With a glower, Moore started off, Andrew and Alice trailing behind him. “You’re not going to shoot me,” Moore said. “Not in front of Alice.”
“You sure about that?” Andrew asked and he fired the gun again, sending a round into the drywall. The gun shot was deafening in the confined quarters of the hallway and Alice screeched in frightened surprise. Moore whirled, wide-eyed with alarm.
“I’m crazy, remember?” Andrew said to him. “Your words, not mine.”
Moore glared at him. “You’re wasting your bullets,” he said at length through his teeth, bristling as he turned and started to walk again.
They ventured deep into the darkened building for ten minutes. When Andrew had been locked inside by himself, trying to find an exit, he’d easily gotten lost because all of the corridors had looked alike to him. Without the overhead glow of numerous fluorescents and only the dim light of the emergency bulbs to guide them, they were even more confusing. So much so, that when Moore drew abruptly to a halt in front of him, Andrew had no idea if it was because they’d reached his office or not. For all he knew, they could have backtracked to the exact spot they’d started from and he wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.
“What is it?” he asked. “Why did you…”
His voice faded as he heard a noise in front of them, emanating from one of the dark, shadow-draped spaces between the faint circumferences of emergency light.
“…stop?” he finished clumsily, because he recognized the wet snuffling, like the jowls of a water-logged bloodhound dragging against the floor while it tried to pick up a scent. O’Malley had made a sound like that because that’s exactly what he’d been doing, trying to smell Andrew in the infirmary.
Shit, he thought.
“Shit,” Moore whispered, backpedaling. Apparently the prospect of Andrew and his pistol didn’t intimidate him as much as whatever lay ahead of them in the hallway, and that fact alone raised the hairs along the nape of Andrew’s neck all the more uneasily.
Shit, he thought again.
“Shoot the heart,” Moore hissed at him.
Andrew cut him a glance. “What?” Then out of the corner of his gaze, he saw movement, and looked back down the corridor in time to see something step out of the shadows, emerging slowly into nearest proscenium of light.
Ashen and nude, the creature’s neck was indistinguishable from its broad shoulders and hunchbacked spine thanks to bulbous, swollen growths that had erupted from its skin. Like O’Malley, these tumors had threatened to cover its face and upper torso. However, unlike O’Malley, the growths had overtaken its forearms and hands, covering them in heavy layers of swollen nodules and scaly, wart-like growths, almost like tree bark. Its fingers had fused together, leaving it with three unnaturally elongated, talon-like claws. Beneath the surface of its pale flesh, a tangled network of prominent veins were visible, blood vessels that pulsated and throbbed like live snakes or eels.
“A screamer,” Alice whispered, trembling as she shied behind her father’s hip, her fingers clutching anxiously at his shirt tail.
The screamer saw them and hunkered down, its grotesquely distended hands dropping to the floor like paws. Its brows furrowed, its eyes red-rimmed and shadow-draped, and its lips pulled back as it bared its teeth.
“Shoot the heart,” Moore said again, then when the creature sprang at them, leaping from the ground with impossible, cat-like speed and fluidity, he screamed it out, snatching Alice by the hand and scrambling backwards. “Shoot the heart! For God’s sake, shoot it in the heart!”
Andrew shot it in the head instead, and it snapped in mid-air like a puppet with its strings abruptly cut. A thin arc of blood trailed behind it as it crashed to the floor, landing spread-eagle on its back, more blood pooling around its head in a widening circumference.
Keeping his gun arm extended, though shaky, Andrew inched toward it, fanning his free hand in front of his face and blinking against reflexive tears as the pungent smoke waned.
“Did you hit it?” Moore asked, little more than a croak from behind him.
Andrew nodded, glancing back at him. Moore held Alice in a fierce embraced, shied against the wall, both of them wide-eyed with frightened shock.
“In the heart?” Moore asked.
Andrew looked down at the screamer, close enough to take it fully into view. The bullet had taken out a broad, meaty swath from its cheek and jaw, peeling back flesh to leave underlying muscles, tendons and bones all starkly revealed. From there, it had punched deep into the skull, leaving behind a bloody, spongy channel, before apparently exiting the opposite side.
“Did you shoot it in the heart?” Moore asked again.
Letting the gun fall limply to his side, Andrew squatted beside it. This was one of the soldiers, he thought. Despite its grotesque appearance, it hadn’t been some sort of horror movie monster. Like O’Malley, it had been somebody’s husband or son, a living, breathing human being.
And I killed him, Andrew thought, feeling sick.
“Did you shoot it in the heart?” Moore screamed, and Andrew looked back at him, startled by both his persistence and vehemence.
“No,” he snapped, scowling as he stood. “I shot it in the head, took out about half its skull from the looks of things. I think that’s going to do the goddamn trick.”
Alice ripped herself loose from her father’s embrace, hands outstretched as she shrieked. “Andrew, look out!”
He pivoted, surprised and bewildered, and the screamer tackled him, sending him crashing to the ground. It had scrambled up from its supine position so quickly and silently, Andrew hadn’t even suspected. Now it landed against him heavily, knocking the breath from him, plowing his head soundly into the floor. In an instant, it had him pinned, one of its enormous, misshapen hands mashed against his face, craning his cheek toward the floor, leaving his throat vulnerably exposed. He’d dropped the gun and could see it on the ground in front of him. It had skittered just out of his reach, and beyond that, pressed in horror against the far wall, he saw Alice.
Oh, God, it’s going to kill me right in front of her, he thought in a moment of sheer, blind terror. Oh, God, Alice, don’t look!
“Andrew!” she screamed, rushing forward, shrugging loose as Moore tried to grab her, restrain her.
“Alice, no,” he cried out, hoarse and stricken.
“Leave him alone,” Alice shouted, then Moore hooked her by the sleeve and whipped her smartly around, grabbing her again. It was too late, however. Distracted by Alice’s movement, her cries, the screamer scrambled off of Andrew and toward Moore and his daughter.
Moore’s eyes cut frantically about as he searched for any semblance of a weapon. “Here,” he called out. He pushed Alice into a corner, then stepped away in a broad stride, holding his arms out, waving them madly, capturing the screamer’s attention instantly. “Here,” he shouted again, backing down the corridor, trying to lead it away. “Here I am. Come and get me. Come on.”
“Daddy,” Alice mewled, clapping her hands to her face. When the screamer lunged at Moore, forcing him to turn and run, she screamed more loudly. “Daddy!”
The screamer was fast, impossibly so, and Andrew stumbled to his feet, snatching the fallen pistol off the floor. Though Moore cut a frantic, zig-zagging path down the hall, the creature stayed straight on course, bee-lining for him, and when Andrew squeezed the trigger, the bullet plowed into the meat of its shoulder, spinning it wildly, knocking it off its feet.
In a flash, it was upright again, whirling about and charging back at Andrew, using its deformed hands and feet to break into a wide, frenzied gallop. Andrew staggered backward, keeping the gun raised.