Backwoods (33 page)

“Andrew,” he heard Alice cry out,
frightened.

“It’s alright,” he called back, but his voice
was strained and shrill, sounding anything
but
alright. But
God, oh, man, the last thing he wanted was for Alice to come
barreling around the corner and find the bisected remains of
Mitchell Prendick sprawled on the floor, not to mention the body of
her dead father still slumped behind the wheel of the truck.

“But you were shooting,” he heard her hiccup,
a tremulous, tiny sound. “I heard you scream.”

“Everything’s okay.” He managed to sit up,
get his knees beneath him, then flipped the safety back on and used
the rifle to prop him as he stood. “Just stay where you are. Okay?
I’m coming to you.”

And then, through that thin haze of gun
smoke, he saw something moving on the floor, something wriggling
and twitching, like an oversized earthworm caught on the sidewalk
on a warm summer’s day, a nightcrawler struggling to make it back
to the loam.

A whole nest of them, in fact, Andrew
realized, as the smoke thinned further, and he could see more of
them now, those peculiar, snakelike things squirming on the floor.
Like fingers,
he thought.
Reaching for me.

“Oh, shit,” he whispered.

The gunshots had at first covered a sound he
now heard clearly, like a rotten walnut slowly cracking open to
reveal blackened, festering meat within.
Snap-crackle-POP
went this curious, nasty sound, then something crawled out of the
smoke and shadows underneath the wreckage toward him.

It wasn’t Prendick, not exactly, not
anymore.

Like they had with Langley, the lower sets of
his ribs had broken free from the bands of costal cartilage
securing them to the sternum. In Langley’s case, these ribs had
grown, protruding through the flesh in new, arm-like appendages.
With Prendick, they had lengthened, but also sprouted
articulations, like the jointed legs of a spider or scorpion. These
spindly limbs fanned out beneath the ruins of his torso, while he
used his hands to arch what remained of his spine back, lifting his
head, cobra-like, from the ground. Again like Langley, the mess of
his eviscerated guts seemed to have come alive, a writhing,
intertwining mess of intestines and colon, like the tails of a
swarm of rattlesnakes thrumming in menacing admonition.

“You took the virus,” Andrew said. “Moore’s
retrovirus. You injected it into yourself.”

Prendick’s remaining eye rolled toward him, a
pale blue disk floating in stark, ghoulish contrast to the
bloody-red of his cornea. The tips of his rib appendages,
squared-off and raw, made wet squelching noises as they
tap-squish-tap-TAPPED
on the floor, propelling him forward
with an insectile efficiency. The popping sound Andrew had heard as
Prendick had torn himself in two had been the sound of the base of
his spine wrenching free of his pelvic girdle. Although at first
the length of it trailed behind him like a grisly tail, he raised
it now, as if the vertebrae had become flexible, hinged joints
instead of a fused column. His spine arched behind him like a
scorpion’s tail, and likewise, capping the tip like a spear was the
ragged point of Prendick’s tailbone.

“You stupid son of a bitch,” Andrew whispered
and Prendick screeched, lunging at Andrew, the whip of his spine
striking, scorpion-like and lightning fast . Andrew ducked
sideways, hunching his shoulders, and heard a loud, hollow crash as
the tip punched into the side of the truck behind him.

Prendick’s shriek was eclipsed by another,
this one high and trilling, as Alice scurried around the back of
the truck and caught sight of him.

“Alice,” Andrew cried, pulling the trigger
again, grasping the gun with both hands to keep it steady while he
sprayed Prendick with a wild volley of bullets. He could hear them
ricocheting off the concrete floor. Prendick began to screech and
through the gun smoke, Andrew could see the horrible mass of his
entrails flapping and flailing.

“Come on!” Wheeling about, floundering with
his wounded leg, Andrew grabbed Alice beneath the arm and hauled
her in step. Using the gun like a cane, he hobbled, hopped and
otherwise hauled ass however he could toward the garage door.

“Wait! What about my daddy?” Alice cried out,
then stumbled and fell to the floor. Andrew stooped, getting his
arm around her, then they both looked up to see Prendick on the
move again, scuttling on those horrific little legs across the
tarmac. Alice screamed, and Andrew let loose another crazed round
of rifle blasts, shattering chunks out of the floor.

“Hold on to me,” he told Alice, grabbing her
about the waist. He felt her arms first lace, then lock around his
neck and he stumbled to his feet, supporting her against his hip
with one arm, holding the rifle like a crutch with the other.

“He’s still moving,” Alice wailed as Andrew
shambled for the door. She was small, but while he might have
ordinarily bore her slight weight without a problem, he was
half-crippled and hurting, just barely making any headway.

He’s not going to stop,
Andrew thought
grimly, brows furrowed, teeth gritted, tendons standing out, taut
and strained, in his neck.
Not going to stop moving, or coming
after us. Not until he hunts us down and kills us. Because it’s
like Moore said. That’s what animals do, and that’s what he’s
become. Hell, it’s what Prendick’s been all along.

He limped past Dani, and thought it was only
a trick of his eyes, the drape of shadows, when he saw her move. He
paused long enough to look again, then heard a soft moan.

“Dani!” Leaning over, he set Alice on the
ground, then hobbled to Dani’s side.
She’s alive,
he
thought, uttering a hysterical, happy, relieved laugh.
Oh, God,
she’s alive!

“Dani, can you hear me?” There was no time
for niceties, not with Prendick behind them. He dropped to his
knees and took her by the shoulders, giving a firm shake. “Dani,
wake up!”

“He’s coming,” Alice whimpered, pointing.
Andrew glanced up, saw a hint of movement among the shadows:
Prendick scuttling in the dark. This time, when he fired the gun,
he managed to do more than chip olive drab off the Army trucks or
knock holes into the floor. One of the rounds hit Prendick high in
the remains of his torso, shearing one of the spindly, spider-like
legs at the base. With a shriek, he danced sideways, then
back-scrambled, disappearing beneath Andrew’s old work Jeep for
cover.

“You hit him!” Alice sounded delirious,
caught between joy and hysterics.

“That won’t stop him long.” Andrew shook Dani
again, harder. “Dani, wake up. Alice, help me get her on her
feet.”

Together, they pulled and tugged, and by the
time they forced Dani upright, she’d roused somewhat. Dazed and
bewildered, she blinked first at Andrew, then down at Alice.

“What’s going on?” she murmured.

Prendick scuttled from beneath the Jeep,
dragging the slithering mound of his entrails behind him. He’d
flattened the length of his spinal column to crouch beneath the
Jeep, but hoisted it now, curling it up behind him, the tapered
point of his tailbone poised to strike.

Dani caught sight of this and stiffened, her
breath drawing to a sharp, horrified halt. “Oh, my God.”

“Come on,” Andrew said. They lumbered
together toward the door, listening all the while to the nasty
tap-squish-tap-TAP
as Prendick darted after them.

Dani looked over her shoulder, one arm around
Andrew’s neck, the other around Alice’s. “Oh, God.”

“Don’t look back,” Andrew said, but Alice
did, too, and began to mewl with panicked fright.

“He’s too fast!” she cried.

“Take her.” He didn’t know to whom he was
speaking more directly, Dani or Alice, but in any case, he shrugged
himself away from Dani and hoisted the rifle again. “Keep going.
Don’t stop until you’re outside the garage.”

With that said, he laid down a sweeping burst
of gunfire in Prendick’s direction. Prendick danced from side to
side, scuttling wildly. He didn’t retreat, however, as he had
before, instead darting and ducking around the bullets. The jointed
segments of his ribs folded as he crouched, then he pounced at
Andrew, hands outstretched.

“Shit!” Andrew shot wildly, missing Prendick
altogether in his floundering, backpedaling panic. Prendick hit him
hard, knocking the M16 from his hands as they crashed to the floor
together.

Prendick clamped his hands around Andrew’s
neck, abruptly cutting off his airflow. Andrew opened his mouth
wide, straining for breath, pawing wildly at Prendick’s thick,
strong fingers. He struggled beneath Prendick’s crushing weight, as
the spindly points of Prendick’s ribs dug down to restrain him.
From over Prendick’s shoulder, the wicked curve of his tail bone
raised again, waggling momentarily before swooping down at Andrew’s
head.

Shit!
Andrew jerked to his left and
felt the rush of wind as Prendick’s coccyx whipped past him. The
concrete beneath him shuddered as the tip plowed into the floor.
Prendick reared his tail back and Andrew cut his head to the right
as again, he narrowly avoided a blow aimed squarely for his
nose.

He bucked his hips, kicking his legs
furiously, feeling the nasty, wet coils of Prendick’s intestines
sliding around his thighs, his knees, tightening around him,
holding him down. The need for air was growing desperate and
agonizing. Andrew clawed at Prendick’s hands, his vision growing
murky, his mind even more so as he struggled vainly for breath.

He heard the sharp report of automatic rifle
fire from somewhere close by, then felt Prendick jerk above him,
the interlocking clamp of his fingers at last loosening around his
neck. Another burst of gun shots and Prendick fell to the side, the
looping folds of his entrails sliding against Andrew’s legs.
Gagging reflexively, clutching at his throat, Andrew rolled onto
his side, whooping for air and pedaling his feet weakly to dislodge
Prendick’s guts.

“Get up,” he heard Dani say, and he blinked
up in bewildered surprise to see her shouldering the rifle. She
leaned over, reaching for him. “Andrew, come on!”

With her help, he stumbled to his feet,
hopping to keep his weight off his injured ankle, keeping his arm
draped across her shoulders. Even as she dragged him toward the
doorway, he could hear Prendick moving behind them, recovering from
his latest wounds. He glanced back and could see the convex curve
of his tail as it raised once more into the air.

Dani followed his gaze. “Shit,” she hissed,
tugging frantically against Andrew’s waist, urging him forward.
“Come on. Hurry!”

The only way he could manage to keep in step
was to force himself to rely on his wounded leg. Putting pressure
down on his shattered heel left him almost instantly reeling from
the pain, and he struggled to keep himself from falling over,
taking Dani with him. By the time they made it past the threshold,
ducking beneath the overhang of the garage door, he was breathless
all over again, this time in pain, his body coated in sweat. When
Dani drew her arm away, he fell to his knees, swooning.

“He’s coming,” Alice wailed.

“We have to get the door closed.” Shambling
under the strain of her own wounds, Dani turned and went back to
the garage.

Prendick was less than ten feet from the
door. Both her aim and proficiency with the M16 had surpassed
Andrew’s, and she’d shot off all but one or two of Prendick’s
appendage-like ribs. Without them, he’d lost the advantage of his
arachnid-like speed, but none of his murderous ferocity, that feral
determination to kill. He crawled now toward the threshold,
dragging himself forward inch by grueling inch with his arms, using
the stump of his spine to shove him along from behind. When he saw
Dani in the doorway, he paused long enough to lock gazes with her,
to set the tips of his spilled entrails twitching again.

“
Bitch,”
he seethed, the only
distinguishable English he’d uttered since Moore had plowed into
him with the truck.

Dani grabbed the door and grunted, tugging on
it. “Alice, help me,” she cried after a futile moment. The little
girl hesitated, shied next to Andrew, then scurried forward at
Dani’s desperate beckon.

Together, they pulled frantically at the door
and Andrew heard it scraping along the tracks as it rolled down an
inch or so.

“
Bitch!”
Prendick snapped from inside
the garage, moving faster now, hauling himself forward, peeling his
fingernails back, bloody, ragged, raw as he scraped them against
the floor.

“Oh, God,” Dani cried, because within two
feet, he’d be upon them, and already, the snaking tendrils of his
intestines were spreading out ahead of him, nearly reaching her
boots. “Pull, for God’s sake!”

With a hoarse groan, Andrew forced himself to
stand, to shamble in a clumsy circle and return to the garage.
Standing between Dani and Alice, he wedged his fingers in between
the metal panels in the door and shoved. Again, the door screeched
as it dropped another precipitous inch.

Alice screamed, a high-pitched peal of pure,
unadulterated terror, and fell abruptly away from the door, like a
cartoon character slipping on a banana peel. She hit the ground
hard and Andrew had a half-second to realize one of the looping
coils of Prendick’s entrails had wrapped, vice-like, around her
ankle, and then she was jerked beneath the garage door, back into
the shadows beyond.

“
Andrew!”
she wailed, the last
syllable of his name scraping out, shrill and frantic:
“Ooooooooooooo!”

“Alice, no!” he cried and dove after her,
turning loose of the door and forgetting that his damn ruined ankle
would no longer bear his weight. He ducked beneath the overhang of
the garage door, arms outstretched as he sprang, and as he hit the
floor, landing on his belly, rapping his chin hard on the concrete,
he felt his fingertips brush against Alice’s.