The Beast (15 page)

‘They’re going to get in, aren’t they?’ Rosie said. Her voice was flat, almost emotionless, as if she had already accepted her fate.

I nodded. There was no point lying. Not any more. ‘Yes. They are.’

There was silence in the room then, aside from the sounds of the screechers outside and below. I gawped with surprise as Rosie kissed me lightly on the cheek. ‘Thanks for trying,’ she said, and as she did her eyes became misty with tears. ‘You saved me once already today. But maybe it’s just my day to die.’

A tingle crept down my spine and out to the tips of my fingers. I felt my muscles tighten and my hands ball into fists. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No one else is dying because of me.’

I crossed to the window. Back when we’d fought Mr Mumbles, Ameena and I had climbed up on to the roof of this very house. I doubted the screechers could follow us up there. Door handles, after all, seemed to be enough to outwit them, never mind drainpipes. We’d still be trapped up there on the roof, but we’d at least be relatively safe.

‘OK,’ I began. ‘I’ve got an idea. We’re going to—’

KA-RAAASH!

The window exploded inwards, spraying glass in my face. A snarling shape slammed into my chest and I hit the floor just as Rosie began screaming. Black eyes and chomping teeth filled my field of vision. Something sharp slashed across my belly, making me hiss with pain.

I scrabbled backwards, kicking out. The monster squatted on all fours in the middle of the room, spitting and seething as it sized us up.

The monster with the dark eyes, sandpaper skin and impossibly large jaws.

The monster with the sharp, elongated bones jutting from every one of its muscular limbs.

The monster – I realised to my horror – in the police uniform.

lade-like bones stabbed through the back of the uniform, each one several centimetres long. Other bones grew from the monster’s cheeks. They curved upwards until they met its forehead, like protective shields for the creature’s eyes.

I thought those words:
Monster. Creature
. But I knew she was neither of those things. It was the policewoman. The policewoman I had watched die in my arms. She was barely recognisable now. If it hadn’t been for the uniform, I’d never have realised it was her.

‘What is it? What is it?’ Billy squirmed. He was flat against the wall, but was still trying to back further away. Rosie had lost the plot. I couldn’t blame her. She was screaming and pulling at her own hair, unable to tear her eyes away from the terrifying vision before her.

Drawn by her screams, the policewoman spun around. Her jaw dropped open wide enough to swallow Rosie’s entire head in a single bite. A shrill, demonic screech filled the room and the monster pounced.

Lightning flashed through me. Consequences or not, I couldn’t just stand by and watch Rosie die!

Luckily, I didn’t have to. Ameena’s boot crunched into the creature, mid-leap. It was knocked sideways and slammed, head-first, into the wall. Ameena grabbed Rosie’s arm and threw her towards the door.

‘Move, Billy,’ she cried. He came running past me just as I stumbled to my feet. The policewoman twisted, tensed her legs and leapt after us. Ameena pulled me through the doorway, then closed the door with a loud
slam
.

We heard the wood splinter, saw it bulge outward. A serrated spike, like a smaller version of the one that had killed Joseph, stabbed through the door, missing me by a centimetre.

As I watched the bony blade withdraw, I suddenly understood what was going on. ‘They’re changing,’ I realised. ‘The screechers. They’re all changing.’

‘Changing into what?’ Billy yelped.

‘She... she looked like the Beast,’ I realised, picturing the creature’s dark eyes and snapping jaws.

Billy scowled. ‘Eh?’

‘The screechers aren’t turning into zombies, they’re turning into
Beasts
!’

‘They’re
baby
Beasts,’ Ameena nodded. ‘Makes sense. In an oh-my-god-somebody-please-kill-me-now kind of way.’

Another spike ripped through the door, tearing a fist-sized hole in the wood. Rosie opened her mouth to scream again, but Ameena slapped her across the face before she could even start.

‘Scream later,’ she ordered. ‘Run now.’

‘Run?’ Billy cried. At the bottom of the stairs, the other door gave a loud, worrying
crack
. ‘Run
where
?’

Ameena gave me a meaningful look. ‘Kyle? We need a way out.’

I hesitated. ‘I can’t,’ I fretted. ‘My dad admitted everything. He told me what would happen if I kept using my powers. He told me millions of people would die.’

‘Or maybe that’s just what he
wants
you to believe. Maybe he really just wants
you
dead! Did you think of that?’

The policewoman gave another screech as her head broke through the door. Her jaws gnashed and gnawed at us as she tried to squeeze her body through the gap.

‘Oh, too tempting,’ Ameena said. She raised her leg and drove the sole of her boot against the policewoman’s deformed face, shoving it back through the hole. ‘Now,’ she said, turning back to me. ‘Get us out of here, or I’ll kill you myself.’

I felt Rosie’s hand grip mine. ‘Please,’ she whimpered. ‘If you can do something,
please
do it. I don’t want to die. Not like this. Not like
this
.’

I looked at their faces in turn.
No one else dies
, that’s what I’d said.
No one else dies because of me
.

‘OK,’ I said shakily. ‘I’ll do it. Stand back.’

Ameena pulled the other two away, along the upstairs landing, near to where the bathroom door stood half open. Behind me, the policewoman’s arm clawed through the gap in the door. At the bottom of the stairs, the other screechers were still trying to force their way through.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to use my abilities. It felt like a victory for my dad, and that was the last thing I wanted. But what alternative was there? What other choice did I have?

The sparks moved through my brain. I held my breath, ignoring the banging and the screaming that now filled every corner of the house, and I focused. I felt my powers surge, then a noise like an explosion drowned out every other sound.

I staggered into the wall as the whole building gave a sudden lurch sideways. The floor became a steep hill. Rosie screamed again as she and the others came tumbling towards me.

‘What did you do?’ Ameena cried.

‘Nothing! I didn’t do anything!’

Another sound, like the smash of a wrecking ball, vibrated the floor beneath us. The squeals of the screechers rose in volume, but they faded again just as quickly. The hammering on the door stopped, and as we listened we heard the screechers fleeing the house. Their screams grew quieter still as they clattered off into the distance.

‘They’ve gone,’ Billy whispered, when the house had gone quiet once more. We leaned there in the V-shape between the floor and the wall, listening to the sound of silence.

‘Have they?’ Rosie asked, her eyes wide with hope. She looked to me. ‘Have they gone?’

‘I... uh... I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘It sounds like they have.’

With a
crack
, the door to the box room exploded outward. The screechers downstairs might have left, but the policewoman hadn’t gone with them. She threw back her head and screamed. Her black eyes locked on us and her teeth chewed hungrily as she clattered on all fours down the slope towards us.

The spike burst through the floor directly in front of her, stabbing up from below. She twisted, mid-leap, but the javelin-like bone speared her through the stomach. Blood frothed around her mouth as she was pulled through the floorboards and down into the darkened room below.

‘Stay there,’ I barked at Billy and Rosie, as I clambered up to the hole in the floor. Ameena got to it just as I did. We looked through it in time to see the policewoman’s mutated body tear in two.

Eyes the size of our heads swivelled to look at us from behind their protective bone-cages. The Beast’s mouth opened wide and its thunderous roar knocked us back away from the hole.

‘Well, the kids are gone,’ Ameena said hoarsely. ‘But looks like daddy’s home.’

The floorboards splintered again as another spike broke through from beneath. It stabbed up between Billy’s legs, stopping just centimetres short of his crotch. Billy gave a squeal and jumped sideways, clutching his groin protectively.

‘Ooh, that could’ve been nasty,’ Ameena said.

CRACK!
The spike withdrew, then jabbed up through the floorboards again. It split the wood at Rosie’s feet. She slid down the sloping floor, only stopping when her back slammed against the equally sloping wall.

‘We have
got
to get out of here,’ Billy hissed.

There was another door just a few metres up the incline. I knew from our exploration earlier that it led to another bedroom. With the house leaning the way it was, it should be possible to jump through the bedroom window and land safely in the snow. After that, all we had to do was outrun the Beast, dodge the screechers, track down Nan, then find a way to get out of the village.

Yeah. That was all.

I locked my eyes on the door. One step at a time. Escape first. I could worry about the other stuff later.

The floor wobbled unsteadily as I inched my way towards the bedroom. ‘Stay close to me,’ I urged. ‘We’ll get out this wa-
aaaaay!
’

My words became a scream of terror as the wall of the house gave way. The floor dropped out from under us and we fell through into the living room. Clouds of dust and plaster swirled up into the air, filling the room with a choking stour.

‘Ameena?’ I coughed. The dust was thick. It whitened my hair and forced closed my eyes. I clambered to my feet, relieved – and surprised – to discover I was unhurt. ‘Billy? Rosie? Where are you?’

WREEEEEEEEEK!

The cry of the Beast was right in front of me, half lion-like roar, half pig-squeal. A gust of its hot breath hit me in the face. It blew some of the dust from my eyes, allowing me to open them.

Big mistake.

The Beast’s face was centimetres from my own. Up close, it looked even more monstrous. Its skull, from the top of its head to the tip of its chin, was deformed and misshapen, with lumps and bumps here, there and everywhere.

Slivers of bone poked out from the face and jutted up from the neck. A stubby spike stuck out from the centre of its forehead, like the horn of the world’s ugliest unicorn.

It was the same creature we’d seen earlier, only it had grown. The shape we’d seen in the fog had been rhino-sized. This was bigger.
Much
bigger. Its back was bent and its head lowered as it glared down at me. I could see more of the serrated, bony spikes running the length of its spine. More bones jutted from its elbows and knees, sharp and yellowing and stained with blood.

I felt another blast of the Beast’s foul breath, and watched as a mouthful of green mucus dribbled down its chin. No wonder the screechers had turned and fled.

Slowly, I back-paced away from the monster. It padded forward on all four feet, closing the gap, but not yet moving to attack. The back feet, I noticed, had three toes, just like the footprint we’d seen in Mrs Angelo’s house. The two at the front were more like hands. They were bunched into fists. The creature walked on them like a gorilla would, leaning forward, balancing on the knuckles.

I stopped retreating and the Beast stopped advancing. We stood there, half a metre apart, me looking up and it looking down. Its slow breathing was like the wind on a stormy night. It rattled from the back of its throat. In,
two, three, four
, out,
two, three, four
.

The black, shark-like eyes were trained on my face. I leaned slowly to the right and the creature’s head swivelled to follow me. I leaned back to the centre, then out to the left, tracked the entire time by the monster’s glare.

There was a
clatter
from behind it and the Beast’s eyes narrowed to slits. It gave a low growl and, even from that distance, I could feel its whole body tense.

Ameena shoved aside a pile of broken floorboards and stood up. She froze when she saw me, and even through the dust that was caked to her face, I could see the last of the colour drain from her cheeks.

‘It’s OK,’ I said, keeping my voice low and my gaze fixed on the Beast’s eyes. ‘It’s just... looking at me.’

Ameena gave a slow nod. There was a commotion beside her and Billy’s arm emerged from the debris. The Beast’s head twitched and its dense muscles became like coiled springs as Ameena pulled Billy free.

‘Relax,’ I said softly. I half-expected the monster to lunge then, but instead some of the tension seemed to leave its body. Its jaws, which had been hanging open, very slowly closed over.

The Beast wasn’t attacking me. For whatever reason, it wasn’t attacking me! I decided to push my luck. Very carefully, I raised my left hand, palm-forwards, into the air. I held it up there, just fifteen centimetres or so from the monster’s head. The Beast’s black eyes moved from my face to my hand. It gave a low, suspicious growl. Then, with a sudden bob of its head, it nudged my palm with its nose. I kept my hand up, ignoring the sticky strands of mucus now hanging from my fingers.

Slowly, almost cautiously, it pressed its snout against the hand again. This time it didn’t move away. Its dark eyes closed over and a low sound formed somewhere at the back of its throat.

Kaaaaaa.

The Beast’s nose pressed harder against my hand. I almost felt my nerve go, but I managed to keep my arm up. I even managed to keep it from trembling too badly.

Kaaaaaahhhhh.

‘What’s it doing?’ Billy asked, his voice hushed.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, not shifting my gaze from the Beast’s broad face.