Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation (20 page)

Muttering a series of expletives under his breath, he stepped on the gas and shot down Willow Spring Drive. The minivan jostled and jolted over the uneven dirt road, but he didn’t slow down. If he was going to save his son, he had to hurry. He didn’t want him to turn into one of those…
things
.

Within fifteen minutes, Adam had reached the motel. It helped that there was no traffic in town. He could drive ninety miles per hour and not have to worry about getting pulled over or running a red light.

Now he knew what had happened to the town’s inhabitants. They were all dead. Or if they weren’t dead, they were lingering in the shadows, reduced to inhuman monsters— a fate possibly worse than death.

“
Alex? Alex!” Adam darted into the decrepit motel. He ran down the hallway and through the kitchen, but his son was nowhere to be found. It was completely deserted. He was too late.

Adam collapsed to the floor, his head in his hands. Hot tears stung his eyes. He felt like tearing the motel apart, piece by piece, but deep down he knew that wouldn’t do any good. It wouldn’t help bring his son back. It would only make the pain worse.

Adam stopped. What had the old man said before he died? Something about the old factory? He couldn’t remember clearly. His head was spinning like a plane in a nosedive.

Shit. What had he said?

Adam gritted his teeth, trying to remember. His fingernails bit into his forehead, drawing little bloody half-circles in his flesh. He had to remember if he wanted to save his son.

Get back there as fast as you can. Before they take him to the factory.

That was it. They’d taken Alex to the factory.

Adam sprang to his feet. The factory was only a twenty minute drive away. He hoped twenty minutes would not be too late. He didn’t know what they would do to Alex once they got him there. Would they stick him in a cage so he couldn’t escape, or strap him to a table and start their experiments right away? He didn’t want to think about it.

“
Hold on, Alex. I’m on my way.”

Adam took enough time to grab his nine millimeter from his suitcase and rushed outside. Only he wasn’t prepared for what he would encounter. Gathered around the motel, shambling up and down Main Street, were hundreds of gruesome, desiccated monsters. The sight reminded him of a low-budget 80s horror flick. The only difference was that these were human beings, not mindless zombies, although from the look of them they both shared the same lust for human flesh.

Adam broke for his minivan in a dead run. He could hear the creatures screaming, crying out through their bloody, broken throats. He thought that he could slip past them, and almost did, until a pair of particularly grisly creatures saw him. Their clothes were tattered and they seemed to be conjoined at the hip by a rippling mass of exposed muscle and bone. Blood spurted from severed arteries and veins as they dove after him, catching him by the ankle.

Adam felt a juicy, wet hand close around his leg. He tried to catch his balance, but it was no use. He fell hard, using his forearms to cushion the blow, but that only caused him to lose his grip on the nine millimeter.

Gravel pellets dug into his arms as the handgun skipped away, sliding beneath the minivan. Adam cursed, kicking at the creature behind him. He was lucky that it wasn’t very smart, or it might have gone after his sidearm.

“
Let go, you son of a bitch,” Adam growled. He swung his free leg, making contact with the creature’s skull. Flesh and blood and brain matter showered from its head, eliciting a scream of pain that echoed into the dark morning sky. But he wasn’t free yet. Another wave of creatures closed on his position, moving as fast as their deformed legs would carry them.

Adam regained control of his handgun and spun around, squeezing off three rounds in quick succession. The first to fall was the double-headed creature that had grabbed his ankle. The bullets tore into its belly, releasing a jet of warm black liquid onto the sidewalk. The second was a creature with salt-and-pepper hair and a dirty apron around its waist. His shot took off the right side of its head, exposing a gooey gray interior that steamed like a cooked lobster.

“
Take that, you swarthy bastard,” he roared.

The third creature to fall was a petite freak with wavy brown hair. Her leathery face—which might have been quite beautiful once—twisted into a mask of pain as she collapsed onto the blacktop. Her innards snaked out of her belly in a bloody heap, coiling between her knees.

Adam was just about to jump into the minivan when a heavy object clubbed him from behind. His head exploded in a burst of white pain, and he felt his knees hit the ground. There was blood in his mouth. A deep, bubbling laugh rumbled from an unseen throat.

“
Welcome to hell, outlander,” it croaked.

Adam gritted his teeth. “You don’t know hell,” he growled, “until you’ve gone through a divorce.”

The creature didn’t know what was happening until it was too late. Adam spun around, sweeping its legs out from under it with a low kick, and jammed the handgun into its malformed mouth. He wondered if it could taste the metal barrel against its tongue for the split second before he pulled the trigger. Blood spattered up into his face.

That bought him enough time to jump into the minivan before more reinforcements arrived. He twisted the key in the ignition and listened to the motor growl to life. It was time to find out what it was made of.

Time for a bloodbath.

Adam threw the van into gear and stepped down on the accelerator. Hard. The wheels spun beneath him and then it lurched forward, tossing a deformed creature off the passenger side door. He piloted it straight down Main Street, despite the legion of creatures hurrying to block his escape.

“
Come and get me, you bastards.”

Adam smiled and steered straight into the creature with the pink cowboy hat. The minivan lurched upon impact and a tidal wave of blood washed across the windshield. The act sent an excited chill down his spine. He didn’t think that killing another human being could feel this exhilarating, but then again, he’d never driven straight down Main Street, mowing down everything in his path.

Bang. Boom. Smack.

The minivan ploughed through the crowd of disfigured faces, leaving a trail of blood, brains, and broken bodies behind it. Suddenly Adam was glad
she
had insisted on buying a minivan. He couldn’t wreak this much damage with a little station wagon.

“
You hungry? Good. Eat this.”

Adam threw open the driver’s-side door and listened to the satisfying
thunk
that accompanied his action. He was having so much fun that he’d forgotten why he was driving in the first place. Once his primal blood lust was satisfied and the reality of the situation kicked in however, he felt a wash of shame. What had happened to him? He needed to save his son, but instead he was sidetracked by cold-blooded killing.

Oh my god.

He was acting no differently than those inhuman monsters!

Chapter 15

Adam tore down Main Street, watching the decrepit buildings disappear in the rear view mirror. There went Lucky Lou’s Corner Store, Hanson’s Hardware, and a particularly deteriorated building that looked like an old laundromat. It might have been a grocery store. He couldn’t tell. The important thing was that he was past all the town’s twisted inhabitants. Their cries of rage and pain slowly slipped into silence.

Adam exhaled, possibly for the first time since he stepped out of the motel, and took a moment to reflect on the situation. He didn’t know what to expect when he reached the factory, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let those sick sons of bitches experiment on his son. He was willing to recruit ghost hunters, psychics, or who the fuck ever it took to get inside those cement walls.

Adam frowned. He could see the giant cone-shaped structure up ahead, spewing clouds of acrid black smoke into the atmosphere. It looked like a twisted version of Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory. But instead of producing lollypops and gum that turned little girls into blueberries, it produced chemical serums and drugs that turned men into mindless killing machines.

Adam started the windshield wipers. There was so much blood and brain matter pasted to the glass that he could barely see outside. The wipers didn’t do much good. They just smeared the gooey crimson fluid even more.

“
Son of a bitch.”

Leaning out the window, Adam wiped at the blood with the palm of his hand. It still felt warm between his fingers, and he resisted the urge to retch on the steering wheel. He never knew that blood, the elixir of life, could be so revolting. Somehow feeling the blood drip down his palm made him remember how fragile human life really was. All it would have taken was a well-placed punch and he would have been down for the count.

Adam pressed down on the gas pedal. He didn’t have time to worry about what
could have
happened. Just like he didn’t have the time to worry about
why
Saundra left him. The present was what was really important. He couldn’t change the past, but by God, he could try to change the future.

“
Hold on, Alex. Just a little longer.”

The minivan squealed to a stop about a hundred yards from the factory. The chain link fence surrounding it zigzagged over little hills and knolls like a jackrabbit on LSD. And behind it a thousand dead cornstalks stretched into the horizon, bent over as if bowing to a great and terrible god.

Fuck you, Cthulhu Mythos.

Adam bounded down the narrow dirt road, traveling just as fast as his legs would carry him. He was tired, but the adrenalin pulsing through his veins kept him on his feet. It would have to if he didn’t want to be torn apart by those bloodthirsty beasts.

“
Damn it.”

Security around the factory was tight. There were two teams that circled the perimeter, mean as hell and armed to the teeth. They wore white biological suits, whatever that meant. Adam strongly suspected that the toxic residue in the atmosphere had something to do with it.

Harmless, his ass. They could probably roast a superhero in that shit.

Adam waited until the two security teams were preoccupied, then he scaled the fence. It wasn’t too hard; he used to climb fences all the time as a kid. The only difference was that his feet didn’t fit between the links quite like they used to.

Adam threw himself against the cold cement factory.

Son of a bitch, it was moving!

The whole factory was vibrating, grumbling beneath his fingertips, as if it had a life of its own. The thought made him sick, but he could feel the life throbbing through its twisted metal core. He could feel the deranged heartbeat shiver through his ribcage.

Adam crept forward, hoping to remain under the radar. Except he was no ninja; a security camera looked down from above, watching him with an impassive eye.

“
Hold it right there.”

Adam froze. He knew that he’d been caught. And that a nine millimeter would not protect him against two guards with fully automatic rifles.

“
Drop the gun and put your hands behind your head.”

Adam complied. He felt a strong hand grasp his shoulder, and a gun barrel jab into his neck. They were both cold, but that wasn’t what sent a shiver down his spine. He was
scared
; scared to death that he had failed, that his son would die at the hands of a maniacal doctor.

However, he wasn’t afraid for long. A loud report rang across the plain and a warm liquid splashed across his shoulders. The man holding his shoulder screamed out in pain and crumpled to the ground. Gurgling spurts of blood bubbled through his white hazmat suit, erupting like a little red volcano every time his heart beat.

The second man dropped to his knee and returned fire. His rifle spit countless rounds of lead toward the advancing mutant, but not before it managed one last shot. The man’s head jerked back, gray brain matter exploding against his plastic face shield. Both figures collapsed at the same time, just twisted heaps in the Colorado sand.

Adam’s heart beat like crazy. The mutant that had come to his rescue wore a tan cowboy hat and a sheriff’s badge on his chest. He was still partly alive, even though his legs had been blown off by machine gun fire. Adam had to resist the urge to help him. He told himself that it was a mindless killing machine, and that it would have shot him, too, if it got a chance.

“
Sorry, buddy,” he said, gunning it toward the front entrance. When he arrived and peered around the corner, he realized that using the main access was not a wise idea. There must have been a dozen men in there, and not just security guards, either. These were fucking SWAT team members, dressed from head to foot in black fatigues and body armor. Adam sure as hell didn’t want to tangle with them.

That’s when he noticed the ventilation shaft. It wasn’t much, just a couple of feet in diameter, but it would get him inside the factory. That was the important thing. He didn’t need a dynamic entrance, guns blazing, like some action-hero wannabe. He was happy with the James Bond approach.