Apocalypstick

by Gregory Carrico

  Lanni turned and stared at Jacob, dumbfounded. “Labor? She’s only four months, so, yeah; I’d say she’s having problems.”

  Jacob’s face went red, and he looked at the floor. Despite their little melee, he wasn’t trying to be mean. Saying the right thing just wasn’t one of his strengths. He was usually a pretty gentle guy, even though he tried his best to hide it.

  “She sounds bad,” Lanni said, “but she’ll be alright. Being pregnant hurts, doesn’t it? That’s all it is.” She sounded less confident with each word. What she knew about being pregnant wouldn’t fill a thimble, but despite her words, she suspected that this was anything but normal.

  Jacob nodded confidently. “I’m sure you’re right, Lanni. Maybe she’s having triplets this time. That could be it. And what mother wouldn’t scream with three or four kids like you in her belly.” He was trying to be funny, reassuring, and comforting all at once, but couldn’t quite pull it off.

  It wasn’t his fault, though. With all of the dire news on TV, very few people had anything to be cheery about. The stories ranged from deadly pandemics, to biblical prophecies of last days coming true, and everything in between. Something was obviously very wrong in the world.

  Pregnant women were dying in startlingly high numbers across the globe. The few women having stillbirths or miscarriages were the lucky ones. The rest died in painful, premature births of seriously deformed and even mutated offspring. It was enough to make the nut-jobs predicting the end of the world sound perfectly reasonable.

  The realities of the situation were crushing, particularly given her mother’s condition. There was no real reason to believe that her mother would be one of the lucky few, yet she refused to abandon hope. As long as those terrible cries kept coming, there was still a chance, and she would cling to that slim hope until it was gone.

  The scratching of Alex’s pencil on his pad stopped, and the entire house went eerily quiet. He suddenly lurched up from the desk, knocking his chair over backwards, and sending a cascade of colored pencils to the floor. He just stared straight ahead, ignoring Lanni and Jacob like he was still in his trance.

  “Dude!” Jacob said, putting his hand to his chest. “You scared the… Aahhg!” He interrupted himself with a high pitched gasp of pain, falling once more to his knees, and clutching the sides of his head. It would have looked comical, like a scene from one of those d-list horror flicks he and Alex loved so much, if not for everything else that was happening.

  Before Lanni could react, nauseating pain hammered her head, and washed over her body. She saw stars through blurred vision, and ringing filled her ears. Her sense of balance abandoned her. Somehow, she caught herself on the desk; leaning heavily against it with both hands. Confused, she wondered if the house had been struck by lightning.

  Alex was little more than a blur of motion as he stepped over his whimpering friend, and brushed purposefully past her into the hall.

  With virtually no reprieve, the pain struck again. It felt like her head was being crushed and trying to explode at the same time. Her nausea became an inexplicable and almost overpowering hunger.

  As her sight returned, she found herself staring at Jacob’s flushed throat, with an insane urge to sink her teeth into it. If she hadn’t been immobilized by shocking jolts of pain, she might have done so.

  Still not recovered from the previous assault, her vision blurred and her ears rang again, as yet another wave hit. Her muscles twitched and jumped, treading the thin boundary between agony and numbness. Even clutching the edge of Alex’s desk, she barely kept her feet.

  She gasped for air, but couldn’t draw a full breath. Her heart quivered in her chest. Even with the overload of sensations wracking her body, in a moment of shocking clarity, she knew she was dying.

  She wanted to resist it, to fight, to scream, but with the strange energy pulsing through her, her body didn’t seem to get any of her mind’s signals.

  NO!

  A low, primal growl of rage clawed its way into her consciousness, but she couldn’t draw enough breath to give it voice.

  Panic!

  This isn’t happening!I won’t let this happen!

  With every ounce of will she could muster, she forced her body to respond, and was rewarded with a tiny, convulsive gasp of air. It felt like a great victory, but it was fleeting. She couldn’t hold out against the current of power trying to wash her out of her body. The world went utterly dark.

  #

  And then it all came back. With no warning, the aches, the sounds, the smells, and the inexplicable terror came crashing back. She could see again. Her brother was beside her, watching her with a hopeful expression.

  The energy that nearly killed her was still there, inside her. But now, it felt no different than her arm, or leg. It had become just another part of her.

  Alex breathed a relieved sigh as she started to act normally again. “Come on,” he said. “We have to get out of here.”

  Then she remembered her mother, and the screams, and the pain. But where had they gone? The house was still silent. Even the moaning and whimpering had stopped. The waves of energy still rolled through the house, but they didn’t hurt her anymore. They broke against her like water on a stone.

  Alex must have understood what she was thinking, because he shook his head. “No. Stay beside me,” he said. “We have to leave.”

  “Leave? We have to help Mom! Find a phone,” she said. “Call 911. We need that ambulance here, now!” She ran to her mother’s room without waiting for him to answer.

  “Lanni, wait! Don’t go in there,” Alex said. “You can’t help her.”

  “Alex! Mom is dying! Get the damned phone!”

  “You don’t understand, Lanni. It’s her. This is all coming from Mom. I don’t know how or why, but she’s been doing it for weeks. It’s never been this bad, but I’ve felt it, and I know it’s her.”

  “What are you talking about? Please don’t go crazy right now. I really need you.” She started crying. Why was everything going so wrong?

  “I thought I was going crazy, too. I keep hearing voices in my head. They sound like you, and Mom, and Dad, and other people, too. It’s mostly just bits and pieces, but now I know they’re real. One of them makes me want to do things… terrible things, but I think I’m stronger. I get these urges, and…”

  “GET THE PHONE!” she yelled. He was raving. It was ridiculous to blame their mother, or anyone. It had to be a freak power surge, or a solar flare, or something, but that didn’t matter, to her. Nothing mattered except getting to her mother. She pushed the door open, and her heart sank.

  “Oh, no. Please, no!” she sobbed.

  “Lisa Ann! It’s not safe, yet. Stay with me!”

  Lisa Ann. She hated her name. He always called her that when he wanted to sound important, or if he was nervous about something. It was an odd thing to notice, given the scene she had just stepped into.

  Blood covered everything. It dripped from the ceiling and down the walls, and soaked the bed. Her mother’s contorted, blood-splattered face gazed vaguely in Lanni’s direction, frozen into a rictus of horror. Her legs were both twisted to one side at an unnaturally sharp angle, and her belly looked like it had been scooped away with a giant grapefruit spoon, leaving only an empty red cavity.

  Her father’s feet stuck out beyond the footboard on the other side of the bed, toes down.

  “Dad?”

  Silence.

  Lanni took small steps around the foot of the bed, not wanting to see what awaited her.

  “Daddy?”

  One of his feet rocked gently from side to side. As his body came into full view, she knew that she was losing her mind, just like her brother. An impossible creature stood on her father’s back. It looked like a wrinkled, black football with four bowed bulldog legs and yellow clawed feet.

  Glistening with blood and gore, it made wet, slurping sounds as it rocked back and forth, clinging to her father like a demonic tick.

  I
must have died. This is Hell.

  Blood poured down her father’s side from beneath the little monster, and his body jerked as it tugged him from side to side. It pulled away from him, and sat back on two legs.

  The center of its chest was split open from top to bottom, and filled with several concentric rows of pointy, shark-like teeth. Each row opened and closed in turns as they shredded an apple-sized chunk of her father’s flesh, working it deeper into its body. If it had a head or any sensory organs, they were very well camouflaged.

  Ignoring her, it dropped back down on all four feet, and bit into her father’s back. It must have hit a big vein or artery, because blood sprayed from the new wound. He was still alive!

  In a blind rage, she screamed and charged at it. She wanted to hurl it against the wall and stomp it to death. It didn’t even try to move as she reached for it. She was vaguely aware of her brother saying something from the hall. It sounded urgent, but his words didn’t register with her.

  The strip of floor between the bed and wall was barely wide enough to accommodate her father, so she fell to her knees, straddling his legs, and tried to pries the thing off of him. It was hot and slippery, though, like it was covered in oil, and it slipped right through her hands.

  A bluish substance dripped from her hands, leaving no residue behind. It flowed like liquid, but felt as dry as powder. She scarcely noticed these details before lunging forward to try again.

  This time, as she reached for it, the monster quivered slightly, and another wave of energy slammed into her. It definitely came from the little toothy football beast. She felt most of the energy flow around her as it had done in the hall a few moments ago, but the tiny bit that managed to affect her felt like a bare knuckled punched from a professional boxer.

  Completely dazed by the attack, she fell face-down on her father’s back, while the impossible little beast easily hopped aside.

  It sat up on two legs again, right in front of her face, giving her a very clear, up-close view. She noticed that two of its legs were longer and thinner, and the conical section of its body between the shorter limbs was covered in twisty raised ridges, very reminiscent of a human brain.

  It moved towards her tentatively, taking small, searching steps with all four limbs, but it pulled back when a yellow claw grazed her chin. Aside from the momentary burning feeling, it didn’t hurt, though she knew it had given her a pretty good cut. She could feel what must have been blood flowing from the spot.

  Her eyes drifted shut, but she fought to stay awake, and forced them back open. Instead of the little monster, she saw her old pet rabbit, Carver, sitting in its place.

  I must be in shock. I’m hallucinating.

  Her eyes closed again, and when she opened them, Carver was gone and the monster was back. The slightly raised ridge on its underside split open, and the shark-like maw chewed the air in anticipation. It smelled like burning plastic and rancid meat.

  It jumped at her, and landed on her head, digging its thick claws through her scalp. More warm, sticky fluid flowed down over her face as it lowered its jaws to her head, just above her left ear. The last thing she noticed was the horrible crunching sound of its teeth digging into her skull. Unable to fight back, or even move, she hoped that Alex, at least, would escape from the surreal, chaotic nightmare that had descended upon their waking world.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Finding Home

  Killing Tiffany Hudson

  A note to the reader

  Excerpt from Children of the Plague