Then came the arms, uprooted at the shoulder sockets.
Then the legs.
It’s taking him apart, piece by piece, I realized.
And last came the torso, though Zalen’s genitals appeared to be absent from the groin. I could only hope that the chewing sound I heard from the truck was my imagination.
I do not consider myself a coward, however, for not attempting to intercede with my pistol, for what you must understand is that the above dismantling of Cyrus Zalen expended only a matter of a few seconds. Instead, I rolled behind a rotted tree stump of considerable breadth. Reflex more than my conscious brain directed my positioning; I lay on my belly, both hands outstretched gripping my weapon, doing my best to establish a firing lane over the area I knew the creature must venture into if it were to pursue me. Shooting eye lined up over the weapon’s small sights, I waited.
And waited.
Come out! I pleaded.
No significant movement could be detected within the truck, though I believe I noticed minor movement. A moment later—and for only a moment—the faintest greenish luminescence seemed to fluoresce within, and I could only judge that it was coming from the passenger side of the vehicle’s interior. A second later, it was gone.
What guided me to re-examine Zalen’s torso I can’t imagine, but as I did so I made the sickening revelation that the cad’s head was no longer in connection with his neck. Why had the batrachian monstrosity within ejected everything but the head?
Something arched in the darkness, thumped, then rolled to answer my question.
Zalen’s head.
The head grinned in a manner that mirrored Zalen’s snideness to perfection. The whites of its eyes, in a faintness that was less than minute, glowed with the same greenish ghost-light I’d noticed in the truck. “Think about what you’re doing, Morley,” came Zalen’s corroded voice, yet a wet, slushy titter now companioned the words. “You don’t have enough bullets to take them on, but you do have choices.”
The dead words wracked me in a near-paralysis. Zalen’s head chuckled when I shakingly aimed the gun at its brow. I noticed, too, that the torn and bloody stump of the neck glowed phosphorically with the thinnest tendrils of whatever netherworld-elixir had been administered into it—the reagent, I presumed, that had also reanimated Mr. Nowry, Candace, and Lord knew how many others.
“What… choices?” I finally managed.
“Join Olmstead’s town collective—”
“Bombast,” I said in spite of my revulsion and fear. “I will not be a party to infanticide, nor will I aid and abet the enemies of my race.”
“Jesus, man. If you don’t join them, you’re dead. Oh, sure, you might take down a few of them with that peashooter of yours, but they’ll get you eventually.” The severed head winked. “And when they do, it won’t be a pretty sight.”
“I’d sooner shoot myself.”
“Well, that’s the only other choice you have. If you’re not gonna join them then you better do yourself a big favor and put that gun to your head right now and pull the trigger, Morley. That thing in the truck just pulled me apart in less time than it takes to bat an eye. You have any idea how much that hurt?” and then the dead mouth bayed wet, mushy laughter.
When I looked up, I spotted the silhouette of the thing standing just outside the truck now, staring at me in great attendance. The eyes which shined in the darkness were gold-irised and seemed the size of adult fists. Its evilly webbed hands hung down well below the joints that sufficed for its knees.
“Of course,” the wretched head continued, “if you’re gonna kill yourself, you’ll need to kill Mary first—”
“Mary?” I exclaimed.
“If you don’t join the collective, they’ll do things to her that will make the Holy Inquisition look like a couple of kids playing in a sandbox. They’ll torture the daylights out of her, Morley, with their chemicals and their tools, and then they’ll kill her, and then? They’ll bring her back just to do it all over again.”
“Shut up!” I yelled and put the gun to the head’s eye.
“But none of that’ll happen if you join the collective. You’ll have your Mary, happily ever after.”
Tempting as they may have been, I knew that I could not fall prey to his promises. If I agreed, they would kill me just the same, for what I knew. I prevaricated, biding time—there was still the fullblood at the truck to deal with—“Let me think about this,” I delayed—but then I looked back to the truck and saw that the heinous, scum-skinned creature was no longer there.
“Too late,” Zalen intoned with a chuckle.
If was from behind that the slime-gloved hand came round and encompassed my entire face; I was hauled back, unable to breathe, and my pistol fell out of my hand. The foot-long fingers encased the full of my head, and thin as they may have been they exerted such force that I knew only seconds would be required before my skull burst like a pressured gourd. Zalen’s execrable head continued to cackle as my struggles grew more enfeebled; worse, the aberration’s other flagitious hand was slipping its way beneath my belt and into my trousers. What I suspected is had used Zalen’s genitals for were about to be duplicated with my own.
“Looks like your God hit the road, Morley,” hacked another splattering laugh of the evil head. “Can’t say that I blame Him…”
It was almost merciful the way my consciousness dimmed just as the marauding hand clasped my genitals and began to twist. Would my skull erupt before I ultimately smothered? I felt the thin, boney fingers tightening, slickened by frog-slime. It seemed to temper itself then, as though it would uproot my privates and collapse my head simultaneously; but as I felt what I was certain were my last heartbeats, the abomination released me as if electrically shocked, leapt upright onto its hideous feet, and released a bellow so cacophonous and inhuman I thought I’d go mad merely from the sound.
A sound like a rising and falling shriek intertwined a wet, slopping-like splatter.
I thudded to my side, desperate to recover breath. Moving clouds over the woods unmercifully afforded more moonlight at the same instant I looked up…
The awkward-jointed, shuddering thing had somehow been staked to a tree via one of Onderdonk’s iron stoking rods rammed into one of its orbicular eyeballs. As the impossible vocal protest wound down, it convulsed with an added sound akin to wet leather flapping.
A dark blur, then, and rapid footfalls, snagged my gaze, as I plainly saw a figure gliding away into the woods.
Who had saved me? Mary? I wondered, but, no, if so she’d have said something, and no woman in her stage of pregnancy could’ve moved so nimbly. Or perhaps a townsperson in conscientious objection to the collective’s ghastly initiatives. Or…
Could it have been young Walter?
The madness of the previous minutes released my senses. I was still on a mission: to save Mary and her son, to see to their escape from this macabre, clandestine netherocracy. Distant thrashing in the woods told me my savior was heading west, across the road…
Towards Mary’s house.
Recovered now, I reclaimed my pistol.
“Kill her,” Zalen’s head said. “Then kill yourself.”
With more than a little loathe I picked the head up by its greasy hair and—
“Don’t you dare, Morley!”
—dropped it into the smoker which was slow-cooking Mr. Onderdonk. Reclosing the lid, I could still hear its muffled remonstrance. “Ain’t nothing but a rich pud…”