There was a loud crack, then another. He heard something thump into the sand close to his left.
He picked up his pace, fighting through the pain in his battered knees.
* * *
“There’s something special about this place,” Walter said. “Ever since I was a boy, I always felt this lake was... for lack of a better word, magical. That’s why I brought you here, Belly. I wanted you to feel it, too.”
“I...” Bell said, his forehead creasing. “I do. I feel it.”
Walter had been a loner as a kid, singled out as weird and uncool, but not unhappy with his isolation. Social interactions always left him feeling anxious and awkward. He’d never really understood the point of friendship as defined by books and movies, and preferred to spend time alone in the woods or the library. Or here, at Reiden Lake, where his Uncle Henry had a cabin.
When he’d first met Bell, they’d clicked instantly, bonded by their love of organic chemistry, and of chess. But while Walter was grateful for the company, and enjoyed having someone with whom to share his more controversial theories on the use of consciousness-expanding drugs, he never felt like he really understood William.
Bell was charming. He knew what to say to girls and, more importantly, what not to say. He knew which tie would go with which shirt. He had a cool car and never got lost. He was Walter’s only real friend, but he still seemed kind of like an alien, or a member of a different species.
Until that night.
That night, with their latest psychotropic formula coursing through their brains, Walter felt closer to Bell than he’d ever felt to anyone. Siamese twin close. The Hollywood cliché—of army buddies so tight they would take bullets for each other—suddenly made perfect sense to Walter.
Not only did Walter feel like he finally, truly understood his friend, but in that moment, he also felt completely understood by Bell. A feeling so monumental and unprecedented that it almost brought him to tears. Never once in his twenty-two years of life had he ever felt that level of understanding from another human being.
Not from family. Not from a woman. Not ever.
It was as if their skulls had become transparent, allowing the secret patterns of their thought processes to sync up in a mirrored burst of neurological fireworks. He looked at Bell, and heard that deep, distinctive voice even though his lips weren’t moving, except for the slightest hint of a Mona Lisa smile.
Unlike the previous blend, this formula seems to induce a profound empathy, bordering on telepathic.
Still clinging to the rigid guide rails of scientific method, even at the height of his trip, he forced himself to double-check his own slippery perception.
“What did you say?” he asked Bell.
“I said,” Bell replied, his lips moving normally, “That unlike the previous blend, this formula seems to induce a profound empathy...” But he didn’t finish his sentence. Instead he stared toward the lake, a look of awestruck wonder washing over his face.
* * *
Another bullet cracked off of a nearby rock.
“Ten more bodies,” Allan called out over his shoulder. “Ten more victims. Kill me now and you’ll never find them! Think of their families, never knowing what has become of their loved ones!”
It was a lie, of course. Allan never hid his work. But the police were fools, and easily manipulated.
“Sir?”
The voice was questioning, its owner desperate to be told what to do by someone in a position of authority. Hopeless without orders, like they all were.
“Awaiting orders, sir.” Another voice, another pig, equally flummoxed. Just like Allan knew they would be.
Pathetic.
“Hold your fire!” This new voice stronger, more cocksure. The boss pig. “Take him alive!”
And then there he was—a fat, pig-snouted silhouette, squealing orders from the cliff top, police lights edging everything with red and blue. Reinforcements had arrived. The bait had been taken.
With the police bullets held momentarily in check, Allan took advantage and broke for the pines at a dead run, keeping to the hard-packed sand and shale near the cliff. Behind him, the cops floundered in the loose sand of the beach, their sty-mates stumbling and squealing as they came stampeding down the steep embankment as if herded by predators.
In twenty strides Allan was under the sheltering shadows of the trees, pushing his way through the scratchy undergrowth. Above, the searchlight shattered into a thousand shining spears stabbing through the interlaced pine boughs like the shafts of light in a religious painting, shining down on the messiah.
He laughed softly to himself. While he was unquestionably superior—even God-like, in his own way—he certainly wasn’t on this earth to save anyone. Quite the opposite, in fact.
More like an Angel of Death.
Now that he was out of their line of sight it would be easy to evade the bumbling porkers and return safely home. By the time he reached the southern edge of the woods and returned to his hidden car, he would be nothing but a ghost, vanished into thin air, just like he always did. Laughing and taunting the flat-footed swine from the safety of the ether.
Behind him he heard his pursuers crashing through the undergrowth like the fat hulking beasts they were. But then there came a new volley of animal sounds, agitated barking, growling and baying that crackled like forks of blue lightning across his vision.
He looked back. Hunched and snouty pig shadows lumbered through the trees behind him, swinging flashlights in hoofed hands as they snorted and oinked to one another in their sub-human speech. But running ahead of them was an entirely different pack of animals. Predators, not prey. Allan could see little but the menacing, low-slung shadows with gaping, slathering maws flashing vicious teeth and lolling tongues. But he knew what they were, and that knowledge was like ice water in his belly.
Dogs. He hadn’t counted on dogs.
Humans were abysmally stupid, soft, pampered and useless, their ancient instincts atrophied by modern convenience. But hounds, they’d never strayed far from their natural state as hunters, gleefully free from the limitations of morality and civilization. They posed a genuine threat, ugly and amplified to nightmarish proportions by the acid surging though his synapses, and for a terrible moment, Allan found himself nearly paralyzed with fear.
Must think.
Yes, he needed to rely on his superior mental acumen. He might not be strong enough to single-handedly overpower a pack of hunting dogs, but he could easily out-think them.
Water. That was the answer. He could wade into the lake to throw them off the scent.
So he leapt over the mossy hulk of a fallen tree and veered left, heading for the shoreline. The trees and undergrowth grew denser and he had to force his way through. Pine branches and blackberry vines clutched at him like grasping, clawing hands, leaving tingling patterns of sensation on his body that glistened in the corner of his eyes like snail trails.
The trees seemed to be twisting and shifting to block him, deliberately getting in his way, then opening up again behind to let the howling hell hounds through. All of nature was working against him, jealous of his abilities.
Ahead, through the pulsing tree trunks, he saw the glimmer of water.
Almost there.
* * *
Without thinking, Walter turned to see what his hallucinating friend was staring at, expecting to see nothing, or some figment of his own chemically enhanced mind.
What he saw was a small slit in the air above the surface of the lake, approximately six feet from where they sat. About twelve inches long, it pulsed with a strange, shimmering glow around the edges. As he watched, the slit elongated and bulged slowly outward, until it was first the size of a child, and then the size of a tall man. It gaped open, disturbingly wound-like, and dark water began to flow through it like blood, creating strange spiral currents in the surface of the lake.