Backwoods (24 page)

“What?” Andrew asked. “Who said that,
Alice?”

He knew, of course. With a sinking feeling,
he knew what she’d say even before she opened her mouth. “Major
Prendick. He’s the one who told Daddy you set the fire that killed
Martha.”

“Alice, stop it,” Moore said. He reached for
her, but she shrugged him away, scurrying to Andrew.

“He told Daddy if he let you leave, you’d
bring the others back. The PACA people.”

“Alice,” Moore said, but Andrew stood,
blocking his path, positioning himself between father and
daughter.

“He said you’d try to hurt us again—hurt
me
again—like they did in Boston when they killed Martha,”
Alice whispered, curling her fingers anxiously against his
shirt.

Oh, Jesus, no wonder Moore hates me,
Andrew thought in dismay.
No wonder he’s had it out for me all
along.

“I’d never hurt you,” he said to Alice.
“Either of you.”

“I know,” she replied. “But Daddy believed
Major Prendick. The soldiers did, too. Now they’re out there
looking for you. And they’re all going to die.”

Andrew turned to Moore. “What’s out there
with them?”

The older man didn’t answer, simply stood
there and angry, Andrew marched toward him. “What the hell is out
in the woods?”

He reached out, jerking the gun from Moore’s
grasp. With a frown, Moore moved to snatch it back, and they
tussled together, grappling over the pistol, staggering and
stumbling in wide, clumsy circles.

“Andrew, no! Please!” Shoving her way between
them, Alice held out her hands like a school crossing guard,
tearful and pleading. “Both of you, please stop!”

In that moment, the lights overhead made a
strange sort of noise, like the
snap-crackle-pop!
from old
Rice Krispies cereal commercials, then, with a staccato flickering,
they abruptly went dark both inside and out, plunging the entire
compound into darkness.

Alice cried out, a confused and frightened
mewl, and Andrew felt her press herself against his side, trembling
beneath the shelter of his arm.

“What happened to the lights?” he asked
Moore, tightening his grip on the gun lest the doctor use the
opportunity to try and wrestle it from him.

“They knocked them out,” Alice whispered from
beside him. “They must’ve killed all the soldiers and now they’re
coming for us.”

“Who did?” Andrew asked, again directing the
question not to her, but to her father. “Who’s coming?”

When Moore cut his eyes briefly away, back
down the hall in the direction of the infirmary, Andrew felt a
sinking, sickening horror because he knew.

The screamers.

****

Andrew ordered Moore to take him to the lab
to get Dani.

“You don’t want to do that,” Moore had said,
just as another patter of gunfire echoed from deep in the woods.
The sounds had grown sporadic, nearly disappearing in full, and
Andrew was of the frame of mind this was not a good thing.

“Yes, I do.” Andrew had gestured
demonstratively with the gun in response.

“We can barricade ourselves in here,” Moore
had said. “Even without the power. We’ve got food, potable water,
enough so that we—”

“I said we’re going to the lab.” Andrew had
mashed the barrel of the pistol into Moore’s nose, flattening it.
“Now.”

As it had been earlier, when Andrew had
trekked out in search of O’Malley, the woods around them lay heavy,
still and silent, unnaturally so. Even the wind seemed to have gone
dormant and the air felt cold and thick around them, seeping
through their clothes and skin, sinking deep into their bones with
an unsettling chill.

Andrew tried to do some quick math in his
head, in spite of his mounting panic and the fact his senses were
still somewhat reeling from where he had been struck with the gun.
How many soldiers did Prendick send out into the forest? There
were twenty-four to start with, Dani told me, less seven from Alpha
Squad, and Lieutenant Carter, who were all shipped home. That makes
sixteen, then minus one for Prendick, another O’Malley and
Dani…

“Twelve,” Alice whispered to him. He hadn’t
realized he’d been thinking out loud until her quiet voice
interrupted him. “Prendick sent twelve soldiers into the
woods.”

When Moore tried to take Alice by the hand so
she’d walk with him, Andrew pulled her protectively behind him.
“She’s with me.”

“I don’t trust you with my daughter.” Moore’s
voice was tight and clipped, his eyes narrowed into slits.

“Yeah? I don’t trust you
period,”
Andrew shot back.

They reached the house of pain, the main
door, and Andrew held the gun out, his finger poised against the
trigger. “Open it.”

“I can’t,” Moore replied. “With the power
out, the building is sealed.”

Swinging the gun away from Moore’s head,
Andrew aimed for the center of the plate glass door. It was
tempered, but not bullet-proof, and when Andrew squeezed the
trigger, sending out a sharp, booming report, it punched a single
hole, no bigger than a silver dollar, through the center of the
heavy pane, with a spider web of cracks and fragments—thousands of
splinters and shards—spreading out in a broad circumference.

The recoil from the pistol shot shuddered
through Andrew’s hand, up his arm and into his shoulder, nearly
staggering him. Alice had tucked her face into his side at the
thunderous shot, hands clamped to her ears, her entire body rigid.
She looked up, remaining huddled next to him, coughing on the acrid
gun smoke that lingered in a thin haze.

Cringing, shoulders hunched, Moore blinked at
Andrew in wide-eyed aghast. “You’re crazy,” he gasped.

“I’m getting there,” Andrew agreed, motioning
with the gun. “Now help me kick that glass out. Come on.”

****

The entire building was silent, save for the
quiet crunch of their footsteps in broken glass and the quiet,
insectile buzz of emergency lights sporadically recessed in the
ceiling. Running off limited battery power alone, these cast pale
splotches of glow in narrow circumferences, lining their path like
a dot-to-dot puzzle in a kids’ activity book.

“Which way?” Andrew asked.

“I locked her in my office,” Moore
replied.

Good,
Andrew thought. He’d been to
Moore’s office before and still had a dim recollection of the way.
Hopefully enough so that I’ll know if he tries any tricks, takes
me anyplace else but there.

“Move.” He waved the gun again. “Go.”

With a glower, Moore started off, Andrew and
Alice trailing behind him. “You’re not going to shoot me,” Moore
said. “Not in front of Alice.”

“You sure about that?” Andrew asked and he
fired the gun again, sending a round into the drywall. The gun shot
was deafening in the confined quarters of the hallway and Alice
screeched in frightened surprise. Moore whirled, wide-eyed with
alarm.

“I’m crazy, remember?” Andrew said to him.
“Your words, not mine.”

Moore glared at him. “You’re wasting your
bullets,” he said at length through his teeth, bristling as he
turned and started to walk again.

They ventured deep into the darkened building
for ten minutes. When Andrew had been locked inside by himself,
trying to find an exit, he’d easily gotten lost because all of the
corridors had looked alike to him. Without the overhead glow of
numerous fluorescents and only the dim light of the emergency bulbs
to guide them, they were even more confusing. So much so, that when
Moore drew abruptly to a halt in front of him, Andrew had no idea
if it was because they’d reached his office or not. For all he
knew, they could have backtracked to the exact spot they’d started
from and he wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.

“What is it?” he asked. “Why did you…”

His voice faded as he heard a noise in front
of them, emanating from one of the dark, shadow-draped spaces
between the faint circumferences of emergency light.

“…stop?” he finished clumsily, because he
recognized the wet snuffling, like the jowls of a water-logged
bloodhound dragging against the floor while it tried to pick up a
scent. O’Malley had made a sound like that because that’s exactly
what he’d been doing, trying to smell Andrew in the infirmary.

Shit,
he thought.

“Shit,” Moore whispered, backpedaling.
Apparently the prospect of Andrew and his pistol didn’t intimidate
him as much as whatever lay ahead of them in the hallway, and that
fact alone raised the hairs along the nape of Andrew’s neck all the
more uneasily.

Shit,
he thought again.

“Shoot the heart,” Moore hissed at him.

Andrew cut him a glance. “What?” Then out of
the corner of his gaze, he saw movement, and looked back down the
corridor in time to see something step out of the shadows, emerging
slowly into nearest proscenium of light.

Ashen and nude, the creature’s neck was
indistinguishable from its broad shoulders and hunchbacked spine
thanks to bulbous, swollen growths that had erupted from its skin.
Like O’Malley, these tumors had threatened to cover its face and
upper torso. However, unlike O’Malley, the growths had overtaken
its forearms and hands, covering them in heavy layers of swollen
nodules and scaly, wart-like growths, almost like tree bark. Its
fingers had fused together, leaving it with three unnaturally
elongated, talon-like claws. Beneath the surface of its pale flesh,
a tangled network of prominent veins were visible, blood vessels
that pulsated and throbbed like live snakes or eels.

“A screamer,” Alice whispered, trembling as
she shied behind her father’s hip, her fingers clutching anxiously
at his shirt tail.

The screamer saw them and hunkered down, its
grotesquely distended hands dropping to the floor like paws. Its
brows furrowed, its eyes red-rimmed and shadow-draped, and its lips
pulled back as it bared its teeth.

“Shoot the heart,” Moore said again, then
when the creature sprang at them, leaping from the ground with
impossible, cat-like speed and fluidity, he screamed it out,
snatching Alice by the hand and scrambling backwards. “Shoot the
heart!
For God’s sake, shoot it in the heart!”

Andrew shot it in the head instead, and it
snapped in mid-air like a puppet with its strings abruptly cut. A
thin arc of blood trailed behind it as it crashed to the floor,
landing spread-eagle on its back, more blood pooling around its
head in a widening circumference.

Keeping his gun arm extended, though shaky,
Andrew inched toward it, fanning his free hand in front of his face
and blinking against reflexive tears as the pungent smoke
waned.

“Did you hit it?” Moore asked, little more
than a croak from behind him.

Andrew nodded, glancing back at him. Moore
held Alice in a fierce embraced, shied against the wall, both of
them wide-eyed with frightened shock.

“In the heart?” Moore asked.

Andrew looked down at the screamer, close
enough to take it fully into view. The bullet had taken out a
broad, meaty swath from its cheek and jaw, peeling back flesh to
leave underlying muscles, tendons and bones all starkly revealed.
From there, it had punched deep into the skull, leaving behind a
bloody, spongy channel, before apparently exiting the opposite
side.

“Did you shoot it in the heart?” Moore asked
again.

Letting the gun fall limply to his side,
Andrew squatted beside it.
This was one of the soldiers,
he
thought. Despite its grotesque appearance, it hadn’t been some sort
of horror movie monster. Like O’Malley, it had been somebody’s
husband or son, a living, breathing human being.

And I killed him,
Andrew thought,
feeling sick.

“
Did you shoot it in the heart?”
Moore
screamed, and Andrew looked back at him, startled by both his
persistence and vehemence.

“No,” he snapped, scowling as he stood. “I
shot it in the head, took out about half its skull from the looks
of things. I think that’s going to do the goddamn trick.”

Alice ripped herself loose from her father’s
embrace, hands outstretched as she shrieked. “Andrew,
look
out!”

He pivoted, surprised and bewildered, and the
screamer tackled him, sending him crashing to the ground. It had
scrambled up from its supine position so quickly and silently,
Andrew hadn’t even suspected. Now it landed against him heavily,
knocking the breath from him, plowing his head soundly into the
floor. In an instant, it had him pinned, one of its enormous,
misshapen hands mashed against his face, craning his cheek toward
the floor, leaving his throat vulnerably exposed. He’d dropped the
gun and could see it on the ground in front of him. It had
skittered just out of his reach, and beyond that, pressed in horror
against the far wall, he saw Alice.

Oh, God, it’s going to kill me right in
front of her,
he thought in a moment of sheer, blind terror.
Oh, God, Alice, don’t look!

“Andrew!” she screamed, rushing forward,
shrugging loose as Moore tried to grab her, restrain her.

“Alice, no,” he cried out, hoarse and
stricken.

“Leave him alone,” Alice shouted, then Moore
hooked her by the sleeve and whipped her smartly around, grabbing
her again. It was too late, however. Distracted by Alice’s
movement, her cries, the screamer scrambled off of Andrew and
toward Moore and his daughter.

Moore’s eyes cut frantically about as he
searched for any semblance of a weapon. “Here,” he called out. He
pushed Alice into a corner, then stepped away in a broad stride,
holding his arms out, waving them madly, capturing the screamer’s
attention instantly. “Here,” he shouted again, backing down the
corridor, trying to lead it away. “Here I am. Come and get me. Come
on.”

“Daddy,” Alice mewled, clapping her hands to
her face. When the screamer lunged at Moore, forcing him to turn
and run, she screamed more loudly.
“Daddy!”