Carl made to go after him.
“Let him go,” I said.
He made it to the big door, slid it open and the rain poured in. It was coming down in sheets. The old guy was soaking wet in seconds. He cried out something and darted out into the storm. All of this happened in under less than a minute.
We saw him out there, the rain and wind hammering into him. He started first this way, then that, and then…then he screamed. We all saw something huge and undulant move in his direction. It hit him and dragged him off into the rain. None of us could be sure what it was. It just happened too fast. In the back of my mind I had an image of a gigantic snake coming out of the murk.
He screamed again and that was it.
Guns in hand, we watched, we waited, but there was nothing. Just the rain spraying into puddles and lashing the sides of the barn.
Nothing else.
4
The storm ended a couple hours later and by that time we knew without a doubt that there were things out there, out in the pastures and cornfields. We had no idea what they were, but we could hear them. For some time we’d been hearing low squealing and sharp screeching sounds. And once a resounding booming noise as if something had placed an extremely large foot down.
The storm had left a pinkish fog in its wake, but the Geiger told us it was harmless. Still, it was heavy and claustrophobic and I didn’t like the idea of legging it out to the Jeep with what we were hearing. As it was, the Jeep was only a vague phantom in the mist.
“It might be advisable to wait until the fog lifts,” Price said.
I was going to disagree with him because I really had to; we had to get moving. Whatever it was, it was building in me: the need to get to Bitter Creek as soon as possible. The idea of waiting was just not an option. His suggestion was greeted with a stony silence by everyone.
Everyone but Mickey. “I think he’s right, Nash.”
But nobody wanted to wait; I saw that.
“I’ll lead the way out,” Carl said. “Nash, you come with me. Texas, you get my signal, lead the others out.”
I knew then it wasn’t just me. The others felt it, too. They were as filled with anxiety as I was. We had to go. We needed to go.
Carl went out and I was right behind him. The fog felt moist, almost sticky against my face. Ten feet from the door, the barn vanished. It was swallowed by the consuming fog which seemed to thicken by the moment, stirring itself into an opaque soup that began to look less pink and more blankly white and suffocating.
We found the Jeep and sighed.
“Okay,” I called out to the others, wiping a dew of moisture from my face. “Come on!”
Carl jumped behind the wheel and turned the Jeep over. The ignition sputtered a few times and my heart dropped. Sometimes those weird lightening storms will fuse out the electrical systems of vehicles and you’ll never get them running again. The ignition caught finally, the engine holding a fine idle.
I allowed myself to breathe.
I knew we weren’t alone out there. I could hear occasional dragging sounds in the distance. I was aware of ghostly shapes moving through the fuming mist.
Something moved near the back of the Jeep and was gone before I could draw a bead on it.
“Hurry!” I called to the others, trying to watch every direction at the same time.
Something else moved past me. I could have shot it. It was close enough…but what I saw, well it was too crazy. Just a hunched over shape running on all fours. It looked almost like a hog, a huge and barrel-bodied hog, bristled and corpse-white. That’s what I saw. I thought it had the face of a man.
I heard others hopping about in the mist.
Carl got out of the cab. “Are they fucking coming or what?” he wanted to know.
The words barely got out of his mouth when I heard the hopping sounds again and something made a shrill squealing and dove out of the mist, flattening Carl. I ran over towards him and some pig-faced mutation came at me. I put two rounds in it, fired three more into the mulling, hopping shapes in the fog, and something hit me from behind and put me face down.
I came up fast, fired a shot, and heard Carl cry out.
I scrambled over to him and one of those things…whatever in the Christ they were…had him pinned down. It looked like a hog, all right…except that it was swollen a blubbery white. Carl was fighting against it as it pummeled him with its split hooves and tried to get its snout at his throat. I got over there and kicked the thing two or three times until it fell off. I should have shot it…but I was afraid of hitting Carl. It rolled off him, greasy and shining white, and came right up, its face caught somewhere between a hog and a man. Its pink, glistening eyes were on me. It was snorting and squealing madly, its mouth almost like a blow hole and filled with sharp yellow teeth that were curled back like those of a rattlesnake.
It dove and I put three rounds into it, which dropped it but hardly killed it.
Carl had his AK then and he blew its head apart.
It lay there, legs kicking in the mud, splattered with dirt and leaves and splotches of dark red blood that looked almost black against its luminously white flesh. Its head was drilled open in three or four places, jelly-like blood pulsing out with a horrible sputtering sound.
“Jesus,” Carl said turning away.
Texas, I knew, had gotten the others back into the barn for safety. He was calling out to us.
“Yeah, bring ‘em over,” I said.
I saw no more of those hog things.
The others were coming now. I couldn’t even see them, I could only hear them stumbling over the muddy drive, splashing through puddles. That’s what I heard, the Beretta 9mm tight in my fist. And then I heard something else and if the engine coughing dropped my heart, this made it plummet into black depths. It was a deafening, almost primeval roaring sound that shook the world.
I had the doors open and I pushed Janie and Mickey inside, then Texas and I almost made it. Yes, we almost did. Then Price cried out. He’d been coming around the rear of the Jeep to get in on Carl’s side…and then something took him.
I heard him scream.
Something coiled around him like the thing that had taken the crazy old farmer. It was black and smooth and serpentine, flattened, the outer edges set with spikes like the traps of a carnivorous plant.
I fired at it. So did Carl for all the good it did.
I saw Price get taken. He didn’t get pulled off into the fog, he got pulled up into it as if whatever had gotten him was hovering right over us.
Morse started snapping pictures like a combat photographer and I pushed him inside.
Carl jumped into the cab and I made to follow suit, except something like a whip lashed out of the fog and hit me. Not only hitting me, but tossing me ten or fifteen feet away.
Carl called out.
I heard someone in the Jeep scream my name. I wanted to believe it was Janie, but I’m sure it was Mickey.
Getting to my knees, the breath knocked out of me, I looked up.
The thing was right above me. It had to be nearly the size of a mobile home. Huge and swollen and lumpy, covered in greasy mats of fur or wiry spines. It was hanging there like it was buoyant, filled with gas. Maybe it was. First thing I thought-although it makes no sense-is spider. But it was no spider. I don’t know what the hell it was. I saw clusters of orange globular eyes, appendages of some sort akin to legs or tentacles, but segmented like the tails of scorpions, pink and pulsing, the edges serrated with spikes. In the very center of that grotesque, rolling
