Savage (38 page)

“I'm not doing that,” Cody said, that stubborn streak that she'd once found kind of sexy coming through.

Now she just found it aggravating.

“You'll do it because we don't have the time to argue,” she said, eyeing the buildup of beasts ahead. It was like a screwed-up assembly line, the twisted animals waiting to be stabbed, speared, or have their heads bashed in.

Cody still wasn't budging, his spearing getting more forceful, angry.

“Please, Code,” Sidney pleaded. “Look at him—what does he weigh? One-fifty? I can't help him.”

His eyes darted over to Isaac, who was having a hard time standing up, even with Rich's help. “You did this to me back at Rich's house, in the bathroom,” he said. “You almost didn't make it out.”

“Yeah, but almost doesn't count. I
did
make it out. Think of that when you're doing what I told you.”

She grabbed hold of his spear and yanked it from his grasp, giving him her smaller, shorter weapon. “I'll use this until you're done.”

Cody dispatched a few more snapping, slithering beasts, then finally turned to Rich and Isaac. “C'mon, help me get Isaac up there,” Sidney heard him say.

Rich started to argue, but Cody ignored him.

“Isaac, we're going to climb up, all right?” Cody said.

Sidney continued to stand her ground, her back to the wall, her eyes attempting to take in all the nightmarish stuff before her. Something with the head of a fox snapped its jaws around the end of her spear and twisted, wrenching the pole from her grasp. The spear clattered to the ground, where it was at once swarmed upon by all manner of new and writhing insects. She needed that spear or she was finished, and she plunged her hands into the squirming mass to retrieve it. The insects began to sting and bite, and she cried out in pain, but she found the spear, wrapping bloody and swelling hands around it, and hauled it up from beneath the ocean of squirming terror.

“Sidney!” she heard Cody's voice calling to her from behind. She turned her face just enough to see that they were actually halfway to the ledge above.

“Keep going!” she ordered.

Her hands were on fire from the insect stings, and as she continued to fight—to spear and slash—she caught a glimpse of them. They were covered in blood and slime, so swollen that they didn't even resemble her hands anymore. They looked like the hands of some fat old man.

If she wasn't fighting for her life at the moment, she might have started to cry.

“Sidney, come on!”

It was Rich calling now, his voice high and almost hysterical.

She knew that she had to turn and begin her climb, but her eyes kept going to the crimson, gelatinous mass—the alien organism—as it throbbed with evil intent. She noticed that a barrier of the larger animals had taken up guard around it, protecting it. That just seemed to drive her forward, wanting to get closer, to threaten it with her presence, but she knew that this wasn't smart.

It was time to retreat, and she started to back up while still managing to fight her attackers off.

But still the organism taunted her.

How dare that horrible thing do what it did to her friends? To her island?

How dare it?

Her anger made her fight all the more fiercely as Cody and Rich screamed impatiently for her to climb. Even Snowy was barking. And she was coming, backing up ever so slowly, even though that thing—whatever the hell it was—sat there, nestled in the rock, dirt, and sand.

The disgusting, fleshy mass seemed to react to her feelings, blowing itself up and then deflating, as if to say,
Did you see what I did to your town
? That thought pissed her off all the more, and she actually fought back the urge to show it that she wasn't afraid, and continued to back toward the wall, to escape.

To run away.

She knew that it wasn't running away, that this was something far bigger than she and her friends.

But it still felt somehow wrong to leave the thing there, untouched—mocking her with its awfulness.

She imagined it laughing at her, amused by all it had taken. Flashes of her father filled her head, and an overwhelming sense of sadness turned to a burning anger, and she heard her father's voice.

When she was a little girl, she and her dad used to watch DVDs of old cartoons that he'd loved as a little boy. One of his, and eventually her, favorites was Popeye the Sailor Man. She used to watch with wide-eyed amusement as the weirdly muscled cartoon sailor fought the villainous Bluto, a can of spinach helping him to save the day.

Right then and there, as she fought for her life against the swarm that had no right to exist, she heard her father's voice, quoting the famous words of the cartoon character just before he ate his spinach and vanquished his foes.

“That's all I can stands. I can't stands no more!”

Sidney found herself grinning.

She couldn't have agreed more. She stepped forward a foot or two, hearing her friends continuing to scream for her, but she didn't have the time to explain. She had to concentrate on what she was going to do.

“This is for my father,” she said, hauling back the spear before letting it fly with all her might.

The makeshift javelin flew through the air and pierced the center of the organism. She grinned as she watched the writhing, fleshy mass react, its body convulsing wildly as spurts of internal fluid shot up from where it had been punctured, the ends of the thick hairs protruding from its mass throwing off even more crackling discharge.

“Take that, you ugly son of a bitch,” she said, then whipped around and raced for the wall, using the momentum of her run to jump and begin her climb.

“C'mon,” Cody screamed from the edge of the cliff above her, the ground beneath his feet beginning to give way.

“Get back!” she shouted at him, seeing that the ledge wasn't going to hold.

The ledge crumbled where he was standing, and he jumped back just in the nick of time.

The exhaustion truly hit her then, those multiple adrenaline surges that she'd experienced since the horrors began no longer having any effect.

But all she needed was a little bit more.

She was careful as she grabbed, giving the handholds a little pull before hauling her aching body up. Glancing up to the ledge, she saw the anticipatory faces of Cody and Rich, each one ready to grab at her as soon as she was close enough.

And then she noticed Isaac.

He was standing behind them, a look on his face that filled her with dread. He was completely emotionless as he stared at her, his mouth hanging slack. His lips were attempting to move, to form words, as if he were trying to tell her something, that strange internal struggle that the poor soul had been fighting since the nightmare began still going on.

The words at last came flying from his mouth in a terror-filled roar.

“Watch out! It's coming!”

Sidney hadn't a chance to question or even to prepare. She felt an incredible pressure around her ankle, yanking her savagely from the face of the wall.

And she had been so close.

Sidney caught a glimpse of what had grabbed her before she fell—a thick, veined tentacle that had emerged from beneath the fleshy skirt of the organism.

How dare you think you could hurt me,
she imagined it saying in a horrible, wet-sounding voice as she fell to the ground. She landed on the soft corpses of the monsters they had killed, hitting her face against the wall.

The animals—the mockeries of life that filled the cave—moved away as she was dragged past them, as if somehow they knew that she was no longer for them.

Oh no, she had riled up the big boss now, and anything that was going to be done to her was going to be done by him. . . .
Her? It?

Her friends were screaming, and she tried to pull the tentacle from around her leg, but it was wrapped so freaking tight. And then she remembered her knife, and she reached down to her belt loop hoping—praying—that it was still there. It was, and she'd barely pulled it free before reaching the body of the monstrosity.

It was even worse to look at up close.

She could see the intricate vein work crisscrossing through its fleshy body as it pumped its life fluids. Somehow she could feel the throbbing of its horrible life, feel the electrical discharge from its swelling mass. It actually made the hair on her body stand on end.

The knife was in her hand, and she began to stab at the tentacle entwined about her leg. The thing reacted by gripping her tighter, and she thought that her leg was going to snap.

Sidney was trying not to cry out, though it hurt so very badly, but it didn't stop her from fighting. She was wild, seeing absolute red, pretty certain that she was now more savage than all the creatures in the cave combined. Her jeans and hands were soaked with the slimy blood of the organism, but she continued to hack and cut at the fleshy appendage until she was actually able to wriggle her leg free of its grip just before reaching the alien mass.

Pulling back her leg, she began to crawl across the stony ground, but the entity lashed out at her, wrapping itself about her waist and hoisting her into the air. The inside of the cave flashed by as she struggled in its grasp. She saw that Cody and Rich hadn't listened to her at all, remaining stupidly loyal and returning to the cave floor. The only smart ones she glimpsed were Isaac and Snowy, still waiting upon the ledge.

She wanted to tell them to go . . . run . . . leave her, but her voice was gone.

Sidney feebly slashed at the thick, muscular tendril that threatened to crush her ribs. Explosions of color caused by oxygen deprivation bloomed before her eyes, pressure so great that she thought maybe her head might pop like a balloon, but she did not stop fighting.

Darkness encroached upon her vision, and Sidney seriously believed that she was about to die, sorry that she wouldn't be able to help her friends.

Things went totally black, and she felt herself begin to float away, when suddenly she could breathe again, and she greedily sucked the dank air into her lungs. She wasn't quite sure what had happened, but the surface beneath her felt odd—spongy, clammy. She was reminded of an old pool cover, the water under the skin sloshing about.

And then she realized where she was.

The organism had dropped her on its own fleshy body. There were sudden roars of thunder—
explosions
—within the cave that she came to recognize as gunfire, and through bleary eyes she saw her friends: Cody firing the handgun that he'd gotten from Officer Kole and Rich having found his homemade, bladed weapon once more. It was an amazing sight to see, her friends fighting for her . . . fighting for their own lives and the lives of those who'd managed to survive the savagery of the night.

In a way, they were fighting for the sake of the world.

The mangled tentacle snapped whiplike at them as the twisted animals under the organism's control again advanced.

She had to help her friends.

Struggling to stand upon the moving, uneven surface proved a chore in her current condition. Sidney could feel that the tentacle had done some damage, her ribs likely cracked. The pain was intense, and it was hard for her to breathe, but she had to do something.

The organism seemed to respond to her presence upon it, writhing and vibrating with life, attempting to shuck her from its skin. It was as she fell backward that she saw it, still sticking up from the center of its mass: the homemade spear that she'd thrown.

Sidney crawled toward the protruding weapon, feeling her cracked ribs grinding together with each inch she made. She told herself she would not pass out from the pain. The flesh beneath her began to buck, to expand and contract as if it somehow knew her malicious intent.

So very close now, she threw herself across the undulating surface, rolling across its rubbery skin toward the spear, gripping the shaft as she almost slid past it, and using it to haul herself up to her feet.

From where she stood she could see the entire cave and saw that things were not good for her friends. Cody's gun had run out of bullets, and now he used it as a kind of club, while Rich continued to stab and slash, but his movements—both their movements—were becoming slow and tired as they fought what seemed to be a perpetual onslaught.

Sidney knew that it had to be now. She yanked on the spear, pulling it from the writhing surface flesh with a sickening sucking sound. Gripping the spear tightly in both hands, she plunged the pointed tines down, again and again, into the body of the beast. The organism bucked crazily, its slimy mass moving beneath her like an ocean wave, but she managed to retain her balance, sticking the spear repeatedly into the body of the alien thing, wanting to do as much damage as possible before—

She must have struck something of great importance. As the spear came down again, the metal forks puncturing the pliant surface, she felt something let go, a release of energy flowing up through the fork's tines, through the wooden shaft, and into her own body.

Sidney went rigid.

She continued to grip the spear as her body began to tremble, every fiber of her—every cell—filled with the unknown energy.

As a connection was made.

Her mind was engorged with something . . .
alien
.

Explosions of imagery unlike anything she had ever experienced filled her thoughts.

Suddenly she knew what
it
knew. She and the organism were of one mind.

She saw where it had come from . . . not outer space, but closer and yet so very far away. On the other side of this reality there existed another place.

An alternate reality. Another dimension.

It had been sent by the others . . . those who lived behind the veil.

Those who watched and waited, coveting what they saw in this world.

Planning how to make it theirs.