He limped past Dani, and thought it was only a trick of his eyes, the drape of shadows, when he saw her move. He paused long enough to look again, then heard a soft moan.
“Dani!” Leaning over, he set Alice on the ground, then hobbled to Dani’s side. She’s alive, he thought, uttering a hysterical, happy, relieved laugh. Oh, God, she’s alive!
“Dani, can you hear me?” There was no time for niceties, not with Prendick behind them. He dropped to his knees and took her by the shoulders, giving a firm shake. “Dani, wake up!”
“He’s coming,” Alice whimpered, pointing. Andrew glanced up, saw a hint of movement among the shadows: Prendick scuttling in the dark. This time, when he fired the gun, he managed to do more than chip olive drab off the Army trucks or knock holes into the floor. One of the rounds hit Prendick high in the remains of his torso, shearing one of the spindly, spider-like legs at the base. With a shriek, he danced sideways, then back-scrambled, disappearing beneath Andrew’s old work Jeep for cover.
“You hit him!” Alice sounded delirious, caught between joy and hysterics.
“That won’t stop him long.” Andrew shook Dani again, harder. “Dani, wake up. Alice, help me get her on her feet.”
Together, they pulled and tugged, and by the time they forced Dani upright, she’d roused somewhat. Dazed and bewildered, she blinked first at Andrew, then down at Alice.
“What’s going on?” she murmured.
Prendick scuttled from beneath the Jeep, dragging the slithering mound of his entrails behind him. He’d flattened the length of his spinal column to crouch beneath the Jeep, but hoisted it now, curling it up behind him, the tapered point of his tailbone poised to strike.
Dani caught sight of this and stiffened, her breath drawing to a sharp, horrified halt. “Oh, my God.”
“Come on,” Andrew said. They lumbered together toward the door, listening all the while to the nasty tap-squish-tap-TAP as Prendick darted after them.
Dani looked over her shoulder, one arm around Andrew’s neck, the other around Alice’s. “Oh, God.”
“Don’t look back,” Andrew said, but Alice did, too, and began to mewl with panicked fright.
“He’s too fast!” she cried.
“Take her.” He didn’t know to whom he was speaking more directly, Dani or Alice, but in any case, he shrugged himself away from Dani and hoisted the rifle again. “Keep going. Don’t stop until you’re outside the garage.”
With that said, he laid down a sweeping burst of gunfire in Prendick’s direction. Prendick danced from side to side, scuttling wildly. He didn’t retreat, however, as he had before, instead darting and ducking around the bullets. The jointed segments of his ribs folded as he crouched, then he pounced at Andrew, hands outstretched.
“Shit!” Andrew shot wildly, missing Prendick altogether in his floundering, backpedaling panic. Prendick hit him hard, knocking the M16 from his hands as they crashed to the floor together.
Prendick clamped his hands around Andrew’s neck, abruptly cutting off his airflow. Andrew opened his mouth wide, straining for breath, pawing wildly at Prendick’s thick, strong fingers. He struggled beneath Prendick’s crushing weight, as the spindly points of Prendick’s ribs dug down to restrain him. From over Prendick’s shoulder, the wicked curve of his tail bone raised again, waggling momentarily before swooping down at Andrew’s head.
Shit! Andrew jerked to his left and felt the rush of wind as Prendick’s coccyx whipped past him. The concrete beneath him shuddered as the tip plowed into the floor. Prendick reared his tail back and Andrew cut his head to the right as again, he narrowly avoided a blow aimed squarely for his nose.
He bucked his hips, kicking his legs furiously, feeling the nasty, wet coils of Prendick’s intestines sliding around his thighs, his knees, tightening around him, holding him down. The need for air was growing desperate and agonizing. Andrew clawed at Prendick’s hands, his vision growing murky, his mind even more so as he struggled vainly for breath.
He heard the sharp report of automatic rifle fire from somewhere close by, then felt Prendick jerk above him, the interlocking clamp of his fingers at last loosening around his neck. Another burst of gun shots and Prendick fell to the side, the looping folds of his entrails sliding against Andrew’s legs. Gagging reflexively, clutching at his throat, Andrew rolled onto his side, whooping for air and pedaling his feet weakly to dislodge Prendick’s guts.
“Get up,” he heard Dani say, and he blinked up in bewildered surprise to see her shouldering the rifle. She leaned over, reaching for him. “Andrew, come on!”
With her help, he stumbled to his feet, hopping to keep his weight off his injured ankle, keeping his arm draped across her shoulders. Even as she dragged him toward the doorway, he could hear Prendick moving behind them, recovering from his latest wounds. He glanced back and could see the convex curve of his tail as it raised once more into the air.
Dani followed his gaze. “Shit,” she hissed, tugging frantically against Andrew’s waist, urging him forward. “Come on. Hurry!”
The only way he could manage to keep in step was to force himself to rely on his wounded leg. Putting pressure down on his shattered heel left him almost instantly reeling from the pain, and he struggled to keep himself from falling over, taking Dani with him. By the time they made it past the threshold, ducking beneath the overhang of the garage door, he was breathless all over again, this time in pain, his body coated in sweat. When Dani drew her arm away, he fell to his knees, swooning.
“He’s coming,” Alice wailed.
“We have to get the door closed.” Shambling under the strain of her own wounds, Dani turned and went back to the garage.
Prendick was less than ten feet from the door. Both her aim and proficiency with the M16 had surpassed Andrew’s, and she’d shot off all but one or two of Prendick’s appendage-like ribs. Without them, he’d lost the advantage of his arachnid-like speed, but none of his murderous ferocity, that feral determination to kill. He crawled now toward the threshold, dragging himself forward inch by grueling inch with his arms, using the stump of his spine to shove him along from behind. When he saw Dani in the doorway, he paused long enough to lock gazes with her, to set the tips of his spilled entrails twitching again.
“Bitch,” he seethed, the only distinguishable English he’d uttered since Moore had plowed into him with the truck.
Dani grabbed the door and grunted, tugging on it. “Alice, help me,” she cried after a futile moment. The little girl hesitated, shied next to Andrew, then scurried forward at Dani’s desperate beckon.
Together, they pulled frantically at the door and Andrew heard it scraping along the tracks as it rolled down an inch or so.
“Bitch!” Prendick snapped from inside the garage, moving faster now, hauling himself forward, peeling his fingernails back, bloody, ragged, raw as he scraped them against the floor.
“Oh, God,” Dani cried, because within two feet, he’d be upon them, and already, the snaking tendrils of his intestines were spreading out ahead of him, nearly reaching her boots. “Pull, for God’s sake!”
With a hoarse groan, Andrew forced himself to stand, to shamble in a clumsy circle and return to the garage. Standing between Dani and Alice, he wedged his fingers in between the metal panels in the door and shoved. Again, the door screeched as it dropped another precipitous inch.
Alice screamed, a high-pitched peal of pure, unadulterated terror, and fell abruptly away from the door, like a cartoon character slipping on a banana peel. She hit the ground hard and Andrew had a half-second to realize one of the looping coils of Prendick’s entrails had wrapped, vice-like, around her ankle, and then she was jerked beneath the garage door, back into the shadows beyond.