Jill nodded toward the window.
The next flash sent a chill through Stella. She felt Ysabella’s pulse and despaired that it was weaker than ever.
* * * *
As the rain-slickened orange goblins approached the Audi, Kerwin tried screaming “Go!” but forgot he needed his amplifier. Brinke said the same. Doris was already flooring it before she finished the single syllable.
The Audi’s bumper banged into the closest pumpkin thing’s sapling-thick leg and fishtailed on the wet road. Doris never stopped, regaining control with admirable dexterity.
The thing had toppled forward on its broken limb. But it still had three legs to keep it moving—and fast.
“Hang on!” Doris called, as she maneuvered around the biggest one yet, a Volkswagen-sized specimen. It skittered toward them with unnatural speed. When it got within a few yards, they all saw its “face”—a wicked countenance with all the nuance of a human being, including a sinister smile and blue eyes alight with an eagerness to shed blood.
Kerwin stared at Brinke. He didn’t even try to say it, but she knew; he expected her to do some “magic.”
Brinke tried to gather her pinballing thoughts to find a general protection charm that might apply. But all those she knew were to be done well in advance.
For now, Doris’s driving prowess would have to do the job. “We’ll get to town,” she exclaimed, as she rocketed right between the spidery legs of a fresh-risen pumpkin demon. “Find Hudson.”
“What can he do?” Kerwin asked, strangely calm through the monotone of the vocal enhancer.
Doris couldn’t answer. She was busy veering hard away from a pair of the things, as they stalked toward the car in perfect unison, like the Martian killing machines of H. G. Wells.
Brinke saw the nearest of the demonic duo open its mouth, viewed the stringy innards hanging before the black cave inside, and saw the tiny, yet deadly incisors.
The pumpkin beasts were evolving—taking on more and more human attributes—by the second.
“We can at least warn the town,” Doris said without optimism, “if we can beat these things there.”
* * * *
Yoshida was usually lulled by thunderstorms. Exhausted as he was from all that had already happened this night, he was sure he would fall into a deep sleep within minutes. Yet the terror remained that he would transform again.
There was no precedent for that. Yet every night’s change had been more intense, making him wilder and more unpredictable. The fear that he would become a wolf, and remain that way, left him in a constant state of alarm. He had already considered ending it all, via a delicious mouthful of gun barrel. But he didn’t have any silver bullets, and if he was anything like his “wolf mother,” Aura, it would be a useless gesture, serving only to drive home the extent of his dilemma.
There was a grenade launcher in the evidence annex. That would surely do it.
He both envied and enjoyed the sound of Pedro snoring on the recliner across from him. His friend deserved a good rest, after all he had done. He, Dennis, McGlazer, Hudson, the boys too—all had gone the extra mile as friends. If it was to be the end, the best consolation he could think of was that he would be well-mourned.
Someone, a woman or child, cried out in panic from the apartment next door.
“God, what n…?” Yoshida went to the window.
No detective work was required.
Under a flash that briefly painted the parking lot a foggy crimson, he saw three van-sized creatures moving toward the apartment complex.
They moved on uneven limbs, some jointed, like locust legs, others more flexible, like the tentacles of a squid.
Another scream—a man’s voice this time.
Pedro stood up, dropping the trank rifle. “Whut the blue hades…?”
Yoshida shushed Pedro, then waved him over, as more terrified exclamations rose all around the building.
Pedro almost cried out when he saw one of the pumpkin-spiders clamber over a car.
“Wake me up outta this sick dream, Yoshi.” Pedro gripped his shoulders. “Right the hell now.”
Through the window, the rain and darkness smeared the pumpkins to moving blobs of orange, but it was clear they were coming closer to the building, drawn by the screams.
“Where’s your sawed-off ten-gauge!?” Yoshida asked.
“You guys made me turn it in!”
Nearby, a window crashed. Then another. Through the rain-pelted window, they saw that one of the things was just a few feet away, moving toward Pedro’s screaming neighbors.
“What about your revolver?” Pedro whispered.
“I locked it up when my super puberty hit.”
“All I got is a spiked bracelet and some butter knives.”
Lightning flashed again, engraving a savage photograph on their minds, of two spider-pumpkin-demons carrying flailing, pajama-clad apartment dwellers, one suspended in a viney tendril, the other quickly disappearing into a grinning mouth.
They physically recoiled from the window, falling over each other and the recliner. The crashing thump of the falling chair came just before the thunder. Pedro and Yoshida lay awkwardly frozen, waiting to see if the shapes would come to their window.
Other noises caught the beasts’ attention, though. Someone had a gun. It popped like either a cap pistol or a .22. Hardly heavy artillery.
“We gotta do something,” Pedro said, pointing at the ceiling. “Ophelia’s up there.”
* * * *
As “The Cat Came Back” played over the speaker, McGlazer made the rounds, passing out candy that was meant for later to the kids trapped inside by the raging storm. He was met with mostly troubled faces and pleas for their parents.
As for the adults, the thunder might as well have been pulses of direct current, with each clap jolting everyone deeper into a collective state of unease.
McGlazer heard the door latch echo and frowned. It didn’t help that the boys were at the exit, holding it open.
“Sure is weird!” said DeShaun, shouting over the roar of the rain.
“There’s no explanation for lightning to be red like that,” added Stuart. The boys gave each other the
