The creature reflexively turned away from Brad, allowing Cole to see a trickle of blood from the spot where the blade had hit.
Finally seeing a chance to do something other than run or hide, Cole rushed forward, reaching out with both hands.
A chill spiked through his blood the moment the creature looked in his direction.
After another step, his legs no longer wanted to work and he had to rely on his own momentum to carry him forward. His left hand snagged the creature’s coat, which felt like a coarse, matted tangle of bare wires and nylon cords. His right hand found the blade in the creature’s chest and twisted it.
Gerald appeared then, next to the creature, and jabbed it with his wooden spear. He screamed something to Cole, but it was lost amid the slamming of Cole’s heart in his chest.
Letting out another thunderous cry, the creature wheeled around and dragged Cole along for the ride. Brad was cut down by a single swipe from the creature’s claws, and Cole was close enough to hear the last sound the other man would make. As he felt the creature turning toward Gerald, Cole tried to steer him away by twisting the knife again.
Despite the knife in its torso, the creature still knocked Gerald through the air with a powerful backhand. The old man’s back slammed against a nearby table and the wet crunch of breaking bones filled the lodge.
There were more voices and more gunshots, but Cole couldn’t make out any details. He was dragged a few more feet as more shots were fired. A bullet shredded through the creature’s fur and thumped against what might as well have been a slab of solid rock.
More gunshots followed, and Cole recognized Sam’s voice through the chaos. Something hit his shoulder then and sent him skidding across the floor. His back and head knocked against a wall, and afterward he couldn’t move a muscle. But he could still feel his fist wrapped around the knife that he’d pulled from the creature’s body.
Sam shouted something and the cook shouted back. Their voices were soon engulfed by a deafening howl as the creature leapt toward the kitchen.
Then consciousness slipped from Cole’s grasp.
He didn’t expect to wake up.
Chapter 4
Cole woke up, but wished he hadn’t.
Just lifting his eyelids hurt more than the worst hangover of his life. He was slumped over and jammed against a wall. His lungs burned with every breath and his ribs felt like they were about to rip through his torso. If he hadn’t been wrapped up in so much bulky winter gear, he knew he’d have several broken bones to add to his list of complaints.
Gritting his teeth, Cole pushed himself up and got to his feet. Whenever he thought he couldn’t make it any further, memories of the creature got him moving again. For a moment he suspected he might have taken a knock to the head and dreamt the rest. That theory was squashed as soon as he realized he was still holding the weapon that Brad had thrown into the monster’s chest.
It was heavier than he’d expected. Although it didn’t seem right to call the thing a knife, the weapon wasn’t quite long enough to be a machete. He guessed that some of the guys who’d worked on the line of Digital Dreamers fantasy games would know more about swords and blades like this one. As far as he was concerned, a knife was a knife. This knife, however, had intricate carvings etched into the blade. Upon closer inspection, the steel didn’t just seem dirty. It was smeared with something, but the streaks were on the inside. It looked like it should be slippery, but it wasn’t.
Cole held the blade up for a closer look at the markings. They weren’t any sort of writing he recognized, but that didn’t mean much. If it wasn’t English or programming code, he wouldn’t know it. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the time to stand there and ponder the mysteries of that blade. The scent of blood was so thick in the air that it coated the back of his throat.
The cabin had been completely destroyed, every table reduced to wood chips that stuck to the gore drying on nearly every surface. On top of that, he had no idea how long he’d been out, and his only real hint was the daylight streaming through a nearby window. Pushing his questions aside for now, he braced himself to get out of the cabin no matter how much it hurt to move.
Nothing vital seemed to be broken, but that didn’t help ease the pain that wrapped him up tighter than his winter gear. Looking to the spot where he’d landed, he noticed he’d missed hitting a wooden beam by about a foot and a half, and had slammed against a relatively smooth section of wall. Compared to the others laying nearby, his landing had been more than lucky.
He recognized the jacket Sam had been wearing on a bloody torso that lay upside down in a corner. Brad was still nearby, but had been torn into unrecognizable pulp. He knew the mess against the wall next to the bedroom door had once been the gun nut. Cole picked up the rifle laying within a few feet of the body and started to clean it off. Then, remembering how much good the rifle had done for its owner, he let it slide out of his hands. The cook was laying against the stove. His eyes were wide open and clouded over, but Cole knew dead when he saw it. Nothing with any life in it would have been as still as the cook or any of the others inside that cabin.
As he worked his way to the front of the cabin, he felt like a passenger inside his own body. His thoughts weren’t exactly incomprehensible, but they came quickly enough to overwhelm him. He took a few breaths, accidentally filled his lungs with the stench of death and ran outside.
The contents of his stomach hit the snow, where they were almost immediately buried. Cole pulled in some of the crisp morning air and felt a little better. As his pulse slowed to a pace just shy of frantic, he spotted movement a few yards away. His hands balled into fists and he suddenly wished he hadn’t left the rifle behind. Squinting through the brilliant daylight, he spotted something shifting beneath a layer of freshly fallen, freshly bloodied, snow. Taking a few tentative steps forward, he asked, “Who’s there?”
No response came.
“Hey. You all right over there?”
“Is…it…is it gone?” the shape asked.
Recognizing the strained voice, Cole rushed over and knelt down beside the shape. “Gerald?” After dusting off some of the snow, he spotted the older man’s face beneath a mask of frozen, crusted blood. “Jesus, it is you! I thought you were dead.”
Gerald was regaining consciousness quickly, and he sat up as if to take a swing at him. When his fist bounced off of Cole’s shoulder, the older man let out a pained grunt. “I…was dead,” he said through clenched teeth as he opened his fist to let several pieces of broken glass fall out.
“Almost,” Cole said. “So was I.”
Although some smaller shards of glass were wedged into Gerald’s fingers, only one large rounded piece had managed to puncture his palm. Now that Cole could look at the older man’s hands up close, he noticed the thick tangle of scar tissue coating most of Gerald’s palms. Although they looked like burns, there were several rounded patches smaller than the size of a dime that stuck out from the rest. Compared to the condition of Gerald’s face, neck, and chest, however, the glass wedged into his palm looked like a paper cut.
Cole’s hands hovered above the older man uselessly. As much as he wanted to stop the bleeding, close up the wounds, or do anything at all to help, he simply didn’t know how to do any of those things. “Try to relax,” he said in the most comforting voice he could manage. “I’ll…uhh…I’ll get some help.”
Lurching toward Cole, Gerald grabbed hold of him with enough strength to knock him off balance. “No,” he snarled. “Listen to me!” Somehow, the older man managed to sit up and collect himself; more wounds revealed themselves as freshly fallen snow fell away from his body. Gashes in his torso and legs seemed to go all the way down to the bone.
“Holy shit,” Cole said. “You need to lay back down!”
“Shut the hell up and listen to me! Brad had two knives. That thing got one of ’em. Do you think you can find the other?”
“Yeah,” he said as he held up the machete for Gerald to se
e. “I grabbed one of them before I was knocked out.”
“Good. There’s a card in the lining of my coat…near the collar. Call the number on the card and tell them what happened. Tell them you need to talk to Paige in Chicago. They’ll arrange for you to see her.”
“What? We’re going to freeze to death or bleed out before—”
“Stop talking!” Gerald’s voice had a hint of the ferocity that shook Cole all the way down to the frozen tips of his toes. “Paige needs to know what happened and that Brad and I won’t be coming back. More importantly…she needs that knife! We didn’t go through all this to lose both of the damned things.”
Suddenly, the nightmare from the previous night rushed back to clamp its jaws around Cole’s mind. “I thought I could help,” he said. “I wanted to do more.”
Oddly enough, Gerald’s voice became steadier as Cole’s broke up. “You did a hell of a lot more than most anyone else,” he said. “When you talk to Paige, she’ll know you did plenty. Be sure to tell her that it took a goddamn Full Blood to put Brad down.”
“A what?”
“Just tell her that. Can you remember?”
Cole nodded, knowing it would take a hell of a lot more than time or even another knock on the head before he’d ever forget those words.
“That blade…the one Brad carried,” Gerald said. “You need to bring it to her. Make sure Paige gets it. Do you understand me?”
“I think so, but—”
Gerald seized the front of Cole’s jacket with almost enough force to pull Cole down on top of him. “You’ll take that blade to her! You got to. After what you saw…after what you did…you ain’t got another choice! She’ll know what to do!”
Cole could think of plenty of other choices. He could push that crazy old man away and do his best to get back to civilization before he froze to death. He could lie to Gerald and tell him he’d do whatever he wanted just to shut him up. Actually, he didn’t think that would work on the old man. Gerald’s eyes were too clear for him to be fooled by such a pathetic smoke screen. Finally, Cole settled upon his only real choice, the responsibility of carrying out a man’s dying wish settling upon his shoulders.
Patting the scarred hand gripping his jacket, Cole said, “All right. But I don’t know who Paige is, and we need to get to some police or a medical team or something before anything else.”
Gerald was starting to fade. “If you drag the cops into this, it’ll just get them killed when that thing comes back. You know just as well as I do that Mounties will be scouring this area for a good long while trying to figure out what happened. That Full Blood’s got your scent as well as the scents of everyone else in that cabin. It’s hurt now, but—”
“That thing can smell me?” Cole snapped. “Is that what you’re saying?”
Gerald nodded. “It knew we were here. It came here for a reason. It’ll be coming back even if the only thing left here is bodies. When the Mounties show up, they’ll just bring their popguns like that asshole who got ripped apart in there.” In a cool, level voice, Gerald asked, “When it does come back, whether there are cops here or not, do you think there’s a damn thing you or anyone else can do to keep that monster from finishing what it started?”
Cole didn’t have to think very long before replying, “No.”
“Then do what I ask, Cole. Brad got himself killed pulling that Full Blood away from you before it could finish you off, and I don’t have enough in me to keep convincing you that you need to get the hell away from this place and leave me behind.”
“All right,” Cole said with a single determined nod. “But you can come with me.”
Shaking his head, Gerald replied, “Take the card from my collar. It has a number for you to reach someone, and they can get you in touch with Paige.” The words were spilling out of Gerald like the blood that had reddened the snow around him. “Just mention me and Brad and tell her what happened here. She’ll help you get to where you need to go. You’ll have to travel, but you need to get that Blood Blade to her.”
Cole nodded and reached for Gerald’s collar. “Where’s the card?”
Rather than explain, Gerald knocked Cole’s hand away and tore open his jacket collar as if it was made out of tissue paper. His fingers fumbled through the stuffing and emerged with a laminated business card. “It’s right here,” he snarled as he slapped the card into Cole’s hand. “I got a phone in my bag that works damn near anywhere. Get it and call the damn number. That Full Blood could come back any time. Once it’s close enough to smell two more living souls here, it’ll all be over.”
Cole examined the card. It had two numbers on it, one of which was an 888 number, the other a bit shorter than a Social Security number. Other than that, the only other thing printed there was the name: MEG BR 40. Cole guessed that it was a business name or e-mail address, but didn’t take the time to think it through more than that.
Looking up from the card, he noticed that the flow of blood from the wounds on Gerald’s arms and chest had stopped. In fact, those wounds were already dried and scabbed over. As the older man shifted upon the ground, the flesh beneath his tattered clothes actually held together. “Don’t try to move,” Cole said. “You probably shouldn’t be sitting up.”
Anyone with eyes could tell that Gerald shouldn’t even be breathing.
Gerald nodded as his scowl faded. He was sitting up straight, blinking slowly and absently rubbing his stomach as if he had indigestion rather than gaping wounds. The older man must have shifted within his shredded clothes, because the flesh that was visible through those rips was only scratched and smeared with blood.
Cole found his cell phone right where it should be. The cold piece of plastic felt like a little slice of home, and he merely had to snap it open to get that comforting bit of technology to come to life. Although the phone’s screen showed the picture he’d downloaded brightly and clearly, it also showed him two disheartening words: NO SIGNAL. He didn’t like leaving Gerald there, but he suddenly had a lot to do. He thought about where he might find a medical kit, some clean blankets, or even any survivors who’d escaped during the attack. Then again, he also realized that if any other survivors had somehow escaped the creature, they weren’t about to be tracked down by a panicked game designer from Seattle. Focusing on what he actually could do, he headed back to the cabin
The inside of the lodge didn’t look any better now than the last time he’d been there. He stepped over human remains without actually paying attention to what was in front of him. When the smells got too strong to bear, Cole opened his mouth and breathed that way.
“Bad idea,” he groaned as soon as the smells were translated into tastes and reached down to his stomach.
The cabin hadn’t grown in the last few minutes, so he spotted the bags scattered near the entrance fairly quickly. After spending so many hours packed into that truck, he didn’t have any trouble picking out which of those bags had been wedged between Gerald’s feet throughout the ride.
“I got it!” Cole yelled as he hurried outside while holding up the bag as if he expected to get a prize.
Grateful to fill his lungs with fresh air, he walked about three more steps before he grunted, “Damn. I was going to get a medical kit while I was in there, but I got distracted.” He stopped a few yards shy of where Gerald was laying and set the bag down. “Actually, distracted isn’t the word. Disgusted is more like it. In fact,” Cole said as he swallowed a bit of bile that gurgled to the top of his throat, “how about we talk about something else? Or…since you weren’t talking about it…why don’t I stop talking about it?” He laughed nervously, but cut himself short as soon as he saw that Gerald wasn’t laughing. In fact, he wasn’t reacting at all.
He wasn’t even moving.
“Gerald?”
He had to be certain that Gerald was dead before he would leave him there to freeze. As soon as he reached out to feel for Gerald’s pulse, he was introduced to something even worse than the stillness he�
��d been expecting.
Beneath the collar of Gerald’s coat, dark gray marks stained his neck as if dozens of threadlike tendrils were creeping beneath his flesh. The lines also snaked along Gerald’s arm from beneath his sleeves. For a second Cole swore he saw those lines shake like shadows being cast by a flickering light. A small syringe still protruded from the middle of the dark marking on Gerald’s wrist.
“Oh my God,” Cole muttered as he reached out with one hand to touch the vein in the side of Gerald’s neck. What he felt instead of a pulse was the last, desperate twitch of another dark tendril wriggling somewhere between the meat of Gerald’s flesh and the outermost layer of his skin. Those dark gray filaments stretched and strained as if doing their best to reach Gerald’s throat from the inside.
Cole snapped his arm back with so much force that he nearly sprained his own elbow. A flurry of obscenities poured out of him as he jumped to his feet and backpedaled from Gerald’s body until the back of his heel knocked against the bag he’d brought from the cabin and his backside thumped against the snow. The sight of Gerald’s contorted face was repulsive, but also mesmerizing. The gray threads kept sliding beneath Gerald’s flesh, wriggling like frantic tadpoles.
“He’s dead,” Cole said to himself. “He’s dead. That’s all I need to know.”
Snatching up a flannel shirt from inside Gerald’s bag, he ran toward the road so he could signal for any vehicle that might pass by. He made it about seven paces before remembering what the old man had told him and the plan of action they’d agreed upon. He felt like an idiot for agreeing to any of those orders.
Then he heard a howl in the distance.
It wasn’t like anything in the movies or nature shows he’d seen on TV. It was powerful and pained at the same time. It could have drifted through the air from miles away or it could have originated from the closest row of trees.
Cole laughed to himself and shook his head. “I gotta be out of my damned mind.”
Turning toward the cabin, he took another few steps and heard the howl again. It came from that direction.
Skinners: Blood Blade Page 5