Night Terrors: Savage Species, Book 1

by Jonathan Janz

  Gonzales, Jesse noted, was conscious, but definitely in a fog. He lolled his head in Jesse and Colleen’s direction and offered them a wan smile. Colleen started to say something, but before she could get it out, they felt the truck rock slightly.

  The storm was kicking up now, but the wind had to be stronger than he thought to buffet the full-sized pickup that way. He glanced a question at Colleen, but she held her arms out, as if awaiting the next tremor.

  “Hey,” Gonzales said, his grin brilliant within the glossy black nest of beard, “I remember you from last ni—”

  He never finished because the window behind them shattered and a pair of white hands clamped over his head.

  Colleen shrieked, and Jesse practically climbed on top of her to get away from the grasping creature. Gonzales yowled in terror and flung out an arm toward Jesse, but the only thing Jesse could think about was the monster in the back of the pickup. Somewhere below his conscious mind, a sardonic voice said, Guess you’ll never make fun of the characters in a horror movie again, huh? That’s worse than not checking the back seat.

  Gonzales was being towed backward through the window. His hairy legs kicked madly, his arms slapping Jesse, the roof, anything they could reach. But the creature drew him slowly, almost methodically, through the jagged aperture. Beside him Colleen puked on the dashboard, and now he saw why. Gonzales’s skin was being peeled from his body as he was dragged through the hole. Shards of glass plowed vermilion grooves through his chest, his arms. The flesh over his ribcage seemed to unzip as if he were molting. Jesse turned away and regarded Colleen, whose upper lip was creamed with vomit. Her face twisted in horror again, and again she puked, this time down the front of her shirt. Against his will Jesse turned to see why and thought, I’m losing my mind.

  The creature had succeeded in dragging Gonzales all the way out. Now it stood in the truck bed with a long-toed foot fixed on the man’s upside-down crotch. It was tugging on the skin of the man’s legs as though trying to free him from a pesky pair of tight pants. Only this was the man’s skin, and the creature was ripping off gobbets of it as it yanked, chewing the pink stuff like a lion at a fresh kill.

  “Oh man,” Jesse muttered. “What’re we gonna tell Musclehead?”

  “Tell who?” Colleen asked, but at that moment the man returned.

  “Can’t find Austin,” he was saying, not yet noticing the soaking red stain where a minute before his friend had sat. “Maybe he got out before the…” Musclehead trailed off, his eyes widening in disbelief.

  His eyes shifted from Jesse to Colleen. “Where did…”

  Jesse pointed sheepishly through the window. Musclehead’s mouth fell open in an expression that would have been comical at any other time. His mouth twitched, the brawny man actually on the verge of tears. He moved around the side of the truck, raised his gun, and aimed it at the feeding creature’s face. Jesse remembered the shotgun, had a sudden urge to wrest it from Colleen’s hands and atone for letting Gonzales get skinned. The champing creature appeared totally immersed in his dining, so Musclehead edged closer, the gun jittering in a palsied rage.

  “Look at me, you—”

  One moment the creature was feasting; the next it was leaping into the air, its agility incomprehensible. Musclehead was too amazed to track it as it described a graceful flip high over him. It landed behind him, and as he turned to blast it the creature surprised Jesse again. Rather than decapitating Musclehead, as Jesse was sure it would do, the creature flicked the gun out of his hands. The gesture was rapid and neat, but the wounds it made were not. Three of Musclehead’s fingers had been torn off, the stumps pumping fresh blood into the air. Instead of lunging at the muscular man and rending him to pieces, the creature scraped a grubby index fingernail through the flesh of Musclehead’s brow. Blood swam over his face in a sheet. Musclehead sank to his knees, his gaping mouth barking out hoarse sobs.

  The creature regarded Jesse, on its face a look of obscene merriment.

  “Drive,” Colleen shouted.

  She was climbing onto her knees and taking a bead with the shotgun, the barrel inches from Jesse’s head. He lunged toward the dash just before the cab filled with the earsplitting roar of the blast.

  “Get your ass over there,” she demanded, shoving Jesse toward the wheel. He moved numbly to the driver’s seat, saw Musclehead had left the engine running and slipped the gearshift into drive. He cast a nervous glance out the open driver’s window to see if the creature was about to leap through, but it was on its knees, its back to the truck.

  “I nailed it in the eye,” Colleen said.

  Jesse glanced in the rearview mirror meaning to see the creature’s blasted face, but he caught a glimpse of Musclehead instead, the man lying on his side, still holding his bleeding hand.

  “Should we go back?” Jesse asked.

  “For what?” Colleen asked, fumbling with the glove compartment.

  “Musclehead,” Jesse explained, “the guy who saved us.”

  “Leave him or all three of us’ll die.” She located the box of shells, slid one more inside.

  From their right came a bounding figure. The creature jumped off one foot, swooped toward them. Colleen pushed into Jesse just as the creature hammered the passenger’s door, its fists crashing through the window. The glass hailed over them. Jesse jerked the wheel, and the creature almost lost its grip. The pickup bounced over campsites, crushed a grill on an iron pole, veered away from an overturned pop-up camper, then made it back to the main road. The creature’s skinny legs scrabbled for purchase on the dented door, then swung up, perching on the windowsill. Then its entire, nine-foot frame was squatting in the open window, its incredible gauntness and flexibility allowing it to snake its head into the cab and leer at them. Its long phallus swung between its legs, reminding Jesse of the creature he now thought of as the Big Nasty, the one who’d raped Tiara Girl.

  The creature groped for the shotgun. Colleen kicked its reaching hand out of the way and leveled the weapon at its crotch. Its eyes widened a moment before she pulled the trigger, the blast evaporating the creature’s abdomen in a haze of black gore. The creature bellowed in agony and fell backward into the road.

  They’d driven about thirty yards when Jesse noticed the object lying on the passenger’s seat. Oh crap, he thought.

  Colleen followed his gaze to the severed penis. A foot long, it looked like an enlarged breakfast sausage someone had left out of the fridge.

  “Could you…” he said and nodded at the penis.

  “I’m not touching that.”

  “Use the gun,” he said, “you know, to nudge it—”

  “Look out!” she screamed.

  Jesse turned and saw the professor standing in the middle of the road, his palms thrown out to stop them.

  We’re going to run him over, Jesse thought.

  The same dread knowledge was imprinted on Professor Clevenger’s owlish face. He flung his forearms over his head as if that would save him. Jesse ripped the wheel left and felt the back end slue. He was sure it would swing around and crash into the man like a wrecking ball, but the impact never came. As they spun in the road, Jesse glimpsed the professor standing where he’d been, his arms still thrown over his face in that warding-off gesture. The truck shuddered to a stop.

  “Get in,” Colleen shouted across Jesse.

  The professor slowly lowered his arms and pivoted toward them, his expression both joyful and unbelieving.

  “You think we can make it out?” Colleen asked as the professor hustled toward them.

  “If we can—” Jesse started, but broke off when he spotted something about fifty yards away.

  In the middle of the deluxe section, surrounded by a dozen pale figures, several RVs had been overturned. A couple were still upright, though the figures were working on them too. It was next to the largest RV, however, that they saw what prevented them from answering when the professor climbed in the passenger door next to Colleen and said, “Thank God
for you two. I can’t tell you how much…”

  The rest of his words were lost in the rush of foreboding that had gripped Jesse.

  “We have to go over there,” he said, dry-mouthed.

  Colleen nodded, but she looked very frightened.

  Jesse put the pickup in drive and cut across the main road. Weaving in and out of campsites, they approached the giant white RV with green and blue stripes decorating its flanks.

  And the big white Buick parked outside it.

  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:

  Savage Species

  The Children

  Dark Zone

  The Arena

  The Old One

  Dust Devils

  Peaceful Valley is about to become a slaughterhouse!

  Savage Species

  © 2013 Jonathan Janz

  The construction of the Peaceful Valley Nature Preserve, a sprawling, isolated state park, has stirred an evil that has lain dormant for nearly a century, and all the men, women, and children unlucky enough to be attending the grand opening are about to encounter the most horrific creatures to ever walk the earth.

  The Children

  Part Two of Savage Species

  Jesse, Emma, and their companions must fight for their lives against the horde of bloodthirsty creatures known as the Children. Meanwhile, Charly and Sam follow the trail of Charly's missing baby below ground to a hidden cave system. But they're followed by Charly's husband, who has murder on his mind…

  Enjoy the following excerpt for The Children:

  Professor Clevenger slammed into the dash with a bone-jarring whump. The RV rocked away from the impact, teetered on its side a moment, then toppled. From inside the RV, Jesse heard shrieks of pain and terror. A creature appeared from nowhere and, berserker style, plunged through the motor home’s windshield. More screams from inside. Then came a volley of staccato blasts, someone firing a gun within.

  The rain was gushing now. Jesse shielded his eyes. Peering through the gaping hole that had once been the truck’s windshield, he watched a creature leap onto the overturned RV’s side. Surely unaware there was a creature there, someone from within the camper threw open the side door and attempted to climb out. Whoever it was let out a yelp of surprise and tried to close the door, but the creature was too quick. It reached down and fished the person out, a short woman Jesse now recognized as Linda Farmer, the camp ranger. Movement to his right drew his gaze and he saw Colleen drawing a bead on the creature, who was lifting Linda into the air, her legs flailing madly. The scimitar teeth leaned toward her exposed neck, but just before the creature ripped out her throat, the side door of the motor home swung open and Ron the DNR officer emerged. He leveled a black gun and squeezed off a fusillade of shots. The creature dropped Linda, took a couple wobbly steps at Ron, then crumpled.

  Ron clambered along the top of the overturned camper to retrieve Linda’s weeping but intact body, but before he reached her, a creature pounced on him. Rolling onto his back, Ron thrust the gun up to shoot the creature, but it backhanded the pistol, the black object skittering uselessly along the white metal before disappearing over the edge. The creature raised its taloned hand to kill Ron, but before it could, a crack of thunder sounded and a gaping hole opened under the creature’s armpit.

  Beside the truck, Colleen pumped the shotgun and advanced on the creature. Rather than clutching its side or bellowing in agony, the creature turned and let loose with a combination bark and hiss that made Jesse’s flesh crawl.

  Then the creature leapt at Colleen.

  Night Terrors

  Savage Species, Part One

  Jonathan Janz

  Peaceful Valley is about to become a slaughterhouse!

  For the first time ever, Samhain Publishing will serialize a terrifying original novel, Savage Species, in five installments, with new installments coming every two weeks. Here, as a special introduction to the fear that awaits you in Savage Species, is the first section, Night Terrors, absolutely free!

  Jesse thinks he’s caught a break when he, the girl of his dreams, and her friend are assigned by their newspaper to cover the opening weekend of the Peaceful Valley Nature Preserve, a sprawling, isolated state park. But the construction of the park has stirred an evil that has lain dormant for nearly a century, and the three young people—as well as every man, woman, and child unlucky enough to be attending the grand opening—are about to encounter the most horrific creatures to ever walk the earth. A species so ferocious that Peaceful Valley is about to be plunged into a nightmare of bloodshed and damnation.

  eBooks are not transferable.

  They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B

  Cincinnati OH 45249

  Night Terrors

  Copyright © 2013 by Jonathan Janz

  ISBN: 978-1-61921-718-8

  Edited by Don D’Auria

  Cover by Angela Waters

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: June 2013

  www.samhainpublishing.com