Husk (46 page)

Lisa’s whole body flexed, expelling silent screams.

Adam vomited across the front of his shirt.

The entire interior of the ambulance dripped with gore.

Blood and gnarled chunks of dark red meat made up the majority of it, but Becky also spotted yellow blobs of fat, tufts of animal fur, and dark streaks of excrement. The filth coated every visible surface, splattered on the walls, ceiling, and medical equipment, leaving nothing untouched. In some areas, heavier bits of butchered viscera dangled on sinewy tethers from the ceiling.

But all that blurred into the background as she gaped at what hung suspended in the center of the compartment.

A body.

Not the remains of a human or animal but a mixture of
both,
an abomination of flesh and bone. The basic structure of the creature looked
humanoid
, and if the thing had been standing upright, it would’ve easily measured eight feet tall. In its current state, the thing hung by thin wires that had been secured through the roof of the vehicle and attached at various points on the monstrosity’s shoulders, torso, arms and legs.

Becky stood powerless in the grip of terror, her gaze locked on the monstrosity, attempting to dissect the components of its form.

The thing’s torso had been made to resemble the physique of a human body, but the bones and tissue were so oversized Becky could only guess at their origins. Its legs proved equally massive, displaying muscles large enough to have come from a horse. Thick tendons and barbed wire bound together half a dozen human arms below each knee, their open hands serving as the thing’s feet. Four more arms sprouted from the sides: two large and two small. The smaller set appeared human, while the larger arms reminded her of the powerful forelegs of a bear. All the fingers ended in wickedly hooked claws, and thick horns jutted from the skin at various points across the shoulders and chest.

The head had the general shape of a human skull, but a long gash cut down the center from the forehead to the chin, creating a vertical mouth in the middle of its eyeless, nose-less face. Sharp fangs bristled from the flesh to either side of the opening, framing a dark red interior.

To create some sense of unity among the assembly of different body parts, the entire creation had been stripped of its original skins and reupholstered with black animal hide. Large irregular patches of it had been fitted together with crude sutures, and a complex network of stitched seams crisscrossed the body like a roadmap of scars. It must’ve hung unattended for several days. Along with the overpowering stench, it was crawling with maggots.

Becky shook her head, unable to fathom what kind of demented soul would labor through the uncountable hours required to gather and construct such a detestable giant.

She clutched her stomach and took a step back, but the hideous scene proved inescapable.

The entire floor of the compartment swam with discarded scraps of cut tissue and ruptured organs left to rot by the corpse’s maker. The putrid mass had begun to liquefy in the advance stages of decomposition, and because of the incline of the ambulance, small rivulets of fetid fluid now trickled out the open doors. In fact, looking at it now, Becky realized that the whole ghastly bulk seemed ready to—

The entire mass of remains slid out of the vehicle and spilled over the edge. It hit the rear bumper step and splashed in all directions, catching the onlookers in the legs.

Becky gagged, felt her stomach seizure. She leapt away, stumbling out of the surge, and staggered to the left into a tall cluster of weeds. Her foot caught on a raised mound of dirt, and she fell forward, landing flat on her chest before a ten-foot-wide pool of inky liquid.

She froze in place, no longer concerned with throwing up.

Something’s wrong here,
a voice screamed from the center of her brain.
The ambulance was nothing; this is worse.

She could feel a coldness reaching up to her from the dirt beneath her body, the wickedness of a hidden presence, and she scanned these new surroundings with darting glances.

At this level, she could see that she’d stumbled over the lip of a shallow pit, a hole someone had excavated in the ground and filled with the strange black fluid. Her gaze glided across its murky surface, noting how it churned in lazy circles.

At the center of the pool stood an even more outlandish relic, a stone obelisk that rose eight feet from the black surface to a sharply tapered point. A host of unreadable characters had been carved into the jagged rock, alien lettering that warped and shifted with an eye-straining three dimensional effect.

Lightning flashed overhead, illuminating the pool. For the briefest moment, the unyielding surface became clearer than a thermal spring, and Becky saw an uncountable number of twisted figures jerk and spasm within its bottomless depths, writhing in a water ballet of agony.

CHAPTER 57

The station wagon’s engine revved louder, its mangled wheels casting hunks of shredded rubber into the air. Orange sparks sprayed from the bare hubs as they cut into the gravel.

Frank stood his ground.

He struggled to recall the ancient verses he’d studied, prayers once believed capable of subduing baleful spirits and banishing them from existence. Indeed, the words all came, but in his panicky state, their order became a disjointed rambling.

Something metallic snapped between the two cars, and the wagon rolled free of the Mercedes. Electric light flashed within its broken headlights and out through the demolished front grill. The vehicle reversed from the wreck and turned to face him.

He raised the shotgun out of instinct but knew the weapon couldn’t help him now.

“
Frank,” the beast’s voice hissed in his head. “How fitting you should be here tonight.”

“
It’s over,” Frank shouted back. “Without the girl, you don’t have enough power to bond with Kane, and without him, your time here won’t last long. He was your link to this world, your anchor, but now that he’s dead and rotting you’re due to go back to where you came from. And this time, you won’t have a body to hold onto for five years. You’re weaker now. This time, it’s done for good!”

“
Even weakened, I am a god,” the entity roared. “What concept could you have of
my
strengths, of
my
power? My kind has spilled the blood of pharaohs; we’ve watched the fall of
Tenochtitlan
; we scattered the bones of the Anasazi like sand.”

“
And yet this world is still ours,” Frank shot back.

The station wagon’s windows exploded outward, spraying Frank with a thousand shards of shattered glass.

“
NO, HUMAN! NO MORE!”

Frank staggered backward, feeling an ominous energy charge the air.

The station wagon rolled closer.

He readied his shotgun, hoping to keep the creature’s attention off the church long enough for Paul and the kids to get inside.

The monster’s voice rumbled inside his head.
“You claim that I am weak. Let me show you the frailty of your flesh.”

The vehicle’s hood exploded open with the sound of a metal bar thrown into a wood chipper. A river of mangle machinery spilled forth from the engine compartment.  Frank leapt away. He snapped his hands to his chest when the animated scrap formed two steel pincers and seized his shotgun, snapping it in half. He retreated, patting his clothing with both hands, searching for his cell phone.

With another metallic thunderclap the station wagon’s engine crashed through the radiator and grill, still tethered to the inside by a twisted umbilical of cables, wires, and hoses. The oil pan hit the dirt hard enough for Frank to feel the impact in his bones. One of the hooked appendages cut the air under his chin, trailing a cool breeze across his throat. He tripped over his own feet when the second claw swept past his chest, coming close enough to snag his shirt and tear a hole. The mechanical monster reared up and lunged again, dragging it’s titanic bulk toward him with smoke and oil spraying from its shattered crankcase.

He shuffled backwards, seeing the forest’s tree line slip into his peripheral vision.

The jagged claws poised to strike.

“
Now, Paul, now!” Frank screamed.

From behind came the pop, pop, pop of gunfire, followed by the hollow sound of the bullets punching through the station wagon’s paneling. A window shattered. Then another.

The creature laughed, expelling a grinding noise from the crevices of its reconstituted body. The torso-like accumulation of motor parts swung to gaze across the vehicle’s roof at the church. Frank used the diversion to pull his cell phone and keyed in a number.

He pressed the ‘send’ button and—

The phone exploded in his hand.

Agony lit a fire in his palm, then across his forearm and chest when his body began to register the bits of the phone’s battery now imbedded in his flesh.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, Frank looked up to find the monster had rolled forward and now loomed above him. The engine’s fan sawed the air.

“
Technology will not save you this time, Frank. Nor will calling on your friends. Weapons cannot harm me, and you have no
s’khem
to send me back. I rule this world now.”

Frank didn’t bother to tell the creature he hadn’t called for backup. Instead, he pushed to his feet and threw himself over the skeleton of a fallen tree. He collapsed on the other side and pressed himself to the moist dirt, flattening himself against the wood. He knew from his talk with Officer Hale that the local cell phone towers had been disabled, but his signal only needed to reach the receiver in his duffle bag, the one wired to a time-delay detonator and three pounds of explosives currently sitting in the station wagon’s bac—

The night lit up like a day in Hell.

CHAPTER 58

“
There it is,” Melissa said.

She indicated to the smashed Lexus once it materialized out of the summer night’s gloom, illuminated by the truck’s only remaining headlight. She started to tell Jimmy to slow down when a blinding flash exploded in the forest to her right, accompanied by a blast of sound that shook the truck’s cab.

Jimmy jumped in his seat, shouting what sounded like four swear words rolled into one.

He slammed on the brakes and brought the semi to a halt.

“
Keep going,” Melissa ordered.

“
What was that?” he asked.

“
Just keep moving.”

“
But what the hell was that?”

“
We don’t have time to waste.”

“
Sounded like a goddamn explosion,” Jimmy said. “You never said anything about—”

A crumpled mass of machinery dropped out of the night twenty feet ahead of them. It hit the ground with earth-shaking force and shattered the asphalt at the edge of the road. It was blackened and heat-scarred, but Melissa thought it looked a lot like a car engine. One end had been pulled apart like a flower.

Jimmy gaped. “Are you kidding me?”

“
Just move this heap,” Melissa pressed. “The turnoff is right there.”

She faced forward to point out where the church’s dirt driveway joined the road.

And saw the officer.

He lay crumpled on the roadside, almost lost among the tall weeds. If not for the truck’s lofty cab, she may have missed him entirely.

“
Holy shit,” she gasped.

Jimmy saw the man at about the same time, and Melissa jumped out the door before he finished asking, “Is he dead?”

She raced around the front of the truck and ran to the fallen officer, her brain reminding her that she’d returned to the spot where her otherwise normal life had derailed into unthinkable realms. The skin-prickling sensation hit her with the same force as when she’d chased after Frank in the woods, and once again she glanced around like a soldier treading in enemy territory.

She waded into the weeds and knelt beside the collapsed policeman, now close enough to see the blood splashed on his face and uniform. He lay on his back, limbs splayed in a gruesome parody of a discarded rag doll; the divergent manner in which his hips and legs rested in comparison to his torso made her stomach roil with distress. Yet he still had a pulse. Melissa held her fingers in place several beats longer, confirming its presence, finding it strong and true.

“
Hang on, just a little longer,” she whispered. “Help’s coming. I promise.”

Leaving the man, she hurried back to the truck.

“
Is he—”

“
He’s alive,” Melissa said, climbing inside the cab. “Give me the radio. Hopefully we can get some people over here from the accident site.”

After making the call, Melissa pointed out her window and indicated where the old road cut into the trees. “Okay, that’s where we want to go, over to the right.”

Jimmy hesitated. “Shouldn’t we wait for the cavalry?”

“
There’s no time. Now go!”

Frowning, the trucker downshifted and squinted at the shadow-heaped forest. “Miss, there ain’t no way we’re gonna fit down that narrow-ass path.”