He jumped, sliding across the stone floor toward the dropped weapon.
Dana screamed, the werewolf howled. Good. If she was screaming, it meant she was still alive.
As his fingers brushed the gun’s grip, The Director landed on his back, jarring his chin against the floor and sending spikes of pain up through his jaw and into his brain. He tasted blood and the grit of a broken tooth.
The woman clawed at his back, trying to pull herself over him to the gun, but Marty punched up and back over his shoulder. His fist hit her jaw and he heard a gentle crack. She moaned. But she never stopped pulling and kicking, and in seconds she’d be at the gun that lay just beyond his reach.
He turned and knelt, aiming at the flailing mess, knowing that if he took too long to aim it might mean the difference between Dana living or dying. He fired three shots and the werewolf reared up on its hid legs, its chest red with blood. It turned to him and he fired again, hitting it in the face. It screeched and ran from the chamber, a howl retreating into the tunnel beyond.
Dana rolled over, eyes wide and white in the bloody mask of her face. She held her hands up, as if afraid to touch any part of herself, and her breath came in rapid, short gasps.
“Dana…” Marty breathed, and The Director tackled him from behind. He flipped up and back, the gun flying from his hand, and he struck the floor hard enough to wind him. He was aware of a terrible space, and depths that he hated to imagine, and as blood dripped from his face into the abyss he was sure he heard an excited intake of breath.
The Director fell on him, fists pummeling at his face, long nails raking his skin. He punched back and raised one knee, trying to shove her aside. Then she was going for the gun again.
He heaved her up and to the side, turning with her and using the momentum to sit astride her, his arm pressing down hard on her throat. Her eyes swelled and her tongue protruded, and she tried shaking her head.
Footsteps… slow, methodical, soft…
He eased back slightly.
“Marty!” Dana said. He turned to look at his dying friend, but instead he saw Anne Patience Buckner standing right behind him. Her little girl’s rotting face held no emotion, and as she swung the hatchet instinct took over. He fell to the side and brought The Director up on top of him again, and the hatchet struck the back of her skull.
Bone broke. Metal scraped. Her eyes went wide, mouth hanging open, and a line of blood ran across her lowered face.
The ground shook again, thudding as if echoing with the memories of huge impacts far below. Anna Patience was trying to tug the hatchet from The Director’s head, making the woman seem to nod up and down as if in response to some internal dialogue.
Marty heaved backward and kicked The Director out over the gap. The zombie girl, unwilling to let go of her precious hatchet, went with her, and Marty rolled onto his stomach to watch them fall. The torchlight lit them for a couple of seconds as they spun together, bouncing from the rough wall and falling quickly, soundlessly into the darkness.
He watched for a moment more, listening for the sound of them hitting bottom. But nothing came. Perhaps the noise was swallowed by the receding grumble of the latest tremor. Or maybe they were still falling.
Then he stood unsteadily and limped over to where Dana lay bleeding. He sat by her side, brushing bloody tears from her cheek. She smiled. Her chest and stomach had been shredded by the werewolf, and there was a bite mark on her throat that must have been one move away from ripping it open. But she was still alert, and she grabbed onto his hand.
“Hey,” he said.
“You know… I don’t think… Curt even has a cousin.”
“Huh. How are you?”
“Going away… ” she said softly, but her grip never lessened.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m so sorry I almost shot you… I probably wouldn’t have…”
“Hey,” he whispered, “shh, no… I totally get it.” With one hand he felt around in his shirt pocket and brought out three ready-rolled joints. He chose the least damaged one and put it in his mouth. Then he found a book of matches from another pocket and lit one, inhaling. It had never tasted so sweet. Perhaps if he smoked enough if would make all this go away. But somehow he doubted that.
“I’m sorry I let you get attacked by a werewolf and then ended the world,” he said. He took another long smoke and held the joint out to Dana. She took it with a shaking, blood-spattered hand.
“Nahh, you were right,” she said. “Humanity…?” She blew out the smoke in a cynical puff, waving the joint at the air in a single dismissal of all they had known. “It’s time to give someone else a chance.”
“Giant evil gods.”
“Wish I coulda seen ’em.” And she actually managed a smile, even as the light in her eyes—the sparkling light, the joy of life that for Marty had set her above all the rest—started to fade.
“I know!” he said, trying to hold back his tears. The last thing he wanted her to see was him crying.
The chamber shook, the stone slabs cracked, dust filled the air from above, and then something else crashed down and exploded across the slab: a battered suitcase, its innards consisting of old 8 mm film reels. They rolled in ever-decreasing circles and then came to a stop.
“Oh,” Marty said.
And something was rising. Thumps came from far below, distant at first, and then closer and closer, and to Marty they sounded for all the world like something climbing the walls of that bottomless hole.
Taking another drag on his joint he turned away from Dana, because he didn’t want to see her die.
They still held onto each other, and always would. They waited for the end.
No human eye bore witness to the cabin exploding apart, nor the giant, gnarled hand that emerged from its splintered heart, nor the arm that powered it a hundred feet into the air, fingers flexing and scratching at the night.
But that would change soon enough.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TIM LEBBON is a
