Terror Town (24 page)

She listened. Nothing.

Her social worker mentality returned, threatening to take control of the situation. She thought about talking to the man, reasoning with him. She wondered if she could figure out why he did the things he did and help him. After all, he was still a human being. He had a mother and a father. He had feelings. He could be rehabilitated.

“He’s
not
a man,” she whispered. “He’s a creep.”

That’s what he was: a creep. Nothing more and nothing less. Screw the fact that years ago, he was just a kid, probably being raised in less than ideal conditions. Screw the fact that he needed professional help by someone that cared, like a social worker, like her.

Beth pushed the social worker far, far away. She already tried the psychological approach with this man (
Creep
, she reminded herself.
He’s a fucking creep…)
and it didn’t work. She wasn’t about to try again. The stakes were too high. She needed to find a different Beth Dallier, figure out what she could do and what she was capable of. It was time to be honest. Her life depended on it.

Strengths and weaknesses: what were they?

She always considered her mental ability to be her greatest strength. But that wasn’t her only asset. She was physically strong too.

At two hundred and thirty-five pounds, Beth moved slowly. There was no point in pretending she didn’t. But if she changed her game plan, changed the way she approached her situation… Or to put it another way, if she punched the psycho in the face, what would happen then? She was strong. Damn right she was strong, but could she outmuscle him? Could she drop him to the ground with a quick left hook before he considered the possibility that she’d try such a thing?

Maybe she could.

Maybe…

It was decided. She could fight, and she would.

But could she snag the shotgun from Nicolas’ hand and take control of the situation? That question wasn’t so easily answered. And there was another issue, possibly the most important issue of all: if she fought him and won, and took the gun from his hand, would she be brave enough to use it? Could she pull the trigger? Did she have the stones to kill a man?

A bug crawled across her nose and Beth flicked it away with her finger.

He wasn’t a man. He was a cold-blooded killer, a creep. She needed to remember that.

He was a creep.

Killing him wouldn’t be easy but she could justify it simple enough. After all, he murdered the family in the minivan. He probably
wanted
to murder Cameron and from the look of things, he was planning on killing her too, but what about William? Did he shoot William? It seemed that way. But then why did two separate doors slam? Why not just one?

He was messing with her. Had to be. He slammed the door himself, and then… then… what? Started talking to himself?

Beth considered these things and more. Adding them together painted a series of question marks, but it also painted the image of a terrible man, or at very least a seriously disturbed one.

So here was the question, the
real
question: was killing a man with mental issues wrong?

If she had to be honest, then––yes, it certainly was wrong. But was killing a sick and twisted murderer immoral?

She thought her answer would be complex enough for different interpretations. It wasn’t. For Beth, the answer was as clear as the sky above: killing was morally wrong. Always.

I can justify it
, she thought. And she was probably right. Finding validation for questionable actions was always waiting for those who looked. But if she killed him, could she live with her justifications? Would she sleep sound, or would the justification make her crazy? And on a different tip: if the creep lived long enough to kill more people, could she live with herself then? These were big questions, for which she had no answers.

Wondering why the creep hadn’t opened the trunk yet, Beth closed her eyes. “I’ll kill him if I must,” she whispered.

There was no anger in her voice, only the subtle tone of deliberation. It had been decided. She would fight. If she killed the man, so be it. She was in a tough spot, which needed a tough solution.

Seconds passed.

She heard the shotgun go off again. Twice. It sounded like it came from far away, or maybe from inside a house.

She pushed her body against the corpse, giving her arms more room to move. Lots of flies sprang to life. Bugs scurried inside her shirt, along the folds of her skin and into her hair. She wedged her fingers beneath her ribcage and wrapped her fingers around the tire-iron. She pulled it free, releasing a squeal as she did so. She was more comfortable now. Not only that, she was armed with the tire-iron.

Immoral or not, when the trunk opened she’d come out swinging. And let the chips fall where they may.

21

The big creature, the mamma he presumed, came charging towards Daniel with its legs slamming the ground like a five-horse stampede. Mouths opened and closed, not together, but slightly askew, creating a hypnotic wave-type effect. Black bubble eyes glistened in the florescent light and stingers punctured holes in the floor three inches deep.

Daniel stumbled back and tripped, feeling his stomach clench. Another six or seven crab-critters were crawling from a hole in the wall, scuttling towards him. He landed hard on his ass, raised the gun and pulled the trigger. With his upper lip curled into a sneer and half his teeth showing, he said, “Take this!” He may have looked brave, but there was no bravery in his voice, no composure or tranquility in his tone, either. The words displayed some level of misguided confidence, but they were only words––lies perhaps, as flat and meaningless as a map to a world that doesn’t exist.

CLICK.

His eyes widened and his face became cloaked in fear.

“It’s empty,” he whispered, trembling. And now the words that fell from his lips came out just right. He wasn’t lying this time. Oh no. His voice sounded terrified and his face wore an expression that fit the tone perfectly. He couldn’t believe his gun didn’t fire. Surely there must have been at least
one
bullet left. He couldn’t have fired all
seven
times. It wasn’t possible, was it? Was the clip half-empty when he loaded it? He thought he’d been counting. Was it possible that he counted his discharges incorrectly?

As giant stalks pounded against the floor, causing tiny explosions in the dirt, mouths opened and closed, teeth clicked, jaws snapped, and Dan pulled the trigger twice more, just to make sure the gun was truly empty. It was.

“Oh shit.”

Dan looked at the gun like it betrayed him while fighting back the urge to throw the damn thing across the room. He pulled the empty clip from the weapon and tossed it aside. Slamming his hand into his pocket, fingers circled the final clip. He had it, and not a moment too soon. Pulling the clip from his pocket couldn’t happen fast enough; he was running out of time, running out of ammo, running out of luck. The beast was almost on top of him now, and very soon it would be. The thought of being devoured made him feel like crying.

With eyes glued to the big boy he started to scream. His knees shook and his chin quivered.

Two killer crabs scrambled across his legs and onto his lap. One was translucent; the other was brown. They were trying to pierce him with their stingers and nip little bites from his chest, but they didn’t quite know how.

With the clip in one hand and the gun in the other, Daniel swatted both creatures off his body. The little brown monster rolled twice and landed on its claws, six feet away. The other clung to his arm before doing a loop-de-loop in the air. Once it landed on the ground it crawled in a different direction before opening its wings and flying off.

Long dark stalks pounded the floor harder now than before.

The creature stopped running; it was above him. Time had run out.

Dan slid the clip into the weapon and clicked the safety. The brown crab came at him again; this time it had company. Two more crabs were right behind it, a black one and another brown one.

The black crab-critter jumped and Daniel pointed the gun right at it. BLAM. The crab went tumbling through the air. He pointed the gun at the other two and picked them off one at a time. BLAM. BLAM. His aim was true.

The giant creature lifted its body high into the air. It looked down at Daniel with countless eyes.

SQUUUUUUEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEEE
.

Daniel pointed the gun into an open mouth. And this time, he knew how many bullets he had left: he had two.

22

Pat looked into the darkness, hearing gunfire blast in the other room. On the floor he could see an odd-shaped rectangle of light and his silhouette standing within it, not much else. So he stepped inside the dark new space, surprised that the door had been unlocked. He placed an open hand on the wall. Only then did he realize that his hand was rebelling against all contact, even the slightest amount. Touching things with his swollen and battered fingers hurt like hell no matter how careful and delicate he tried to be, but what could he do? His hands were a mess but he needed to use them.

Deal with it
, he thought.
Such is life.

Ignoring his throbbing wounds, he slid his bruised, bloody, and swollen fingertips along the wall until he found a light switch. He flipped it on. Nothing happened––then slowly, almost painfully, a florescent light flickered, faltered, and came to life. His silhouette, and the rectangle residing in it, vanished.

The space was not big, not big at all. But it seemed
huge
because the wall on the far side of the room was home to a giant hole.

Looking at the aperture, Patrick’s expression revealed a surprised kind of bewilderment. It seemed safe to say––at least in his eyes––that the giant creature had chewed its way through the wall. When he looked beyond the opening he could see another hole in the far wall of that room too. The creature, he assumed, had been busy.

There was a door on his left. He walked past without looking at it, eager to see the next room. He stepped through the hole in the wall. The room, like the one before it, was mostly empty. There were a few boxes stacked in a corner and debris at his feet, but that was about all.

More gunshots blasted.

Why the empty rooms?
he wondered, approaching the next hole.

Then he noticed a hole in the ceiling, every bit as big as the first two. He thought about the creature, about the crates in the big room––the
unopened
crates.

“They were just moving in,” he whispered. And with that Pat closed his eyes, creating a full-blown scenario inside his mind:

A strange and wealthy apocalypse-fearing eccentric built the shelter and loaded it with army supplies. After the supplies were delivered, the movers found themselves face to face with a giant bug and left the shelter in a hurry. The eccentric, perhaps named Rockefeller, complained because the shelter had not yet been organized the way he wanted it. The movers didn’t care. They were not going back down and that was final. Neither threats of law suites nor increased wages could convince the men otherwise. Finally Mr. Rockefeller reached into his pocket deeper than he thought he should. He said that he’d pay fifty thousand to any man willing to finish the job. It was a lot of money, and the men found themselves weighing the pros and the cons. Some said money means nothing if you are not alive to use it. Others discovered that fifty thousand was a number worth risking your neck over. After the deal had been negotiated and money exchanged hands, eight men returned to finish the job. Several crates were opened. Several items were placed in different rooms. Then things turned bad. The beast returned and it wasn’t alone. The men found themselves surrounded. One man escaped while the others died. Rockefeller learned his lesson and built a house on top of the shelter, concealing the fact that it existed. The one remaining man––

Patrick opened his eyes and put a hand to his mouth. “The men were surrounded?”

There’s more than one of them
, he thought.
There has to be.

He didn’t know if his scenario was the least bit accurate but he knew one thing for sure: animals procreate; it takes two to tango.

He looked down.

There was a giant hole in the floor, lost in shadow but there. It was seven feet in diameter and looked like something a four thousand pound groundhog would have dug if it could chew through concrete.

Pat stepped away from the hole with a new scenario brewing.

Rockefeller stumbled upon something resembling a gigantic anthill beneath the earth but he didn’t know it. He built the bomb shelter and one of those creatures dug its way inside. But it wasn’t alone. Oh no. It was never alone. There are hundreds of those creatures, maybe thousands of them. And, and––

Thinking changed gears, becoming a mental question and answer debate inside his mind:
Why had the creatures not surfaced until now?
Man invaded their space, and keep
this
in mind Einstein––they
didn’t
surface; we came to them.
But why had the species not been discovered before?
Simple. Most animals have a native land, and many animals are on the brink of extinction. This might be the only place on the planet that this species exists.

Pat stepped forward and looked down. He couldn’t see much, but he had the feeling that his little anthill scenario was right on the money.

An anthill
, he thought,
an anthill for giant, mutant ants. Damn.

Five gunshots blasted within a matter of seconds.

He turned his head left; there was a door. He hadn’t noticed it before but he noticed it now, and he had a pretty good idea where the door would lead him. He approached it and put a hand on the knob. Doing so caused enough pain that his eyes squinted and his nose wrinkled. He turned the knob as much as he could.