The Skunge (37 page)

A doorway loomed in his vision. A dark tunnel entrance. Another of Juniper Ridge's many doorways, perhaps. Who knew where this one would lead? An entrance, or an exit: what was the difference? He knew how important it was to reach that door, though he no longer remembered why.

A woman. Someone he had searched for without knowing, and found her in a scummy little California town. A wave of sudden clarity washed over him. It was the doing, not having
done
something;
that
was the goal. He wanted to share his sudden knowledge with Sugar. Together they could discuss it. Turn it over between them, passing it back and forth like a polished stone. He wanted to tell the child, once old enough, about the distance between the past and the present, and how to bridge that gap in the space of a lifetime.

Perhaps he would see her, and the child, beyond the door.

He pulled himself through the threshold, and into the nothingness beyond. The last of the light in his mind sputtered and winked out.

Arneson—or a man who called himself that, but forever a man without a name—let go of the past.

He died.

CHAPTER SEVENTY SEVEN

Brayle leaned over Arneson's body. A tremor ran through his body, starting at the legs and ending in a bone-rattling seizure that brought him to his knees. More seizures racked him. His head swung back and forth in a helpless gesture of negation. The shaking quickened, faster and faster until his alien face became a blur. His eyes were nothing but wet white smears in the blurred green smudge of his face. Tiny crackling and tearing sounds emerged from him, growing louder.

Brayle's head exploded. Streamers of Skunge, splashed with blood and brains, rained down on the tunnel floor with sick plops. Something squirmed its way out of the ragged squirting hole of Brayle's neck, something black and green and red, a bundle of Skunge shaped like a brain. It knitted itself into a crude facsimile of a head, complete with a ragged slash for a mouth and two whorled knots of pulsing Skunge in place of eyes. The head opened its mouth and screamed.

Humans and Skungers fell, deafened, to the floor, blood pouring from ruptured ears. Freshets of gore ran from their noses and ears, as their brains were battered by Sugar's squealing, buzzing, alien scream of mourning.

After it was gone, the air rang with it, until something new took its place.

A voice boomed from the docks, amplified into a cataclysmic roar that thrummed through the concrete of the tunnel. As the echoes died, so too did Brayle's spasms and quivering palsy. He collapsed back into the driver's seat of the cart.

"
COME, CHILDREN.
" The voice was immense, irrefutable, rumbling through the air like thunder. "
COME, AND MEET YOUR MAKER
."

CHAPTER SEVENTY EIGHT

There, in the middle of the docks, a black SUV. Maas stood before it, his face bearded with Skunge, body lumped with it, arms ringed with growths. He still wore his California surfer-boy shorts and flannel shirt. He leaned against the back doors of the SUV, one leg kicked up with nonchalant ease.

He smiled as the Skungers entered. When he saw Sugar, he spread his arms wide. "Welcome to the party." He laughed. "You know, I was kind of pissed at you about this—" he indicated his Skunge-covered arms. "But now that I'm used to it, it's the best thing that's ever happened to me. This is the future, baby!" He waved his hand at Christian and the army of Skungers. Now he turned serious, but his eyes retained a humorous twinkle. "And guess what? I brought you something else." He unzipped his shorts. Between his legs, where his penis had been, a long, thorny tentacle whipped through the air like an enraged snake. He cackled. "Come to Daddy."

Sugar's alien voice hissed from Brayle's new mouth. "
You are not my father
," she said.

"Well, you're right about that, honey," Maas said. He turned and opened the back doors of the SUV. "But I brought him to you."

The thing that had been Christian Neumann poured out of the SUV, a writhing black and green nightmare of crawling, hungry flesh. Faces rose, submerged, and rose again in the corrupt flesh. If Sugar was a goddess, Christian was a god—or a devil. A deity of perfect madness.

Some of the guards screamed and bolted as he emerged. They raised their phones, triggering the disruptor signal over and over, but the effects were lost in the booming space of the docks. Men fell to their knees, terrorized beyond reason by Christian's corruptive presence and their own fear. Christian left viridescent pools of slime on the concrete as his cancerous mass flowed forward, the amorphous lines of his body slopping over the guards where they knelt in supplication. Their bones crunched as he absorbed them, their screams not cut short but only gradually muffling as they were digested alive.

Maas turned to the Skungers. His laugh, sounding more like a scream now, rose over the other sounds, jagged and bright and splintery with madness. "Take them! Take them and offer them to your new
God
!" He raised his arms, and the Skunge on his body whipped frantically.

The Skungers turned on the guards and began to slaughter them. A red-bearded guard squealed in terror as four Skungers converged on him, tearing at him. Another sobbed and cried out for God to rescue him while they ripped open his torso and yanked out handfuls of glistening pink guts. They threw the bodies to Christian, who sucked them in through his gelatinous surface. He grew larger with every feeding. He made huge, contented grunting sounds, especially when fed a human who was still alive.

Brayle turned his new Skunge head toward Maas, the pulsating knots of his eyes seeming to grow.

Finally, only a handful of humans were left—the rest torn to shreds or drowning in Christian's guts as he gorged. The rest, including Crantz, huddled in a miserable group, ringed by Skungers.

Christian was larger now, fed with blood and souls. He turned to Sugar, pulsing with unending sick hunger. "
JOIN US
." He extruded a long pseudopod of tissue. It reached toward her like a blind worm. "
BECOME ONE WITH US
."

Brayle's body, puppet-like, stepped between Christian and Sugar and spoke. "
The end of change comes soon
."

Maas uttered a barking laugh. "Bitch, we are going to change the
world
."

With shaking hands, Brayle ripped open his lab coat. He was naked underneath. He dug into his belly, tearing at the flesh. Chunks of skin flew from his furrowing hands. Blood welled up and dripped in clots down the front of his pants. He clawed through until he reached the tense red layer of muscle underneath. The Skunge flowed down over his arms and speared into the muscle, tearing it open with a sound like wet sheets in a cold wind. Finally, his fingers scrabbled at the wet gray sac of his stomach, and he plunged his hands into his own gut.

When his hand emerged, he held the blinking steel tube of the bomb. The pulses of light came faster, and faster. It began to emit shrill noises.

beep beep beep

Some tiny part of Lester Brayle must have remained deep within his broken, spoiled body. The last vestige of air in his lungs pushed out one last word in a dying croak. "No," he said.

"Sugar?" Maas said. He sidled closer to Brayle's shaking body.

Sugar's voice issued from Brayle's gaping mouth. "
The end of change comes now
."

"No!" Maas and Christian screamed. Maas leaped for the scientist.

beep beep beep beepbeep beeeeeep

CHAPTER SEVENTY NINE

Explosions can be beautiful, in their own way. This one was no exception. In the first milliseconds, blue-white fire blossomed; it grew from a blinding point of light to a white death's-head looming over them all.

Christian exploded like a pile of rotting shit under the spray of irradiated fire. Maas was blasted into ash, then even that was vaporized. Brayle's last thoughts were of his son. The surviving humans died with the image of the glowing white skull of fire imprinted on the back of their eyes. The Skungers were consumed in the cleansing fire.

All but one.

CHAPTER EIGHTY

The tunnel door opened with a rumble. Heat roiled out from the docks, rippling the air. Sugar dropped the phone she had been holding and entered the tunnel.

Her skin was luminous: electric lashes of blinking light limned every curve and angle of her body. Her translucent skull was filled with coiling green vines that writhed like living tattoos.

She could have been the goddess of love, or death, or change.

Beside her stood a child. The boy was every bit as wondrous as his mother: underneath his skin, the dark trails of Skunge twined, intricate as a fingerprint. He took his mother's hand as they regarded the dead man on the floor. He looked up at his mother. She gazed back at him with eyes like undersea sunlight.

A living, tactile silence passed between them.

She knelt, pale green muscles working smoothly, and rolled him onto his back. His face, obscured behind a mask of blood, was at peace. She stroked the lines of his face, noting each scar and line. His left eye was a churned red horror, but the right eye was only plastered closed with blood. She touched his face. A slender thread emerged from her fingertip, twisting around her finger before brushing against him with delicate care. From underneath his eyelid emerged a slender vine of the Skunge. It rose to meet hers, and they twined together.

Sugar smiled.

THE END

Other books by Jeff Barr

Odd Ends: A Double Shot of Horror - Available at Amazon.com

Unholy Places: A Double Shot of Horror - Available at Amazon.com

Dasvidaniya: A Double Shot of Crime - Available at Amazon.com

Web:

jeffbarr.com