“Just ignore him, honey. What’s the matter, stud? Need some help with your stick shift?” Doris waved at the air around her face; in truth, it was an old, familiar odor. Before an early retirement, she’d been the local coroner. The appointment had been political, and her professional survival through a succession of graft-ridden administrations had been no accident. She was tough, an expert at cronyism. The fact that Mullica Emergency Rescue, with its small volunteer crew, kept operating at all was due entirely to her fund-raising activities, the shambling wreck of an ambulance itself having been donated by a neighboring township at her instigation. “Christ, this job is a bitch during the summer,” she muttered, resisting the impulse to hold her nose.
The bald head of the dead man was splattered and darkening, and he stank of booze and other things, his abdomen a shredded pile that slopped through lacy layers of fat. When the ambulance rattled through a series of rapid lurches, the ruined organs quivered, slipping farther down, and fleshy tendrils vibrated toward the floor. Doris mumbled something about the damn road, and Jack replied with something about a tune-up and new shocks.
Athena tossed a blanket over the body. They were still a good twenty miles away from the nearest hospital.
…and Mary Bradley knelt in black water. The marsh was a darkly flooded vision of hell, and the nightmare landscape revolved, rushing with the blood that streamed down her left side.
“No! Please!”
Circling, the thing lunged. It tore at her, ripped her soft breasts, and the force of the attack sent her rolling in the morass. Now glimpsed in scattered moonlight, now invisible in shadow, the thing backed off, moving through dark water with incredible speed, again circling.
“Stay away from—!” A mouthful of warm, stagnant water stopped her screams as something spurted from beneath her rent T-shirt. She staggered to her feet, slipped in slimy muck and went down in a sitting position. Half submerged, she watched the red spot on her shirt spread, watched the water around her darken. “Don’t hurt me.”
It surged toward her. She was jerked upright. Struggling, she beat wildly, beads of blood flying as it lashed at her. She was thrown against a dead sapling, and the pine toppled, easily uprooted in the muck.
She came down on one knee in shallow water. Splashing, slapping noises surrounded her in the dark. She slid backward, falling across a mound of hard earth. If she could only rise…
Scrambling on all fours, she heaved out of the ooze, tried to get to her feet.
With a leap, it was on her back, wet and heavy. “Help me!” It pounded her to the ground with hammering blows. “Oh God!”
Again, it backed away.
Face in the mud, she listened, struggling to stay conscious. Her skull felt as though it had been crushed. Distantly, she heard it snarl with obscene ferocity.
Then it closed again and flipped her onto her back.
Weakly now, she flailed, as cloth and flesh ripped away. Belly exposed and white, she lay quivering, throbbing with pain. The thing leaned over her—huge, hot, dripping—and she trembled convulsively, closing her eyes hard, her body rigid, as the thing pressed against her, reeking breath in her face.
And then the forcing…enormous pressure…her screams emerging as mangled chokes.
“No!”
It gripped her, plunging, clawing.
“don’t”
Her body arched in spasms, legs jerking as the bloody remnants of her urine-soaked cutoffs bunched at her knees, bound her stiffened limbs. She heard her own flesh ripping, as a sound emerged from deep within the thing —a groan of pleasure. Her mind retreated.
As it pounded and clutched, her bare back jerked from the mud again and again, her skin grinding against the coarse sand with each thrust. Her eyes opened: flesh hung from her left arm in a flap, veins laid open and pumping fluid, bone exposed to the moonlight.
It pushed hard, harder, until something swelled and burst within her. Numb, she rocked with pressure, the flap of skin swaying, dripping, as dark rivulets ran along the folds of her stomach and trickled over her side, making thick black coils in the sand.
The crickets sang.
“Hey, we got company.” Jack leaned out the window.
Outside, swirling lights and a siren gained on them, the siren switching off suddenly. Somebody yelled, and Jack laughed. “What’s that? Yeah, she’s in here.”
“Watch what you’re…!” Doris sputtered. “What the hell you slowing down for?”
Athena stood up, wobbling. “Is that Barry?”
“What?” Outside, the siren screamed on again, cutting Jack off in midshout, and the police car swiftly pulled away from them. “They must of got a call,” said Jack over his shoulder.
“Barry’s going to hear about this! He can’t be holding us up like that—we could’ve had a patient in here for all he knows. For crying out loud, you’d think Steve at least would have better sense.”
“Come on, Doris,” Jack said. “They got a radio. They must of heard us call the hospital—Steve knows we got a dead ’un. Hey, before I forget, you know you got to drop me back at my car, don’t you?”
“I know it.”
“Just so’s I don’t get stuck like last time. I can’t believe I was the first one on the scene again. That’s three times in a row.”
Athena limped toward the front of the rig. Doris stood aside to let her pass, watching her walk, feeling the familiar tug, deep inside.
“Can you raise them?”
“You want to try?” asked Jack, not looking up.
Athena sat next to him and impatiently fiddled with the radio. “I can’t get anything. What did he yell?”
He navigated a series of rough turns. “Something about meeting you at the diner.”
“Real discreet,” Doris muttered. Slipping in blood, she lost her footing for a moment and steadied herself against the soft pile on the stretcher. “Shit. You’d think by now I’d at least know how to ride in an ambulance without falling over.” She wiped her hands on her jeans and reached behind the oxygen cylinder. “This tank’s almost empty. I’d like to know how in hell I’m supposed to run a rescue team without O2”. She found the thermos bottle. “’Kill for a cigarette.”
“What’re you grumbling about back there?” yelled Jack. “You know you ain’t allowed to smoke in here, Doris.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered and concentrated on sipping coffee without spilling it. “Just shut up and drive.”
“Forget it,” said Jack, noticing Athena’s attempt to roll down a window. “Stuck again.”
“Great.” As pines rushed past on either side, Athena felt the ground drumming beneath her, lulling her. Yet she sat very stiff, very straight. “In this heat.”
They all lapsed into a hot, weary silence. The right headlight, pointing upward at a crazy angle, raked across roadside trees.
Athena tried to concentrate on the radio but could only get static. “One more thing that needs fixing.” Hypnotic, the woods rolled endlessly past the window, formless as storm clouds. Suddenly, she leaned forward. For an instant, she thought she’d seen a beast trotting at the edge of the road.
“The woods still bother you, don’t they, kid?”
She started. Doris had come up behind her.
“Doris, don’t you know by now our ’Thena ain’t afraid of nothing?” Jack laughed. “Hey, you found the coffee? Gimme some.”
Athena looked away from the window. “What happened to his wife?”
“Whose wife, honey?”
