Max waited for the strike.
Towering over Max, the snake tensed. It began to shake and shiver. Still, no strike.
Then about two meters below its head, the snake’s skin burst open in a flash of light. Blood flew everywhere, the stink of singed flesh filling the cave. The snake aimed its head towards the ceiling of the cave, its jaws opening wide, wider, and even wider until Max heard muscle tear.
The light grew brighter and a laser shot from the snake’s body, cutting deep into the cave’s wall, sending rock falling to the ground. Max scrambled out of the way, getting to his feet then leaping at the last second as the snake shuddered one last time then fell forward onto the shore.
The life was gone from the cold eyes and only torchlight flickered in the orbs as the vertical slits dilated and froze.
“Fuck me,” Max whispered as he picked himself up and carefully approached the snake.
The snake’s body shook. Max jumped back. Then light erupted from the spine and the flesh parted as a laser sliced through muscle and rib.
Shane clawed his way out of the ginormous hell snake’s corpse and rolled out onto the ground. He lay there for a moment, breathing hard then held up a thumb. “Did it,” he said. He pulled the rebreather from his face, gagged several times, then held up a second thumb. “I rock.”
“Dude, way to go.” Max hurried to get his brother clear of the snake’s corpse, dragging Shane up onto his feet. “You good?”
“Ow. Ow, ow, ow,” Shane said. He pushed his brother away. “Ow.”
“What’s broken?”
“Everything?” Shane shook his head and pointed to his chest. “Ribs. A lot of ribs.”
“That thing ate you,” Max responded.
“Too bad for it,” Shane said. “No one eats Shane Reynolds without my consent.”
“Word to that, bro,” Max said, and they high-fived.
Then Shane gasped and lowered his arm. He fell onto the ground, landing on his ass with a thud and another gasp.
“No way I’m swimming back out of here,” he said.
Max scanned the walls of the cave and found their exit. “I think I know the way out, but we probably won’t be alone when we emerge,” he said.
“Just get me away from that,” Shane said, nodding at the dead snake. “Like now, bro.”
THE TRIBESPEOPLE HAD found more bows and arrows, more spears, and some even had pistols.
“Where’d they get pistols?” Shane asked as Max helped him walk out of the cave mouth and into the filtered sunlight of the jungle.
“It’s the 21st century, dude,” Max said. “Probably ebay.”
One of the tribespeople shouted at Shane and Max. The Reynolds brothers only glared.
Bows were pulled taught, arrows and pistols aimed, spears hefted.
“Whelp. It was fun while it lasted,” Max said.
“Was it?” Shane asked.
“I think so,” Max replied.
“Cool. Just checking,” Shane said.
The brothers opened their mouths to shout at the encroaching cannibals, but whatever last words they were going to say were drowned out by rapid gunfire and the screams of the tribespeople. Max and Shane hit the deck. The adrenalized cannibals fell to the ground, ripped apart by bullets.
Max and Shane waited for the gunfire to end before they risked looking up.
Behind the piles of corpses was Vincent Throne, his M4 smoking and sweeping right to left. “You two good?” Thorne called.
“Uncle Vinny!” Max shouted. He got up and helped Shane to his feet. “Damn! Are we glad to see you!”
“The snake?” Thorne asked, all business.
“Killed it dead,” Shane said. “From the inside out because that’s how this Reynolds rolls.”
“It ate him,” Max said.
Thorne paused in his movements and fixed his gaze on Shane. “It ate you?”
“It ate me,” Shane confirmed.
“As in it swallowed you?” Thorne asked.
“Well, I didn’t enter through its butt,” Shane said.
Thorne lowered his weapon. “Why am I not surprised you were eaten by a giant snake?”
“Ginormous hell snake, Uncle Vinny,” Max said.
“Yeah, Uncle Vinny,” Shane said. “Get it right.”
Thorne opened his mouth to respond but only shook his head. “Come on,” he said at last. “Mission accomplished.”
“Except we didn’t get any DNA samples,” Max said.
“Dude, look at me,” Shane said. “I’m a walking DNA sample.”
“Oh, right, true,” Max said. “Nice.”
“Boys!” Thorne snapped. “We have six hours to get out of this jungle and to the coast before the Brazilian army homes in on us. Let’s move!” Thorne took off jogging, leaving Max and Shane to stand there.
“He’s not going to slow down because of my ribs, is he?” Shane asked.
“Nope,” Max said. “You cool?”
“I’ll make it,” Shane said. “No choice.”
“I hear that,” Max said. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Shane said.
The brothers took off, jogging after their uncle, leaving the piles of cannibal corpses, the pools of congealing blood already coated black with insects, and the memory of a ginormous hell snake, far behind.
THE TORCHLIGHT IN the cave dwindled, flickered, sputtered and was gone, plunging the space into pure darkness.
Within that pure darkness, water splashed. The surface of the pool was disturbed. Unseen, a new snake, much larger than the corpse that took up most of the pool’s shore, slithered out of the water. It paused briefly as it came in contact with its dead mate. But it was a snake and grief wasn’t part of its genetic makeup.
The new ginormous hell snake undulated over the corpse and towards the cave exit, ready for the hunt.
GHOSTS OF HYPERIA
Jessica McHugh
It smells like seawater and Aqua Velva in the underground prop room where Victoria Fell stands over her father’s coffin.
She wipes dripping blood from her chin and grits her teeth. This can’t be real. Not Harlan’s cologne, maybe not even the coffin. Certainly not the fingernails scratching the underside of the lid. But then the casket shudders, the lid lifts, and shriveled brown fingers curl over the edge.
Vic stumbles backward into a rack of moldy gowns and quickly snaps up an algae-slicked stiletto as a weapon, but the things in the dark don’t care.
It laughs. It wheezes. And it sounds exactly like Harlan Fell, especially after the hurricane. The breathing alone makes her feel like a child again, before acid reflux and Celiac Disease took hold, and fear was the only thing that swamped her gut with pain. It was the same hushed desperation she heard late at night, when her adoptive father stood outside her room, soundless yet somehow screeching for Victoria to talk to him again.
But she could barely look at him after the storm. She wasn’t even certain the man outside the door was Harlan Fell. Even after she left for Cornell at sixteen, part of her believed the creature in the house overlooking Fell’s Fairy Funland was an impostor.
Until Harlan Fell hung himself two years ago in her childhood bedroom. Until he was embalmed, painted up and displayed in a near-empty mortuary. It was him all along, and he died knowing his only child didn’t think he was human.
“I’d never hurt you the way you hurt me,” he says. “I love you, Vic. You’re why I did all this.” The voice is changed now. It slips around pockets of familiarity but loses all trace of her father’s melodic drawl. Even when Harlan was at his worst and sounded like Vic’s most depraved imaginings of the boogeyman, there’s no mistaking this thing for Harlan Fell. It is a hundred wet whispers, a wave of angry ghosts echoing in the utility tunnels underneath the once-legendary theme park.
She covers her ears and pain shoots through her skull. She doesn’t know the severity of her injuries, but she must be battered to hell. Such a hurricane struck Calvert Cliffs once before, but this time she left the watchtower at the onset, directing as many employees as she could to the house on the hill. But the wind was like a serpent, purposeful as it whipped and crashed through the crowd of fleeing actors. It tossed the sea as carelessly as the people dressed as fairies and forest animals, and once the bay surmounted the wall, Vic had no choice but to flee herself.