Husk

The car jerked to a stop inches from his hip, dust shooting from beneath its whirling wheels. Its front bumper had punched a hole in the other car’s door, snagging it like a fishhook and preventing it from moving farther. Paul leapt away from the machine with a curse, all too aware he could’ve been crushed beneath its tires. He brought up the gun and aimed at the car. But he saw nothing to aim at; no one sat behind the wheel.

Who would be? We were the only ones in there a second ago.

Frank had told him the creature they sought possessed powers, mentioning fantastic words like electrokinesis and telekinetics. But now Paul realized he’d only agreed with the man in the hopes it would get Mallory back, never expecting to actually encounter such extraordinary things.

The wagon jerked back and forth, its engine growling.

“Go,” Frank yelled over the commotion. “Get the kids.”

Paul didn’t hesitate. He turned his back on the crazed wagon and dashed to where he’d seen the children.

“Dad,” Mallory shouted, screaming for him like an injured toddler. “Daddy, help us.”

“The church,” Tim kept saying. “We have to get to the church.”

Tearing at the pale restraints, Paul freed the kids and lifted them from the shattered landscape. He stood up, helping his daughter to her feet when a strange noise emanated from behind him—an ominous, metal-wrenching sound.

And whatever made it caused Mallory to scream.

CHAPTER 56

Becky flinched at the harsh concussion of sound generated by the colliding cars, wanting to know what was happening at the front of the church but too terrified to investigate alone. She prayed Mallory and Tim were safe, prayed the new arrival was an ally and not another monster.

As if the noise of the collision were the crack of a whip across her back, Lisa scrambled over the cemetery’s fence and joined Adam on the other side.

“Come on, Becky,” he urged. “We have to get out of here.”

He leaned on the fence’s bars for support, favoring his left foot over his right. Blood oozed from numerous shallow lacerations scattered across his body, but he had enough strength to hobble on his own. “I’m going, with or without you.”

“You son of a bitch,” she hissed. Tears of fear and frustration rolled down her cheeks. “Tim saved your life a minute ago, and you’re still willing to turn your back on him and Mallory.”

“We don’t have a fucking choice.”

“He’s right,” Lisa sobbed. “There’s nothing we can do here.”

“But Tim said not to leave the—”

Gunshots boomed at the front of the church, at least half a dozen of them, and Adam and Lisa ran, leaving Becky where she stood.

“Adam!”

He and Lisa vanished into the darker gloom of the forest without looking back, abandoning her.

She fidgeted beside the fence, shivering with fear and alternating her line of sight between the darkness in the direction of the parking lot and to where the Adam and Lisa had fled.

Tim told her to stay in the graveyard, that the creature couldn’t get her here, but he never said anything about guns. A bullet could reach her here just like anywhere else, right? And by the sound of the shots there was more than one firearm involved. She wanted to stay, wanted to be certain Mallory and Tim were still alive, but she couldn’t handle being all by herself, not knowing what the hell was going on.

A new noise arose from the front of the building.

Mallory. Screaming.

She grabbed hold of the iron bars and hefted herself over, breaking into a sprint the second her feet hit the ground. She stumbled across the twisted pile of the elm tree ruins and charged into the ramparts of waist-high weeds. Her foot landed in a depression and she fell to her knees, needing to bite her lip to keep from screaming at the surprise. Then she was up again, trudging forward with thistle barbs snaring her clothes and nettle spines stinging her skin.

She pressed onward, toward the hungry darkness that consumed her friends.

Wait, she wanted to scream, don’t leave me. She looked to the graveyard, fearing even the thought of crying out would draw the creature’s attention.

“Becky.”

She spun to see Lisa emerge out of the gloom. The girl stood on the opposite side of an overgrown dirt access road that ran behind the cemetery, waving her forward.

“Look, look,” she said. “Look what we found.”

Becky squinted in the direction Lisa pointed and couldn’t believe what she saw.

Just off the side of the road, a white ambulance sat wedged between the trunks of two giant pine trees, its front end facing into the forest.

Adam hobbled into view from around the tree on the driver’s side, returning to the rear of the vehicle.

“Adam,” she whispered. “What’s going on, what’s this?”

He looked up but didn’t appear surprised to see her, or even grateful that she’d escaped unharmed. “It’s abandoned, I think,” he said. “The front doors are jammed shut by the trees, but I saw a CB handset inside. If the battery still works, maybe we can use it to call for help. Come here and help me try the back.”

The two girls descended into the heavier growth along the road, toward the double rear doors. “Don’t you need the ignition key to make the radio work?” Becky asked.

“I’ll hot wire the bastard if I have to.”

“You know how to do that?”

“Under the circumstances, I’ll learn,” he replied, and reached up for the handle.

The latch clicked and the doors flew open, expelling a humid breath of repulsive mist and the overpowering odor of decay. The blast hit them like a toxic cloud, and all three staggered away in disgust, coughing and wheezing and gasping for air. The vehicle’s battery did have a charge, and the moment the doors began to open, the overhead lights popped on to reveal the unimaginable horror that lay waiting inside.

Becky shivered, unable to take her eyes from the sight.

Lisa’s whole body flexed, expelling silent screams.

Adam vomited across the front of his shirt.

The entire interior of the ambulance dripped with gore.

Blood and gnarled chunks of dark red meat made up the majority of it, but Becky also spotted yellow blobs of fat, tufts of animal fur, and dark streaks of excrement. The filth coated every visible surface, splattered on the walls, ceiling, and medical equipment, leaving nothing untouched. In some areas, heavier bits of butchered viscera dangled on sinewy tethers from the ceiling.

But all that blurred into the background as she gaped at what hung suspended in the center of the compartment.

A body.

Not the remains of a human or animal but a mixture of both, an abomination of flesh and bone. The basic structure of the creature looked humanoid, and if the thing had been standing upright, it would’ve easily measured eight feet tall. In its current state, the thing hung by thin wires that had been secured through the roof of the vehicle and attached at various points on the monstrosity’s shoulders, torso, arms and legs.

Becky stood powerless in the grip of terror, her gaze locked on the monstrosity, attempting to dissect the components of its form.

The thing’s torso had been made to resemble the physique of a human body, but the bones and tissue were so oversized Becky could only guess at their origins. Its legs proved equally massive, displaying muscles large enough to have come from a horse. Thick tendons and barbed wire bound together half a dozen human arms below