Mandibles (11 page)

Read Mandibles Online

Authors: Jeff Strand

Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Horror Tales, #Horror, #Suspense Fiction, #Horror Fiction

BOOK: Mandibles
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Slash quickly ducked down as he saw that stupid idiot point the gun at Bug Boy's face. At this range, the bullet could very well burst through Bug Boy's head and get him as well.

But there was only a click as Hack pulled the trigger. The incompetent moron hadn't even bothered to check how many bullets he had left.
Flecks of blood hit the windshield as a real gunshot went off.
Hack screamed as Dustin followed the bullet to his upper left arm with a vicious punch to the same area. Dustin twisted around yet again and pointed the gun at Slash, who was starting to reach into his pocket.
"Open the door and get the hell out," Dustin ordered.
"In your dreams, Bug Boy!"
Dustin squeezed the trigger again, and a bullet pounded into Slash's shoulder. "I said get out!" He spun around and smashed the gun barrel against Hack's bullet wound. "You too! In two seconds the next shot goes through your brain!"
This was not good. Going outside with all those ants was almost certain death, but there was no reason for Bug Boy not to make good on his threat. Between "certain death" and "almost certain death," Slash knew what to pick. He opened the passenger door.
"We'll get you," he said, pressing his hand tightly to his bleeding shoulder. "You are incredibly, amazingly dead."
"Get out _now_!" Dustin screamed.
Slash got out of the car. Hack opened the driver's side door and did the same.
* * * *

It took every ounce of Dustin's self-control to keep the gun from flopping around in his hands like a fish. He'd intended for both bullets to be fatal. The thought of murdering another human being sickened him, but he had to get away from these lunatics, and without knowing how many bullets were in the gun, he knew he had to go for the kill.

As Hack and Slash exited the car on their respective sides, Dustin knew that he should shoot again, put them out of commission for good. What if they went after somebody else? But if he pulled the trigger and found that he was out of bullets, they'd come right back after him.
If nobody was stupid enough to open their car doors and let them in, maybe the ants would take care of the problem.
Dustin leaned forward, grabbed the driver's side door handle, and pulled it shut. Then he did the same with the passenger door, keeping the gun pointed at Slash.
The lunatics stood there for a moment, as if trying to figure out some way to get the gun away from him, but then took off running. Dustin watched in the rear-view mirror as they ran for the parking lot of a grocery store, hoping for one of them to fall to the ground and be overrun by ants, but both of them managed to stay on their feet.
Nothing he could do about it now.
But he also couldn't stay in the car. If he was going to get to his destination, he needed faster travel than just sitting here in barely-moving traffic. He didn't much like the idea of going outside with the ants, but it couldn't be avoided. Well, it _could_ be avoided ... he could always just stay here where it was safe and let other people handle the situation, but that wasn't really an option, was it?
He flipped open the cylinder of the revolver.
Empty.
He pocketed the gun anyway, then opened the door, got out of the car, and ran in the opposite direction that Hack and Slash had gone.
*-CHAPTER TWENTY-*
Zachary threw open the car door as the two men approached him. They were both in black leather jackets, neither of them looked like they'd shaved in a couple of days, and they were probably on drugs. Punks.
"Hold the door for us!" shouted one of them, the skinny one, waving his non-bleeding arm in the air as they ran toward the car.
Zachary got in the driver's seat and slammed the door shut, but reached back and unlocked the door to the back seat. He sure as hell wasn't going to stand there with the door open with all those ants outside. He did a quick check around the car to see if any had gotten in, and smashed the three that had.
The red-haired punk with the bleeding shoulder opened the back door and slid in, followed by the man with the bleeding arm and nose. They shut the door behind them, and then just sat there for a moment, breathing heavily.
"Thanks, man," said the one with the injured shoulder, holding his hand tightly against his nose. "Those things are everywhere."
"No kiddin'," said Zachary, starting the engine. "I'm gonna be pickin' up two other people, then we'll get out of here."
"Sounds good to me," said the skinny one with the hurt arm.
"How'd you get shot?" Zachary asked, putting the car into reverse and backing out of his parking spot, hoping he was crushing a shitload of ants in the process.
"Some guy went insane. Started shooting at the ants, if you can believe that. Son of a bitch hit both of us."
"What about your nose?" Zachary asked the other one.
"I tripped while I was running."
For some reason Zachary wasn't convinced by this explanation, but he shrugged it off. He had more important things to worry about than a couple of injured punks. "The people we're pickin' up are a dentist and a dental assistant. It probably would've been better if you got shot in the teeth, but I'm sure they can do somethin' for you."
"Thanks. We appreciate it."
Zachary drove into the parking lot of the strip mall, and pulled up next to the door to Dr. Ruiz's office. Roberta and Dr. Ruiz were standing right there.
"Get ready to open your door," Zachary said to the punks in the backseat. Then he gave the thumbs-up sign to Roberta.
* * * *

"Are you ready?" Roberta asked.

"If my leg was chopped off, maybe there'd be a problem," said Dr. Ruiz. "A little bump I can handle, yes?"
They rushed outside as Zachary leaned over and opened the passenger door and one of the guys he'd picked up opened the back door. She quickly slid in the back seat as Dr. Ruiz took the front, and they pulled the doors shut simultaneously.
"Ant count?" asked Zachary.
"None up here," Dr. Ruiz reported.
"None back here either," said Roberta. She looked at the two men seated next to her. "My God, you're really bleeding," she said, opening the first aid kit. "Are those gunshot wounds?"
The red-haired man with the bloody nose nodded. "It's been a lousy day."
"I don't know how much I can do for you," said Roberta, taking out a roll of gauze. "I can patch you guys up, at least, until we can get you some real medical help."
"Thanks. I'm Dave, by the way. My friend here is Stanley."
"But you can call me Hack."
"Is that short for Hacker?" asked Zachary, driving away from the strip mall.
"Yeah, he's one of those computer geeks," said Dave. "Hey, traffic is barely moving, so I wouldn't drive onto the street, not that you'll be able to get in anyway. I don't know how bad the side streets are, but you're going to want to get out of this mess or we could be stuck all night."
"Thanks," said Zachary. "How bad _are_ things out there?"
"A lot of ants. You probably should have stayed inside."
"They got in."
Roberta handed Dave a wad of the gauze. "Here, tilt your head back and hold this against it. It doesn't look broken."
"Doesn't feel broken. Just hurts." Dave took the gauze from her and did as instructed. "So you're a dentist, huh?"
"Dental assistant," Roberta corrected. She pointed at Dr. Ruiz in the front. "He's the dentist."
"I'm the guy who doesn't take good care of his teeth," said Zachary.
"Dentist, huh?" asked Hack. "So are you a nice dentist or a sadistic one?"
"A nice dentist," said Dr. Ruiz. "Unless it's a full moon."
Hack chuckled. "Funny. I haven't been to a dentist in a few years. Maybe if the ants don't kill me I'll throw a little business your way. Did you bring any laughing gas?"
"Left it in my other suit," Dr. Ruiz told him.
Zachary was next to the main highway, driving parallel to it through the grocery store parking lot, as were a couple of other cars. "I guess we need a destination," he said.
"Hospital," said Roberta.
"The closest one is St. Joseph's," said Zachary. "But we're not gonna make it there through this traffic."
"We don't need a hospital," Dave assured him. "As long as you don't mind a little blood in your jeep, we'll be okay. We just need to get out of town as quickly as possible."
"You've both been shot!" Roberta protested.
"Yeah, but we'd bleed to death just sitting in the emergency room, if we could even make it there. I'm guessing we've got a lot of ant sting victims crowding the place. We'll be fine."
"You will _not_ be fine. You've been shot."
"You've already made that point. No hospitals, okay?" Dave apparently realized how much he'd raised his voice and cleared his throat. "There's no reason to put the rest of you in danger. Let's just get out of town."
"Well, apparently the ants haven't infested the entire city, so we may be fine once we get out of this area," said Roberta.
"Haven't infested the entire city _yet_," said Zachary. "Everyone hold on, I'm goin' over a curb."
There was a heavy jolt. Though she wasn't about to criticize their rescue vehicle, Roberta noted that Zachary really needed a better set of shocks.
"Well, how many ants can there possibly be?" she asked.
"I dunno. An hour ago my answer would have been 'not enough to fill up an entire parkin' lot,' so I'm tryin' not to rule anything out."
"Okay, you've got a point," Roberta admitted. "Let's just get out of Tampa. Maybe head east. I'm sure Disney World has a state-of-the-art ant defense system."
Hack chuckled again and gently patted Roberta's leg. "Don't worry. We won't let anything bad happen to you."
*-CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE-*
Moni knew that she should be doing something, anything, but the most she could do was stand there in shock, gaping at Abigail's no-longer-visible body. Trevor and Abigail. Two people she saw every weekday, dead.
Abigail had a husband and two children.
Were they still alive?
The three of them just stood there, unable to speak or react, until the silence was broken by the fire alarm.
"What the hell...?" Jack glanced over his shoulder. "Did we miss somebody else in the building?"
"Why didn't we think of that?" Moni wondered aloud, raising her voice to be heard over the alarm. "Even if we can't get through with the telephone, the fire alarm will bring help, right?"
"What if the entire fire department is out on ant patrol?" asked Jack.
"They've got to be out helping _someone_. Might as well be us."
One of the rat-sized ants crawled onto a remaining shard of the broken window from below. Moni took a step back, and then noticed another ant crawling over the same filing cabinet that the one responsible for Abigail's death had come from.
"We are _so_ dead," said Jack.
Moni shook her head. "No way. Our plan doesn't change. We get out of here."
"We need to find someplace in the building to hide," said Mr. Kamerman. "A broom closet or something."
"We're not staying here," Jack told him, as they all moved away from the window.
"I'm still the boss," Mr. Kamerman insisted.
Jack shrugged. "Like I said, that doesn't mean -- "
"Stop arguing," said Moni. "It's like _Night of the Living Dead_, where that idiot kept telling them they needed to lock themselves down in the cellar."
"He was right, though," Mr. Kamerman pointed out. "And in the end the hero had to lock himself in the cellar to make it through the night."
"Fine, whatever. Let's argue about it somewhere that doesn't have ants crawling in through the window. We need to get down to the second floor, at least."
The three of them hurried down the aisle toward the exit door. Moni swiped her card, but the display light stayed red. She swiped it again with the same result. "Oh, crap."
"Here, let me try," said Jack, swiping his own card. Nothing happened. "Wow, and everything else was going so nicely this evening."
Mr. Kamerman half-heartedly swiped his own card, which didn't work either. "I can't believe this."
"Ants are attracted to electrical wires," said Moni. "If there really is a fire that's probably what started it. They must've shorted out the electronic reader system, too."
"Nice," Jack remarked. "So we're trapped in the top floor of a burning building with Godzilla ants coming in after us. Mr. Kamerman, if I'm not already fired for telling you that being head of the Corporate Accounting department doesn't mean shit, I quit."
"Resignation accepted."
"We need to quit joking around and figure out a way to get out of here," said Moni, tugging on the door on the off chance that it might not really be locked. It was, of course.
"Joking around is my defense mechanism," said Jack. "You either get jokes or you get me screaming at the top of my lungs like a girl. Pick one."
Moni ignored his comment. "We have an emergency exit, don't we? We have to have one. They wouldn't be allowed to close in this area without putting in an emergency exit, would they?"
"There's no other way out," said Mr. Kamerman. "We need to find a closet or a secure office and hide out. We'll be safe."
"We _won't_ be safe," said Moni. "The building could be on fire."
"And the fire department should be on its way."
"You really think the fire department is going to take the time to search every floor? We're not the only group of people in peril here. They'll be sending in emergency vehicles from everywhere they can, sure, but who knows where we'll rank on their list? We need to get out of this place, and every second we spend arguing about this gives more of those ants a chance to get in."
"And how on earth do you plan to get out of here?" Mr. Kamerman demanded.
"The window."
"Oh, you are completely insane! Do whatever you want. I'm finding a place to hide. Best of luck to you." Mr. Kamerman turned and stormed off.
"The window?" asked Jack. "You can't be serious."
"I'm very serious. I think there's an extension cord on the desk where that temp was working last week." Moni headed back in the direction of the window Abigail had broken through.
"Maybe he's right," Jack suggested. "Maybe we should just hide out."
"What if the fire's on the floor underneath us?" Moni asked. "What if there are a million ants pouring into the building? We can't just hide out; we've got to empower ourselves. Nothing is going to stop me from getting back to my husband, and let me tell you something, if I'm going to die anywhere, it's _not_ going to be at work."
"Amen," said Jack.
They reached the broken window. There was no sign of the other two ants, and a quick glimpse outside didn't show any more of the large ants crawling on the side of the building.
It did, however, show some white smoke billowing from a first-floor window.
"Kick out the rest of the glass while I grab the cord," said Moni.
As Jack went to work, Moni ran past the next two aisles until she reached the shoddy workstation where they'd put the unfortunate temporary employee. The orange extension cord was wound in a nice neat circle, so she wouldn't have to contend with any knots, but as Moni picked it up she realized that it wasn't going to be nearly long enough.
She returned to the window just as Jack finished kicking out the entire frame of glass. "Is that going to get us to the ground?" he asked, eyeing the wound cord.
"No. We'll have to grab more cords and tie them together. Were you ever a Boy Scout?"
"For a couple weeks. I was dishonorably discharged. But we won't be able to get extension cords tied into a good enough knot to hold our weight, will we?"
"I'm not sure," Moni admitted. "It would've been nice if Winnie had been able to find some duct tape."
"Maybe I should look. He's not exactly the most perceptive person in the world."
"We'll split up and look for two minutes," said Moni. "If we haven't found anything by then, we'll come back and start tying these cords together. We've wasted too much time already."
Jack walked around the corner of the aisle, but wasn't gone for more than ten seconds before he called out to Moni. "Come here! Quick!"
She hurried down the aisle to where Jack stood, and then saw what he was looking at. Mr. Kamerman was standing against the far wall, frozen, with one of the rat-sized ants on his shoulder.
"Did it sting you?" Moni asked.
Mr. Kamerman gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.
"Well, brush it off!" Jack said.
Moni stepped forward, but Mr. Kamerman's eyes widened and he spoke in a soft but forceful voice. "Stay back!"
"What do we do?" asked Jack.
The ant crawled onto Mr. Kamerman's face.
Moni thought for a moment. "Wait here. I'll go get the crossbow."

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