I kept my. 30.06 up and ready. Janie was trembling next to me only I didn’t feel it so much because I was trembling myself.
“Anybody in the mood for a nice quiet ghost story?” Texas Slim said.
“Shut up.” I sighed. “I think someone should go have a look. How about you, Gremlin?”
“Fuck that. I ain’t going out there.”
“You afraid?” Texas Slim said. “You didn’t seem afraid of that thing last night.”
And it would have been interesting to hear Gremlin’s rebuttal to that, but a wild screeching noise came scraping out of the darkness and it sounded almost like laughter…shrill, hysterical laughter. The laughter of something that grew fat on fear and sharpened its teeth on human bones. The stink was overbearing…high and hot. I thought I saw two huge eyes shaped like crescent moons reflected out there.
“It’s coming and we’re going to kill it,” I said.
I tried to swallow but my throat was so dry that my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Something moved out there. Something made a hoarse guttural noise that became a slobbering sound like the beast was drooling.
“Get ready,” I whispered.
I couldn’t have imagined a more tense, threatening situation. That ugly bastard out there, whatever in the Christ it was, had our number. It had been following our trail and now it had us right where it wanted us. Yet…it was hesitating out there. It could have jumped out at us at any time and started killing, but it didn’t. It was cautious. Careful. Predators were like that. They wanted the upper hand. Even a tiger in the jungle or a great white shark in the surf aren’t as gutsy as most people think. They want to take their prey, yes, but they want to do as easy as possible without harming themselves. And like them, this creature wanted a sure thing, a clean kill, the upper hand. I could almost sense its hesitation out there.
“Come on, you fucker,” Carl said under his breath.
The waiting was hell. We couldn’t go on like that. We had what I thought was a perfect killzone: sheltered by the concrete pilings, there was a sandy clearing right in front of us and wreckage piled up in a rampart behind. If that thing wanted us, it’d have to charge through the clearing. And I wanted it to do that. What I didn’t want was to play cat and mouse with that fucking horror. I didn’t want it sneaking in on our flank or getting ahead of us and lying in wait when we tried to make our escape. No, we had to draw it in.
“We have to bait it in,” I said. “Gremlin, take a walk out into that clearing.”
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Why not, Gremlin?” Texas Slim said. “He won’t hurt you, will he? You’re his friend.”
At the moment what Texas was getting at did not occur to me, but later I understood perfectly: we had been set up. Gremlin had set us up.
“Give me the AK,” I told Carl. I handed him the Savage. “I’m going out there.”
Janie’s hand on my arm was like an electrical wire juicing with current. I had to pry it loose.
“No, Nash,” she said. “Rick…”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mickey said.
Nobody did except, of course, Gremlin. But it had to be done. “Carl? I’m going to draw it in. Aim for its head, its eyes. Killshot.”
Carl got ready with the Savage.
Texas said, “Still say we send Gremlin here.”
“No, not him,” I said. “We’re going to need him tomorrow night when the moon comes up.”
He made a whimpering sound in his throat because he thought I had just selected him. Maybe I had, but if so then I’d selected him many days before. I said it mainly to shake him and it worked just fine.
I stepped out into the clearing with the AK. My knees were shaking. Beads of sweat rolled down my face. Yet, despite the fact that I was ready to have kittens, I walked out there very casually. I did not even hold the AK up; I kept it at my side as if I didn’t have a care in the world. I reached into my breast pocket, took out a cigarette and lit it. I was shaking, but I was doing everything I could to give the impression that I was perfectly at ease. Then I waited. The holes in my plan were many. If that thing had sniffed us across the city, then like any other predator it might be able to smell the fear on me. If it was intelligent-and I suspected as much-then it might suspect the trap I had laid. All I had going for me, I thought, was the fact that it wanted us bad. And such animal desires often cancel out common sense.
I had almost finished my cigarette when I sensed, rather than heard, motion out there. A chill went up my spine and there was a sudden hot, reeking stench of putrescence that nearly put me to my knees. Then it charged, leaping out of the shadows. I had a momentary glimpse of something massive, muscular, and distorted. I threw myself backward and a split second after my ass hit the ground I opened up with the AK on full auto, just spraying rounds into the shadows.
I saw it clearly as it came at me in the moonlight.
I saw my rounds pepper its chest, saw it flinch and draw back. It was much larger than a man and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say it stood eight feet in height. A hulking thing with skin like oily leather, threadbare with twisted tufts of gray hair or bristles. Its misshapen hide was split open in a dozen places with knobs and rungs of bone protruding out. A mutant. One arm was longer than the other, the right shoulder high and ridged, the left almost flat, the chest a rack of bones. It lacked any sort of body symmetry.
And it had claws, huge curving claws.
It moved with incredible speed. Carl fired and missed and in that split second, it jumped at me, standing over me. I could feel the acrid, pungent heat rolling off it in waves. Smell the rank decay of its hide. Tiny crawling things fell off it and skittered over my face and bare arms.
I heard Janie scream, Mickey cry out, Texas shout.
It looked down at me and why I didn’t fire the AK again I did not know. I guess I froze. Its face was an obscenity: gray and seamed, almost like some demonic version of a wild boar with a flattened snout and huge maw filled with gnarled yellow teeth and what might have been tusks. One eye was huge and staring and the other drawn into a slit, everything out of sync.
The way it stared at me with those glistening red eyes, I got the sense that, yes, it was going to kill me, but it would not be a quick, merciful affair. My death would be sport. Amusement. Like a cat torturing a mouse. No more, no less.
I remember wondering why Carl didn’t shoot again, thinking that this had been going on for minutes. But later they told me that it was probably less than five seconds from the time I went on my ass to when it stood over me.
Then Carl did fire.
He caught the beast right in the head, his round right on target despite the shadows. It punched through that slit eye and exited with a spray of meat and blood. It was a killshot. A perfect fucking killshot. That thing should have fallen over dead as a stump. But it didn’t. The impact of the bullet tossed it backwards and it stumbled for a few feet, but instead of dying it raised its taloned hands to the sky, threw back its head and let out a shrieking cry that nearly deafened me. It wasn’t a roar or a baying, nothing like that. Not the sort of thing you’d expect from a monster like that. No, it was a high, piercing wail that sounded very much like a woman in utter anguish. Inhuman, yet definitely female.
Then it darted into the shadows.
By that time I was crawling madly towards the concrete pillars and hands found me and yanked me to my feet. I was nearly delirious with terror. It took me a moment to screw my head on straight.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I finally said.
Mickey instantly took charge. With a flashlight borrowed from Carl she found the trail and led us out of there. Texas Slim was at her side with his Desert Eagle. They got us through that maze of bones and junk and found the trail leading up the hillside. Carl and I took up the back door, Janie and Gremlin sandwiched in-between.
Out in the enshrouding darkness of the pit we could hear the thing.
It was wailing with that shrill unearthly sound, its voice echoing out all around us. It seemed to come from behind us, then off to the left, then the right. We stopped dead twice in our climb because it sounded like it was right in front of us. It must have been the echo. Once, when we paused, I swore that I heard it sobbing out there pitifully. Then, seconds later, there came a maniacal screeching that went right up my spine and that, too, dissolved into a cold, dry, hysterical laughter like the braying of a hyena.
