Chapter 14
Though the rain had stopped, gusting wind battered the hinges and rocked the cabin, urging the loose boards to shudder and groan in terrible choir. Frigid air screamed between the slats in choked stutters like the fierce cachinnations of the damned. Flanking the intermittent blasts was deep quiet, louder and more threatening than any noise the forest could bring.
Mia palmed the last of the 12-gauge shells and shoved them into a free pocket, all the while keeping the shotgun within reach. Her red, heavy eyes never left Rick's monstrous form as he reset the barricades as best he could with what little they had left.
He glanced back at her every few seconds, meeting her gaze with eyes she couldn't begin to read. His careful body language belied that he knew what she was thinking, or rather feeling, and the silence grew awkward even amidst the threat of agonizing death.
"Rick?"
"Yeah?"
She tried the words first in her mouth, struggling to form them coherently from thoughts she couldn't entirely shape even in her mind. Finally, she settled on, "What is it?"
Rick likewise took his moments to reply, unsure of how to compress the experiences and knowledge gained into a presentable thought without turning into a dissertation. "It's hard to explain. The mask is…possessed."
"You said something about…a god?"
"Yeah, or a demi-god. Or even a demon. I don't really know what it is, but that's probably the simplest way I can think to put it. It's an asshole, I can tell you that much."
"Huh?"
"It's intelligent, sentient. It speaks to me."
"What does it say?"
"What doesn't it say?" Rick laughed, then became serious again. "It's hard to explain."
Mia cocked her head, listening as if she might hear some secret murmur. "What's it saying now?"
"Nothing. It doesn't talk all the time. There were times when I even wondered if it was gone. But I think it's always there. Trust me, I'm thankful for the times it leaves me alone." He paused for a moment, opting to omit a few finer details that would only disturb her further. "I can't always control it. That's why I ran away before. I couldn't risk hurting you. And I didn't want you to see me like this."
She went to him and, after a moment of hesitation, took one of his large hands. "It's okay," she said, playing her fingers over the rough knuckles. "I just want you back. The real you."
"I know. Just as soon—"
A sudden assault shook the barricades. A dark, rotting fist cracked through the bookshelf, scraping the air for the purchase of flesh. The couch bucked against the force of the collapsing door and when the hutch against the left side window fell, a circular object sailed between the tattered curtains and rolled to a rattling stop on the floor.
They recognized it immediately. A steering wheel. The steering wheel to the truck outside, the last viable form of egress they had left.
"Is that what I think it is?" Rick asked.
"Yeah. We're not going anywhere."
They backed up as the rest of the barriers fell to kindling beneath the chalky bone of long-dead fingertips and the creatures began to find their way through.
Mia lifted the shotgun and fired into the meat of the one at the window, exposing its ribs with the blast. Decayed lungs in the shape of blackened mushrooms fell from the cavity and splattered onto the floor, but the beast continued its intrusion.
Mia aimed to fire again but Rick grabbed the barrel. "No! We have to make them count. Hit them in the head if you can."
"I'd rather not get that close," Mia quipped.
Sensing movement, Rick spun and pulled Mia out of the way. One of the ghouls had infiltrated from one of the bedrooms and snuck upon them from the hallway, wielding the axe last seen buried in Henrietta's neck. Arms high, it moved with a surprising quickness for a walking corpse.
Mia fell to the floor as the bladed edge cut the air with a sinister whistle and sunk half-way to the handle into Rick's chest. Densely packed muscle flexed about the rusty metal as fresh blood welled up from the wound. The eyeholes in the mask flashed brilliant red and Rick's stature changed, tightened, as if something had changed within—as though something had taken over.
Ignoring the axe embedded in his chest, Rick grabbed the creature by the wrists and spread its arms wide, cruciform style. The skin at the shoulders straightened and stretched like bubble gum until finally popping open with the sound of snapping rubber, revealing the cartilage beneath.
Any human body, taken to such far reaches of pain, would have broken into a warbling mound of screams and flowing tears, but the creature contorted by Rick's hands only looked at him as one demon to another as he slowly separated it from its appendages.
And it smiled.
The damn thing smiled.
Incensed, Mia's mind flew wild with thoughts of violent vulgarity, imposed against an brightly illumined background of her brother's last breaths. Kill it! Kill it! she screamed within. Tear it in two! Rip the fucker apart!
With a final pull, the entire mechanism separated on both sides, limbs dangling wildly from Rick's hands. When the disarming was done and the two bloody stumps fell to the ground, he took the fiend's face in his palm the way one would grip a softball. One flex of the forearm—one simple squeeze—and the thing's head popped between his fingers, spewing four bloody geysers and oozing bony chips and soft brain between the knuckles.
Oh yeah! The voice of the mask squealed in sadistic elation. Now that was fun! Who's your number one life taker and heartbreaker?
Fun? Rick thought. I've got a fucking axe in my chest!
Get used to it, Ricky! Learn to love the pain. There's a whole lot more coming.
Another threat was out of the fight, but there was little time for small victories as Mia saw that more were pouring in through the door and windows. Four, five, six of them—the decayed, resurrected corpses of whatever denizens of the deep hills that had been taken by Henrietta or some other demons from beyond.
"Rick!" Mia screamed as they approached with wild eyes and gnashing teeth.
"Fight! Kill them! Kill 'em all!"
Mia fired the remaining shell, splattering a ghoul's face all over the ceiling. She chose another target and pulled the trigger to the sound of a dry, defeating click.
An inhuman growl, unlike anything her ears had ever sampled, emanated from deep within Rick's core. The axe dropped from his chest, bloody upon the floor, the wound seemingly healed. Where once a red river gushed only a ghostly scar remained.
In one deft move, his massive arm slid her to the corner with surprising grace, then turned and flipped the table on its edge. Lifting it as if it was as light as plywood, he swung it around before her, legs against the adjoining walls. It formed a meek but tangible barrier to shield her from the coming brawl.
"Reload!" he said. "And shoot anything that gets close!"
At once they began to pile on him, one after another until they swung from his outrageous frame. They clawed and clamped and sunk into his flesh with wicked incisors. He flayed around like a tornado of meat, lashing with fists and elbows, but each time he cast one against a wall it rose almost instantaneously, hungry for more. They were as tenacious as they were ugly.
He was a maelstrom of mass and fury, swinging fists as hard as cinder blocks, obliterating ribcages and separating meat from bone. Heads were ripped free from their hosts and limbs rained from the sky, trailing shiny scraps of bloody meat in their wake.
Mia swayed on legs that wobbled like springs and fumbled two shells out of her pocket as the battle waged before her very eyes. A rush of sickness heaved in her stomach and she nearly vomited but managed to hold it in her throat. There was nothing down there to purge anyway save for the burning juices of her gut. Reloaded, she snapped the gun shut and brought it to shoulder, waiting for one of the bastards to make a clear target.
She caught one racing toward Rick and fired at its hideous face, tracking it with both barrels in the fashion of a skeet shooter, but it was the neck that split open like a burst hose, showering black ichor over the floor. Its head flipped from side to side obscenely on its half-supported spine, all the while issuing terrifyingly joyous cackles.
Rick cast one from his back and plucked the axe from the floor near his feet. After a sharp turn and a fierce downward swipe, the nearly decapitated ghoul froze and split down the middle, its gushing halves flapping like grounded fish to either side.
As the battle waged on, a sudden thought flashed through Mia's mind. She looked at each of the undead creatures closely, or at least as closely as she could in the midst of battle. Of one thing she was sure. None of them were David.
These things…possessed corpses of the dead…were dressed in the tattered remnant rags native to anyone in the region. They were, Mia was certain, the poor families of the hills mentioned on the accursed recording.
But where was her brother?
Don't come back, she pleaded silently. Please don't come back. I don't want to see you die again.
The ferocity of the battle broke suddenly, revealing in the settling stillness that Rick had broken, smashed, stretched, shattered, and dismembered all but two of the demonic ghouls. Though seemingly unaware but for the urge to rip and chew flesh from bone, the creatures were not entirely without intelligence, for the pair did not rush him headlong, but rather watched with a sort of feral caution.
"Not so tough now, are you?" he taunted.
That's what I'm talking about! the voice cheered. There's my little badass. Looks like I've taught you well.
With one smooth draw of the axe, he cleaved the skull cleanly off one of the monstrosities. It flailed its arms in exaggerated panic, jibing like a headless chicken. Rick stepped down on the cranium and watched the brains fan outward about his feet with hidden mirth. He felt powerful. Unstoppable. Merciless.
Feels good, doesn't it? Giving these heathen fucks what they deserve.
What are they? he wondered.
Cockroaches to us. Pests. Or maybe more like a communicable disease. They're corruption, Rick. And if you don't want your world to end up as bloody as this cabin, don't let your guard down.
Rick watched as the headless body swelled about the abdomen until the dirty, wet flannel shirt popped open, revealing a gaping mouth full of cunning teeth, with dark, wild eyes rolling in the chest.
"What the fuck!" he said.
Told you. Sometimes takin' the head isn't enough. These things like to distort the flesh. Tricky little fuckers, huh? They can be a real pain in the ass.
A bloody, whip-like tongue lashed from the mouth and fastened around Rick's throat. Small, bony barbs adorned the tip, sinking into the skin of his neck.
Nasty, too.
"Gross!" he shouted and brought the axe down on the face, opening a wide gash through its center. The severed tongue slid loose and wriggled fiercely until he pulled it from his neck and let it drop to the ground. He hoisted the axe high again to deliver the killing blow when a thunderous shot rang out and a spray of blood and teeth hit his chest.
The mutated creature's middle exploded from the blast, and what remained amounted to little more than a pair of denim-clad legs, which twitched and promptly buckled to the ground.
Rick turned to Mia. He looked past the smoking barrels into her eyes—wide and glittering blue. Brilliant, icy blue. Blue that changed to purple in certain light. He fell into that gaze and knew that there was no one anywhere he'd rather love or fight alongside. She shone like a Valkyrie in the ever gleaming light of Valhalla.
"Thanks," he said.
"Don't mention it," she returned with a surprising smile—a smile that melted with the rise of a hideous, terrifying sound—the bone in the meat grinder. The explosive, rumbling roar of a two-cycle engine succeeded by the whistling whine of high velocity blades slicing the cold air.
"Shit," Rick cursed.
Somebody found a new toy. Looks like the fun isn't over after all.
Mia broke open the shotgun, pulled the still smoking empties from their housing and slid fresh rounds in before snapping it closed once again. The spicy smell of spent gunpowder stung her nostrils.
The last remaining demon standing in the house—a bald, goblin looking fiend in overalls with eyes like white marble—seized that moment to jump on Rick, swinging around onto his back and lodging its canines into his neck. Mutated hands tipped with lethal talons scraped the flesh from his chest in curling red ribbons.
That's when David appeared in the doorway, features contorted and barely recognizable, holding the chainsaw before him like a rabid animal. The grin on his demonic face turned Mia's blood to ice instantly.
"David!" she screamed. "No!"
It wailed in sadistic excitement, lifted the chainsaw high and dashed at full speed into the room.
Rick saw Mia push over the table and cried out. "Mia! Stop! It's not him!"
Unconscious of his words or oblivious to reason, Mia stared at her brother, shotgun gripped at her side. The pained grimace on her face told all that was unsaid—that the deep recesses of her heart still held hope that the power of love could somehow overcome the horror she faced.
Rick dropped the axe and scrambled forward as the creature upon him ravaged his back and neck. He pushed Mia out of the way as the saw blades screamed down toward her head.
The demon moved quickly, bringing the chainsaw down between Rick's neck and shoulder. It tore through flesh and bone, veins and ligaments, splitting his upper body diagonally.
"FUUUUUUuuuuuuuckkkk!" Rick screamed, a drawn out bellow of agony. He grabbed David's arms to keep the screeching blades from reaching his heart. With all his strength, he managed to hold it back, but David continued to bear down like an animal, slowly scooping out more of Rick's insides.
The one on Rick's back cackled as the saw shredded through its left arm, as if the loss of its own limb mattered not at all. A new morsel in sight, it dropped from Rick's back and ran for Mia, but Rick released his grip on David's arm to reach out and take it down by the ankle.
"Mia! Run!"
The David-thing ripped the chainsaw free of Rick's chest and brought it screaming down on his outstretched arm. The bulging bicep split like roasted meat, spraying blood across Mia's face. She tasted Rick's life in her mouth, hot and metallic across her tongue.
She screamed and jumped back from the creature that struggled to scrabble towards her. Reflexively and almost without thinking, she stepped down hard one of its hands as it scraped the floor trying to grab her. The satisfying crunch of snapping bone reached her ears as she pushed the muzzle of the gun into the back of its head and fired. The blast shook her fiercely and set bells ringing in her ears. Bits of brain and skull bone splattered across her legs and dripped over her boots.
As the ruined thing lay twitching on the floor, she snapped the barrels up and aimed them at David's face. His twisted, hideous grin went slack and he released the throttle on the saw. Slowly, he pulled it out of Rick's woefully injured arm and let it fall to the floor, where the engine choked and died.
"I'm so sorry, David."
The creature merely looked on with fierce but idle eyes. To the side, Rick groaned and tried to hold his wounded body together. Every fiber of muscle ached. Every vein rain with fire.
"Mia!" he cried in pain. "Get away from it! That's not David."
"I…I love you" Mia sobbed. "Please forgive me."
She blinked tears from her eyes and suddenly the heinous, evil creature was gone. In its place stood her brother, complete and well again. He looked at her with loving, sorrowful eyes. He looked younger, more vibrant, from a time before years of trial and pain lined his face with age.
"David?" she whispered, taken by the miracle of his return—the notion that his heart was strong enough to reject the demonic infection.
"It's okay, Mia," David said, low and soothing. "It's okay, sweetie. We can go home now. It's over."
"Mia!" Rick cried, but his voice warbled far away from her ears, as if he was speaking underwater. He slumped forward and drug his body toward David with his one good arm, smearing buckets of blood beneath his open flesh.
"It's not you," she said. "It can't be."
"It's me. I came back. I'm here to take you home. I won't leave you again, I promise. We'll get you better, and we'll be a family." He held out an open hand to her. "Come on."
Mia looked at the callouses on his hand and remembered how hard he'd always worked, putting everything else in his life on hold after their mother got sick. To be a good brother. To be a good son. He deserved a better life—a better death. The sight of his pallid face slumping against her kept breaking into her mind as she shook her head moved back and forth. A tidal wave of tears crested behind her eyes, eager to spill forth. "No. You're dead. I watched you die."
Rick looked into the hollowed valley of torn flesh that was his bicep. Astonished, he watched the tiny fibers of muscle stringing across the gulch of his wound, knitting themselves back together. Separate sides of a blue vein, severed and limp, struck together and melded like chewing gum.
"Mia," David said, a tremulous note breaking into his voice. "It's time to go."
"No! You're not my brother! Get out of his body!"
"You spoiled little brat," David snapped. His face screwed up in disgust. "No wonder mom hated you. She told me. Years ago. She said 'get away from here and your little junkie cunt of a sister!' So I did, and I wish I'd never come back. I wish you had died with a needle in your arm."
"Fuck you!" Mia screamed.
In an instant, David's face fell to ashen gray, popping with odd ridges and open lesions. His eyes turned to black and red as he reverted to demon form. "Come here you bitch!"
Arms shot out like whips and pulled Mia to him. She screamed as he sank his teeth into the tender area between her shoulder and neck. If not for the leather jacket protecting her, he surely would have taken a good chunk of flesh.
Energized by the sound of her agony and healed enough to move, Rick shot forward and locked his good hand on David's left shoulder. He squeezed until the joint turned to pudding beneath his grip.
Mia broke free and backed away as Rick flung David toward the door. Her foot scraped against the shotgun as it lay where she had dropped in on the floor. She snapped it up and checked the chambers, unsure if she had fired both shots. One shell remained unfired. Knowing what she had to do, she closed the gun and brought it to her shoulder, aiming down the twin barrels at her brother's face.
"Go to hell," she said.
The creature sneered and roared in defiance. "We'll rip your soul apart you stupid whore—"
Mia fired.
David's contorted face disintegrated into formless meat beneath the destructive power of double-ought buck. Mia closed her eyes so tight it hurt, but the snapshot of that hideous end was imprinted like a glowing cattle brand in her mind, a hell she would be forced to live with forever.
His body stood for a moment, still as stone, then jolted and slumped to the floor, blood pouring from the neck in buckets.
Rick froze as Mia let the shotgun clatter to the floor. The weight of her pain hit him in full, squeezing his insides like a cold press. Short of watching her brother die, there wasn't anything he could have thought more painful. It never occurred to either of them that she might be the one to finish him for good.
"Mia…"
She went to his arms and stared into him with clear blue eyes. "It's okay, Rick," she said.
"I'm so sorry."
"I know it wasn't him. I…I know there wasn't anything we could do."
She pulled back and took notice of his injuries. Her eyes softened with worry. "Oh my God. Are you—"
"I'm okay. I'm already healing, see?"
He held up his arm and chuckled inwardly at her look of complete surprise as she saw the final traces of the gash in his arm healing. The outer flesh folded together like a zipper and it was as if he was untouched. The much more grievous wound to his chest, however, was taking longer to seal.
"Wow," was all she could say as she reached up to scratch at her shoulder. Grimacing in pain, she unzipped the leather jacket and peeled it from her shoulder. Her sheer nightgown, soiled with sweat, revealed with hideous contrast the bright red blood oozing from the bite near her neck. "It got me."
"It's okay," he said. "We'll patch it up as soon as we get across the creek."
"How are we going to make it without the truck. We can't walk all the way back."
"My bike should still be on the road. If we walk we can make it by sunrise."
"I don't feel good," she said, voice faint, and swooned on her feet. He took her into his arms and twitched at the icy cold of her skin. He ran his hands over her arms, hoping to draw out some of that bitter chill.
"You're exhausted, baby. You need rest. I'll carry you if you can't walk." Her body sunk further down between his arms and he felt her breath grow rapid and shallow against his chest. "Mia! You could be going into shock. Don't pass out. Don't you dare fall apart now."
With a deep breath, she seemed to regain her composure. "I'm okay," she said, brushing wet hair from her face. She folded into him and absorbed with intense warmth of his body. It flowed into her veins and filled her bones with awesome heat. Heat she hadn't felt since her fever subsided.
He looked her over with concern. "Can you make it?"
"I think so."
She looked around at the carnage, aware—painfully, insanely aware—that the blood and the bone and the bits and pieces that littered the room belonged to her best friends and her brother. The only real contacts she had left in life had been splattered and torn apart.
Rick saw the dismay and doubt in her eyes. "There's nothing we can do. You know that."
"What are we supposed to tell people? What the hell are we supposed to do?"
"I don't know, Mia. I don't have the slightest idea. We'll figure something out. We lost our friends, but we're alive, and that's what they would want."
Mia nodded and looked out the door, into the dangerous night. "Do you think there are any more of…them?" she asked, looking at the stomach-churning mess flooding the floor of the cabin. The place of her childhood had become an abattoir, brimming with spilled viscera and unmentionable gore. It smelled like one, too.
Rick handed Mia the shotgun and retrieved the chainsaw. "I think I'll keep this handy, for close encounters."
A tired grin came to her face. "You're quoting Aliens now?"
"Can you think of a better time?"
She shook her head. "You're such a nerd, and I missed you so much."
"I missed you, too. Now what do you say we get the hell out of here?"
She nodded and they stood together, side by side in the shadow of the valley of death. They looked through the doorway into pitch black, wondering what final horrors and detestable creatures were waiting, looking to make the deep woods their eternal hell.