Whoever he’d seen at the time, she had helped him up and sent him on his way.
He glanced at his watch now and walked on. Almost one A.M.; he should be getting home. His parents were pretty liberal when it came to allowing him out, insisting only that they know where he was going. But Marty was a bright kid, and he knew the worry he must be putting them through. They’d lost one child, and they’d do anything within their power to avoid losing another. Once he got home, they’d go to sleep at last.
He passed a bunch of drunks, yuppies in sharp suits and high skirts, and one of the women called something to him. He walked on without looking. Male laughter followed, and he was glad to turn a corner and put buildings between them.
It was the eyes that had convinced him it was Rose. It had been too dark to see their expression, but it had been like looking into his own.
He followed his familiar route, the couple of pints of cider he’d drunk tiring him more than anything else. He was looking forward to bed, and perhaps he’d dream of Paulina. Gaz kept telling him he didn’t have a chance, but the sexy Spanish girl he’d met at their local pub two weeks before had been on his mind ever since—olive skin, dark eyes, and a permanent smile that held a promise of wonders. She’d apparently moved into the area with her extended family—there had been at least six of them at the Dick Turpin that evening—and that first time she’d got drunk on white wine and made out with Marty in the pub’s beer garden. He’d slipped his hand inside her blouse and held her breast, small and smooth, with a nipple as large and hard as an acorn, and she’d giggled and pushed him away, wagging her finger as she staggered backwards toward the pub. Since then she’d given him only coy smiles, and Gaz didn’t believe for a second that Marty’d had a handful.
Yeah, Paulina. Maybe tomorrow he’d—
Something came. Marty paused, looked around. Nothing had changed, but the night suddenly felt loaded, silent darkness thickening, breeze faded like a held breath. He was standing in front of a Laundromat, its neon sign flickering on and off as it had for years. Beyond that was a closed restaurant, then a bank, then…
Nowhere to run, he thought. He looked around in a panic, searching for whatever had scared him but seeing nothing. A car drove along the street, not too fast, not too slow. A woman drove, hunched over the wheel and not even sparing him a glance. Should’ve flagged her down. Asked her for a lift home. He knew she wouldn’t have stopped, but…
But something was here.
Marty backed into the Laundromat’s recessed doorway. It stank of piss. His bladder suddenly felt full and hot. The darkness gathered, not increasing but solidifying, and then there was someone standing in the middle of the road. A man. Marty hadn’t seen him before, didn’t know where he’d come from, but he started walking toward Marty, with a casual gait but unbelievably fast, and in the second it took the man to cross the road and pavement and let his shadow fall across him, Marty had time to see what was so wrong.
The man’s fingers were too long and tipped with claws. His legs bent unnaturally, like an animal’s limbs grafted onto a person. And his face… it was inhuman. It bore all the normal features, but their combination produced something other than the man it pretended to be: nostrils flared as if smelling fine food, not a drunk’s piss. Eyes deep and impossibly dark. And his mouth… was crammed with teeth.
Marty screamed, the man crouched and hissed as if ready to leap, and then something else powered into the stranger, knocking him out of the streetscape framed by the shop doorway. Marty froze, unable to move as he listened to the terrible sounds emanating from somewhere out of sight. A scream, a growl, and then a noise that could only have been claws ripping flesh.
He leaned forward so that he could see fully into the street, staring to the left. The pavement was wide here, but the two fighting things seemed to span from shop to curbside. Limbs flailed, shadows twisted and tore, strangled and pulled, and here and there Marty saw the gleam of streetlights reflected from something pale and wet. At first he thought they were those teeth he’d seen, gnashing in a black maw. But then he heard a sickening snap, and knew that they were exposed bones.
The person he’d seen coming at him from the road—the thing—pounced from the melee, reaching for him with one clawed hand. His face was that of a ravening animal. His mouth opened wide, and something squirmed in there, as if a snake had replaced his tongue and was now tasting the blood-flecked air.
Marty was so shocked that he did not even pull back.
The other thing—he hadn’t yet made it out, couldn’t concentrate long enough to see who or what it was—swung a limb around the attacker’s face and pulled, twisting and rolling backwards. Marty heard the snap of bone, and through the paving slabs he actually felt the thud as bones gave way.
Marty retched, puking a thin gruel of cider and peanuts onto the pavement before him. All the while, he tried to keep his eyes open and focused on the conflict.
His potential attacker stood, seeming to rise and rise, even though he stood not much taller than Marty. Though he looked ragged and broken, still he retained the power and threat Marty had seen moments before. Head tilted to one side, mouth still open and displaying those terrible teeth—too many teeth, too long—he faced Marty’s savior, hissing words that he could not understand.
“Speak English, fuckhead,” his savior said, and though she had her back to him—he could tell it was a she by the curves, even though she wore a thigh-length jacket, and the stance, even though she stood crouched to repel another attack—something jarred in his chest. He did not recognize the voice or the words she spoke, but there was something there… an attitude…
“Rose,” Marty whispered, and the attacker’s eyes flickered to him again. The stranger grinned. His mouth seemed far too wide for his head, and a moment of disbelief made Marty nauseous again. This warm night was suddenly unreal, and he wondered whether Gaz had put something dodgy in his cider. Gaz had been experimenting with drugs, Marty knew that. Nothing too heavy, he claimed, but who knew what was in some of those pills?
Rose, if it was Rose, did not react to his voice. Instead she leapt at the man-thing again, knocking him back into the road. A taxi had been approaching and its brakes screeched, tires laying rubber, but when the driver leaned from his window with a curse on his tongue, Marty saw him quickly change his mind and duck back inside. Instead of driving around the fighting pair, he reversed, ricocheting from several parked cars and setting off an alarm. The screaming engine provided a counterpoint to the all-but-silent struggle before him.
Marty slipped from the doorway and started moving along the shop fronts. Thirty yards along the street was an alley; he could cut in there, jump across a few gardens, and exit into the next street. From there he could lose himself, and it would only take a few minutes…
That thing will sniff me out. His legs weakened at the thought, but it could not be denied.
The fight was relentless. There was no pulling back, circling, stalking; just close-in fighting. The shapes crashed across the street, piling into a car and setting it rocking. The windshield and side windows shattered, the glass sparkling to the ground, and by the time each shard had fallen they were already twenty yards away, one shadow holding the other against the side of a white van, pummeling a fist into the other’s face again and again, metal buckling, paint darkening as it was splashed.
Lights came on in several houses, residents reacting to the singing car alarm. Marty saw curtains shifting, and most of the lights went out again. One stayed on, and from that window he saw several flashes as a camera started snapping away.