Serpentine (20 page)

It was a desperate thought, one that seemed to fill his head in a repetitive shout. He assumed this was because he knew that their only chance of escaping was taking advantage of the thing’s weakness. But even then, it moved so fast that he didn’t know if they’d be able to get away.

“What is it?” Valerie asked.

“What’s wrong?” Mac followed up, her tears making her voice sound thick and broken.

“It’s not moving. It’s—”

A loud banging noise seemed to explode right out of the air directly in front of him. The door shuddered in its frame, popping out slightly. A large crack formed along the bottom, racing up like a backwards lightning bolt.

Joe fell back on his rear end as the girls screamed behind him. He scrambled back, unable to get to his feet. He looked back, making sure Mac and Valerie were okay. Mac was crying at full force now, but it was unlike her usual bouts of crying. There was horror in the sounds that came out of her mouth now. Hearing her like that made him both terrified and pissed off.

In front of him, the thing struck the door again. This time, the entire bottom section of the door popped out, the right corner splintering and almost falling away from the rest of it. The monster darted its head in but the broken bit of door was not enough to allow it a full entrance. It drew back quickly, its slithering noise now louder and without stealth as it backed up to reach charging speed again.

“It’s coming again,” Joe said, now on his feet and holding the pitchfork almost like a shield. “When it hits the door, run through it. Right away. Okay?”

Valerie nodded but Mac looked to be frozen. She was still weeping but her eyes looked to be unblinking as she stared at the place where the monster had been only seconds ago.

Joe got back to his knees and looked down through the hole that had been partially created along the right side of the door. He could just barely see the thing coiling up around itself and then charging forward. It was close, surely no more than ten feet away, and its speed was uncanny.

“Here it comes,” he said.

And then the door to the shack seemed to blow inward. There was a cracking sound that was almost like a comical
pop
as two of the door’s three hinges were blown off. Splinters of wood hit Joe in the face as the bottom of the door exploded and the thing came charging in.

Joe rolled to the right and felt the slimy side of the thing against his arm. He finished his roll just in time to see Valerie doing as he had been instructed. She reached towards the door before the entire length of the monster was inside the cabin. She jumped over it and darted into the forest.

After that, Joe lost sight of her. His eyes were on Mac. She was still frozen but now her face had contorted into something that was almost feral. She was literally frozen in panic as the thing went charging after her.

Joe lunged for her, not sure what he was doing. Rather than grabbing her and pulling her away (which he knew he didn’t have time for), he shoved her hard against the far wall. The charging monstrosity missed her, lashing through the air where the little girl had been standing less than a second ago.

Mac struck the far wall and started screaming again. Joe knew it was inviting death to think such a thing, but his only hope now was that the thing would turn back for him. Maybe it would leave Mac and come racing back to him. Then Joe could only hope he could manage a few good strikes with the pitchfork.

The thing slowed itself before striking the wall and then Joe was both terrified and relieved when the thing did exactly what he had wished. The upper half of its body turned and seemed to study him with eyes that Joe could not see. The thing’s flesh seemed to expand slightly and then contract, as if it were breathing. It drew back a bit, arching to strike and Joe was given another glance of that wretched slash of a mouth that had haunted him since the night he and Valerie had caught fireflies. It opened that mouth twice and Joe was pretty sure it was somehow tasting the air, figuring out where it needed to strike.

And then it was coming at him. Joe looked into that mouth, vaguely aware of the bowl-shaped suckers along its underside.

“Run, Mac,” Joe said, unable to take his eyes away from the thing.

Behind him, he could hear Valerie screaming.

He brought the pitchfork up and stabbed out at the monster as it closed the distance between them. The monster moved at the last moment and only one of the prongs at the bottom of the pitchfork pierced it. Most of the thing’s weight slammed into Joe and he was knocked to the ground.

As the thing started to fall on him, Joe saw Mac freeze again, a look of shock and surprise on her face behind the thing.

Then there was a sound like an explosion and the monster was on top of him.

After that, darkness.

THIRTY

Scott brought his car to a hard stop, slamming on the brakes. A cloud of dirt and dust billowed up around the sedan as he opened his door. His hand instantly went to his hip where the Sig waited. When he was out of the car, he stood motionless for a moment, listening.

It took no time at all to hear signs of distress. He heard a girl screaming from very close by. It was coming from directly ahead of him, a shrill sound of terror. Scott went racing in that direction, the Sig raised as he went bounding through the forests in the directions of the screaming.

As his eyes fell on the shack a few yards ahead of him and the teenage girl running out of it, he heard an approaching engine roaring down the road. Susan, he assumed.

He started down towards the shack, not bothering to wait for Susan. The girl that had come running out of the shed was still screaming, staring at either the shack or the lake beyond.

Scott worked purely on instinct, running down into the woods and towards the shack. When he passed the girl, he gave her only a passing glance. He hoped Susan would stop and check on her. For now, he was more concerned with what had caused her screams.

As he neared the old shack, a series of screams came rocketing out of it. It sounded like another girl, probably much younger than the one he had already passed. He came to the door in a sprint and drew his gun up. He took a step in and everything in his body—his mind included—froze for a split second to try to make sense of what he was seeing.

His brain first brought to mind the world
slug.
After that, he thought
leech.
But the truth of the matter was that the thing he saw falling on top of a teenage boy was neither of those things. It was eyeless and without appendages. Its underside—which he saw clearly for a moment as it fell on the boy—was filled with suckers that reminded him of tentacles, bringing to mind one of his favorite childhood novels,
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

It took that connection to reality to unhinge his mind and muscles. As the boy fell to the ground, the leech-like thing on top of him, Scott looked for a shot where the boy would not be at risk. The boy’s head was still uncovered, but it was clear that the head was what the monster was going for. It squirmed and crawled, trying to position its own head over the boy’s. The boy fought diligently but the weight of the monster was just too much.

Scott steadied his hand and fired three times into the lower part of the thing’s body. The thing responded instantly, coming up off of the boy and rearing back like a snake ready to strike. Scott peered into its horrid mouth for just one second before firing two more times, each shot tearing into the meat of the thing’s sickly-white underside.

Black fluid poured out of it as it barreled forward. Scott tried to move out of the way but the thing slammed into him. It was soft to the touch but incredibly heavy. Rather than falling onto him as it had done with the boy, it simply knocked him out of the way. Scott went tumbling into the front wall of the shack, his back smacking into the wood and sending the breath out of his lungs.

Amazingly, the monster went slipping out of the doorway. The gunshots had apparently hurt it enough to make it give up on its latest meal. Scott watched the length of it trail out of the shack, still not quite sure what he was seeing.

At his feet, the boy was rolling over and getting to his feet. He looked around as if in a daze. On the far side of the cabin, the little girl he had heard screaming before he entered ran to the boy, crying hysterically. The boy took her carefully into his arms and looked back to Scott.

“You have to stop it,” the boy said, looking desperately to Scott. “It’s going back to the water. It’s just like a fish, I think. It can’t stay on land for so long.”

“Stay here,” Scott said, drawing a painful breath. He turned to head out of the shack when he heard two loud gun blasts that made him jump. He looked out of the doorway, up towards the road. He saw Susan standing in a shooter’s stance beside the other girl. She held a shotgun up on her shoulders, looking towards the shack.

“I’m coming out,” Scott yelled, not wanting to wander into her line of fire.

He stepped out as Susan came rushing down the hill, the shotgun still held up. “It’s making a run for the water,” Susan said. “I shot the damn thing…I know one of the shots hit it. But it just kept going.”

Scott only nodded, already turning towards the lake. The thing was moving along the ground, making strange U shapes along its belly as it crawled along. He could clearly see the place where Susan had landed one of her shots. A large chunk of meat along its center was bleeding more of the black stuff he had seen spill from its body in the shack.

“Kids, I need you to stay where you are and not move a muscle,” Scott said loudly back into the shack. He then looked to Susan and said: “Light it up.”

They stood together and fired at the thing. Scott knew that every shot he fired landed true but the thing kept moving. It was now less than five feet from the water and Scott emptied his clip into it, stepping forward and closing the distance with each shot. The thing’s body shuddered with each round that pierced it and although its movements slowed, it still continued to move.

“To hell with this,” Susan said. She ran forward, pumping a new round into the shotgun.

“Careful,” Scott said.

“Got it,” she said. She ran in front of the thing and brought the barrel of the shotgun down.

But the monster was too close to an escape to be stopped. Before Susan could take her shot, the thing lashed out hard to the right, knocking her to her feet. Without so much as stopping, the thing wrapped its lower half around her leg and continued on towards the lake.

Its top portion had reached the water as Susan started to wail and scream. She tried to angle the shotgun for a clear shot but was unable to do so. Scott ran down to her and grabbed her hand. He yanked as hard as he could but the monster only tightened its grip. As more of it went into the lake, moving slower than ever now with Susan’s added weight, Scott heard the sound of an approaching boat engine. He looked up and saw a boat speeding towards them. A single man was on board and as far as Scott could tell, he showed no signs of slowing down.

“Give me the gun,” Scott said, feeling stupid that he had exhausted his rounds so easily and that he’d left his additional clips in the trunk of the sedan. He looked back to the approaching boat and wanted to yell for the moron to turn around or, at the very least, to slow down.

She handed it to him, stock-end first. When he took it, he remembered that he’d already watched Susan load the next shot into it. He aimed carefully three inches away from where Susan’s leg was caught, and fired.

Black goo splattered against his leg as a chunk of the thing’s left side was disintegrated. The rear portion of its body went limp for a moment, releasing Susan.

But still, it moved on, slinking further into the water. Only, it was moving oddly now. It seemed to be turning itself in the shallow water and—

Scott realized what was happening a moment too late.

The boy had been right; the thing needed water. In the back of his head, Scott could see one of those e-mails written to George Galworth from KC Doughtry.

It needs water.

And then its upper half was rocketing out of the shallow water and coming directly for him. Scott had just enough time to bring the shotgun up but that was not enough. The monster knocked it out of his hands and then it was on him, the soft and fetid flesh of its underside covering his face and suffocating him.

THIRTY-ONE

Wayne’s vision was nowhere near perfect, but even he could see enough of the surreal scene along the bank to know that something unnatural and violent was taking place. The sporadic sound of gunshots was a further indication of this. Then, as he neared the bank and saw more of the situation clearly, he knew he was in the right place. He saw Susan Lessing on the ground and a man standing not too far away from her, pointing what looked to be a shotgun towards the ground. Behind them, three kids watched on, a boy a two girls, unmoving.

There was the roar of a shotgun blast as Wayne drew closer. It made him jump a bit, even over the rough purring of the boat’s engine. Within another few feet, Wayne saw the shape on the ground between Susan and the man with the shotgun and his guts seemed to boil.

It was that thing…that
monster.

Wayne slowed even more, the bank now no more than twenty yards away. As he slowed the boat, he kept his eyes on the scene playing out on the shore. He watched as part of the monster came out of the lake like some weird projectile and knocked the man with the shotgun down on the ground. It wasted no time covering the man’s head in much the same way it had done to Al.

Susan started to scream, the noise tearing through the noise of his engine as it scaled down. Sensing the urgency in the moment, Wayne acted before his brain could lock down at the absurdity of it all. The three kids looking on in terror, the screaming game warden, and the man currently with his face covered by some ungodly creature…it was insane.

He closed in on the bank—ten yards, eight, five—and picked up his Remington. He had to move and not think. If he thought about it too long, he didn’t know if he would be able to act at all.

He drove the boat directly into the bank, pulling up directly beside the area where the creature was still partly submerged, its backside coiling tightly in the water. The underside of the boat groaned, punctuated by gritty scratching sounds. The engine struck the sand beneath the boat and came to a shuddering halt.

But Wayne wasn’t paying attention to any of that. He leaped off of the front of the boat, his knees aching from the effort, as they had not moved so quickly in a very long time. Wayne looked down to the creature and watched as it tightened itself against the fallen man. He placed the Remington directly along what he assumed was the thing’s back and pulled the trigger. The thing responded by coiling back. It did not release the man, though; it simply dragged him towards the water.

Wayne pulled the trigger again, loaded the next shot, and fired again. The shots rang out like small thunderclaps across the lake. Black blood-like fluid flowed from the thing’s flesh and it finally relinquished its grip on the fallen man. When he was freed, the man backed away on his haunches, coughing and retching between strangled screams.

Meanwhile, the creature waved its upper half around like a cobra seeking where it would strike next. Wayne saw that the thing had taken a beating. He saw at least six gunshots in the thing—a few of which looked to have been close-range shots with the shotgun—and a long ragged scratch along its head. It darted forward towards him, but Wayne held his ground.

He leveled the rifle and fired again. His shot tore into the flesh directly beneath what served as the thing’s mouth and it shuddered backwards with the impact. Still, the damn thing was on the move, backing into the water.

“No!”

The sudden voice made Wayne jump a bit and didn’t realize who had spoken it until he saw the shape of a small person running by him. It was the boy he had seen standing by the shack. He was running forward, running towards the monster as if his life depended on it.

***

Watching the hefty woman and the man shoot at the thing was sort of cool. There was no way Joe was going to deny that. But at the same time, he could tell that the shots weren’t doing enough damage. The damned thing was going to escape back into the lake and they’d never get the opportunity to kill it again. Even his fourteen-year-old logic told him that this would be a wasted opportunity—that they should kill the thing before it escaped.

Joe watched in horror as the thing assaulted the man, slamming into his chest and taking him to the ground. Joe assumed this man was a cop or something; it was obvious in the way he had carried his gun when he had come into the shack. But now, cop or not, he was on the ground with the monster covering his head.

Gunshots won’t slow it enough,
Joe thought.
Enough shots might kill it, but it’ll get back to the lake before they get the chance…
if
they get the chance.

An idea formed in his head as he thought about narrowly escaping death on the little canoe thanks to the shattered oar. He took Mac by the hand and then placed her hand into Valerie’s. Both girls looked at him, confused.

“Please, both of you, stay here and don’t move.”

“Joe, what are you—” Valerie started, but Joe was already on the move.

He dashed back into the shack, barely aware of the slight droning noise of an approaching boat engine. Now that he was in the darkness of the shack, the place where the thing had pinned him to the ground, his idea suddenly seemed very stupid. But at least it was
something.

He went to the place where he had been knocked to the ground, his nerves electric. He picked up the pitchfork even though it had proven worthless the first time he’d tried to use it. With the rusty old tool in his hands, he started for the door again as another round of gunshots sounded out from the shore.

Joe got back outside with the pitchfork in hand just as an older man pumped a shot directly into the monster’s featureless face, just below the mouth. Joe also saw the thing continue to slither back. It was moving slow now, a clear sign that it had been severely wounded, but wounded wasn’t good enough in Joe’s mind.

“No!”

He let out the scream of desperation as he ran past Mac and Valerie, down towards where the grown-ups were trying to kill the thing. He passed by the old man and then the woman and neither of them tried to stop him.

“Son,” the old man said. “What are you—?”

Joe was well aware that the thing was tracking him as it retreated. Already, at least half of it was back in the water. Joe didn’t wait for the thing to come at him, even if it
was
wounded. He brought the pitchfork high over his head and slammed it down into what he thought was the thing’s center.

When the forks drove through the monster’s flesh and into the soft sand beneath, Joe kept pushing down on the handle, trying to get them to go deeper.

“Damn good thinking,” the old man said, coming up next to him. He placed his hands on top of the pitchfork handle, gently nudging Joe out of the way. The man then pushed down hard, letting out a grunt, and the handle seemed to drop another six inches or so.

At their feet, the creature writhed. Its head came less than a foot from Joe’s face and he stumbled back, nearly falling.

“I’ve seen it before,” Joe said. “It came after me but after I ran away from it, it gave up. It had to go back to the water.”

The man that might have been a policeman was slowly getting to his feet, still coughing. “He’s right,” the man said, stopping to let out a gagging sound. “Keep it out of the water. It’ll suffocate.”

Joe watched as the thing tried to pull away from the pitchfork, but it was impaled all the way through and the forks were almost entirely buried in the sand. Joe could see them beneath the thing’s stomach as it lifted its body slightly in an attempt to get away.

Joe didn’t know if keeping the thing’s head out of the water would be enough to do the job, but he thought so. Even now, as he watched it struggle, it seemed to grow weaker. Where it was thrashing about before, it now seemed to only lash out in a blind and lazy sort of way.

The man that might have been a cop came over to Joe and patted him on the back. “Quick thinking,” he said. “If you hadn’t have done that, this thing might have gotten away.”

Joe tried to accept the thanks, but it was hard to do. Standing in the presence of this thing made it hard to think of anything other than the nightmares he was sure to have for the foreseeable future.

“What is it?” Joe asked.

“Dying,” the maybe-cop said. “And that’s all that’s important.”

“You’re from the government, aren’t you?” the old man asked, watching the thing as intently as Joe. “I saw black vans a few weeks ago. I know where they went.”

“You and I need to talk later,” the government man said. But from the way he spoke, Joe didn’t think he’d be doing much talking for a while.

The woman took a few steps towards them. Joe saw tears trailing down her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said to the government man. “You had the shotgun and it had you and—I just froze. Oh my God, I’m sorry.”

The government man shook the comment away. He was leaning against a tree and breathing heavily.

Joe watched it breathe heavily, now done with any attempts at fighting. It knew it was done and it slumped to the ground in defeat. It gave one last twitch that traveled the entire length of its body and then there was nothing.

Joe felt something graze his hand. He looked to his side and saw Valerie standing there. He took her hand and drew him to her. She hugged his right side and buried her head into his shoulder while his sister hugged the other side.

They stood in awkward sort of hug and when the government man started asking them questions a few minutes later, Joe did his best to answer them. And when government man placed all three of them into his car to escort them home, Joe looked back down towards the shack. He tried his best to think of the kisses he and Valerie had shared there—of what it had been like to fall in love around that old rustic structure, but all of that was gone now. Instead, there was only the very recent memory of thinking that he was going to die in order to save his sister.

He wanted to feel heroic and he supposed it would be justified. But it was hard to feel like a hero when all he wanted to do was crumple up in his mother’s lap and cry.