip it. His lungs tried to pull air in but they were small and ragged. He saw Rachel bend down and pick up the Tin-Snipper.
“Throw it and get down,” he wheezed, locking eyes with her.
She looked at the polished egg of steel in her palm and then down the corridor to where Adam stood, his hands on his hips as if awaiting an answer. Gray watched her wind back her arm and whip it forward.
“Get down!” he yelled at Lynn and Joslyn who each pulled the little boys to the floor, covering them with their bodies.
The Tin-Snipper sailed down the hallway and Gray pulled the cart closer, hoping he would hear the sound of the sphere hitting Adam’s mask. Instead, it bounced harmlessly off the giant’s ample belly and shot straight up into the air. Adam laughed.
“Was that supposed to hur—”
The Tin-Snipper hit the floor at Adam’s feet and detonated.
The concussion struck them first, driving the cart against Gray’s outstretched hands and legs. There was no definable sound, only a thick buzzing in the air as if bees had returned from their extinction and swarmed the hall. Then the vacuum was punctured by a fading roar followed by inhuman screams. They reverberated off the walls like things alive, cutting through the waning aftershock of the explosion.
Gray turned to the women and boys, searching for missing limbs or lacerated torsos. They were all sitting up slowly, the children crying in hushed tones, Rachel and Joslyn clinging to them. Lynn reached toward him, a haze of disorientation covering her eyes.
“What happened?”
He more read her lips than heard the words. The bees hadn’t left his eardrums but the floor had stilled instead of rocking like a ship’s deck. He gathered his feet beneath him and stood, a swarm of vertigo coming and receding within a heartbeat. He held out his hand to Lynn and helped her up. The screams were still coursing past them, a river of sound, and when he turned he saw why.
Adam’s legs were gone from the hips down.
He lay in a muddled ocean of gore with shattered spars of bones poking their bleached heads through the red swells. Strings of muscle were splattered against the walls and one especially long strand hung from the ceiling like a party decoration. Adam screamed over the top of his mask’s lower jaw, the upper portion had been torn off in the blast and lay farther down the hall. The inner mechanism still worked and the piece of steel that hung from his face snapped upward with each bellow.
Gray rounded the overturned cart and saw that the lowermost tray had been obliterated by shrapnel and there were dented constellations formed on the underside of the second level. He moved forward, careful not to slip in the organic spray that used to be Adam’s legs. The man squirmed in his own fluids, his palms slapping the wet floor, sending up droplets of blood. Gray came even with him and Adam turned his spattered face toward him, his breath coming in short hitches between shrieks.
“Help me! Help meeeee!”
Gray surveyed the pulped ends of the man’s thighs, arterial blood jetting from them in rapid pulses. Miraculously, from the waist up Adam appeared unharmed. Gray knelt beside him, balancing on the balls of his feet and began to open the pockets on the prone man’s shirt. The plastic card was in the second one he checked and he drew it out, turning it over in the dim light.
“Daddy! Help me!”
Gray stood and walked past him, fragments of bone crunching beneath his feet. He passed the card over the electronic eye beside the handle and felt a click. He opened the door and looked around the corner at a set of steps leading up to a vacant landing.
“Let’s go,” he said over his shoulder and held the door open.
They filed past the dying man on the floor. Rachel came last and paused, turning Ken’s face away toward the wall. The pumping blood was arcing out of Adam’s ruined legs slower and slower. He reached toward her with one hand, trying to grasp her shoe and failing. Rachel leaned toward him and spit into his face before stepping on his hand and continuing down the hall. She moved past Gray without a look and began to climb the stairs.
Gray watched Adam reach toward his missing lower half, shock finally overwhelming him, his fingers feeling the tattered stumps and sharp femurs. With a final look, Gray let the door swing shut and moved past the women toward the landing.
Joslyn had picked up his knife and offered it to him as he passed but he motioned to Lynn instead.
“Give it to her,” he whispered.
Lynn took the weapon and nodded once when Gray put a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m all right.”
“Are you sure?”
“Never better.” She gave him a wavering smile.
He climbed to the top of the stairs and waited, listening over the ringing in his ears. He eased one eye around the corner.
Another hallway, this one shorter, ran two dozen steps and ended in a set of stairs leading up and out of sight behind a wall. Two doors, identical to the ones below them, were set in the righ
t side of the hall. The space seemed deserted.
Gray drew the remaining Tin-Snipper out, holding it at his side. He scanned the passage, searching for a camera and spotted one hanging above the first tread of the stairs. After two more cautious steps he paused by the last door and turned to the landing.
“I think we’re okay,” he said.
A sharp bang came from the door beside him.
He flinched, spinning and bringing his arm up, ready to release the bearing at the slightest movement. The pounding came again from inside the door and then a voice, high and unmistakably feminine saying words he couldn’t understand.
“Siri,” he said, stepping forward.
With a swipe of the card, the door released and he opened it, ready to slam it back shut if it was some kind of trick. Siri leaned against the doorjamb inside, her dark hair hanging in sweated strips around her flushed face. One hand was bleeding from the bottom of her palm and the other held her swollen belly.
“Sheriff?”
“Siri, thank God.”
He moved to her side as a cloudburst of pain crumpled her face, and caught her as her left leg trembled then gave out. The floor was wet beneath his boots and when he looked down he saw the front of Siri’s pants were soaked a darker blue than the rest of her outfit.
“My water broke two hours ago,” she managed, bringing her face up to his. Her eyebrows knitted together and her mouth opened in a soundless cry as she nearly doubled over. “The contractions are less than a minute apart.”
Chapter 42
Gray helped her to the Spartan bed and eased her down as the rest of the women filed into the room.
Lynn kneeled beside them as Rachel and Joslyn continued to comfort their boys. Over the quiet crying of Joslyn’s son, Siri’s jerking inhalations filled the air.
“She’s having the baby,” Gray said, propping a pillow behind Siri’s head.
“We have to get her out of here,” Lynn said.
“No time. The fire’s almost here and we don’t know where Darrin is. She’s going to have to have it here.”
“Mac, we don’t know if the smoke from the fire will seep down into these rooms. What if the air gets cut off or it gets too hot.”
“It’s the chance we have to take. Barder was planning on staying here so if he was confident that it would be safe, that’s all we have.”
Siri moaned and began to shiver. Lynn stood and spread out a thin blanket over the shaking woman.
“He killed him, Sheriff. Darrin killed Joe,” Siri whispered before she gasped for breath again.
Gray found her hand, hot beyond fever.
“I know, kiddo. I know. I’m sorry.” He watched Siri close her eyes, nodding once as sweat poured in delicate streams from her temples. He let her hand go and wrapped the blanket up in her palm for something to grip.
“If the baby comes, you’ll have to deliver it,” Gray murmured to Lynn, standing and taking a step toward the door.
“What? Mac, I don’t know how to deliver a baby, I’m not a doctor! Wait, where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“I have to find Darrin before he finds us. We’re completely vulnerable here. We have no weapons other than this grenade and that knife.”
“We can lock the door,” Lynn began.
“And if he figures out we’re in here, which he will, all he needs to do is get a gun, open the door and pick us off one by one.”
“Mac—”
“Listen.” He lowered his voice. “We will die in here if I don’t deal with him first. If I find a gun or ammo for the one I’ve got, I’ll come right back.”
Lynn watched him, her eyes filming over and then clearing. Her lips clenched white and she shook her head.
“Damn you, Mac.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know. Go.”
“Have someone stand by the door with the knife. I’ll knock twice before I come back in. If there’s no knock, stab whoever comes through that door in the throat.”
Lynn nodded, gripping the knife tighter in her good hand. He looked her face over once more, committing it to memory though he didn’t need to.
“Hey Adam, get your ass up here!”
The yell stiffened them all where they stood. Even Siri quieted and let a silent breath of pain slither out between her clenched teeth, her eyes bulging. Gray turned to the door, expecting Darrin to step into view any second, his surprised expression erupting over his handsome features at the sight of the prisoners all gathered where they shouldn’t be.
Without a word, Gray turned and strode to the open door, peering out while holding the Tin-Snipper ready in his left hand. The hall was still devoid of life, but Darrin’s voice rang down the nearby stairway again, clear and sharp with its command.
“Adam, quit fucking around down there. You better not be bothering the pregnant one, he said not to touch her until after she gives birth.”
Gray hefted the small grenade, weighing it and his choices before covering his mouth with one hand and turning his head away from the stairwell.
“Coming,” he barked, trying to make his voice amorphous. There was a pause and then a scuffle of feet at the top of the stairs. Then nothing.
He moved down the hallway and stopped beside the stairs, readying himself. Every muscle ached. Every bone burned beneath his skin. A pale light spilled down the stairway, giving the shadows a liquid quality. They lay in ashen tangles amidst the dark, and he tried to blend with them as he took the steps upward.
The stairway he’d fallen down had seemed to go on forever when he’d tipped into it. Now it was only ten steps, the treads covered in gritty dirt that snapped beneath his boots. He winced but continued at a steady pace, keeping his vision locked on the hatch above him, waiting for Darrin’s form to darken it and fire a round into his chest as he realized that it wasn’t his brother coming to meet him. He moved upward, the air growing warmer with each step. The hoarse roaring, like static from another room in a house, became louder as he climbed. The fire was nearer and from what he could see of the silo, the air had thickened with its noxious breath. He came even with the submarine hatch and crouched, looking over the rim of the floor.
Darrin stood with his back to him a short ways off, gazing out of the open man-door to the yard that was filled with sulfurous-looking smoke. The air glowed yellow and it carried the quality of a failing fall evening instead of a late August afternoon. The younger man leaned against the doorway as if admiring a stirring sunset instead of the raging destruction that was coming toward them. In one hand he held a pistol, pointed at the floor. Grit crunched beneath Gray’s boot and he hesitated, waiting for Darrin to spin around. Instead, he spoke.
“It’s beautiful, Adam. It’s all burning away. There’ll be nothing but charred remains left behind it. It’s cleansing; clean in a way that only belongs to nature. Speaking of burning, where did you put the big bastard’s body?”
Gray climbed silently from the stairway and wound his arm up, throwing the Tin-Snipper as Darrin pivoted. It flew across the distance between them and Darrin caught sight of it just as it was nearing the space beside him. He dove in the opposite direction, hurling himself to the ground at it struck the steel wall and was lost to Gray as the snipper exploded in a flare of thunder. Gray ducked, shielding himself behind the propped hatch door. The silo repeated the explosion until it was a fading whisper of itself and deadly, tinkling shrapnel peppered the walls, leaving holes where it punched through.
Gray rose, searching the floor for another weapon but saw nothing that would suffice. His hands. They would have to do if there was any breath left in the murderer. He strode through the smoke, moving fast, watching for shadows that might leap toward him, but none did. He edged the pile of grain, feet cracking the wheat that housed life for the next season. Cordite smeared the air and where he thought Darrin should lay dying, there was only a matted pool of blood, boats of seed floating between its shores.
He had only a moment to realize his m
istake, following the trail of crimson where it led beneath the pile of chaff.
The wheat burst apart as Darrin launched himself from it. A myriad of grain flew, mimicking the Tin-Snipper’s display, and in the center a devil grin of malice plastered across the killer’s face. Blood coursed from his arms but the hands that latched onto Gray’s neck were solid stone, cement come to life. He fell back under the younger man’s weight, pressing down, the thumbs at his neck finding arteries and digging into them.
His head cracked against the floor hard enough to send flickering gray spots to the sides of his vision like a spilled bag of marbles rolling away to darkness. He blinked and brought his knees up, creating valuable space between him and Darrin’s smothering bodyweight. The other man’s face was inches from his own, blood-flecked teeth white against the yellow air. Gray threaded his hand and arm between Darrin’s wrists, then the other before scissoring them downward. Darrin’s hands slid free of his throat and he breathed in, tasting the tainted air and welcoming it like water in the desert. With an up thrust of his neck, he bashed his forehead against Darrin’s. Once, again, a third time, until an unfocused look clouded the young man’s eyes.
With a grunt, Gray rolled him over, switching their positions, and brought an elbow down to Darrin’s nose. It broke with a sound like a pine knot popping in a fire. Blood spewed from both nostrils and the bone within slanted the once regal feature far to the left. Gray rained blows down upon him, some landing, some blocked by the younger man’s upraised forearms. There were cuts and missing chunks of skin on his arms where the Snipper had tasted him with its many tongues. Gray postured up and sliced an elbow down between Darrin’s outstretched hands, connecting with his forehead. A splotchy bruise rose and split open on his scalp and just as Gray thought the other man was dropping into unconsciousness, Darrin grasped a handful of wheat and dust and threw it into his eyes.
A thousand biting insects were in his vision. He swiped at his face, trying not to rub the sharp grains deeper, trying not to scrape his iris and corneas raw. Darrin sat up and struck him below the jaw with an open hand and his throat closed like a shutter being thrown. He choked and fell sideways as Darrin shifted his weight.