Husk (47 page)

“
Just do it,” Melissa ordered. “I told you, lives are at stake here, kids’ lives.”

Jimmy grimaced but throttled forward, swinging the semi wide to make the turn. They arced all the way across the road, where the driver-side bumper collided with the stalled Lexus and forced it off the shoulder, into the ditch.

Plowing onto the forest trail, the huge truck mowed down dense clusters of bushes and flattened several saplings. Pushing on, the branches of taller trees raked the cab’s walls, screeching across its roof and windshield and hissing past Melissa’s door.

CHAPTER 59

Mallory huddled with Tim and her father at the top of the church steps. Her ears still rang from the unexpected explosion that destroyed the station wagon in a single annihilative blast. The invisible hands of the shockwave had shoved her in the chest, knocking her flat. She’d fallen against Tim, both of them landing on their backs to the sight of a fiery orange cloud rolling skyward above the church.

She sat up.

The back half of the station wagon now lay in a twisted pile in the middle of the parking lot and smaller fragments continued to rain down through the surrounding treetops. Other than that, the night had taken on an eerie calm in the aftermath of the vehicle’s destruction. Even the storm entered an uneasy lull.

“
Is everyone okay?” her dad asked.

He’d been in the process of attempting to force open the church’s doors when the blast occurred, and he’d been flung through the boards amid a whirlwind of dust and rotted wood.

Tim pushed to his feet and moved to the staircase’s railing. “We’re okay,” he said. “But what about the man you arrived with?”

Mallory looked to her dad and saw him swallow hard. At the far edge of the parking lot, beyond Derrick’s disabled Mercedes, the ground at the forest’s tree line looked like an old war photo out of Vietnam. The nearest trees bristled with dozens of bright gashes where shrapnel had stripped away their bark, and a hundred deformed auto parts lay scattered across the dirt.

Mallory watched her dad stand up, noticing he still clutched the pistol he’d fired at the creature.

“
How many shots left?” Tim asked.

“
Five, I think,” he said. “You two get inside. I’ll go check on Frank.”

“
No,” Mallory cried. She leapt to her feet. “Dad, that thing’s not dead. It’s just out there somewhere, waiting for us.”

“
She’s right,” Tim added. “This is the safest place there is.”

Her dad ran a shaky hand across his face then stepped to the edge of the steps.

“
Frank,” he shouted.

His cry echoed in the distance, answered by a flash of lightning and a growl of thunder.

Mallory gasped at the sight the lightshow revealed, clutching her father’s arm.

Under the glare of the storm, they spotted a fallen tree at the far side of the lot and a man’s hand reaching up from behind it.

And from what they could see, his skin was covered in blood.

* * *

“
Becky… Becky, wake up.”

“
What happened to her—Oh, God!”

“
Help me, Lisa.”

“
There’s so much blood. Is she dead?”

“
No, she’s breathing, but—”

Becky stirred at the voices of her friends, suddenly realizing she wasn’t dreaming. At first she couldn’t remember anything. Then the night’s fiendish roller coaster of insane events thundered out of a black tunnel in her memory and she jolted awake, sitting up fast enough to make Adam and Lisa jump in surprise.

“
What happened?” she cried.

She recalled the inky pool of strange liquid and the freakish forms she’d glimpsed within its depths. Then something exploded. She’d stood to flee from the horrid vision in the pool when she witnessed the strobe of the detonation in the corner of one eye. Part of her thought a lightning bolt struck the ground beside her, whereas a more sinister inner voice suggested someone had shot her pointblank in the head.

Now she looked to the faces of her friends, trying to understand their expressions of mixed terror and disbelief.

Following their gazes, she looked down at herself.

And saw the blood.

Huge splashes of red streaked her arms and legs; a terrible wetness soaked her shirt.

Fear whispered all manner of possible injuries in her mind, but when she looked around she discovered the huge stone obelisk lying in the dirt beside her.

“
It’s not mine,” she said. “I’m not hurt. I must’ve got splashed when that thing fell over.”

Adam helped her to her feet. “You’re lucky you didn’t get crushed.”

Becky opened her mouth to reply, but stopped short when a sudden noise overpowered her words.

A wire snapping.

The noise came again, and again, followed by a crash that sounded like it came from behind them.

Inside the ambulance.

Everyone swung around to see the vehicle rocking on its shocks. The paneling of the front doors screeched against the tree trunks with each shift, while a clamorous tantrum of activity raged from inside.

“
It can’t be,” Adam said. “It just can’t.”

“
It is,” Becky cried.

“
No,” Lisa mewed.

And before Becky had a chance to voice her suggestion to flee, the blasphemous patchwork monstrosity tore free from the vehicle. It kicked the back doors out of its way, sending both flying off their hinges with a shriek of rent metal. The thing slid out the opening, using its massive arms to peel back the roof and make way for its head.

Becky stood paralyzed by the sight, her sanity grappling with emotions that surpassed all the rational boundaries she’d developed in the scope of her lifetime.

Beside her, Lisa fainted. On the other side, Adam had vanished.

Becky remained immobilized, certain the walking mound of reconstructed corpses would come after her next.

Instead, it strode toward the church, laying waste to everything in its path.

CHAPTER 60

Frank slid out from his refuge behind the fallen tree and used the trunk to help pull himself upright. The concussive force of the explosion had knocked his equilibrium off kilter for a moment, but the large tree managed to protect him from the dangerous shards of flying debris. By comparison, he’d fared better through the blast of the car bomb than the cell phone explosion.

He flexed the fingers of his damaged left hand, grateful for the pain and the throb of sensation.

But the fight wasn’t over.

He looked to the graveyard, knowing it was only a matter of time before the entity found another body and resumed its attack. If only he could stall it long enough to—

Frank tensed at the sound of a girl’s voice.

“
No, Dad! Come back!”

He looked to see Paul Wiess step off the church’s staircase and break into a run, no doubt coming to help, despite the danger.

Frank stood up, waving him back. The man was already halfway across the lot before he got close enough to see.

“
Paul, don’t leave your daughter!”

A look of relief softened Paul’s face when he saw Frank was unhurt, and his run slowed to a jog. “Frank! Thank, God, you’re all right. I thought you were dead.”

Frank inhaled, about to reply, but the words stopped in his throat when he saw the trees swaying at the edge of the forest. The ominous crackle of broken branches swelled out of the dark.

“
Paul, run!”

The monster burst from the forest ten feet to Paul’s left, leaping into view among a downpour of shredded plants and knocked-over trees. Its feet hit the ground and punched twin craters in the dirt.

Overhead, lighting slashed a jagged wound in the clouds. The blaze revealed the monstrous proportions of the entity’s new form and the ghastly product of its exploits.

Frank gasped. “An
amalgamate
!”

The buried past erupted from Frank’s memory, and he staggered away from the onslaught of unwanted emotions that welled up in his mind. Terror trapped him in a merciless grip.

In the parking lot, Paul Wiess slid to a halt. He gazed at the beast, mouth agape. Frank saw his own fear in the man’s face, magnified beyond all understanding. The gun in Paul’s hand seemed utterly forgotten.

The creature lunged.

Paul shrank away from it, but Frank saw he couldn’t take his gaze off the madness before him. The thing swept him up with ease, clutching his throat in a huge, inhuman hand.

“
DAD!”

The girl’s cry struck Frank like a slap in the face.  His fear of the past vanished in an instant, replaced by the dread of what would happen if the entity succeeded in using Paul to coerce—

Mallory stepped away from the church.

“
No!” Frank shouted.

The other teenager, the boy, held her back, needing to wrap his arms around her waist to keep her from breaking free.

Paul thrashed in the monster’s grasp. He clung to its fetid flesh when it lifted him upward, bringing his face level with its head. His feet kicked in the open air two feet off the ground.

Frank bound over the fallen tree and rushed forward.

The monster’s voice rumbled out of the tomb of its body, each word filled with an alien loathing for all human life.

“
Mallory, your father needs you.”

Frank charged onward, closer and closer. He tore off his jacket and shoulder holster, abandoning what remaining weapons he had, knowing they’d do him no good.

Thirty feet away Paul aimed the pistol. Frank knew the weapon would be useless against the monster’s dead flesh, but the creature chose to snatch the man’s firing arm out of the air before he could shoot. Its grip tightened, cinching down on his forearm, and Paul bellowed with pain as the bones snapped in a series of five horrible cracks.

Mallory screamed, begging the creature to stop.

The boy continued to cling to her.

“
Come save your father,” the thing called. “You have the power to heal him, Mallory. Just as I healed you.”

Frank neared within ten feet—

“
Or…”

—
Five feet—

“
You can watch me tear him apart!”

Frank struck.

The beast swung around to meet him, but Frank anticipated its awareness. He ducked the assault and rammed his shoulder into its midsection, feeling the ungodly husk of meat and bones succumb to the impact. Its putrid outer skin stretched, pulling apart seams that expelled noxious odors of the grave.

But he knocked it off balance.

It took a step backward, suddenly battling gravity. Frank claimed the advantage and plunged his fingers into a row of stitches over its bicep. He seized handfuls of fibrous muscle. With a tremendous shout he yanked a huge slab of meat from the arm holding Paul, simultaneously unfettering other strands of black sutures. A sickening chorus of wet tears and sinewy rips declared Frank’s success, and the arm cracked in half, dropping Paul to the ground. The remains dangled from leathery tethers.

“
Go!” Frank shouted.

No sooner had he spoken when the monster’s broken arm snapped back into place. The shredded tissue bound together like a cluster of octopus tentacles while the stitching rethreaded itself. The beast flexed its claws and turned its eyeless gaze toward Frank. He suddenly found himself staring up at a mouth large enough to engulf his whole head.

He gazed back. “Oh, shit.”

The beast lunged.

Frank parried a slash from one of the smaller arms then dodged a fist that punched a pothole in the dirt. He retaliated with a barrage of quick jabs. Each strike pulled away a wad of more stitching. Reeking liquid splashed from the ruptured sutures and droplets of gore cascaded over his face.

Frank growled through his disgust and snared another fistful of bindings, tearing a bundle of muscle from the monster’s right leg.

“
Not so strong now,” Frank shouted.

One of the human appendages reached for him. He grabbed it and held fast. The beast pivoted for a second assault and he ducked, twisting the joints, executing an arm lock. He braced one foot on the thing’s thigh and tore the captured limb off the body. It pulled away to the sound of snapping twine and ripped fibers.

A pestilent river of yellow fluid spilled from the hole.

Frank flung the severed arm aside. “For a ‘
god
’ you don’t seem to be holding together so well. Also, you smell like an asshole!”

The monster roared. It swung a massive paw and raked Frank’s back with its talons as he attempted to dodge. Adrenaline muted the pain, but the impact spun him around—throwing him into the other claw-tipped extremity. Its razor sharp points sliced across his chest.

They cut deep, severing muscle, scraping bone.

Night air rushed into the wound, chilling his nerves before being flushed out by a deluge of hot blood.