We loaded up the Rover and said goodbye to Henry, who watched us leave with guarded eyes.
It was time to hunt.
36
There was a patrol car blocking the road into town. The lightbar on the roof was flashing in time with the strobes in the grill and a long smear of blood ran across the hood from the shattered windshield to the front bumper. All of the tires had been slashed.
I pulled the Land Rover onto the shoulder, then looked at Anne and touched my nose. Her gaze turned inward for a moment, then she shook her head.
“I’ll be right back. You two stay here.” I got out and walked over to the patrol car. The only intact glass was the rear window and there was also blood on the ground by the driver’s door to go with the mess in front of the car.
It looked like the officers had been sitting in the car when the attack came. The driver had been pulled out of the side window, and the passenger had been dragged out of the windshield. A trail of blood and disturbed earth led to the trees about twenty yards off the road.
I expected to find a couple of shriveled corpses missing their blood. Instead, all I found was blood. Well, almost. The hands, feet, and heads of the corpses were still here, as well as a mix of unrecognizable human organs and shredded clothing. I wanted to look away, but I know what Henry would have done, so I steeled myself and peered closely at the grisly aftermath.
The hands and feet had been severed cleanly at wrist and ankle, not torn free as I would have expected. The neck was in similar condition, although not all at once. There was nothing neat or surgical about the remainder of the bodies. Just a horrifying pile of meat.
I went back to the patrol car and used Hunger to pry open the trunk. As I’d hoped, there was a police-issue Mossberg shotgun, as well as a black nylon satchel full of shells. I grabbed both and headed back to the Rover.
“Well?” asked Anne as I climbed in, taking the gun and ammo from me.
“Both dead, torn to pieces.” I described the scene.
Anne wrinkled her nose and pinched her lips. Then she racked the forestock of the shotgun to eject a shell. She glanced at it before reloading it into the weapon. The shell clicked against the loading port several times before she got it lined up and into the tube. If I hadn’t heard it, I wouldn’t have noticed that her hands were shaking.
Even so, her voice was steady as she passed the shotgun over the seat to Chuck. “12 gauge double-aught buckshot. Should be a lot more effective than your pistol. Even if we meet more of those things with armor over the knots, you can at least take off the arms and legs at close range.”
Chuck stowed the gun by his feet. “Thanks.”
The Rover’s tires crunched across the spray of safety glass as I drove around the patrol car. The low gray sky leeched the color out of everything, threatening snow and an early darkness. A mile past the patrol car we saw an empty beige Camry on the shoulder with the side windows smashed out. I kept driving.
The first thing we noticed when we turned onto Main street were the thin curls of smoke that hung in the still air. Partially charred wrecks sat in front of quaint cast iron parking meters down both sides of the street, sitting on slashed tires with their hoods up.
Except for the occasional crackle of still burning plastic, the town was silent. There was no traffic. And no people.
We drove down the center of the street at a walking pace, each one of us staring out the windows at the eerie stillness. A splash of color caught my eye, crimson smeared across the glass door of the Main Street Dry Cleaners. I hit the brakes and got out.
Without speaking, Anne opened her door and rolled down the window, then stood behind the open door with her drum-fed .410 shotgun. Chuck did the same with the rear driver’s-side door and his 12 gauge. I drew Hunger and trotted across the street to have a look.
The glass of the door was intact and unlocked. At this distance I could see that the smears on the glass were from a hand, slapped flat near the bottom, then trailing down.
I pulled the door open and warm, copper-scented air rolled out over me. There was a sticky black puddle just inside the door, stretching into long red streaks across the linoleum and curving around the counter out of sight.
I stepped around the mess and followed the grisly trail into the back of the store. As I expected, there was a similar pile of mutilated remains. A sharp breeze whipped past me and a door creaked.
On the back wall of the shop was a metal door, open about a foot. Bloody tracks led outside, some of which were crude approximations of footprints, and the rest just a mass of red dots in a thick line, as if someone had dabbed the end of a stick in paint and then tapped it on the ground all the way out the door.
The door jamb was damaged around the lock and looked like someone had forced it open with a crowbar. Poking my head outside, I saw that the door opened up into a wide alley behind all of the Main Street shops.
Every door to every store had been pried open, and most of them had those same dotted tracks leading out of it.
I checked out the shop next door, which had no dots or tracks leading from it. Inside was a candy store, barrels full of taffy and colorful hard candy knocked to the ground, but no bodies and no blood.
They had broken into every store, done a quick search for victims, then moved on. Very organized.
I found myself eating a candy bar as I looked around. After what I had just seen, the idea of food should have been revolting to me, but I couldn’t help myself. I gulped down two more before I left, knowing full well that my friends were out in the street waiting for me, exposed.
Back inside the truck, I explained what I had seen as we rolled towards the sheriff’s station.
“Smart,” said Chuck. “They went in the back, so nobody on the street or even next door would know what was happening.”
Anne chewed her lip. “Why would they even care, though? Besides, wouldn’t destroying all the cars on the street be kind of a tip off that something was going on?”
I shrugged. “My guess is that they wanted to catch as many people as possible before panic set in and everyone ran off in different directions. They probably destroyed the cars after they were done. I just hope the sheriff’s station is in one piece.”
We began to see more damage as we entered the center of town. Shattered plate glass was common and every car we passed was either burning or sat on shredded tires.
I pulled into the sheriff’s station parking lot, noting the absence of any patrol cars. Other cars, presumably belonging to the rest of the staff, were still there, although destroyed. I eased into a reserved space marked ‘Duty Sergeant’ right next to the entrance. If he showed up I’d happily take the ticket.
Broad concrete steps led up to the wire-reinforced glass doors and windows of the entrance. A white concrete overhang loomed over the doors, emblazoned with the seal of the department.
The front doors swung open easily and the now-familiar smell of blood wafted out.
37
The lobby was empty. I walked to the counter and peered through the glass at the comm center. Coffee cups sat next to busy screens while complicated phone panels blinked and buzzed at no one. The only indication that something had happened here was a single office chair on its side in the middle of the floor.
Anne put one hand on my arm and pointed towards the back of the building. “We’re not alone. There are at least a couple of stick men in here with us.”
Neither one of us mentioned Leon, but we both knew that this had just turned into a race.
On the right side of the lobby was a reinforced glass door leading into the station proper. I could see a beige corridor beyond, bland and utilitarian. The door was locked, requiring either an access badge or someone hitting a switch in the comm center to open it.
I decided to take the direct route and drove my boot into the space where the door frame met the wall. Glass exploded in all directions as the door frame ripped free of the studs holding it in place. Alarms went off and whit
e strobe lights began flashing in the corridor, making the drywall dust hanging in the air appear and disappear in time with their bursts.
Anne ran past me and took the lead. The hall ended in a T-intersection and Anne bolted left without hesitation. As I ran behind her, I saw that the carpet was covered with those same red dots that had been at the dry cleaners. Two tracks of dots curved into a doorway on the right side of the corridor from opposite directions, making a V shape, but Anne ran past it, so we didn’t stop to look inside.
Anne led us into a room at the end of the hall. As stark and utilitarian as the rest of the place, the only furniture inside was two conference tables and a beat up wooden lectern. Clipboards holding thick stacks of paper hung from the walls next to cramped whiteboards filled with rows of names and assignments.
We dashed between the tables and headed for a door on the far side of the room. I could hear muffled shouting coming through it. Anne reached the door first and yanked on the handle without success, then stepped aside.
I grabbed the handle and pulled. The receiving plate for the lock tore through the wooden frame and the door swung open. The room inside was small, containing only a glass-fronted booth and another door. A sign taped to the glass read, “ALL PROPERTY LOGS MUST BE SIGNED BEFORE PROPERTY WILL BE RELEASED.”
The shouting was much clearer now and one of the voices was obviously Leon’s. The door in this room was steel, but a wad of bloody clothes had prevented it from closing all the way. I shouldered it open, making it boom against the wall.
Leon and the thug from Verna’s Diner were pressed against the rear wall of their shared cell. A wooden man was halfway into the cell, stuck between the bars at the widest part of its chest, bloody arms outstretched toward the cringing men. A second wooden man was ripping strips of wood from the first creature’s torso, littering the ground at its feet with bits of broken twig and vine.
As I watched, the first wooden man writhed against the bars of the cell, wood squeaking against the metal loudly enough to be heard over Leon and the thug’s hoarse shouts.
I took one long step into the room, drawing Hunger at the same time. The second wooden man continued to shove with single-minded intensity until the moment Hunger came down across its shoulder, tearing off one of its gore-slicked arms.
The impact spun it around, revealing what I had been looking for, a knot of wood the size of a golf ball between its shoulder blades.
I had its full attention now. It turned to me and charged. I aimed my shoulder at it and charged right back. As vicious as the thing was, it simply lacked the mass to compete. Colliding with it was like a professional linebacker running full tilt into a store mannequin.
I powered it backwards across the cell block and into the concrete wall at the far side. The creature’s wooden chest collapsed with a satisfying crunch and the knot burst open, marking the wall with a syrupy spatter.
Back at the cell, the other creature went berserk, flailing its arms and legs wildly in an attempt to get free of the bars. Chuck walked up to it and grabbed one leg by the ankle, stopping it long enough to put a single bullet through the knot on its thigh. The wooden man collapsed, still stuck between the bars, arms and legs dangling limply in midair.
The big gang member had his face pressed against the bars in an instant. “Open the goddamn door before more of those things show up! Do it now!”
I holstered Hunger and took my time walking over. “Yeah, I don’t even know how to open these cells. Hey, Leon. How’re you holding up?”
“I almost pissed myself just now, but other than that, I’m cool.”
Anne glared at me. “You are such an asshole. I’ll open it.” She walked out of the room. Two seconds later a buzzer sounded and the cell door popped open.
Mr. Personality ran out and grabbed the front of my shirt with both hands. He opened his mouth to bellow something, but he never got the chance. I hit him in the sternum and he sagged to the ground gasping. I had pulled my punch enough to keep from breaking anything, but he’d have a hell of a bruise there tomorrow. If he survived until then.
Leon stepped over him and clapped me on the shoulder. “Thanks.”
Anne came back in the room. “I think you guys are the last living people in the building.”
“I figured,” said Leon. “We heard gunshots and a lot of screaming about thirty minutes ago. Things got quiet for a while, then these things came in looking like they just walked out of a slaughterhouse.” He pointed at his cellmate. “His name is Jamal, by the way.”
I headed for the door. “C’mon, let’s see if there are any guns left in the station.”
“Wait.” Jamal was on his feet with one hand clutching his chest. His voice sounded strained. “Take me with you. If there’s more of those things out there, then you need all the help you can get, right?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think shooting me in the back counts as helping.”
“No, man, listen. I was just freaked out, all right? Believe me, I’m on whatever side is killing those things.”
I looked at Anne. She shrugged.
“Fine, but you do what I say, when I say it, or I’ll personally haul you back here and lock you up. Got it?”
“I got it. No problem.”
We went back out into the hallway to start searching for the station’s armory. Leon stared at the bloody dots on the carpet and then looked away, fixing his eyes on the walls instead.
We moved cautiously through the deserted hallways, weapons ready. Anne’s senses were good, but like her grandfather before her, the range depended on how active the target was.
Halfway down the hall I stopped and raised my hand to signal the others. The absence of our footsteps left only the hum of the air conditioner. And one other thing. A very faint rhythmic dragging noise. As I listened, the sound was punctuated by a hollow pop.
The sound was coming from the next doorway in front of us, on the left. The same doorway that the v-shaped trail of red dots curved into. I crept to the edge of the door frame, Anne close to my side. I glanced at her and she nodded, although a bit uncertainly. Whatever was in there wasn’t giving off much of a signature.
The door was open, but the lights were off. Anne raised her pistol.
I reached inside and flipped on the lights.
38
When I was six years old, my father sent me down to the farm’s root cellar to get a jar of preserves for my mother. I ran outside and around the house, running because like most six-year-olds I lacked the patience for walking, and pulled the heavy cellar doors open, one at a time. I only needed to open one to get in, but I wanted to get as much morning light onto the stairs as possible before going down.
The light would paint a bright stripe all the way to the bottom, which was good enough to let me reach the candle and matches that I had hidden under the last step. That way I didn’t have to bring a candle from the house and admit to my father that I was afraid of the dark.
I got to the bottom and walked slowly away from the light, striking my match. It lit on the second try, by which time I was pretty close to the back wall. When the match flared to light, the floor at my feet burst into motion.
One of the jars of preserves had burst as they sometimes do, spilling syrupy fruit on the ground. That had attracted a great pile of roaches, which scattered in all directions when the light hit them, running over my feet and up my pant legs. I screamed and to this day I don’t remember running up those steps to the yard.
Flipping on the light switch in that room brought me right back to that cellar.
The floor was alive with sudden movement. Dozens of glistening red creatures, each nearly a foot long, scattered in the light, running up the walls, into the drop ceiling overhead, and charging out the door between our feet.
Like roaches, they were oblong, flat, and low to the ground, but made entirely out of wood. They skittered along on six spindly, jointed legs like twigs and coming out of their backs was a mass of thin, pale vines abou
t six inches long that curled and flexed in the air. On the front of their bodies were two oversized serrated jaws made of a hard, thorn-like material.
The floor of the room was covered in blood, and as the creatures fled their thin wooden legs left a trail of sticky red dots out the door and up the walls.
The grisly scavengers had been covering a pile of bodies on the floor, and as they scattered I could see that some of them were carrying away chunks of the corpses by holding them tightly with the vines growing out of their backs.
One, apparently a more single-minded specimen, had its pincers clamped tightly to the end of a thigh bone and was rocking back and forth as it twisted and pulled, making the body shift back and forth, creating that rhythmic sound I had heard earlier.
Someone vomited behind me.
As much as I did not want to enter that room, my revulsion at seeing that last creature desecrating a body was more than I could stand. My boots squelched on the carpet as I took two quick steps inside and drove the end of Hunger down through the creature, just behind its front legs. Hunger punched through easily. It went mad, legs flying, so I stomped down on its back to pin it to the floor and proceeded to turn it into kindling. It took a long time for the pieces to get small enough to stop moving. Unlike the wooden men, it contained no knot of blood.
I left the room holding my breath, my skin crawling, and didn’t stop walking until I found the break room. I had one foot up in the sink under running water before the last member of our group even got into the room. The water sluiced down my boot and ran off my heel in a solid crimson stream.
“I’m gonna throw up again,” said Jamal.
Leon shoved him out the door. “Not in here.”
He heaved loudly in the hallway.
Anne crossed the white linoleum floor, avoiding my clearly defined footprints, and sat down at a small plastic table. Her arms were crossed tightly in front of her.
Most of the gore was off of my boot, so I switched to the other one. I just concentrated on the water and not on the images in my head. One more thing I’d never be able to forget. One more thing that would jump out at me before falling asleep or while daydreaming in the shower. For the rest of my life. How many horrors could you witness before that’s all you could remember?
Liar's Harvest (The Emergent Earth) Page 14