Crack! High-voltage electricity making the thing howl, the pit strobing with the fat sparks, the monster lit up for a moment, roaring, quivering with the voltage, smoke rising from where its flesh fried on the metal wall. It shook, its jaws spastically opening and shutting, clacking — then it tore itself free, whimpered just once, lowered its head like a bull and came at him like a locomotive —
Destroyer laughed and ran at his enemy, screaming, “Pray for war, motherfucker!”
They met in the middle, the creature with more sheer bulk coming harder, lifting Destroyer off his feet, even as he dug his fingers deeply into the wet places where its eyes should be, sank his teeth into the place that should’ve been its neck so that he tasted its tarry blood, and head-butted it so hard his scalp split open like that orange Mac had pitched to him…
Until the two of them crashed into the wall, the electricity searing through both of them now, as they tore flesh from each other’s bones in the death throes of shared electrocution.
Crashing white light, all consuming darkness, infinite journey to nowhere…and then…
Good job, son. Welcome to Valhalla.
Duke was sitting on a chair as Sam sewed up his wound. He was pretending it didn’t hurt as much as it did.
He was staring at the “imp” trapped in the nanowall. It’d gotten some of its strength back, was thrashing around, jet blood streaming between its teeth, foam dripping from the corners of its jaws, blood leaking from the edges of its eyes…
The creature thrashed and moaned.
“That’s why I don’t do nanowalls,” Duke said. He looked at the wound. Good, neat sewing. “Now that I’m dying,” he said gravely, “I want you to know I will accept mercy sex.”
“Sorry,” she said, bending to bite through a suture thread. “I’m afraid it missed the brachial artery. You’ll live.”
“Just my fuckin’ luck.”
Half a smile from her, then. Almost.
The lights flickered — off. On. Off and on. Duke and Sam looked up at the ceiling lights as they fluttered another time…and finally, almost reluctantly, decided to stay on for a while.
“Good,” Duke said dryly. “Because it’s not as if it wasn’t scary enough in here already.”
Sam grunted in agreement, and went over to the exam table, looked at the incisions she’d sawed into the dead imp’s chest.
Duke looked at the other imp trapped in the door. Almost felt sorry for it. Almost.
“Give me a hand here,” Sam said.
Duke turned to see Sam bent over the monster’s corpse on the gurney. She had a crowbar in her hand, was working on the thing’s chest. He sighed and went to help her pry it open. She used the crowbar, he used muscle, grabbing the two halves of the thing’s chest-exoskeleton, pulling them apart. Repugnant smells and fluid gushed and sputtered out, runneling over his hands, down his forearms.
This was not Duke’s ideal of a good first date.
They got the chest wide open — and Sam stared into it, mystified.
Duke didn’t look too close, himself. Sure he was tough — but he was a little squeamish about some things. “Jesus…you ever seen anything like it before?”
Sam nodded numbly. “Yes.”
Eleven
IN THE INFIRMARY’S observation room, a zipped-up body bag on a gurney was stirring. Whatever was inside was getting restless. The bag was squirming like a chrysalis just before the moth breaks out.
The body bag settled into stillness…
Then it suddenly lurched, the motion carrying it off the gurney, onto the floor with an ugly thump.
It lay still for another few moments — until an arm punched through the vinyl, at a place where the seams met in a corner; another arm ripped free.
And Goat, who’d been dead for some time, thrust his head out through the break. The whites of his eyes had gone red; the pupils were the color of dead flesh. His skin was like the imp’s — as if outer layers had been stripped away.
But it was Goat. Wriggling, ripping, climbing out of the body bag — insect from cocoon — getting to his feet, swaying, staggering to the glass wall between him and the two human beings who had no notion that he was there, that he was staring at them, that he wanted to shred their throats with his teeth…
Sam and Duke were staring into the imp’s pried-open chest.
“Look,” Sam was saying, her voice hoarse, “there’s a heart, lungs, liver, kidneys…”
“But…” Duke was trying to think his way out from under the conclusion that was threatening to settle on them both. “But like, dogs got kidneys, right? Pigs…pigs got kidneys…”
Sam shook her head. “See this scar? On the lower right side abdomen here…and this ligature, and stitching…” She swallowed, and looked at him. “It’s…had its appendix removed.”
He stared. “What are you saying? Are you saying…”
She nodded. Looked back at the imp, having difficulty accepting it herself. “It’s human.”
When she looked back at Duke again she saw him staring, suddenly pale, at the observation room behind her.
She turned to see Goat glowering balefully at them from the other side of the glass wall. Goat tilted his head and bared his teeth. His eyes were two embers glowing from the hollows of his skull.
Then he raised a hand to his forehead and made the sign of the cross.
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
Goat turned away…walked a few steps…Then turned and sprinted toward the window and rammed it with his head — the audible crunch of bone reached them and black blood ran down the glass.
Duke saw it then — a look in Goat’s eyes. Horror. Recognition. Despair. A mute entreaty…
And again Goat slammed his head on the glass. And again. Duke and Sam watching helplessly as Goat pounded his head on the glass, over and over until bone fragments flew and gray matter clumped on the transparent wall beside the blood, to ooze slowly down the glass. And at last — Goat collapsed. He shuddered and twitched, then lay still.
A second death. A final death.
It was a long moment before either Duke or Sam could speak. “He knew,” she said at last, softly. “He knew he was turning…”
Sam looked at the imp on the gurney as the realization struck her. “That thing didn’t butcher Willits — it is Willits.”
She turned to the imp in the nanowall. Walked toward it, suddenly on a mission. “We’ve got to keep it alive…”
Duke looked at her. Keep it alive? As far as Duke was concerned, that sentiment was totally baffling.
Once, in a faraway desert place, they’d been driving half the night in a big, six-wheeled armored vehicle, Sarge and Destroyer, Duke and Reaper and three other men. Sarge was driving — all three of those other guys were now dead. Red Morrison, Rolf Gestetburg, Lee Zhang. They had the bad luck to be in the rear of the ATV when the RPG hit just above the right rear fender.
One moment they were ribbing each other about flatulence and snoring, the next they were screaming as shrapnel cut them to pieces. Blown clear, Zhang lived about ten minutes and then blew out his own brains with his sidearm when he realized he was missing most of his lower half.
Upfront, Duke had been wounded, but got out in one piece. Sarge had been stunned by a spinning chunk of steel fender, was slumped over the steering wheel of the burning vehicle, vaguely aware of what was going on but unable to move. Reaper was out on the road, firing at the enemy — the insurgents cresting the dune on the east side of the road. They were skidding down the dune to kill any RRTS who’d survived the blast. Maybe torture them a while before they killed them, knowing these desert guerillas.