Harvest (58 page)

“
It’s in my head. Ripping.
Clawing at my mind.” She screamed.

“
What can we do?” Craig
shouted to Cat then Rachel.

“
Attack it. Distract it
from its attack on Cat.” Rachel stated.

The idea was madness. Rachel was
already moving towards the gap, her sword held before her. Craig
followed, but hesitated, glancing back at the crippled Cat, she was
their main weapon. What chance would Craig and Rachel have? “I
don’t think this is such a good idea…”

“
It’s COMING!” Cat
suddenly shrieked at them.

The lockers either side of the
gap flew through the air, he saw a locker smack Rachel to the
ground a second before lockers slammed into him, knocking the air
out of him and carrying off his feet. He hit the hard ground
several metres from where he had been standing with a tremendous
weight on top of him. The world blacked out then, the blackness was
shifting and flowing across his eyes and he realised he was on his
back staring at the ceiling with its flow of smoke.

His forearms burned with pain
from where they had been skinned and grazed in his slide across the
gritty ground. He couldn’t move his legs or his lower body under
the crushing weight of the locker pinning him to the floor. He
struggled to catch his breath then lifted his head off the ground
to check his situation, the locker looked to be lying across him,
pressing down completely on one leg and the top of the other one,
the top of the locker ended just below his ribs. There was another
locker fallen across that one. He wondered how many ribs had been
broken from the impact but didn’t want to check. He was grateful to
not be feeling any pain from them at the moment.

Craig turned his head within his
limited degree of freedom and saw that Cat was struggling to her
feet. Hopefully recovering from the psychic attack she had
experienced. He looked for Rachel and saw she was lying on the
other side of the room, propping herself up on her elbows. One side
of her face was a mask of blood, her loose perm flattened and
matted to her head on that side. She saw that Craig was looking
over to her but she didn’t react, her face stayed blank with shock
as she began to drag herself backwards. He saw that her feet were
turned out from each other and were limp against the floor and he
understood why she couldn’t get up; the locker had crushed her
pelvis. He wept for her. Then he saw that she wasn’t dragging
herself to safety but to her sword.

The lockers had been smashed
aside. He couldn’t see that part of the room for two the lockers
piled on top of him. Whatever had tossed the lockers aside like
skittles was now in the room with them.

A loud sound entered the room; a
click click click click, sound of things being stabbed at the
concrete floor and the slurp slurp sound of something heavy and
slimy being dragged across the ground. He turned back in Rachel’s
direction and saw that her efforts to drag herself across the
ground had grown more desperate. He gritted his teeth against the
pain of moving and he lifted himself up onto his elbows to increase
his field of vision.

It
staggered out of the enlarged hole on six spider-like legs
and glowed with an internal green luminescence. It had two other
legs at the front, folded back onto the creature’s body and instead
of being used to walk they thrashed and stabbed the air before it
like javelins. Its abdomen wasn’t like the firm body of a spider
raised from the ground, but it was a ribbed gelatinous sack bloated
with fluid that dragged behind the creature. The thing was taller
than the low ceiling of the basement would allow, and its elongated
spine-like neck hunkered so that its cumbersome angular and horned
head could duck down. Its seven empty slash-like eyes scanned the
room. Each eye was like a black hole consuming all light, even the
light from its own body seemed to flow and pour into the holes.
Above the middle eye there were two scars shaped like interlocking
V’s. The creature was branded with the rune that Rachel had told
them represented the harvest. This was the result of the harvest;
the creature that had been created from the people that had been
taken.

It looked at Craig and he felt
his own energy weaken, as if his very essence was being drained
from him through its black hole gaze. He tossed his head from side
to side looking for his nail-gun. Finding it between him and Cat he
stretched out his arm and fingers, ignoring the pain of his raw
skin rubbing at the dirt and grit of the floor, and dragged it to
him with his finger tips. He took a hold of it, but as he lifted it
its unbalanced weight tugged the tool free of his awkward grip. He
quickly tightened his fingers only for it to kick and buck in his
hand, almost shaking itself free again as he accidentally pulled
the trigger and pumped nails wildly into the air. Cat clapped a
hand to her head and fell to the ground, her flare gun skittering
away from her grip.

His stomach flipped and he
cursed, cried and dropped his own weapon a he realise he had shot
her. “Cat? Cat!”

The creature let out an awful
sound, a roar, a shriek, a laugh all at once.

The spider-creature lurched back
on its six legs and reared its lance arms back, and Craig knew it
was ready to pounce on Cat. Cat who had been laid out by his own
weapon.

Rachel suddenly cried out and he
saw that she had her sword. Despite her injuries she swept the
hefty weapon behind one shoulder then swung it before her in a wide
arc until it was over her other shoulder. It cut at the creature’s
ribs and knitted flesh, renting it open and loosing a flow of thick
lumpy fluid from the wound. The creature roared and reared upward
in pain from Rachel’s attack slamming its head clumsily against the
ceiling.

Craig crawled sideways,
fingering the ground, trying to grasp the nail gun he had dropped
just out of reach. As he did so he saw Cat roll onto her
back.
Maybe she wasn’t seriously
injured?
Before he could think any further he saw the
creature descended fiercely upon Rachel.

Rachel swung her sword back in
the direction it had just come from and it cleaved through one of
its six legs below its second knee joint. The shortening of its leg
caused the creature to crash awkwardly to the ground, but it
instantly scrabbled to regain its footing and it shifted its weight
onto its other legs. Rachel slumped, apparently spent from the
force of her attack, but kept a tight grip of her weapon.

Don’t give
up!
Craig willed.

She raised the sword weakly and
swung it in a wavering arc behind her for another hack. While the
sword was pointing away the creature leapt forward and lunged both
of its javelin arms downwards. The sword wilted in Rachel’s hands
before it found her target and clattered heavily to the floor as it
slipped from her loosened grip, the tempered metal sang out as it
struck the concrete floor.

The creature stood proud over
its kill, its arms staking Rachel to the ground through her abdomen
and chest. Craig clutched the nail-gun tightly and swung the heavy
tool onto the creature with a bitter rage. He squeezed the trigger
in rapid succession, sending a steady stream of nails shooting
through the air like miniature arrows or spinning like vicious
death-stars.

It didn’t react. With Rachel
gone it stared back at Cat. Craig watched sections of the spider’s
abdomen split under the hail of fire. Able to see where his nails
were hitting he steadied his aim and concentrated his fire on one
area. A large section of the sac shredded, then tore open under the
pressure of whatever filled the creatures abdomen. Now the creature
screamed. Glowing green goo pattered out onto the concrete along
with misshapen lumps that looked like internal organs. A large
object fell out and it resembled a partly dissolved or deformed
limb of some kind. Parts of the people it had harvested.

The creature was staring at him
with its seven black eyes. Staring into him. Drawing the life and
energy from him. He knew he was next. He shifted his aim and
watched a line of wounds trail up from the sac to the creature’s
chest and he held his aim steady there. The force of the gun
rattled the bones in Craig’s hand as it slammed the nails through
the air one after the other in a rapid succession of blurry metal
hyphens. The creature shook its javelins free of Rachel’s body and
waved at the nails but couldn’t stop Craig shattering a section of
its ribs.

The creature howled, but what
Craig saw stopped him finding any satisfaction or hope in his
attack. The wound that Rachel had inflicted on the creature
squirmed. Bony emaciated fingers sheathed in slime split out from
the flesh each side of the wound, and the two hands clasped
together over the gash, it glowed and was then no longer a wound.
The thing could heal itself. It carried around a store of harvested
organs and body parts in its sac so it could regenerate.

Craig pressed on with his
attack. It was all he could do. They had to damage it quicker than
it could heal itself. Had to exhaust its harvest. The creature
leapt forward on its six legs. Its sixth leg had re-grown! In a
single bound of its legs it cleared half the gap between the
creature and Craig. The shock movement sent his aim wild again,
nails ricocheted off the concrete ceiling in a shower of sparks and
masonry dust before they fell tinkling to the ground around him.
The lower part of the creatures face opened up as it lunged at him,
its mandibles snapping wide leaving a trail of thick mucous
stringing from its gaping maw. Its two jointed arms reached from
the base of its long neck and prepared to puncture Craig’s chest
and snap off his head with its jaws.

He turned his face away from the
imminent attack and kept pumping his finger on the trigger. He saw
Cat get up from the floor. The toy-like flare gun rushed across the
ground, leapt up through the air and into her waiting hand as if
pulled by an invisible force. Her jade eyes glowed with an internal
green furnace.

Craig still had a head.
He wasn’t speared to the ground. He dared to look back at the
creature and saw it was held fast in its striking pose, thrashing
violently like a great crane fly trapped in an invisible
web.
Was Cat doing that?

There was a pop and Cat’s hand
was kicked back by her gun as it expelled its load in a fizzing
whoosh of smoke and light. Individual colours were suddenly burned
away by a red fire as the smoking flare leapt the small distance
from the weapon into its targets chest to the left of its neck. The
creatures rib cage rocked with the impact and tendons and muscle
burned away with the intense heat. The creature staggered backwards
screaming the loudest Craig had heard it scream. Its legs and arms
clawed frantically and uselessly at the lodged flare as the ball of
intense heat continued to turn its flesh into flame.

Kelly appeared in the doorway,
and nearly stumbled back out when she saw the creature. Craig
called for her to help him. She didn’t even hesitate, and rushed to
his side. She pulled the top locker away, and Craig found he could
push the other one away himself. Thankfully the one that had
covered most of his body must have been fairly empty. Movement was
painful, but he was getting used to pain with his recent injuries.
He just had to find the right way of holding himself to avoid
triggering the pain. Kelly dragged Craig to his feet and he soon
found there wasn’t a way of avoiding the pain. Both of his legs
hurt, and his chest ached with every breath.

He continued to pump nails into
the creature while he hung off Kelly. “We have to get out of here.”
Cat stood and stared into the creature that thrashed wildly but it
couldn’t get through the invisible wall that seemed to be there. “I
don’t know how long Cat can keep that up.”

“
Where’s
Rachel?”

Kelly’s face twisted in anguish,
and tears streamed down her face before Craig could explain. She
could see Rachel’s body.

“
No. No, Craig. Tell me
she’s injured.”

“
Kelly we have to
go.”

“
We can’t leave
her.”

Craig grabbed her and was
dragging her now. “We can and we must. If we don’t get out of here
now we will lose our only chance of killing this thing. We have to
make Rachel count.”

The flare faded and the darkness
fought its way back. Free of pain the creature stopped thrashing.
Cat held the creature in her continual stare but now it stared back
and began to walk forward. Its pace was slow, one leg then another.
The air was still clearly holding the thing back from rushing them
somehow, but it was steadily gaining ground against them. There was
blood streaming from Cat’s nose and eyes and her head and shoulders
trembled with the effort of whatever she was doing to hold the
thing back. Craig dragged Kelly out of the door and up the stairs
to the lobby. Cat didn’t have long. He pulled his phone out of his
pocket and thumbed speed dial through to Jason’s phone. The ring
would be the signal that Jason was waiting for.

Chapter
Forty Seven

Cat retreated to the doors of
the first lift, the creature staring at her, its glare drawing her
energy while it pressed its will against hers, pushing itself
against the invisible barrier she held against the creature, moving
it back and gradually closing the gap between them. She pressed
herself against the metal of the lift doors, they were hot, but
then so was the air around her. The fires they had started were
burning fiercely, destroying the objects they had used as fuel,
causing the pile nearest the lift to collapse towards her bringing
the flames uncomfortably close. She attempted to kick at the pile
and the creature gained half a metre on her. She stopped any
thought of doing anything but holding the creature back. She
wouldn’t get past the creature to the fire door that Craig and
Kelly had left by; the lift was her only way out now. Besides, she
needed the creature at the lifts or their plan might not work.