The buck had been disturbing. Seeing an animal continue to move after being decapitated, its eyes popping out of its skull on veiny black stalks, its whole demeanor and unnatural, jerky movements, it had all been nothing short of grotesque. It wwas going to be making an appearance in Wil’s dreams for years to come, assuming he lived that long.
But the thing that emerged from the medical room was a living nightmare.
It had clearly been Sandoval. It still wore the remains of a ranger’s uniform and even had the shiny metallic “SANDOVAL” nametag on the left side of its chest.What it had become since the others had closed the door mere minutes before…Wil couldn’t guess.
Its limbs and torso had stretched beyond the capacity for the skin to hold it, tearing the flesh and exposing the wet muscle beneath. That had torn as well, and beneath the musculature were thick black ropes that glistened. Wil thought of his own rope, currently in the back of Gutierrez’s jeep.
Sandoval’s arms and legs stretched out to at least five or six feet long each. His hands had split down the middle, and the insides were lined with broad, sharp teeth, just like the buck had. Sharp black thorns that shone like obsidian emerged from his all over his body. Some of them were no bigger than the tip of a finger, while others were as long as Wil’s forearm. Twisted around and beneath the thorns were those thick veins. Wil could see them squirming and pulsing even in the dim light of the station.
Sandoval’s skeleton had warped from all the stretching of muscle and sinew, but also expanded. His ribcage wove in and out of his chest, his shin bones had splintered and poked out in white shards, his finger bones extended far past the limits of the fingers themselves and stuck out in blood-soaked talons.
The worst of it all was Sandoval’s face. It was a melted, twisted mockery of what it must have been before. The mouth yawned open and merged with the neck and created the same sort on elongated orifice the buck had tried to eat Wil with. It was lined with more of those broad, sharp teeth set in rows that clacked together. Three long, prehensile tongues emerged from the dark pit of the Sandoval-thing’s mouth and lashed at the air, the hardwood floor, and the nearby wall. Each left a thick, gummy white paste behind it.
The Sandoval-thing’s eyes were entirely black, and seeping that thick dark fluid. A third, smaller eye opened on the right cheek, while a fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh blinked open on the scalp, forehead, and neck.
The thing screamed, a horrible, piercing sound not of the Earth. It slapped at Wil’s conscious mind and turned it to mush. He had been taking in all the horrific details with the stark clarity of adrenaline and terror, but now there was only the scream. It made it impossible to think, to understand what was going on. It utterly derailed any train of thought he might form, and reduced his thinking to a simple command: run.
So he ran. He flung himself over the nearest desk and bolted toward the window beyond it. He would throw himself through the glass, damn any cuts he might get, and keep running. If he came to a cliff he would run over the edge. Death would get him away from the god-awful noise better than any amount of running.
A single gunshot stopped the scream and Wil’s feet just as he prepared to leap out the window.
His mind returned to normal (As normal as a suicidal shut-in gets, Wil thought)and while still terrified beyond anything he had experience in his life, he could think again. He spun around and saw many of the other residents had scattered as well, flung themselves over furniture. It looked like Mr. Stewart, he of the egg-head, had run directly into a wall and bloodied his nose. Matsuda and Gutierrez had fallen where they had stood, hands over their ears. Gutierrez was fumbling for her side arm, and O’Donnell was nowhere to be seen.
Birkin had shot. She stood in front of the Stewart family, pistol out and aimed at the Sandoval-thing. If she hit it, Wil couldn’t see where, and it hadn’t hurt it, because it roared and charged right toward Birkin in a shambling, arachnid sprint on its hands and feet.
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“Move, Birkin!” Gutierrez said as she pulled her pistol out and fired. Wil saw the bullets hit the thing’s side, but it didn’t feel or didn’t care about the impacts. Birkin fired wildly, and then fell beneath the thing’s charge. It pinned her and Wil screamed as one of those dark obsidian thorns emerged from the end of one tongue, and it plunged into Birkin’s skull.
The woman jerked, her eyes rolled up in her head, her mouth went slack, and she twitched violently ad the thing’s tongue flexed and lashed as it punched through her skull and into her brain.
“Fuck!” Gutierrez said and emptied her gun. She started to reload when Matsuda grabbed her arm.
“No! Run! Out the kitchen door!” he said. The Stewart family were in the far corner, behind Birkin, a few short yards away from the Sandoval-thing as it continued to ravage Birkin’s skull. Wil, Matsuda, and Gutierrez all had a clear way out through the kitchen. O’Donnell had presumably already left, but the Stewarts were too close to the thing.
“Fuck it,” Wil said. He picked up a heavy glass paperweight off the corner of a nearby desk and hurled it at the back of the Sandoval-thing. It struck it square on the back of the head, which looked oddly swollen and lumpy, as if the brain had expanded beyond the skull.
It turned to glare at him with several of its black eyes and Wil gulped.
“Ah, shit,” he said, then looked at Gutierrez and Matsuda. “Run!”
The thing took a shambling step toward him and Wil backed away. It dragged Birkin along with it by its tongue for a moment before retracting the prehensile muscle. Black sludge leaked out of the dark hole in the midst of Birkin’s blond locks.
She twitched.
And then she stood.
“What the fuck,” Wil said. He glanced to the side as Gutierrez gave him a quick nod, and then she was gone down the kitchen hallway. Matsuda had already left. The Stewarts remained, facing the backs of the two ungodly creatures that started at Wil.
Birkin did not stretch and contort and change like Sandoval had. She more closely resembled whatever had happened to the deer. Her muscles bulged, her veins lashed under her skin, and her mouth extended and grew even as Wil watched. He took his eyes away as he backed up and put a couple of desks between him and the two creatures. He met eyes with Mr. Stewart, then darted them to the front door, which was closer for them. The egg-headed man glanced to the side, nodded and began to edge away. Mrs. Stewart held her daughter’s hand and all three of them stepped toward the door.
One of the Sandoval-thing’s eyes rolled backwards. It blinked as it saw the family moving away, then roared.
“No!” Wil shouted as the creature fully rotated one of its long arms in a circle so it face back behind it, seized the trailing Mrs. Stewart in its tooth-lined hand. She let out a gargling choke as it slammed her to the ground with a brutal crack of her skull and she lay still.
“Mommy!” the daughter wailed.
“Oh god! Oh god!” Mr. Stewart stammered and tried to grab his daughter. The Birkin thing spun on him and tacked him to the floor with ease. Her huge mouth tore his neck open and a spray of arterial blood coated the wall and floor behind him.
The daughter fell to the floor and curled up in a ball, and then the Sandoval thing fell on her with its mouth.
It had taken two, perhaps three seconds, and the family that had been there was gone.
Wil was across the room, his view mercifully blocked by desks and and overturned chair. He had a clear shot at the kitchen exit now, and he took it. It was a short, narrow hallway to a cramped cooking and dining area, but Wil didn’t notice any of it. He only saw the tall rectangle of gray light of the exit and threw himself out into it.
Gutierrez, Matsuda, and O’Donnell stood there, the former and the later with guns drawn.
“The family—” O’Donnell said.
“Dead. We have to go! They’re probably gonna be up any second!” Wil said.
“Jeeps!” Gutierrez said and all four of them ran around the side of the station towards the parking lot and the two jeeps. O’Donnell and Matsuda climbed into one, and Gutierrez and Wil jumped into the one they had arrived in. O’Donnell peeled out of the parking lot and sped away up the road, and Gutierrez wasn’t far behind.
“Oh god,” she said as she glanced in the rearview mirror. Wil knew he wouldn’t see anything good, but looked anyway.
Birkin and the Stewarts stood on the porch of the station. All of their eyes were black. Birkin, Mrs. Stewart, and the little girl all looked swollen with muscle, and began to sprint after the jeeps as soon as they saw them driving away. Mr. Birkin was far slower, shambling forward with awkward steps and tripping on the short stairs that lead down to the parking lot.
The Sandoval thing had to duck to get its long, gangly, nightmare form through the door. It look at the fleeing vehicles, then climbed up the side of the station like an enormous spider and disappeared behind it.
The jeep far out-paced the chasing pack of black-eyed creatures behind it, and they were soon out of sight. Gutierrez let out a long breath and Wil did too. He hadn’t realized he had been holding it in. As they sped after O’Donnell and Matsuda in the jeep ahead, he tried to block out the screams of the Stewart family and the sight of what they had become.
He failed.