Night Terrors: Savage Species, Book 1 (13 page)

Jesse’s windpipe constricted. He realized why the creatures had let so many people escape the playground.

Jesse stared gape-mouthed.

The entire campground was acrawl with the beasts.

On the main road alone Jesse counted twenty or thirty. In the sprawling, primitive camping area he beheld twice that number. The creatures were all running people down, feasting on them, or scouring the darkening day for more victims.

When the black pickup bounced onto the main road, half a dozen sets of huge, green eyes fixed on them. Rain pattered the windshield.

“Can you see?” Colleen asked.

“Good enough,” Musclehead responded. Staring at the square jaw, one corner of the man’s mouth rising with the tiniest glimmer of mirth, Jesse realized the man was enjoying this. Had probably daydreamed about it all his life. Of course, Jesse had too, but deep down he’d always known if there were an outbreak of vampirism or a zombie plague, he’d turn into a quivering jellyfish. Thinking of Tiara Girl, he supposed that assumption had already proved true.

Not fair
, a part of him protested.
I did go back and try to help her
.

Not soon enough
, his conscience declared,
not nearly soon enough
.

Musclehead turned to Jesse. “You know how to shoot?”

“With that?” Jesse asked.

Musclehead smiled. “This one’s mine. There’s a shotgun under the seat.”

Colleen got on the floor, said, “My dad taught me guns.” She came up with the shotgun. “Shells?”

“There’s a live one chambered and five more inside. There’s more in the glove compartment.”

Jesse longed for a better weapon. He’d positioned the bat between his legs with the handle sticking up, and now it made him feel like a child on the way to little league practice.

The rain was falling steadily. Through the passenger’s window, just beyond Colleen’s grim face, he watched a creature rip a man’s head off.

Jesse shut his eyes and leaned against the seat.

“Where’re we going?” Colleen asked as the pickup accelerated.

“Where you think?” Musclehead asked. “The fuck outta here, of course.”

Mercifully, they passed the last of the primitive sites and the wholesale murder occurring there, and into the stand of forest separating the two main camping areas. Jesse caught a glimpse of a pale figure hunkered over something obscured by the underbrush, but the bobbing of the creature’s head told him all he needed to know.

Musclehead asked, “What the hell are they?”

Colleen only stared.

Jesse said, “It’s like they’ve been waiting for this.”

Musclehead glared at him but said nothing. Then the truck emerged from the canopy of forest. Colleen gasped.

The RV area was overrun by creatures.

Chapter Twelve

In a movement Jesse suspected was wholly involuntary, Musclehead eased off the accelerator and let the pickup drift down the lane. There’d been fifteen or twenty RVs and other assorted camping vehicles when they’d come in; now there were double that.

And nearly all of them had been overturned.

Jesse had no idea how many creatures there were in the deluxe section, but his mental estimate was somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred. Like gaunt, fairy-tale trolls, the figures marauded over the campground, ripping and maiming as they went. Jesse beheld an old woman, her neatly permed white hair swinging wildly from side to side, being devoured by a creature with its face buried in her midsection. Moving away from the same campsite, another creature dragged a white-haired man through the grass. At first Jesse thought the creature was grasping the man’s belt, but then he realized the object was too long for that, that it was a string of the man’s intestines the creature was clutching.

Get us out of here
, he thought.
Just get us out of here
. But to his horror, the pickup was still decelerating.

“What’re you doing?” Colleen asked.

Musclehead was staring at something ahead and to their right. “Gonzales,” he whispered.

Squinting through the cracked windshield and the metronomic sweep of the wipers, Jesse discerned a man swinging a crowbar at an advancing creature. The man backpedaled, his mouth twisted in a deranged grin. As the truck crunched to a halt, Musclehead said, “Wait here.”

“What are you—” Colleen began.

“That’s my friend,” Musclehead said and climbed out.

Jesse wished Musclehead had shut the door. He and Colleen watched as the creature slapped the crowbar away from Gonzales and then whacked him in the side of the head with an open hand. The blow sent Gonzales flying, his puny-looking body crashing against an iron fire pit. As the man rolled over—not dead, but not exactly flourishing either—Jesse noticed the black facial hair and recognized Goatee from the night before.
Poor son of a bitch
, Jesse reflected.
Guy came out here for a little fun and is going to be eaten alive by a white-skinned monster instead
.

Before the creature could rend Goatee’s flesh, however, a gunshot cracked, then another. The creature stood rigid and actually glanced down to assess itself, the runny black liquid leaking out of its chest and belly.

Its face came up to stare at Musclehead. Seeing the monster’s wide green eyes, its lips stretched wide, Jesse couldn’t breathe. He’d never seen such unbridled viciousness in a face.

Musclehead shot it between the eyes.

Jesse was stunned to see it tumble backward.

Without pausing to make sure it was dead, Musclehead hoisted his friend in a fireman’s carry. Then, Gonzales’s shaggy black head jiggling pitifully, Musclehead hustled him over to the truck. With a gentleness that would have moved Jesse under other circumstances, the big man placed Gonzales in the driver’s seat and eased his head against the seatback.

“These two are gonna take care of you,” Musclehead said. “They owe me.”

Gonzales, Jesse noted, was conscious, but definitely in a fog. He lolled his head in Jesse and Colleen’s direction and offered them a wan smile. Colleen started to say something, but before she could get it out, they felt the truck rock slightly.

The storm was kicking up now, but the wind had to be stronger than he thought to buffet the full-sized pickup that way. He glanced a question at Colleen, but she held her arms out, as if awaiting the next tremor.

“Hey,” Gonzales said, his grin brilliant within the glossy black nest of beard, “I remember you from last ni—”

He never finished because the window behind them shattered and a pair of white hands clamped over his head.

Colleen shrieked, and Jesse practically climbed on top of her to get away from the grasping creature. Gonzales yowled in terror and flung out an arm toward Jesse, but the only thing Jesse could think about was the monster in the back of the pickup. Somewhere below his conscious mind, a sardonic voice said,
Guess you’ll never make fun of the characters in a horror movie again, huh? That’s worse than not checking the back seat
.

Gonzales was being towed backward through the window. His hairy legs kicked madly, his arms slapping Jesse, the roof, anything they could reach. But the creature drew him slowly, almost methodically, through the jagged aperture. Beside him Colleen puked on the dashboard, and now he saw why. Gonzales’s skin was being peeled from his body as he was dragged through the hole. Shards of glass plowed vermilion grooves through his chest, his arms. The flesh over his ribcage seemed to unzip as if he were molting. Jesse turned away and regarded Colleen, whose upper lip was creamed with vomit. Her face twisted in horror again, and again she puked, this time down the front of her shirt. Against his will Jesse turned to see why and thought,
I’m losing my mind
.

The creature had succeeded in dragging Gonzales all the way out. Now it stood in the truck bed with a long-toed foot fixed on the man’s upside-down crotch. It was tugging on the skin of the man’s legs as though trying to free him from a pesky pair of tight pants. Only this was the man’s skin, and the creature was ripping off gobbets of it as it yanked, chewing the pink stuff like a lion at a fresh kill.

“Oh man,” Jesse muttered. “What’re we gonna tell Musclehead?”

“Tell who?” Colleen asked, but at that moment the man returned.

“Can’t find Austin,” he was saying, not yet noticing the soaking red stain where a minute before his friend had sat. “Maybe he got out before the…” Musclehead trailed off, his eyes widening in disbelief.

His eyes shifted from Jesse to Colleen. “Where did…”

Jesse pointed sheepishly through the window. Musclehead’s mouth fell open in an expression that would have been comical at any other time. His mouth twitched, the brawny man actually on the verge of tears. He moved around the side of the truck, raised his gun, and aimed it at the feeding creature’s face. Jesse remembered the shotgun, had a sudden urge to wrest it from Colleen’s hands and atone for letting Gonzales get skinned. The champing creature appeared totally immersed in his dining, so Musclehead edged closer, the gun jittering in a palsied rage.

“Look at me, you—”

One moment the creature was feasting; the next it was leaping into the air, its agility incomprehensible. Musclehead was too amazed to track it as it described a graceful flip high over him. It landed behind him, and as he turned to blast it the creature surprised Jesse again. Rather than decapitating Musclehead, as Jesse was sure it would do, the creature flicked the gun out of his hands. The gesture was rapid and neat, but the wounds it made were not. Three of Musclehead’s fingers had been torn off, the stumps pumping fresh blood into the air. Instead of lunging at the muscular man and rending him to pieces, the creature scraped a grubby index fingernail through the flesh of Musclehead’s brow. Blood swam over his face in a sheet. Musclehead sank to his knees, his gaping mouth barking out hoarse sobs.

The creature regarded Jesse, on its face a look of obscene merriment.

“
Drive
,” Colleen shouted.

She was climbing onto her knees and taking a bead with the shotgun, the barrel inches from Jesse’s head. He lunged toward the dash just before the cab filled with the earsplitting roar of the blast.

“
Get your ass over there
,” she demanded, shoving Jesse toward the wheel. He moved numbly to the driver’s seat, saw Musclehead had left the engine running and slipped the gearshift into drive. He cast a nervous glance out the open driver’s window to see if the creature was about to leap through, but it was on its knees, its back to the truck.

“I nailed it in the eye,” Colleen said.

Jesse glanced in the rearview mirror meaning to see the creature’s blasted face, but he caught a glimpse of Musclehead instead, the man lying on his side, still holding his bleeding hand.

“Should we go back?” Jesse asked.

“For what?” Colleen asked, fumbling with the glove compartment.

“Musclehead,” Jesse explained, “the guy who saved us.”

“Leave him or all three of us’ll die.” She located the box of shells, slid one more inside.

From their right came a bounding figure. The creature jumped off one foot, swooped toward them. Colleen pushed into Jesse just as the creature hammered the passenger’s door, its fists crashing through the window. The glass hailed over them. Jesse jerked the wheel, and the creature almost lost its grip. The pickup bounced over campsites, crushed a grill on an iron pole, veered away from an overturned pop-up camper, then made it back to the main road. The creature’s skinny legs scrabbled for purchase on the dented door, then swung up, perching on the windowsill. Then its entire, nine-foot frame was squatting in the open window, its incredible gauntness and flexibility allowing it to snake its head into the cab and leer at them. Its long phallus swung between its legs, reminding Jesse of the creature he now thought of as the Big Nasty, the one who’d raped Tiara Girl.

The creature groped for the shotgun. Colleen kicked its reaching hand out of the way and leveled the weapon at its crotch. Its eyes widened a moment before she pulled the trigger, the blast evaporating the creature’s abdomen in a haze of black gore. The creature bellowed in agony and fell backward into the road.

They’d driven about thirty yards when Jesse noticed the object lying on the passenger’s seat.
Oh crap
, he thought.

Colleen followed his gaze to the severed penis. A foot long, it looked like an enlarged breakfast sausage someone had left out of the fridge.

“Could you…” he said and nodded at the penis.

“I’m not touching that.”

“Use the gun,” he said, “you know, to nudge it—”

“
Look out!
” she screamed.

Jesse turned and saw the professor standing in the middle of the road, his palms thrown out to stop them.

We’re going to run him over
, Jesse thought.

The same dread knowledge was imprinted on Professor Clevenger’s owlish face. He flung his forearms over his head as if that would save him. Jesse ripped the wheel left and felt the back end slue. He was sure it would swing around and crash into the man like a wrecking ball, but the impact never came. As they spun in the road, Jesse glimpsed the professor standing where he’d been, his arms still thrown over his face in that warding-off gesture. The truck shuddered to a stop.