Nightwalk 2 Read online

  I didn’t quite know what to do. These were borderline hysterics, and I half expected her to faint again any second.

  But fortune smiled, and it appeared she started to regain control. She still gulped air, but after another thirty seconds her breathing slowed a bit and the squeaky noises stopped.

  Lupe and I looked at each other and agreed on our next move without saying a word. We carefully released Darla’s arms, but hovered close to catch her should she collapse. Thankfully, she didn’t. She immediately hugged herself and trembled once more, but her legs stayed under her.

  “Esta bien,” Lupe soothed as he patted her on the back, “No te asustes. Esta bien.”

  Whether she understood him or not, the effort on his part seemed to be helping. And seeing him do it made me realize I probably owed her a little comforting and encouragement on my part as well.

  “You made it, Darla.” I tried to sound as calm and upbeat as I knew how. “You’re okay now. See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  Yeah, sometimes the things that come out of my mouth amaze even me.

  I think she actually stopped breathing for a second. Darla went absolutely still, then raised her face and stared at me with a look akin to wonderment. She tilted her head as if trying to figure out something puzzling… and then she looked at Lupe… then she turned and looked back at the giant carnivore… then she turned back and looked at me.

  “You sicced a T-rex on me,” she said in a small, little-girl voice.

  Then she exploded.

  And by “exploded” I mean she launched into an extended, profanity-laced tirade so full of obscenities and vile invective that it would have made a biker gang slink away in shame.

  She cast aspersions on my parentage, and she cast aspersions on my parents’ parentage. Then she continued by saying unkind things about my humanity, my intellect, my manhood, my character, my hat, my sexuality, my dog (I don’t even own a dog), my appearance, my demeanor, my hygiene, my place on the evolutionary scale, and then the varying degrees of stupid looks I apparently wore upon my face.

  During all this, I think she managed to inject every single obscene word in the English language, along with a few in Spanish. Hell, I think she might have made a couple up.

  She then summed things up with a list of suggested sexual acts that would have likely been injurious or even fatal to attempt before concluding with a mighty, “AND FUCK YOU, TOO!” directed at the T-rex who now stared forlornly at us from his side of the chasm.

  Having finally run out of steam, Darla stood there with her shoulders half hunched and her chest heaving, and eyeballing me like a wild animal gone borderline rabid.

  Apparently, despite my efforts at comforting and encouragement, she was going to be upset about the whole T-rex thing.

  Lupe and I had stepped back and now watched her with wary concern, trying to discern if the explosion was really over. I briefly considered asking if this meant my status as “not a total asshole” had been revoked, but something in her overall demeanor suggested that might not go over well either.

  I also noted with some relief that Lupe had surreptitiously picked up the shotgun and apparently decided to hold on to it. Good man. It was probably better to leave him in charge of any future comforting and assurances in regards to Darla.

  On the other side of the chasm the Rex made a surly grumbling noise and I turned to see him stomp back out into the darkness. I guess he wasn’t having the best of nights either. Now having missed his shot at suburbanite-on-the-hoof, he had decided to get back to the business of hunting other chow. Either that, or Darla had hurt his feelings.

  Oh well, good riddance. At least with the chasm between us, we wouldn’t have to worry about that big bastard anymore.

  Since Darla was busy giving me the stink-eye, I decided it would be best if I just got back to focusing on the business of getting out of here. I turned my attention to the boy lying on the asphalt.

  “David?” I asked. “Can you walk?”

  He slowly made his way to his feet, but he stood oddly and somewhat bent to the side.

  “Yes sir,” he mumbled in a dull voice, “but I hurt my shoulder. It hurts really bad.”

  Crap.

  I suspected he had either separated or dislocated it when he hit the chasm’s wall. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a medic. Despite Lupe’s surprising fix of David’s nose, I doubted he had a magic solution for this either. The poor kid had to be hurting bad, and in a lot of places. Something about his overall demeanor seemed off as well. I hoped like hell it was only some minor form of shock.

  “In that case I’ll keep carrying the baby in my backpack till we get to the pipe. You focus on walking, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Once again, this kid proved himself a trooper. And the best thing I could do for him now was get him to somebody who could provide help.

  “Okay then,” I raised my voice a bit to make it clear I was addressing everybody, “time’s running out, but there is one bit of good news. The sky creatures still haven’t shown back up, which means our best path now is straight down the highway. I recommend we don’t waste any time in getting started.”

  Nobody objected, although Darla still sent me looks of pure murder.

  So, having made my pronouncement, I turned and headed north toward the drain that was their destination…

  …and the unimaginably dark and ancient being I had now figured out was mine.

  .

  Chapter Eleven: Partings

  Thus began the last, desperate leg of our journey.

  I decided the safest route would be to walk straight down the divider in the middle of the highway. Doing so would put us equally distant from any cover a beast could use to get close, and force them to cross open ground to reach us.

  On the other hand, the densely thick atmosphere meant my flare light only reached slightly past where the outer curbs would be, if we could have seen them under the ground-fog. So the effect was something like standing in a boundless, mist-shrouded limbo. Nothing to see in any direction but blank, slow-curdling whiteness under an ocean of darkness.

  But we knew which way to go.

  We could feel it.

  The massive, overwhelming presence that had passed above us at the Rocketwash still loomed over the earth to the north like an invisible thunderhead. It hung up there…unseen, hideously primeval, and unfathomably powerful. It was all the ancient nightmares of man concentrated into one titanic point in the sky. And our path would be taking us right back under its shadow.

  We moved single file, like an abbreviated column of ants crawling across the whiteness toward a malevolent Olympus.

  We didn’t make it very far. I think we had only walked sixty or seventy feet before reality reminded us that Death still lurked much closer than the obscenity in the blackness ahead.

  “What was that?” Darla hissed. “Stop a second. I heard something.”

  We came to a halt, scanning the night around us.

  Nothing.

  “What did you hear?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know. A rattle of some kind. It was off to the right.”

  I refocused my attention in the indicated direction, straining my middle-aged senses to their utmost. Things had gone very quiet now, with only the song of small alien wildlife providing a background nighttime soundscape.

  Otherwise, still nothing.

  “Darla, are you…”

  “I’m sure,” she snapped. “Now hush!”

  On the one hand, time had become even more of a factor, but on the other this was no night to be accusing anybody of imagining something. Dying before we got there was every bit as bad as being late. So once again I pushed my hearing to its limit.

  And this time I heard it.

  A soft, slithering rattle, just a bit outside the reach of my light. I recognized it immediately, and as soon as I did every hair on my neck stood up.

  It was the sound of something disturbing a chain link fence. And that w
ould be the chain link fence surrounding the storage yard where Cassie and Herman Loomis had died.

  This could be really bad.

  “Oh shit!” I breathed aloud, “Darla! Light a torch, and you guys stay back.”

  Holding the flare high aloft, I strode toward the right-hand curb with my gun at the ready. It seemed reckless, but if I had guessed right about what was happening…

  I was right.

  They were on the fence. Their pale underbellies were visible through the chain link barrier, where they clung like the world’s grisliest Halloween decorations… and they were trying to come over.

  I’m not sure how to describe them. They weren’t spiders, and they weren’t crabs, but some unholy mix of the two. The front part of their body was wide and featured the splayed legs of an arachnid, but then tapered to a “tail” possessing centipede-like legs of its own. Like the thing I had encountered on the cell tower earlier, their heads were nothing but a mass of feelers, tentacles, and antennae.

  Most of them were bigger than me, and the only reason we weren’t already dead was the looping razor wire at the top of the fence seemed to have them confused. But now that my light fell upon them, the predators gave up all pretense of stealth and began struggling to come over the fence after us.

  This was about to get ugly.

  “Darla!” I yelled, knowing my flare illuminated the ghastly sight for her benefit, too. “Hold off on lighting the torch and you guys keep going north as far as you can without it! Cassie said there is a hole in the fence somewhere that way and you don’t want to draw them toward it. Now GO!”

  There was no time for further instruction because one of the larger ones had made it to the top and now fought to disentangle one of its legs in order to leap in my direction.

  I threw my flare on the ground between me and the death-laden fence in order to free up my off hand. Then I opened fire.

  My first shot stopped its momentum, and the second knocked it over backwards off the top. There it hung by its one caught leg and struggled in what I hoped were its death throes. But I didn’t have time to check. I was too busy desperately swapping magazines because I had wasted four shots shooting the sky in order to get Darla across that chasm.

  Yet even as I struggled to get back in the fight, the first doubts had already started creeping in.

  I was about to do something totally nuts. Maybe suicidally nuts. A darkly selfish part of me insisted I was the one who needed to survive because the world needed me to survive. That if I died here, it wouldn’t matter if the others got away or not. It cried out at me to run, for humanity’s sake if not my own. And I wanted to… oh God, how I wanted to.

  But by this time I had lived with fear long enough to recognize its logic for the lie it was.

  If I ran it would only result in my own death along with the others. I had to stop these things from overwhelming us. This fence made the only chokepoint where it could be done, and I was the only one armed to do it.

  I slapped the next magazine in and the Coonan roared just in time to stop another horror from surmounting the fence. Then motion caught my eye and turned to blast two smaller ones off the wire with one shot apiece. Another one reached the top to my right, but had become hopelessly tangled in the razor wire. I opted to ignore it in order to concentrate on one of the largest ones nearing the top. That mistake almost got me killed.

  I had just readjusted my aim when a medium-sized beast crawled over the caught one and leapt at me. By “medium sized” I mean about the same size as me. And this thing could jump. It launched itself from the back of its tangled sibling and practically flew across the twenty feet separating us, with its legs spread wide for the kill.

  Shit!

  I saw it at the last second and barely dodged aside. As I did, the sudden movement combined with all the shooting finally brought to light the other factor I hadn’t counted on. The baby started crying.

  Double shit! I still had the baby in my backpack! I had been in such a hurry to cut off these thing’s attack that I hadn’t thought to hand the kid over to Darla. Now he would have to live or die with me. Dammit, when would I ever learn to think on my feet?!

  The creature hit the ground about six feet past me, and wasted no time in spinning around to confront me.

  In response, I wasted no time in stomping down on it and putting two slugs in the rough area where its head should be.

  But now I had run out of bullets again and the situation was getting dire. The Coonan .357 magnum is a powerful handgun, but its power comes at the price of a smaller magazine capacity than many of the nine millimeters that can be found on the market.. Each magazine contained six shots apiece. More than enough for normal circumstances, and I had four magazines in case things ever got a little abnormal. But I had never planned on having to stand my ground against a large group, mainly because under most circumstances it would be a stupid thing to do. Naturally, I had found the exception.

  Now I was down to two magazines, which meant I had exactly twelve shots left.

  There didn’t look to be twelve of the monsters left, but these things took more than one bullet to put down apiece. Or at least most of them did. My odds of running out of bullets before monsters loomed uncomfortably high.

  With that in mind, I swiftly selected three more of the smaller ones and blew them off the fence. A risky decision since it meant letting a larger one start clambering over wire, but I wanted to get those creatures with single bullets while I had a clear shot at them. Besides, the smaller ones were faster and harder to hit.

  But those shots had used valuable time and now the others were mounting the top. And the one on the left was a true beast with a leg span of ten or twelve feet. I pivoted toward the giant and fired my three remaining shots into it. The rounds drove it back, but it didn’t go down. And the others had now reached the top.

  One magazine left.

  I reloaded at a frantic pace and brought the pistol back to bear.

  Yet even as I did, another beast about my size made its leap. And this time I had no chance to dodge. Instead I screamed and started pulling the trigger. The creature trilled and the Coonan thundered. The horror fell dead at my feet…

  …just as another one hit me from the side.

  It drove into me from my left, wrapping its hard legs around me and causing me to stagger aside. My mind now became a shrieking chaos of, Oh holy shit, I’m dead!, It’s got me!, and Don’t fall on the baby! The last thought was actually strong enough to make me brace myself and stay on my feet. Not that it helped much. Several of the tendrils where the creature’s head should be wrapped around my neck and shoulder, and something bit down hard into my upper arm.

  The pain was incredible. I cried aloud and tried to twist in the monster’s grasp. This damn thing had already started eating me alive!

  Fortunately, my other hand held the gun. Unfortunately, while I now had it pointed in the direction of the creature, the creature’s leg had it pinned up against my chest. To fire it would risk hitting myself along with my tormenter. Even if I somehow avoided blowing holes in myself, the large flash alone would scorch my upper torso. But to not fire it was to die.

  I emptied the magazine

  Now both the monster and I screamed as the slugs cut grooves across my chest before slamming into the beast. I squeezed my eyes shut and simply focused on making myself keep firing. Every pull of the trigger caused a mind exploding instant of agony. I never knew such pain was possible. After each shot I couldn’t imagine finding the will to pull that trigger again, yet my hand seemed to have found a mind of its own. Instinct had taken over, and I was like the cricket still struggling in the jaws of the tarantula.

  Then the slide remained back, meaning I had run out of bullets.

  The creature still held me in its grasp, and for one gut twisting second I prepared to die. But then I realized it wasn’t biting me anymore. It had also stopped trilling and screaming. Apparently the damn thing had died, and just like the previous
insect-like creature I had fought, its body stubbornly refused to let go. Meaning I was trapped, unable to move.

  And the biggest one was still coming over the fence after me.

  I almost couldn’t bear to open my eyes and face the inevitable. I had fought so hard, but the math had been against me from the start. The baby wailed on my back, but I couldn’t do a thing for him either. We would die together. Maybe I should have saved a shot for us, although I don’t know how I could have gone about doing it.

  In the end, we all live with the knowledge that someday we will die. I had just never imagined it would be under the jaws of a giant, multi-legged vermin while its dead colleague held me in place.

  But it sure seemed to be taking its sweet time in getting around to it.

  I opened my eyes to behold the largest one hanging lifeless by its tail from the fence.

  Huh?

  It was dead? I had won? How in the hell had that happened?

  As I struggled to grasp what had happened, Lupe stepped from somewhere behind me and started pulling on one of the legs of the corpse holding me.

  “Lupe?” I gasped.

  “Andale!” he gritted as he pulled a leg loose. “Apurate!”

  Then I got it.

  He had killed the other one! While I had been blasting away at myself and the one on me, Lupe had used the shotgun to stop the other one in its tracks. I had already wounded it, and the 12-guage had finished the job. I just hadn’t noticed because I had my eyes closed and my ears full of my own gun going off.

  Now we stood in our little red fog-shrouded bubble of light, with the twisted corpses of the predators around us. And one twisted around me.

  “Apurate!” he repeated with emphasis as he worked on dislodging another leg.

  He seemed to be in a hurry, and I understood this to be encouragement to get a move on. A quick glance around showed no sign of Darla or David. I couldn’t imagine Darla taking off into the night without backup, meaning Lupe must have done something with them and rushed back to help me. Now he was probably anxious to get the two of us back to them.