Soultaker (36 page)
Authors: Bryan Smith
When she saw that only a few students remained alive, the shock gave way to a simple, reflexive act of self-preservation. She moved backward and tripped over the body of a man in a long black trench coat. She landed awkwardly, twisting her ankle as she hit the floor. The last of the screams from the auditorium cut off as she lay there. Then she heard footsteps coming toward her across the stage. She had only a few seconds to act and rolled under a table laden with a punch bowl, plastic cups, and various refreshments. Another dead body was nearby. She pulled it close, hiding behind it as she held her breath and waited for Lamia to pass. The sound of her mother’s heels entered the backstage area and continued through to the hallway beyond.
Jordan let out a breath and shoved the dead body away. She crawled out of her hiding spot and spied the shotgun’s barrel sticking out beneath another table. She retrieved the weapon and hurried after her mother, a wild idea sparking inside her as she examined the gun. She knew how the thing worked. Her only high school boyfriend had been into guns and had shared much of his knowledge with her. In truth, he’d been more into those guns than he’d been into her. Which was fine, because she wasn’t into him either, but a girl was supposed to have a boyfriend. When he’d kiss her, she’d close her eyes and pretend he was Laura Miller, her number-one crush
at the time. But his stubble made the illusion a fragile one. Well, at least now maybe some good would come of that sham of a relationship.
Her plan was simple. She would sneak up on Lamia and blast her host body full of holes. And she would hope this would weaken the demon sufficiently to successfully engage her another way. It probably wouldn’t work, but there was nothing else she could do.
She stepped into the hallway and aimed the gun at Lamia’s back, acting quickly before the others could see her and give her away. She squeezed the trigger and the shotgun’s stock slammed against her shoulder, but she’d been taught how to absorb the weapon’s recoil and was able to keep it steady as she took aim again. Lamia started to turn toward her as the next shell took out the back of her skull and sent bone shards and bits of brain matter flying. The demon’s mouth opened and a sound like a thunderclap split the air.
Jordan chambered another round and fired again. The third shell took the demon full in the neck and nearly decapitated her. The head lolled sharply to one side, but the demon remained upright as she turned fully toward Jordan and began to stagger toward her. Jordan retreated down the hallway as she chambered yet another round. The next blast hit Lamia between the breasts. It staggered her for a moment, but she kept coming nonetheless. Any one of the blasts would have knocked a human woman off her feet, but Lamia was able to keep Bridget’s mortally wounded body erect and mobile. It was frustrating. And now there was another complication. The minions streamed past Jake and Kristen, past Kelsey, and Lamia herself.
Jordan tensed, expecting an attack. They were Lamia’s minions, after all. Instead they surrounded her and formed a barrier between herself and Lamia.
A few of the dogs even growled at Lamia.
Jordan heard Jake say, “Well, damn. Look at that.”
Jordan kept a wary eye on Lamia while directing a response at Jake. “I’ve got this. You guys get out of here.”
“Are you sure? Because—”
Jordan screamed and raised the gun again.
Jake frowned.
Now what?
In less than a heartbeat Jordan had gone from relatively calm to terrified, and he had no clue what had happened to cause the change. She raised the shotgun to fire again. The blast hit Lamia’s midsection again, but failed to even rock her. Then the demon’s host body began to convulse. She ripped at her bloody clothes, shredding them and pulling them free. Her flesh rippled and shifted as something moved beneath. Then her skin began to split in several places as something inside started to push its way out.
Kristen cringed and clung tighter to him. “What the hell’s going on?”
Kelsey aimed his Glock at Lamia’s blister-covered back and fired until the gun clicked empty. None of the wounds seemed to have any effect, except perhaps to accelerate the change occurring.
Kelsey looked at Jake. “Why won’t she fucking fall down?”
The shotgun boomed again. The shell hit Lamia’s neck again and now the head hung by a single thick strand of tissue. But now something else surged through the neck stump. Another head. This one green and triangular, with hard, pebbled flesh and rows of sharp, glistening teeth. The rest of Bridget’s dead flesh fell away and a reptilian creature the likes of which Jake had never seen stood hissing in the hallway. It had short, stubby arms, somewhat longer legs, and a long, thick tail. And it began to grow as they stared at it in awed, paralyzed terror. The body expanded to perhaps three times its original size in seconds, its head bowing to avoid scraping the ceiling. Its arms grew and long black talons appeared at the tips of its fingers. The minions whimpered and retreated as it reached for Jordan. A flick of its thrashing tail knocked Jake and the others off their feet. The back of Jake’s head smashed against the
combination lock of a locker and a bright, flashing pain obliterated everything else for a moment. Then he rolled onto his back and lifted his head to get a look at what was going on.
And he felt a small flicker of hope.
Because now Jordan was changing, too, her body morphing, becoming something very similar to the reptilian demon without having to shed her skin. The creatures lunged at each other and clashed in the hallway, slamming each other from wall to wall. The auditorium door was knocked off its hinges. Lockers collapsed like crepe paper beneath the force of the body slams.
Jake realized what was about to happen an instant before it did.
There was no time to get out of the way.
He closed his eyes and hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much.
Then the thing that had been Jordan crashed into him and the world went black.
The first thing he felt when he woke up was pain. Pain all over. He wondered for a moment whether he was paralyzed, but then realized he wouldn’t feel this all-over pain if he’d been paralyzed. He carefully tested his arms and legs, rolled his neck from one side to the other. It hurt like hell, but nothing seemed to be broken. A miracle. Now he’d just have to hope he hadn’t been hit quite hard enough to trigger some kind of internal bleeding.
He drew in a deep breath, braced his palms against the slick floor, and pushed himself up to a sitting position. He held his breath as he surveyed the carnage around him. Kristen sat slumped against a bank of lockers, unconscious but breathing. She looked okay otherwise, with the exception of a bruised face and a bloody nose. Then he saw Kelsey and felt a pang at the center of his chest. The boy was facedown on the floor. His neck had been snapped during the monster melee. He wasn’t breathing. Jake considered a CPR attempt, but knew it would be useless. The floor was littered with pieces of Bridget Flanagan’s exploded body.
He frowned.
They were gone.
There was no sign of Jordan. No sign of the thing she’d become. No sign of Lamia in Godzilla mode. All the animals were gone, too.
What the fuck happened?
Kristen groaned and her eyes fluttered open. She blinked slowly and in a few moments was able to focus on Jake. “Jake…what…happened?”
He sighed. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
He got to his feet and went to her. He took her outstretched hand and pulled her gingerly to her feet. They walked out of the school and she held tightly to him as they made their way to the Camry. He got her settled into the front passenger seat and said, “I have to go back inside for a minute.”
Some of the bleariness drained from her eyes then. “No. Jake…please…”
“I have to. I won’t be long, I promise. You stay here. I just have to check on something.”
He turned away from her and left without another word. Back inside the school, he moved quickly past the bodies in the hallway and stepped through the open door leading to the auditorium. In the backstage area, he stopped and stared for a moment at the bullet-riddled bodies of the adults. These were the people Lamia had recruited to assist her in arranging the Harvest. All dead. Good. Fuck them. He moved past them, found his way to the stage, and felt the strength drain from his body as he saw what had happened in the auditorium.
They were all dead. Just as he’d feared. Every last one of them. If Trey’s body was out there somewhere, he would never be able to identify it. The withered corpses barely looked human.
He dropped to his knees and just stared at the horror for a long, long time.
Then he heard footsteps behind him.
A moment later, a soft hand on his shoulder.
“Jake…let’s go.”
He looked up at her through eyes wet with tears. “Okay.”
He took Kristen’s hand and she helped him to his feet.
Then they left that slaughterhouse and never returned.
PILOGUE
Their first stop after leaving Rockville High was his mother’s house in the Zone. He kept his mind a blank as he kicked open the front door, not wanting to acknowledge any notion of his brother having remained safe at home. There was no point in hope by then.
They did find Trey at the house.
But there was no miracle.
He was dead.
And so was Jolene.
Their bodies had been torn apart. They found arms, legs, fingers, and genitals in different parts of the house. He found Trey’s head floating in the toilet bowl. His mother’s head was in the microwave oven. Lengths of intestine were spread out on the table. Some of them had been cooked and gnawed on. There was an eyeball on a toothpick. Just one. Jake didn’t care to guess what had happened to the others. He grabbed an unopened twelve-pack of Old Milwaukee from the fridge; then they got the hell out of there.
They left town.
What else was there to do?
Kristen drove as he drank beer after beer, crumpling the empties and tossing them into the back. After six of them, Jake had her pull over. He threw the door open and heaved his guts out and listened to cars whiz by on the interstate. He sat there with his head hanging out the door for several more minutes,
sweat pouring down his face as his body continued to spasm long after his stomach had been emptied of its contents.
Then he pulled himself back inside and shut the door.
“You okay?”
“Yeah…” He was still working to get his breathing under control. “I’ll be fine. Just go.”
Kristen stared at him a moment. Then she shrugged and put the car back in gear.
Jake started in on the rest of the beer.
They drove and drove, with only brief convenience store pit stops. Jake would empty his bladder and buy more beer while Kristen pumped gas. This continued all the way through to the next day, when they stopped in Austin, Texas. By then Jake was running on fumes. He didn’t want to sleep, fearing the nightmares that would come. But sleep was coming. There was nothing he could do about it. They found a cheap motel and Jake used his debit card to pay for a week’s stay. He slept deeply that night and did not dream.
The next day they explored the town. Jake didn’t feel much like sightseeing, but it was better than just sitting in that gray, depressing room all day. Austin was a funky college town, a bastion of liberalism and creativity in the heart of conservative Texas. Under other circumstances, he might have found it a fascinating place. But he was still too numb to care. Too numb to have even begun a proper grieving process.
That night they ventured back out to a bar they’d stopped by earlier in the day. It had a long wooden porch with benches. The front door was open and music spilled out. There was loud talk and laughter. As Jake stepped through the door with Kristen, he knew this was what he needed. To be surrounded by people. To hear their boozy, carefree conversations. To feel their normality. Maybe if he soaked in enough of it, he could forget about the monster he knew was out there somewhere.
The jukebox was playing “Stagger Lee,” some version he didn’t recognize. A very attractive brunette in tight denim
shorts gyrated in front of the jukebox. A table beside her was filled with other extremely attractive women. They were talking and laughing. Their table was littered with empty beer bottles and shot glasses. One of the women, a leggy black chick, spotted his roving eye and winked at him.
Jake smiled and followed Kristen to the bar. There they ordered two pints of Shiner Bock and watched the television bolted to the wall behind the bar. The news was on. Coverage of the mysterious massacre at Rockville High was still nonstop.
Jake felt a deep melancholy settle over him. There were answers he wanted. Questions he could never ask. He sipped his beer and looked at Kristen. “Do you think she did it on purpose?”
Kristen frowned. “Did what?”
He cleared his throat, looked at the television again, and frowned. “At my mom’s house. Do you think she did what she did to Mom and Trey knowing I’d be back there to see it at some point?”
Kristen shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe she just did it for the sheer evil thrill of it. She’s a demon, remember.” She touched his knee. “Best not to think about it, really.”
Jake nodded. “Yeah. I know.”
They sat there and drank several more beers. Then they staggered out of the bar and picked up another twelve-pack on the way back to the motel. Back in their room, they sat on the bed, conversing intermittently while they drank beer and watched TV. At some point Kristen took charge of the remote and dialed up a pay-per-view porno movie. As the first sex scene began, she nibbled on his ear and kissed his neck.
Her hand went to his crotch and squeezed.
The erection surprised him, considering how much he’d drank. Considering everything that had happened.
Kristen made a soft sound somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. “Let’s do it,” she said, her voice a breathy whisper. “What better way to take our minds off things?”
Jake didn’t argue.
Maybe she had a point. Besides, it felt good. And his philosophy had always been that if something feels good, it must be good.
They shed their clothes as they made out and groped at each other. When they were fully nude, Kristen shoved Jake backward. She straddled him as he fell onto his back. He sighed at the silken smoothness of her thighs against his hips, then gasped as his hardness plunged into her. She smiled down at him and rode him with a slow, rocking rhythm.
She licked her lips. “Mmm…you like that, baby?”
A weak smile twitched the corners of Jake’s mouth and he let his eyes flutter shut for a moment. “Yeah…”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
Then he felt her hands around his throat. Soft, but strong.
The balls of her thumbs pressing.
His eyes snapped open.
She wasn’t smiling now. “Did you really think I’d just walk away?”
Jake’s heart began to race. “What do you mean?”
“You know.”
Jake stared at her hard, unflinching eyes.
He did know.
“What happened to Jordan?”
“Our daughter? I consumed her, of course.”
Daughter?
Jake felt a profound ache of the spirit.
He had a daughter. And she was dead.
Like everyone else.
The creature atop him seemed to sense his thoughts and smiled again. “Not all is lost, darling. I know you like this body. I saw it in your eyes when you were kissing the bitch. And now you’ll get to enjoy it for a long, long time.”
Jake closed his eyes.
Lamia’s hands closed another notch tighter around his throat.
The slow, rocking rhythm gave way to a more frenzied one.
The headboard banged against the wall as Jake grabbed Lamia’s arms and held on. It went on for a long time. Jake feared she would break him in half before it was over. Then it was over and he was still intact, at least physically. She drew him into her arms and wrapped a leg around his midsection, holding him tight, not letting him move.
She whispered in his ear. “Now I have to punish you. Teach you a lesson. The first of many.”
Jake tried to scream.
She didn’t let him.
