He opened his belt buckle. He unbuttoned the waist of his white shorts and lowered the zipper. The shorts dropped around his ankles. He was wearing tight, red briefs. The front jutted with the push of his erection. He slid his thumbs under the elastic at his hips.
Alison lashed out with her foot, catching his left shin. Evan staggered backward, arms waving, feet tangling in the shorts. He started to fall.
Alison flung herself over. She shoved at the floor, got to her hands and knees and scurried up, staggering. In front of her was the bar. She threw her hands against its edge to catch herself. She spun around. Evan had freed himself of the shorts. He was crouched. He sprang at her.
Alison lunged to the right. Straight ahead was the main dining area. Straight ahead, at the end of a long stretch of bare floor, was a window. Crash through it?
She dodged around the corner.
Had a moment to see the clutter on the floor: cans, rags, toolbox, vacuum cleaner, ladder. A moment to wonder if she could leap clear.
Evan hit her.
His head pounded her rump. His arms wrapped her thighs. His diving tackle drove her forward and down.
She cried out as her body crashed to the floor. Cans overturned. One stayed under her hip. Another pushed at her belly. The edges of the open toolbox dug into her chest. Her left breast was inside the toolbox, pressing cold steel.
Evan squirmed off her. He pulled her by the ankles. As the edge of the toolbox scraped the underside of her breast, she hooked her left arm around the box. It skidded along the floor.
Evan stopped dragging her. He clutched her hips. Growling with effort or rage, he lifted her off the toolbox, swung her sideways, and dropped her. Falling, Alison hugged her belly and turned her face away from the floor. The impact wasn’t as bad as she expected.
For a few moments, nothing happened. Alison lay there, gasping.
Evan was nearby, but out of sight as long as she didn’t turn her face the other way.
She heard him move closer.
A hand curled over her right shoulder. Another hand hooked her right hip. He tugged at her. She rolled onto her side, rolled onto her back. And kept rolling, opening the arms folded across her belly as she came up onto her left side, facing Evan who crouched on the floor naked, who was staring at her breasts and not at her right hand, not at the screwdriver she’d taken from the toolbox.
She rammed it into him.
It hit him just under the sternum and punched in deep. The force of the blow sent him tumbling backward. Knees in the air, he stared bug-eyed at the ceiling. His mouth was a rictus of agony. He made whiny sucking noises struggling to breathe. A palsied hand pulled at the screwdriver. Its blade started to slide out, but was still deep inside him when his hand gave a spastic jerk, wrenching the screwdriver sideways. His body lurched, heels driving against the floor, thrusting his pelvis high and higher as he yanked the blade the rest of the way out.
Alison had begun to get up while she watched his contortions. She was still on the floor, turning his way, braced on a stiff arm, drawing in her legs, when Evan freed the screwdriver and hurled himself over, twisting, trying for her. She lurched back. Even’s arm swung down as his side struck the floor. The tip of the screwdriver buried itself in the wood an inch from her hip.
Alison scooted farther away. Turning over, she crawled toward the toolbox. She watched over her shoulder and saw Evan yank the screwdriver from the floor. He was flat on his belly, writhing.
She took a claw hammer out of the box.
Evan still squirmed on the floor.
She crawled back to him. His twitching arms and legs shuddered against the floor as if he were trying to push himself up.
“Stay down,” Alison gasped. She raised the hammer overhead. “Stay down or I’ll bash your fucking skull.”
She stared at the bruise that curled around from his side to his back. The discolored skin over his spine, all the way to the nape of his neck, bulged out almost an inch.
It’s that
She remembered Jake’s warnings.
If Evan dies, the thing will come out.
And come after me.
Well, he’s not dead yet.
The screwdriver dropped from his hand. He tried to pick it up again, but his jumpy fingers flicked it and sent it rolling.
Alison got to her feet. She was trembling badly and her legs threatened to give out. Ready to fall, she staggered backward to the ladder, dropped the hammer, and grabbed one of the upper rungs to hold herself up.
Evan still writhed on the floor, but not so much anymore.
She would need to go around his body to reach the front door. He was in no shape to stop her, now. She let go of the ladder, took a single step and flinched rigid as blood exploded from the nape of Evan’s neck.
The creature surged up through the red spray, sliding out of Evan, darting across his shoulder blade, dropping to the floor, streaking toward Alison’s feet.
She lurched backward. Bumped the ladder. Got a heel onto its first rung. Grabbed the side rails behind her with both hands and climbed. The ladder wobbled. She was only two steps up by the time the creature reached the foot of the ladder. Gazing down at the monstrosity, she moved one rung higher, then clung there, gasping.
The creature slowly circled into a coil.
It resembled a snake, but with its slimy undulating flesh, to Alison the thing looked more like a two-foot length of intestine. Where Evan’s blood had rubbed off, it was pale yellow and webbed with veins.
One end of the thing rose from the center of the coil. Not a head so much as an opening. A garden hose with teeth. The opening flattened shut, and Alison saw the dull gray globs of its eyes.
The eyes seemed to gaze up at her, seemed to
Alison’s skin crawled. She glanced at herself. The open shirt hung off one shoulder. She had never felt so naked, so exposed, so vulnerable. She ached to close the shirt and clamp a hand between her legs but stood frozen, clutching the sides of the ladder.
The creature stretched upward, uncoiling, and half its length dropped onto the ladder’s bottom rung. Its lower end squirmed and flipped. In an instant, the entire length of the creature was stretched along the aluminum step.
Whimpering, Alison climbed higher.
As Jake’s car shot over the crest of the road, he saw the Oakwood parking lot. A blue car was parked near the restaurant’s front door.
Let me be in time! Please!
His car flew and dropped, pounding the downgrade.
Let me be in time! his mind shrieked.
It had taken so damn long. He’d driven as fast as he could, sped through intersections without regard for red lights or stop signs, twice barely avoiding collisions. But it had taken so long!
Five minutes? Closer to ten.
Oh, God, please. Let her be all right!
The thing kept coming. It kept
Alison climbed higher, but so did it. And it seemed to get better at swinging itself from one rung to the next.
Alison sat on the head step, at the ladder’s peak, and clutched its edges and stared down between her
