The Grip (2 page)

Captain, he’s left you no other choice.

Chavez was still shouting at him.

DO IT! DO IT NOW!

Cready drew his eyes back to Chavez and a chill ran through him. The engineer’s face had melted away. In its place now was the snorting face of a horned demon.

KILL HIM CAPTAIN BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!

Cready’s hand cramped around the smooth surface of his coffee mug and he swung it against the side of Chavez’s face. The mug shattered in two. Cready’s bloodied hand clutched the remaining shard. He was swaying with blood lust like a drunk in a bar fight. The engineer stumbled back, hitting the HAB wall, eyes panicked. The room shuddered. By the time he regained himself, Cready was there, slashing, ripping away flesh, tearing at Chavez’s face with orgasmic fury.

At first the flow of blood was incredible, never ending, but as it slackened to a dribble, Cready was able to look into the hole he had made in Chavez’s skull. He had never seen inside a man before, not up close. He had expected a red mash of blood and bone and a host of things unidentifiable. He hadn’t expected this. Wires, rotors and spindles. Two mechanical sockets moved artificial eyes until their silver gaze met his. They focused accusingly on him and then slowly they faded to pinpoints of light and then were gone completely. The last they saw of the world was the horror on Cready’s face. A horror that was now two-fold. One was the dawning realization that he was now alone, dreadfully and truthfully alone. The other was seeing Chavez’s true identity, his inhumanity, was making Cready question his own.

Chavez had seemed about as real as they came. At times annoying and petty. Other times forceful and courageous. He had heard of moids being used on asteroids for mining, where the duration was indeterminate, the risk to human life too great, and part of him knew that it was coming, eventually. But surely not for a mission as important as this one. And yet the form sprawled before him proved otherwise.

He looked to the computer console.

“How many robots were sent on this mission?” he whimpered. “One or two, how many?”

The computer remained silent.

“How many!” he shrieked, but there was no answer.

Cready ran to the MESS-HAB and got a knife. He stood for a long time, searching his body, looking for the best place to cut. So he would know if he was one too. He studied his hands. Which part was expendable?

He seized on his foot. How important was a pinky toe? But the answer was already there.
Not important enough
.

Cready kicked off his boot and swung his leg onto the counter. The wind outside shook the HAB and nearly sent him flying. When he’d regained himself, Cready steadied the knife over the smallest toe of his left foot. Chavez’s blood dripped from his fingers and sullied the target. Nevertheless, he pressed the knife down until he felt a biting sting of pain. His vision became dim and blotchy and the world nearly swam away from him. Blood gushed from the wound. Seemingly unconcerned, Cready studied the amputated toe. There seemed to be a sprig of bone in there, but he was beginning to distrust even his own eyes.

What else, what else can I cut? What else!

He caught sight of himself in the mirror on the far wall and limped over to it, a trail of thick clotted blood marking his passage. He turned his head from side to side. He was laughing now. There was a way, oh yes. There was a way!

Cready grabbed the top of his ear, bent the tip down, and then lowered the cool steel of the blade against the soft cartilage. He sawed in short jerky motions until the ear fell away and landed on the floor with a wet plop. He wiped at the blood pumping out of the nickel-sized hole with the white sleeve of his uniform. He strained to see inside the hole. He waited patiently. He would wait as long as he needed to. Finally he saw. And that’s when he screamed.

•  •  •

Alone at the edge of the universe, long after the screaming had finally subsided, after Cready had been alone with the soft rhythm of his own breathing for an unknowable length of time, there came a sound. The sultry quality of a woman’s voice. A beautiful woman.

Hello, Captain.

Cready looked up. There was doubt on his face.

You seem upset.

“I thought you left me.”

Why would I ever leave you?

A pause. Acute distrust as he searched the question for some note of irony. Finding none, his distrust gradually ebbed, and then dissolved altogether. “I know, it was silly.”

You and I are the only ones left.

Cready’s eyes slowly sharpened, like a man coming out of a long dream.

“Gone?”

Yes.

“All of them?”

Uh huh. Just you and I now. No one else to bother us, ever again.

Cready’s face seemed on the verge of clearing, threatening a return of the old Cready, the take charge Cready. Cready the problem solver. That moment of uncertainty seemed to linger—an hour, maybe a month—before his eyes dulled and became cloudy again. He slid back into his chair. His blood flaked hands resting peacefully at his sides. On his lips was the faint hint of a smile. Just then a thought passed through his synthetic mind. “How long is an eternity?” he wondered vaguely. He wasn’t sure, but something inside told him he was about to find out.

An excerpt from
Malice
by Griffin Hayes. Available where eBooks are sold.

Chapter 1

T
he stranger grinned and his sunken cheeks made his face look like a skull.

“Go on, Lysander,” his father, Glenn, scolded. “Shake the man’s hand.”

Lysander Shore’s family hadn’t been in Millingham longer than a week, but he was sure somehow he had met this man somewhere before. Maybe filling bags at the grocery store or delivering mail down the street? This was going to torture him the whole day.

Lysander stuffed his lunch into his knapsack and then slowly held out his hand. The cold palm that slid into his a second later made Lysander’s stomach turn. His father must have noticed the discomfort on Lysander’s face, because Glenn’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment. At least for once it wasn’t about Lysander’s black nail polish or matching combat boots.

“You’ll have to excuse the mess,” Glenn said, clearing a place on the couch where the stranger could sit. “We’re still getting settled.”

A pin on the lapel of the man’s suit jacket read “Peter Hume” and below that “Zellermann’s.” He was probably an insurance guy, Lysander thought, here about the fire that had destroyed their old house in Hayward.

The two men spoke about how the house was a complete write-off, his father running through a list of things that were destroyed, when Peter Hume peered up at Lysander. The odd glint in his eye instantly made Lysander uneasy.

“Do you have any pictures?” Hume asked Glenn. “So we can take inventory of what you lost.”

“Yeah,” Glenn said, looking at his watch. “You need those now? I gotta leave for work.”

Hume smiled apologetically. “I’m afraid so.”

Glenn sighed, as he always did when asked to do something menial but necessary, and headed for the kitchen. “You want something to drink?”

“Earl Grey would be nice.”

“That’s the only tea we have,” Glenn said robotically. He seemed dazed. Or was he hypnotized? Lysander couldn’t tell which.

Hume’s eyes were shining. “Legend has it an old Chinese man gave Lord Grey the recipe for saving his son’s life, if you believe that sort of thing.”

His father shrugged and disappeared into the kitchen.

Now Lysander and Peter Hume were alone and the air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Slowly, the smile disappeared from Hume’s face.

“You were warned not to come here,” Hume said, his voice gravelly, almost hoarse. Lysander peered down at Hume’s scalp and saw the man’s translucent flesh squeezing the plates of his skull together.

Lysander’s breath caught in his throat.

“He knows, Lysander.” Hume’s voice was more forceful. Desperate. “Knows you’re here. He knew the minute you arrived. Felt you crossing the town line, just like I did…”

Lysander’s mouth was frozen open in a mix of confusion and disbelief.

And then, Lysander knew where he had seen this man before. It was Hume’s hollow face that had been glaring back at him from the old weathered placard that greeted visitors on their way into town. And etched below him in crooked red letters had been the words:

STAY AWAY

But at the time Lysander was sure his mind had been playing tricks on him, because when he passed that same weathered sign on the town line days later, everything had changed. Even Hume’s face was gone. In its place was a beaming, happy-looking family.

WELCOME TO MILLINGHAM!

A tiny impression appeared in Hume’s forehead, and from it a thick drop of blood rolled down his face. The man’s sockets were receding into the back of his head. A noise came from the kitchen and Hume’s cavernous eyes darted over Lysander’s shoulder. The fear bubbling in his voice was palpable. “He hasn’t found me,” Hume whispered. “Not yet. But you. You, he’ll know right away.”

Lysander tried to say something, anything, but all that came was a moan.

Run Lysander! Turn your ass around and RUN!

“He could be any one of them,” Hume croaked. “They all look so innocent, don’t they? With their little white houses and their hybrid SUVs. Hard to imagine there’s a monster coiled somewhere in all that.” Hume’s eyes—black bottomless chasms now—rose to meet Lysander’s, and when he did the expression on his face fell flat. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? You haven’t remembered yet.”

Lysander felt the muscles in his chest knot with fear.

“He’s come to finish it, Lysander.” The structure of his face was coming undone. Blood flowed freely from his forehead. Into his mouth. Drenching the dark fabric of his suit and the upholstery of the couch. Lysander could see bits of splintered bone and flaps of dangling flesh. It looked like someone had redecorated his face with a tire iron. “That’s why he’s here. To finish it…”

Lysander staggered back and nearly tripped over a moving box filled with old books. Glenn reached out a hand and caught him. He was holding a cup of tea. A photo album was wedged under his armpit. “Mr. Hume?”

Hume’s face rose. Tight and skull-like, but nothing like the monstrosity from a moment before.

Glenn was handing Hume his Earl Grey when he turned to Lysander. “You better hurry or you’re going to be late for school. It’s already a quarter past.”

The alarm in his father’s voice rattled him. Lysander snatched his school bag off the floor, shoved his lunch back inside and left the room as fast as he could.

“I wasn’t really expecting you till tonight,” he heard his father tell Hume as he sped away, “so I hope we can make this fast.”

Lysander was trying to steady his hand over the front door handle when Hume replied.

“Keeping you safe and sound, that’s our motto at Zellermann’s.”

It was on the long walk to school that Lysander tried to make sense of what he had just seen. The whole thing seemed to happen so fast. Hell, he wasn’t sure he’d even closed the door behind him.

Whenever Lysander closed his eyes, that was when he’d see the stranger’s face dissolving all over again.

He’s come to finish it
, was what that creepy bastard had said.

Who was the
he
Hume had been talking about? Lysander wondered uneasily. More than that, Lysander wanted to know what he had meant by finish it?

One thing was certain, there had been a serious look of desperation on Hume’s face before it began to look like raw hamburger meat. No, more than desperation. Hume was scared shitless.

That made two of them.

Chapter 2

A heavy rain had swept over Millingham the night before, leaving the roads slick and shiny. The sky was low and thick with heavy gray clouds that threatened to open up at any moment. Samantha Crow stared out the police car window. She loved the stillness, the clean feeling after a rain, the way the air smelled soggy.

A steady clicking sounded from the car dashboard. Her father, Steven Crow, the city’s sheriff, made a lazy left-hand turn.

“People driving slow this morning,” her father said. He fancied a white handlebar mustache—a carryover from his hero, Wyatt Earp. “Good thing, ‘cause it’s slippery out there and we need to get you to school. Couldn’t afford to be pulling anyone over, now could I?” He winked at her, twitching a matching white bushy eyebrow, and she smiled weakly in return.

“You’re gonna have to think about a graduation dress, you know,” he said.

Samantha remained silent, eyes closed.

“You know, I asked your mother to prom. I don’t think I was her first choice, though.” He laughed, the way older people often laughed at the humorless things they said. “Had her eye on a boy named Billy Dobbins. But I never gave up, Sam. Went out and bought myself a nice new suit.”

Samantha’s blackened lips began to tighten.

Her father combed his mustache with the flat tips of his fingers. “She was a good woman, your mother.” He glanced over and caught her change of expression. “I’m just thinking that with the way you dress. What do they call it? Goth? I just wouldn’t be surprised if some nice boy might pass you up.”

“I’m not a Goth.” Her laugh bore a threatening edge. “And what’s wrong with the way I dress?” She crossed her arms, glaring straight ahead.

“No, not wrong…” he said. “Definitely not wrong, honey, just different. We don’t live in the big city, where people wear leather trench coats and knee-high boots.” His expression darkened. “I spoke to Mike Spiolis last week. You know, my friend over at the NYPD. He was telling me how a young boy and his father were waiting for the subway train when a man who lost his job as a middle school janitor came up behind them and pushed them both onto the tracks. Boy’s father managed to throw his son clear in time, but he stepped on the third rail trying to get out and jolted himself with 750 volts of electricity. When they asked the guy afterward why he had done it, you know what his answer was?”