But then … something happened. He felt the thing jerk, but the sensation was very far away, a whisper that his brain didn’t seem to have the will or energy to hang on to. Another jerk, a faraway flop, the way a fish struggled to free itself from a hook.
All of a sudden, the pressure around his neck was gone.
He wasn’t thinking anymore, didn’t know what was going on. What happened next was instinct, reflex. He heard, very dimly, a tortured, wheezy caw, the rasping cry of a bird fighting the jaws of a cat with the last of its strength. A razor of cold air sliced his throat. In the next instant, his chest exploded a bright hot burn as his tortured lungs struggled to inflate. Casey’s eyes snapped open, unseeing, his vision still blinkered, patchy, and molten, and he began to retch. Gawping, he managed another stinging, croaking bird’s caw of a breath, and another—and then, above the thunder of blood in his ears, he made out a very strange sound: a hollow, dull thuck!
Running over pumpkins. The thought was hazy, hard to hang on to, like trying to cup a fine mist. Running over pumpkins on Halloween.
2
“AH!” RIMA SWUNG again, with both hands, bringing the hammer whizzing down. Its black claw whickered, cleaving air. She’d gotten it between the shoulders the first time and was aiming for the head now, but even hurt and surprised, the thing was fast. At the last second, it flinched away, and she missed, the claw whizzing past, pulling her off-balance. She stumbled, her right knee banging into an equipment locker. Gasping against a starburst of pain, she caught herself on her hands, the hammer gripped in her right hitting the lid with a dull clank. To her left, the man-thing let out a huge bellow that she felt, blasting over her back and humming through metal.
Stand up, get up! But she already knew she was too late. She was turned around, facing the wrong way. From the corner of her left eye, she saw the thing rearing up, large as a mountain. Shifting the hammer to her left hand, she put her weight into it, whipping the hammer around and up in a vicious slice.
The creature never saw it coming, and then, in the next instant, it couldn’t, at least not from that left eye. Rima felt the bone give as the claw slammed into the ridge above the socket. Gravity and momentum did the rest. Snagged on shattered bone and soft tissue, the claw tore out the socket. The eye burst in a sludgy spray of gelatinous yellow muck. Bawling with rage and new pain, the thing reeled, pawing at the ruin as snot-colored goo slithered down its snout.
She cringed back from the mess. She couldn’t help it; it was automatic, a reflexive moment of disgust and horror; and so she didn’t understand her mistake until a half second too late—because the thing still had that one good eye.
With a roar, the man-thing drove its fist, hard and fast as a piston. The blow slammed just above the bridge of her nose, and pain detonated in her forehead to spread in molten fingers. It felt like he’d broken every bone in her face. Her mind skipped a beat, and she stumbled, her consciousness suddenly slewing to one side like a car sliding off an icy cliff.
Stay with it. Fight. But her hand was empty. Hammer … dropped it …
Another blow, solid as a battering ram, drove into her belly, punching out her breath and what was left of her strength. Doubling over, trying to pull air into lungs that would not obey, she simply crumpled.
Get up. She knew her feet were moving, but only in a useless shuffle. Her head felt as if someone had buried the business end of an ax in her skull. Her grudging lungs balked. C’mon, get up, get—
There was a sudden blinding flash of yellow light, firecracker-bright, as a deafening ba-ROOM filled the cab. The blast was so strong she felt it shiver through the deck and into her teeth.
The thing’s chest erupted in a liquid black halo. An oily rain of blood and mangled flesh sheeted over the walls and fell on Rima in a viscous shower. For a moment, she was too stunned to do anything, much less understand. The roar had been replaced by a muzzy, muffled hoosh, like water rushing past her ears. But then she felt something: a slick creep along her skin, a worming sensation over her clothes, eeling through her hair.
“Ahhh!” Rima clawed her way to her feet. To her left, the man-thing splayed, its chest replaced by a huge crater of obliterated bone and tissue. Frantic, she began swatting at the mucky bits of the monster’s flesh squirming over her chest and arms and hair. “Get off, get off, get them off!”
Through the hoosh, she heard someone say, “Rima, what is it?” Then: “Casey, are you … Jesus, what the hell?”
Still disoriented, she turned a wild look. An older boy, with dark hair and eerie blue eyes, crouched in the entrance to the passenger cab. Openmouthed, the boy stared at the wriggling bits and shivering globules of black blood. “My God, its chest,” the boy said. “It’s moving.”
“Re-repairing it-itself.” Her voice felt rusty, her tongue thick. From where she stood, Rim could see strings of the thing’s chest muscles nosing and then coiling together. Closing her eyes against a bolt of nausea, she pressed her trembling lips together and gulped against the sudden acid bite on her tongue. Something squiggled on her thigh, and she swatted it away in a fast sideswipe. The black slug of muscle sailed across the cabin to hit the far wall with a moist splot. For a second, it clung there, trembling as if trying to clear its head, before beginning a slow slither toward a neighboring splotch. She turned aside with a shudder. “Just like Father P-Preston.”
“Who?” Shotgun still in hand, the older boy was helping Casey ease to a sit against an equipment locker. “What’s going on? What is this thing?”
“D-don’t know.” Groaning, Casey clamped an arm to his left side. “My th-throat f-feels broken,” he croaked. “H-hurts to … ahhh!” He threw his head back as the other boy probed his chest, and Rima saw a necklace of purple-black bruises ringing Casey’s neck. “God, Eric, d-don’t.”
Eric. Of course, his name is Eric. He and Casey are brothers. She put a hand up to her throbbing forehead and felt the beginnings of a knot. Why couldn’t I remember? What’s wrong with me?
“I’m sorry, Case,” Eric said, calmly enough, although Rima saw a ripple of fear as the older boy touched a gentle hand to Casey’s bruised jaw. “My God, what happened to your face? Can you walk?”
“Y-yeah. It’s a long story.” Wincing, Casey backhanded a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. “Where’s Emma? How did you guys find us?”
“She’s back at this farmhouse we found. The fog pulled us here, me and these two guys out in the truck …” Eric made a face. “That sounds pretty nuts.”
“No, it doesn’t. Fog got us, too,” Casey said, then looked up as Rima dropped to her knees by his side. “Rima, are you … God, you’re hurt.”