A pair of fingers appeared, curling over the edge. A thumb followed. And… that was all. The three digits formed a tripod and moved clumsily toward him.
Cochran couldn’t breathe. The fingers looked like they’d been glued together with black sludge and held tight at the joints with gray tendrils. A fuzzy patch of white cobwebs hung down from the center of where the fingers were joined.
Another couple of fingers crept over the edge of the hole. This time, it was four fingers and a couple of stubby toes, no thumb. They tipped and swayed as they tried to crawl along.
Cochran found his feet and edged closer. He still held on to his gun. The fingers seemed to sense him and followed his movement. He nudged the thumb and two fingers back toward the hole with his toe. The other four-finger organism, aware of the proximity of his boot, rushed at him. He brushed that one back into the darkness as well.
He stood at the edge and peered down in to the hole.
Too damn dark to see anything.
He looked around, found an old dresser with a swivel mirror on top. Dragging it closer, he angled the mirror at the windows, now blazing with the morning sun. He tilted it over the hole, and blasted sunlight down into the void.
At first, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. It was like trying to piece together a painting of a human by Picasso; most of the parts were all there, but they didn’t make sense. Until the eyes opened and stared up at him. Then he saw how the head was sunk into an irregular circle of flesh, wreathed in arms, legs, exposed ribs, something that may have been a hipbone, all of it submerged in raw sewage. He tilted the mirror even farther, and saw that the walls of the hole were covered with the finger and toe creatures, along with more of the long, centipede things that scurried along with twenty or thirty different insect legs on each side.
They were all crawling up the rough cement, up to him.
For a long moment, Cochran didn’t move. His mind simply couldn’t accept the horrors that dripped with human excrement crawling up out of the rural septic tank. But as soon as a pair of tiny cricket legs crested the edge of the access hatch and the rest of the wriggling creature followed, heading straight for his boot, he jumped backward and aimed the Nighthawk.
He squeezed off three rounds before he realized it wouldn’t help.
More of the fungus organisms followed, climbing their way out of the septic tank.
Cochran started for the cellar doors, but stopped. What if there were more of the bigger things outside, the ones that were using possum and skunk legs? They seemed tougher than the insect creatures. They moved faster too. His eyes went to the old lumber that covered the basement and served as the floorboards for the house above. He could now see faint light between some of the seams, and how several of the two-by-twelves had long cracks running along their length.
He hefted the handgun. He wasn’t entirely sure how many rounds he’d torched off, but there had to be at least five or six left. Not nearly enough to protect himself against the monsters crawling out of the septic tank. He thought of another use.
Thick, sloshing sounds were coming out of the access hatch.
He didn’t want to know if that awful flower thing with the horrible open eyes was trying to get out. His eyes went to the ceiling again, following the cracks. He found a spot where several of the cracks intersected each other and dragged the dresser over and set it right under the section that seemed to be the most vulnerable to damage.
Then he took the Nighthawk, squinted, and aimed up at the floorboards. He squeezed off round after round, moving his hand in a tight circle. Turned out there were six cartridges left. When the gun was empty, he had an oval punched through the floor above, like some kind of child’s perforated artwork.
He climbed up on the dresser and used the empty handgun to hammer at the wood in the center of the circle. It took a while, but eventually it started to crack. Within fifteen minutes and bashing the shit out of the two-by-twelve, he smashed a hole into the first floor of the farmhouse.
He tossed the gun through the hole, grabbed two sides, and hefted himself up. He crawled out of the ragged hole and found himself in the kitchen. He lurched over to the fridge and seized the top corners. Rocking it back and forth, he toppled it over with a crash. The entire floor groaned and made some teeth-clenching cracking noises, but the structure held, and the hole he had climbed through was now covered with a heavy refrigerator.
He made a quick sweep of the first floor. No firearms. No shells. The driveway was empty, but he knew that his bosses had given his location to the “extraction” team. They had to be close. If he tried to escape on foot, he wouldn’t get far enough.
He needed backup.
There was a phone on the wall in the kitchen.
He dialed 911.
CHAPTER 19
Sandy parked her cruiser in Dr. Castle’s lot and walked around to the back of the building. A black awning covered the narrow driveway, protecting a pair of double doors. This was where the two funeral homes in Parker’s Mill picked up the bodies.
She knocked and stepped back. As she waited, she noticed a sign taped to the inside of the window. “We’re sorry, but we’re closed for the holiday. If this is an emergency, please call 911.”
She tried the door.
It was open, and swung wide on well-oiled hinges.
Sandy stuck her head inside and called out, “Hello?” No immediate answer. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. “Hello? Anybody around? This is Chief Chisel. Anybody hear me?”
She went out to the waiting room. It was empty, along with the office behind the counter. She checked the two examination rooms. Nobody. It looked like everybody had gone to the parade.
She went past the freight elevator to the stairs that led to the basement and called down, “Hello? Dr. Castle?”
Ugly fluorescent light spilled out of a square little window in the door at the bottom of the stairs. She descended the narrow stairwell and tried the door handle. Part of her expected it to be locked and another part was hoping it would be, so she could leave.
The handle twisted easily and clicked obediently open. She stepped into the morgue. The place smelled of formaldehyde and bleach. It was a clinical smell, not rotten at all. Sometimes, Dr. Castle had to handle a traffic accident where the body had been laying in the sun for too long, or the occasional suicide that had ripened before being discovered, so he always made sure the morgue was well ventilated and spotless.
The refrigerated drawers waited off to the left. A stainless steel table with several drains set into it and a large utility sink were set off to the right. Sandy wanted to call out for Dr. Castle again, but it was clear that the room was empty.
Except for the body bag on the table in the center of the room.
She’d been in here before, plenty of times, mostly to acknowledge Dr. Castle’s findings and sign on the dotted line. Yes, this person had died instantly when their minivan had struck the Christmas tree truck in a head-on collision. Yes, this person had drowned after getting drunk and falling out of his rowboat into the Mississippi River. Yes, this infant had been beaten to death by her father.
Sandy didn’t like being down here.
She pulled out her phone and dialed Dr. Castle’s home number. Nobody picked up. She hung up without leaving a message and took two steps toward the table.
The black plastic of the body bag crinkled, shifted. Sandy stopped. Her right hand had dropped to the handle of her Glock, but she had no idea of how her sidearm would help. Still, she didn’t let go.
Something moved again inside the plastic.