“Not quite,” Freeman continued, taking his hand from his pocket to reveal the lighter he was holding. “The fact that we always have a surprise up our sleeve.” With that, he lit one of the tendrils that was poking out from Lincoln's side, causing a strong flame to immediately start burning along the black flesh.
“If you -”
“You guys are pretty flammable, aren't you?” Freeman added with a smile. “When it reaches your center, I reckon you might just burn pretty goddamn bright. This is for my sister, and all the -”
Before he could finish, Lincoln's body exploded with a brief rush of fire, blowing the end of the pier apart and sending a huge shower of wood, flesh and flaming meat flying through the air, before the burning pieces fell down into the lake. Where Lincoln and Freeman had stood a moment ago, all that now remained was the shattered end of the pier, which had been ripped apart by the force of the explosion. Down in the water, burning pieces of meat floated on the surface of the otherwise peaceful lake.
“This is hopeless,” Kirsty gasped. “We've been walking for hours, we're never going to find that road.”
“Just stay focused,” Lizzie replied, helping to support her weight as they made their way down a muddy embankment. She forced a smile, even though she was starting to have doubts herself. She'd expected to find a road, but so far there had been no sign of civilization. “It's not much further,” she added, even though she knew her words rang hollow.
“Are you kidding?” Kirsty asked. “It's going to be dark soon. For all you know, we might've been walking in circles. We might end up back at that fucking camp!”
“No chance. We've kept the sun on our right side all the time.”
“Yeah, but the sun goes
around
the planet, dummy.”
“Not that fast.”
“I can't do this,” Kirsty whispered. “My foot hurts again. I think maybe you should just leave me here and go get help.”
“No way.”
“It's your only chance.”
“I'm not leaving you here,” Lizzie said firmly, “and that's final. Stop wasting energy by making dumb suggestions. I don't care what -”
Before she could finish, she stumbled on a stray tree-root. Although she was able to stay upright, she let Kirsty slip for a moment and watched helplessly as she tumbled to the ground.
“Are you okay?” she asked, kneeling next to her.
“Please leave me here,” Kirsty whispered, rolling onto her back. “Go and get help. Lizzie, I know you don't want to carry on alone, but I'm slowing you down and it's only going to get worse. I'm getting weaker.” She gasped, as if in pain, before looking at Lizzie with fear in her eyes. “Brain tumor,” she said finally.
“What?”
“I never told you what type of cancer I have,” she continued, her voice trembling a little. “I had a brain tumor when I was five years old and it was removed with surgery. Seven months ago, it came back. The symptoms aren't so bad right now, but the location of the tumor means they can't operate, so... It's not like there's a whole lot of hope for me anyway.” She paused. “That's why I got into make-up when I was young, I wanted to cover the scars so no-one could see. And now, hey, at least I'll never have to grow old. I'll still be young-looking when I die. That's what they say, right? Leave a good-looking corpse?”
“I...” Pausing, Lizzie felt as if someone had just punched her in the gut. “I'm sorry...”
“So you see,” Kirsty continued, “I will absolutely, positively be dead within the next eighteen months. Leaving me here is the smartest move if I'm going to slow you down. Crystal might have been a total bitch, but she was right about this. Don't risk getting caught by those creatures just because you feel like you want to do the right thing by me. You don't need to be a hero, Lizzie, you just need to do the right thing by the rest of the world. Warn people. That's all that matters now.”
Staring down at her for a moment, Lizzie knew that leaving Kirsty behind
would
be the logical option, and she was certain that Freeman would tell her to go on alone. Still, she figured that by doing so she'd effectively be leaving Kirsty to die, and there was no way she could just abandon someone in the forest, not when she was convinced that there could still be stray creatures on the loose.
“Wait here,” she said finally, getting to her feet. “I'm going to climb up onto that rock and see if I can get a better view of the area.”
“Lizzie...”
“Just hold tight,” she continued, clambering up until she could see half a mile in every direction. After looking around for a moment, she finally spotted not only a road snaking through the forest, but also a small white building.
“A diner,” she said finally, as a wave of relief spread through her body. She looked down at Kirsty. “There's a diner just up ahead!”
***
“The Easy J Bar and Diner,” Lizzie read from the sign in the parking lot as she helped Kirsty past the last of the trees. “There's even a police car here. Look, over in the corner!”
Barely able to summon the strength to turn her head, Kirsty looked across the lot and saw a police car parked near the entrance to the diner. The pain in her foot was so strong now, she could barely even think straight, but finally a faint smile crossed her lips as she felt the weight of fear starting to lift from her shoulders.
“We made it,” she whispered, with tears in her eyes. “I can't believe we actually made it.” She stumbled, but Lizzie caught her just in time, keeping her from falling. “We escaped!”
“We still have to warn people,” Lizzie reminded her, as they made their way past the police car and finally pushed the door open. “Help!” she shouted. “We need help here!”
She eased Kirsty down into the nearest chair and took a moment to examine her damaged foot, before looking over at the unattended counter.
“Hello? We need help! We came from Camp Everbee, something's wrong up there!”
She waited for a reply, but after a moment she realized with a growing sense of unease that the diner was completely silent.
“Where is everyone?” Kirsty asked cautiously.
“They're probably just out the back,” Lizzie muttered, heading over to the counter and hitting the bell next to the cash register. “Hello? We need help. Please, it's urgent!”
She waited, as Kirsty got up and limped over to join her.
“They have to be around somewhere,” Lizzie told her. “They have to be, they just... They have to be...”
“Great,” Kirsty said with a sigh, hitting the bell a couple of times. “We're in hillbilly land. They probably wandered off to catch dinner in the forest.”
Making her way around the counter, Lizzie grabbed a phone from the wall, but she quickly found that the line was dead. She tried a couple more times, still with no luck.
“This is ridiculous,” Kirsty muttered, limping past her and heading through to the kitchen. “Hello?” she called out. “Seriously? We need a little service here! How the hell do you guys expect to run a business if you fuck off and leave customers to wander about like this?”
“They couldn't have got this far,” Lizzie whispered to herself, looking back across the empty diner. “They just couldn't.”
“For God's sake!” Kirsty shouted from the kitchen, as her frustration began to boil over. “What is wrong with these people?”
Heading through to join her, Lizzie found that several pans were sitting on the stove. Checking the temperature, she found that they were cold.
“I don't like this,” she said after a moment. “No-one's been here for a while, I think maybe -”
Before she could finish, they both turned as they heard a faint bumping sound coming from a nearby room. They stared for a moment at the darkened doorway that led off to the side of the kitchen, and then slowly they turned to one another.
“Maybe we should keep going,” Lizzie said finally. “Someone's bound to come along that road eventually. All we have to do is follow it and we'll hit civilization.”
“I can't walk,” Kirsty replied, “not with my foot like this.” She turned back to look over at the doorway. “We're just on edge, that's all. After everything we just went through, we're totally freaked out by the slightest thing. The people who run this place, they're probably just out the back or they stepped out for five minutes.”
“I hope you're right,” Lizzie muttered, heading to the back door and looking out at the yard. She waited, hoping she might spot some sign of movement, but the whole place seemed desolate and abandoned. Staring up at Mount Everbee for a moment, she shivered as she thought of everything that had happened at the camp.
“I don't see anything in here!” Kirsty called back to her.
Turning, Lizzie saw that she'd already made her way into the darkened storeroom.
“Hey!” she replied. “You shouldn't go in there!”
“It's full of, like, shelves of tinned food,” Kirsty continued, heading further into the next room. “I can hear something at the other end, though, like...”
Lizzie waited for her to finish. “Like what?” she asked eventually.
“It's probably nothing.”
Hurrying through to join her, Lizzie made her way into the gloomy storeroom and found that Kirsty had stopped by a set of shelves. The far end of the room was lit only by a few wall-mounted lights, but they illuminated nothing more than more shelves.
“Do you hear that?” Kirsty whispered.
Lizzie took a step forward. She
could
hear something: a kind of gentle, repetitive sighing sound was coming from the shadows, like someone breathing very slowly and very deeply. Taking care not to get too close, Lizzie tried nevertheless to see around the far shelves. After a moment, she stopped as she spotted something on the floor, and as her eyes adjusted to the gloom she began to realize what they'd found.
A leg.
“Oh no...” she whispered.
“Is that what I think it is?” Kirsty asked. “Please, say it's not what I think it is. I can't handle any more of this shit!”
“We have to get out of here,” Lizzie replied, turning to her. “We have to get out of here right -”
Suddenly she felt something grab her ankle and pull her back. She let out a cry as she fell to the floor, and although she tried to grab one of the shelves, she was powerless to keep herself from being dragged toward the shadows at the far end of the room. Twisting to look down at her foot, she saw that a thick black tendril – thicker than any she'd seen so far – was wrapped around her ankle; she tried to kick it loose, but it simply continued to drag her across the room until finally she cleared the last of the shelves and she was pulled straight over the body of a dead police officer.
“Help!” she screamed, seeing the officer's withered, dehydrated face. Reaching down, she tried to pull the tendril off her ankle, but a moment later she saw that there were two more dead bodies nearby. “Oh no,” she whispered, trying not to panic, “no, please...”
Realizing that the slow breathing sound was much closer now, she looked up at the wall and saw to her horror that something large and bulbous was hanging down from the ceiling. She blinked a couple of times, barely able to see properly in the gloom, but finally she saw that it was another of the black creatures, except that this one was huge, many times larger than anything she'd seen before and more like the size of a man. The central body mass, bloated with large lumps protruding in all directions, was black and glistening, and the tendrils that ran down to the floor were as thick as human arms, writhing and flicking in the air.
“Kirsty!” Lizzie screamed, unable to stop staring at the creature. “Run! Get the hell out of here!”
Kicking out at the tendril, she tried to push it away only to find that a second tendril was already snaking over to her. She turned and grabbed the nearest shelf, trying desperately to pull herself away, but she felt the second tendril starting to wrap itself around her knee. As the creature began to pull her back, she tried to hold onto the shelf but eventually her fingers slipped and she cried out as she was dragged closer and closer to the creature. Turning and looking up, she watched in horror as a slit on its side began to open, revealing a sickly, black-red eye filled with a kind of gelatinous gunk. For a moment, all Lizzie could do was stare up into the eye, as if she could feel another consciousness reaching out to her.
“Memnon,” she whispered finally, as she was hit by a wave of realization. “You must be the Great Memnon they kept talking about. And it looks like you've had quite a feast. You're huge and -”
“Eat shit!” Kirsty screamed suddenly, hurrying around the corner and spraying something at the creature.
Feeling the tendrils loosening around her foot, Lizzie scrambled free and hurried over to join Kirsty.
“What's in that can?” she asked.
“Cooking oil,” Kirsty replied. “It was the only thing I could find. I just hoped it'd distract him.”
“Let's get out of here,” Lizzie said, supporting Kirsty's weight as they limped across the storeroom and finally reached the kitchen. “We have to keep going, we have to warn people. There's -”
Suddenly Kirsty let out a cry of pain and dropped down to the floor.
“What's wrong?” Lizzie asked, but she quickly saw the problem: Kirsty's damaged foot had finally snapped, with a section of broken bone protruding from the side.
“I can't do this,” Kirsty stammered, trying to get up but letting out another brief cry. “It hurts too much. You have to go on without me!”
“No way,” Lizzie replied, kneeling own to help her. “We're not leaving each other.”
“I'll just slow you down.”
“I'm not leaving you!” Lizzie said again. “I promise!”
Wincing, Kirsty tried to get up. Once she was on her knees, she paused for a moment, taking a series of deep breaths.
“Come on,” Lizzie continued, putting an arm around her. “Just one more push.”
“I can do it,” Kirsty gasped. “I didn't let a brain tumor beat me and I won't...” She held her breath for a moment. “Okay, ready?”
“Up on three,” Lizzie told her. “One, two...”
Before she could finish, the tip of a long black tendril came whipping out through the door and struck the side of Kirsty's neck, slicing through the flesh and cutting her head clean off.