* * *
The monster hesitated at the sight of the flames billowing from Bill’s hand, and Bill screamed at the top of his lungs, hoping to scare the creature off. Four black eyes squinted inside clenching, wrinkled cones of translucent flesh. A black tongue licked the air, and folding forelimbs bent at the joints, rearing back, fingertips rubbing together like a praying mantis’s legs. The monster tossed its head back and made a shrill trilling noise in the back of its throat. To Bill’s horror, he heard an echo of that sound somewhere behind him, approaching fast.
He glanced over his shoulder, but couldn’t see anything in the darkened hall. Melanie stood frozen just outside the door to her room, the flashlight he’d given her shining in his direction. The second monster trilled again, and there came a galloping sound. Melanie whirled around, and the flashlight swept away with her, leaving Bill in darkness, staring up at a fire-lit monster. The flames were guttering as if the can of disinfectant was running out of juice. No...
Bill began backing away, but the monster advanced at the same pace. Glancing back once more, he saw Melanie’s flashlight reveal a second translucent monster racing toward them on four legs. She screamed and ran back into her room. The hallway plunged into utter darkness; Bill heard the door slam, then lock, and his heart spasmed painfully. His breath hitched in his throat, and an awful sinking feeling crawled into his stomach.
“Get away!” he said as his Lysol flame-thrower sputtered and darkness swelled. A bony arm came arcing out to reach him, snaking around the sputtering fire. Bill gritted his teeth and swept the flames over that arm before it could reach him. The monster squealed like a piglet and withdrew—only to seize him from the other side with one of its other limbs. Sharp claws slashed through his shirt and bit into his shoulder; he cried out as hot blood coursed down his arm. Somehow he managed to keep his grip on the can of Lysol, but he couldn’t reach the arm that had grabbed him. All he could do was keep those glassy teeth away.
“Somebody help!” Bill cried.
A low, stuttering growl started up, right beside his ear, and more claws bit into him around his ribs. A giant hand seized the back of his head and pulled it back. He struggled pitifully, provoking fresh agony from all the places where alien claws had skewered him. Another alien arm swept up in front of him. The hoof-like pad of the central leg appeared, gleaming in the sputtering flames still spewing from his makeshift weapon. He saw tree-ring-like patterns on the bottom of the hoof, and... some kind of orifice. It was a puckered mouth, he realized, just as it dilated open. He struggled to sweep his glorified candle into line and burn the gaping throat, but the flames had died down to barely six inches. All Bill could do was watch as that sucking mouth gaped wide and drifted toward him. He writhed and screamed, afraid to even guess what would happen next.
Chapter 14
Beth heard the screams as soon as she and Don reached the first-floor landing.
“That sounded like my Dad!” she whispered sharply.
Don reluctantly stopped and turned as he reached the sliding glass doors of the front entrance. “Kid, we can’t.”
Beth set her jaw. “Maybe you can’t.” She turned toward the sound of her dad’s screams and ran, lighting the way with her phone. She ran past the elevators and the stairs, through the lobby, and opened the door to Building C. A long, shadowy hallway stretched before her, and the screams snapped into louder, sharper focus. Gritting her teeth, Beth ran as fast as she could, never for a moment wondering what she would do when she arrived.
A dim flicker of flames illuminated large, hulking shadows clutching someone on all sides. Beth recognized her dad’s loose-fitting white cotton shirt and brown shorts.
“Dad!” she cried.
Rumbling growls sounded as she approached, but her dad gave no reply. Skidding to a stop just five feet from them, Beth’s eyes flicked over the translucent creatures holding her father. Their heads turned, and four black eyes squinted at her in the light of her phone’s flash. One of them peeled away from her dad, the other she saw had completely covered his face.
“Let him go!”
The one that had peeled away began advancing on her with four arms raised and poised to strike. Jagged, glassy teeth yawned open, and a big black tongue darted out. Beth backed away quickly, shining her light into the monster’s eyes, hoping to blind it. She was gratified to see the knots of wrinkled flesh around those eyes tighten until they were just four gleaming pinpricks inside the creature’s massive head. It growled at her, and she gave a shaky smile.
“You like that four eyes?”
It stopped advancing and shrank back a few feet, hind legs bending to lunge. She saw those legs snap straight a second later. The monster growled as its jaws opened wide enough to swallow her whole.
“Get down!” someone knocked her over, and two gunshots followed, deafening her. Beth landed hard and stared up at Don. He held his handgun in one hand, his flashlight in the other. The monster squealed and withdrew, blood gushing like water from a pair of ragged holes in its torso. It dropped to all fours, extra limbs folding up, and shrank like a balloon with a leak until it couldn’t have been any larger than her.
“Get!” Don said but held his fire. “You want more?” he roared, shaking his gun with a metallic rattle. “I’ve got plenty where that came from!”
The creature shook its head and shoulders like a wet dog, and then bounded down the corridor, quickly fading from sight. The one holding Beth’s father withdrew from him, but slowly and reluctantly. Horror stabbed in Beth’s gut as his face appeared, glistening with blood.
“Get away from him!” Beth screamed.
Don’s gun went off again. The monster squealed and released Bill, letting him fall with a sickening thud. Then the alien dropped to all fours and dashed away in the same direction as the first.
Beth hurried to her dad’s side and knelt beside him. “Dad!” She cradled his head in her lap, scanning him for injuries. His eyes were shut, and she wasn’t sure if he was breathing, but besides a few bleeding welts on his cheeks, there was no sign of any damage.
“Dad?” she tried again, and this time lightly slapped his cheek. His eyes fluttered open, and he gasped, sucking in a sudden breath. Tears sprang to Beth’s eyes, and she smiled.
“We have to get out of here,” Don said. “Before those things come back.”
“Can you walk, Dad?”
“I’m fine,” he said, jumping to his feet and hauling her up after him. Don turned and started jogging back the way they’d come. They ran after him, but her father darted abruptly to one side and knocked loudly on one of the doors.
“Melanie!” he said. “It’s me, Bill. The resort owner.”
“Are they gone?” a trembling voice asked.
Don stopped and turn to them, waving them over with the hand holding his gun. “Come on!” he yelled.
The door cracked open, a golden chain gleaming in the light of Beth’s phone. A pretty woman appeared in the gap, her cheeks streaked with tears.
A hand flew to her mouth when she saw Bill. “What happened to you?!”
“I’m fine,” he said. “My daughter rescued me, but we have to go before they come back.”
The door clicked shut in their faces.
A galloping sound began, faint, but quickly drawing near.
“Shit,” Don hissed. “We have to go, now!”
The chain rattled, and the door swung open. Melanie stumbled out, holding a flashlight. The galloping sound was louder now.
“Wha—” the woman turned toward the noise.
“Let’s go!” Bill said and tried to haul her toward Don by her arm, but she struggled, afraid to leave the safety of her room. Beth ran up ahead of them and then turned to walk backward and shine her phone into the shadows behind them. A pair of glistening monsters were crawling toward them at a frightening pace, four legs bent at the knees and splayed out from their bodies like spiders.
“They’re coming!” Beth screamed.
“Run, damn it!” Don said.
Bill tugged on Melanie’s arm, but she wouldn’t budge from the doorway, so he gave up and let her go.
The young woman’s door slammed and locked, and the three of them ran as fast as they could to get back to the lobby, not even daring to look back.
They crashed into the swinging door at the end of the corridor, bursting out beside the stairs. Don promptly turned and planted his shoulder against the door. “Help me!” he said.
Beth went to brace the door with him, but her dad came and nudged her aside. “I’ve got it,” he said, and Beth stepped back. The galloping noise became a crescendo, and she held her breath.
The door thumped with violent impacts; both Don and Bill lost precious inches as the door cracked open. Pale, translucent fingers appeared in the gap. Curving three-inch claws like shards of glass scraped and scrabbled, digging out giant splinters from the wooden door frame.
Stuttering roars shivered through the air, vibrating through Beth. The men fought to hold their ground, but their feet were slipping on the tiled floor. They struggled, panting and cursing, losing precious centimeters. The door was inching open with every passing second.
A stampede of footsteps sounded in the stairwell behind them. Beth spun around, remembering the galloping sound that preceded the aliens, and she screamed at the top of her lungs.
Chapter 15
Just before they reached the bottom of the first flight of stairs, James heard a girl scream; the sound came from the lobby. Up ahead Eric Monte suddenly stopped, and James almost knocked him over.
“That sounded like Beth,” Eric whispered.
“Who?” James asked.
“The owner’s daughter,” Eric replied.
“Maybe we should go back,” James’ wife, Kayla, said.
“Daddy...” Michael whimpered, and wrapped his arms in a vice around one of James’ legs. He was only six years old.
“Shhh,” James said, placing a big hand on his son’s head, and cocking one ear toward the sound. The screaming stopped, replaced by men’s voices echoing from the stairwell. “They’re in trouble, but I don’t think they’re under attack.”
“How do you know?” Kayla asked.
“Because the girl stopped screaming and the others are talking, not choking on their own blood.”
“James!” Kayla chided sharply.
“Shhh!” he snapped.
“I’m not going down there,” Eric said.
“Did I ask you to?” James replied. He snatched the man’s phone away. “Everyone stay here and be quiet.”
“But—” Michael latched onto his leg again.
“Kay, get him off me.”
She pried their son’s hands away, and he screamed.
“Damn it all to hell! Now the whole world knows we’re here. Everyone follow me.”
James hit the landing, hurried around the bend, and down the last flight of stairs to the lobby. A teenage girl appeared under the beam of his stolen phone, peering up at him with wide eyes and a furrowed brow.
“Hey, what’s going on down there?” James called out.
“We need help holding the door!” a man called back before the girl could reply.
James hurried down the stairs, following the voices around the corner to a wooden door with two men in blood-soaked shirts bracing it against scrabbling, jelly-fish colored hands with circular palms and three long fingers on each.
“Shit!” James said and body-checked the door with all of his considerable weight.
Something squealed on the other side, and the jelly-fish hands withdrew, allowing the door to bang shut. James shone the phone light where the door handle should have been, but all he saw was a simple brass loop.
“There’s no door handle!” he cried.
“I know,” one of the two men said. James recognized him in spite of his blood-streaked face. It was the resort owner. Just a few hours ago James had been demanding a refund from that man, and now here they were, bracing a door together to keep alien monsters out of the lobby.
“There’s got to be some way to lock it,” James insisted.
“They seem to have lost interest,” the second man bracing the door said. This one had a thick blond beard and was wearing a blue Chicago Cubs cap.
“They might be going around,” the resort owner replied, easing his shoulder away from the door to plant his back against it instead.
“Could be,” Blond Beard replied. “They’re a lot smarter than they look; they were knocking on doors to get people to open up.”
James stepped back from the door and cast about the shadowy lobby with his stolen phone. He saw Kayla and the kids standing at the bottom of the stairs with Eric and the teenage girl who’d been screaming a moment ago.
“What are we going to do?” Kayla asked.
He shook his head. “We have to get out to our cars. Get out of here before they come back,” he said.
“I agree,” Blond Beard said.
James swept his stolen phone around the lobby. Shadows flowed out of couches and chairs, flashing off the picture windows and sliding glass doors.
“Where’s Toby?” the teenage girl asked suddenly. “Dad? Where—”
“You didn’t see him?” the resort owner asked. “He went back to our room. He said he was going to hide with you.”
“What? No,” she replied, shaking her head. “He never came back.”
The resort owner let out a noisy breath but said nothing.
“The aliens must have gotten him,” James said, to which the girl let out a strangled sob. He swept the phone light back to the resort manager and the Cubs fan with the shaggy blond beard. This time he noticed the semi-automatic pistol in Blond Beard’s hand—the source of the gunshots they’d heard on the third floor. James frowned, wondering where the other man had gotten the gun and wishing he had one of his own. “I have a minivan parked outside,” James said. “But it’s not big enough for all of us. I can fit three besides my family.”
“I have a two-seater pick-up,” Blond Beard added. “Could fit three in a pinch, with more in the back.”
“I’m not getting in the back,” Eric put in.
“No one’s getting in the back,” the resort owner added. “There’s only eight of us, and I have a car, too.” He pulled a jangling set of keys from his pocket with an electronic key fob attached.
“Then let’s get out of here!” James replied.
The owner hesitated. “I have more guests trapped in their rooms.”
“And you think you can save them?” Blond Beard asked, holding up his gun and shaking it for emphasis. “If we hadn’t come to the rescue when we did, you’d be dead right now.”
“Then help me. You have a gun!”
“Negative,” Blond Beard said, shaking his head. “We need to get some real help. Besides, I’ve already pumped those things full of six rounds. If that didn’t kill them, the other nine aren’t going to either.”
“We’re wasting time,” James said, glancing around anxiously.
“Please,” the owner pleaded.
“Sorry. It’s my gun, and I’m leaving. You gotta choose if you want to stay and be a dead idiot, or leave and come back as a live hero.”
The owner’s eyes tightened, and he wiped his bloody face on his sleeve. “Fine. Let’s go.” He gestured to the front entrance. “We’ll need to pry the doors open and watch our backs—I left another set open on the other side of the lobby. Those things could sneak in behind us at any minute—if they haven’t already.”
“Shit,” James said, and swung his light back around, but the phone’s flash wasn’t strong enough to reach anywhere close to the other end of the lobby. A real flashlight joined his, penetrating a dozen feet deeper, but James couldn’t see anything besides the island tours ticket counter, the lobby bar, and more empty furniture. The far end with the restaurant was cloaked in shadows.
“I don’t see anything. Let’s move out,” Blond Beard said.
Chapt
er 16
Bill grabbed one of the sliding doors, and the guy with the baseball cap grabbed the other.
“On three,” the Cubs fan whispered.
Bill nodded.
“One, two... three.”
They hauled the doors open and warm fragrant air spilled in. The Cubs fan swept his gun and flashlight around the parking lot, holding them together like a wannabe police detective.
Shadows pooled between the cars, but no sign of aliens concealed within them.
“Seems clear, but it’s impossible to say. We’ll have to make a run for it. Each to their own vehicles.”
“Split up?” Beth asked in a trembling voice.
Bill was also wondering at the wisdom of trying to reach his car alone with Beth. Neither of them had any kind of weapons. “We’re going with you,” Bill said, making a snap decision.
“Better keep up,” the man replied. “Let’s go.” With that, he ran out the open doors, leading the way with his gun and flashlight. Bill grabbed Beth’s hand and tore after him, not waiting to see where Eric or James and his family went.
Bill flew across the parking lot, faster than he’d have thought possible, but Beth struggled to keep up, forcing him to drag her. She was only five two, and her legs weren’t nearly long enough to keep up with two six-foot men running at top speed.
“Faster!” Bill whispered.
“I’m trying!” Beth replied between gasps. Her phone pumped up and down with her free arm, periodically flashing over the Cubs fan’s blue hat and gray Hawaiian shirt. He was angling to the far right of the lot, heading for a white Chevrolet pick-up. Beth’s light flashed off his shirt, then pooled on the asphalt, then back to his shirt. The man had reached his truck. Now he was fumbling with keys to open the door. Bill poured on an extra burst of speed to catch up, breathing hard.
Beth’s light illuminated the vehicle again as she ran. The driver’s door was open now, but the Cubs fan was gone.
Under Darkness (A Sci-Fi Thriller) (Scott Standalones Book 1) Page 6