10
Kylie is running a bath. She hears gunshots echo in the distance.
She peers out a little window above the tub, trying to see where the shots are coming from.
.
.
The posse run through this very dark forest after Johnny, leaping over brush and rocks. They're nervous, but also excited, as the primordial hunting urge takes over. Their eyes are filled with anger and bloodlust.
They're able to follow Johnny only by catching glimpses - a flash of flesh between trees, a tentacle disappearing around brush.
"There he is! Over there!"
They fire at the creature, taking chunks out of trees, but missing. He's too fast.
Johnny slips around a boulder and splashes through a creek, and into the plentiful trees beyond. He rustles thick fronds as he moves up alongside the creek.
The posse run up the creek itself, splashing, trying to peer through the leaves to get a shot at Johnny.
Jack, carrying his revolver, trips and falls in the creek. He cuts his knee on a sharp rock. He stands and keeps going.
The posse come up out of the creek. They've completely lost track of the diseased man-beast.
They stop, out-of-breath and looking around. They whisper to one another.
"Where'd he go?" Andy hisses.
"We aren't ever gonna find that girl now." Gwen howls in a stage whisper.
The Redneck is snarling with rage. "I'll kill that asshole what he did to Charlie."
Jack sees Rhiannon run up behind them. He waves her back. "Rhiannon, get the hell out of here! Ianto, god no!"
Rhiannon takes a couple steps back but doesn't leave. She watches there, half in shadows as the posse creep around, searching for some trail of Johnny. Gwen looks down into the bubbling creek. She sees it's turning red. She looks up the trail of red, which is rippling downhill in the water. The red flow starts somewhere near a boulder. Jack and Archie are searching in front of the boulder. Gwen sees, but they don't, Johnny pulling himself up on a tree branch and rising behind them. Blood from a shotgun wound is dripping into the creek. Johnny, pissed, lifts a tentacle.
"Jack!" Ianto cries out as he sees too.
Jack turns as the tentacle swings down toward him. He falls back; the tentacle slashes inches from his face.
Jack BLASTS his shotgun up at Johnny, but Johnny is already slithering swiftly back into the thick brush. The posse squeeze themselves though the brush, following. The posse emerge on the other side of the brush, only to be confronted by a terrible odour. They cover their noses and mouths as their faces shrivel in disgust.
"What the hell's that smell?" Andy asks with disgust.
"It's something dead." Archie replies with a gross expression.
The posse gaze up at the old ramshackle barn where Johnny had brought Mary.
"It's coming from in there, isn't it?" Gwen looks at Jack. "Think he's inside?"
Jack takes the lead, carefully approaching the barn. The posse follows, their weapons drawn. The closer they get to the barn, the more unbearable the smell becomes. Only Jack, intent on the task in front of him, doesn't react to the stench at all.
Jack leans his ear in close to the front door, and listens. Through the door he can hear a quiet sobbing. Jack and Archie exchange a look. Jack steps back. He and Archie aim their shotguns at the door. Jack nods to Gwen, and gestures for her to open it. Rhiannon watches all this from the rear. Gwen swings open the door. Jack and Archie move cautiously but quickly inside. But they stop suddenly, in disgust and horror.
"Oh..." Jack chokes out "Fuck."
It's Mary. And she doesn't look good. Her weepy little head is stuck to the front of a huge fleshy orb, which is what her body has become. This enormous ball of flesh is nine or ten feet tall. Vestigial fingers protrude from the sides. She is utterly immobile. Her flesh sloshes, slightly and constantly; a thousand snakes seem to be slithering beneath her thin, tight, bruised skin. The woman is in great pain. She sobs. Her mouth and chin are stained with blood.
The posse and Rhiannon along with Ianto holding her arm to hold her back enter behind Jack and Archie and are equally astounded.
"Oh, shit!"
They see the source of the awful stench:
Mary is encircled by the rotting carcasses of cows and horses and forest critters. They are mostly skeletal, as they have been largely devoured. They're swarming with flies. The stench is so bad the posse cover their faces with the bottom of their shirts.
The sobbing Mary looks desperately at Jack and Archie.
"Something's wrong with me."
"Uh, yeah." Archie agrees.
Jack and Archie get in a little closer.
"Mary, um..." Jack gasps as his eyes start to tear up from the stench.
"I didn't want no one to be seeing me like this."
As the posse inch closer, Mary's whole body suddenly lurches forward a bit - like whatever's inside her is trying to get out and to the posse. Mary screams in agony.
The posse jump back. They stare as she recomposes herself. "How are my boys, Jack? Are they alright?"
"Boys are fine, Mary. Uh, what's …" Jack gulps "what's happening here, exactly?"
"I'm so fucking hungry, Jack. I'm so hungry. I just never knew anybody could be so hungry." Mary tries to smile in a way she might charm her Daddy into giving her candy. This is creepy as hell. "Would you mind handing me a piece of that possum there at your feet? Little bit?"
Andy gags and runs out of the barn.
Andy vomits into some bushes.
Jack eyes poor Mary. "I think we best get you to a hospital right quick."
"What the fuck they gonna do with her in a hospital, Jack?" Archie hisses.
Again, Mary screams. Her body lurches forward.
"Why's she doing that?!" one of the others ask.
"Her tumours are moving." Archie replies.
"Jack, get her to stop that shit! Don't… don't touch her" Owen demands, not willing to step closer. As he is a doctor, this makes them all step back as well.
"It hurts!" Her body lurches forward again. She sobs. "Help me! Help!"
And then again, she lurches.
Ianto notices that Mary's skin is starting to split and tear on her side. "Jack!"
"Little fuckers are tearing me aparrrr…" Mary screams like a woman giving a thousand evil births at once and her body rips open in one part; and then, in quick succession, ANOTHER, and ANOTHER.
Jack looks out one of the windows. Johnny is peering in at them, smiling. "He led us here."
And then Mary's body BURSTS OPEN COMPLETELY, like a water balloon hitting cement, and thousands of little SLITHERING EYELESS PARASITES with slippery black-red skin like slugs spill forth. The horrid creatures, eight inches long and a few inches thick, swarm over the posse.
Andy sees the things flooding over the posse in the barn. The parasites are especially drawn to the posse's heads. Because there are so many, the weight of the beasts knocks most of them down.
Andy runs, but the things make it out the doorway, covering him like lava in One Million B.C., and he buckles.
A parasite slithers quickly and fluidly into Archie's mouth. He gags on it. His eyes flip back up into his head, and his body starts to spasm.
Another man tries to pull one away from his face, but it's too slippery and it disappears inside his mouth. His body, too, convulses, and he spits up blood.
Jack notices the parasites slithering into the mouths of the Redneck and the Older Cop as well; whites of their eyes, bodies convulsing, spewing blood. Jack sees the things oozing up Gwen's neck.
"Gwen, cover your mouth!" Owen yells as he does the same.
Jack sees Andy outside the door in the dirt, trying to slap the parasites off. Jack yells to everyone "Don't let them in your mouths!"
One starts to get in Jack's mouth as he speaks, but he slaps it aside. Gwen pulls her shirt over her face.
Rhiannon SHRIEKS.
She puts her hand over her mouth as the parasites rush up her. She's knocked over, and falls back onto the floor.
A parasite slithers between Rhiannon's lips - when, suddenly, a knife thrusts down, pinning the creature to the dirt, stopping it from oozing further into Rhiannon.
Ianto is holding the knife in one hand, his other hand firmly over his mouth. Jack swats more incoming parasites away from Rhiannon's mouth. He covers her mouth with his free hand. He lies on top of them, mushing their bodies and faces as closely together as possible so the things don't get into them. The parasites swarm all over them, flapping their slimy little tails as they try to fight their way inside their mouths. But Jack holds tight to himself, Ianto and Rhiannon.
Eventually, the parasites give up on them, and begin to slither away. Jack watches as they crawl off the posse and filter out of the barn in a squirmy mound.
Eventually, they're gone. Jack takes his hand from Rhiannon's mouth. Rhiannon looks around.
She sees Gwen lift her face from the ground, shivering, holding her shirt over her mouth. Owen with her, his own shirt held the same way. They gaze out the front door of the barn.
Andy pulls his face from the dirt and stands. He spits violently and wipes the dirt off his tongue with his wrist. "They wanted us to eat 'em! Why would they want that!?"
Jack is trying to make sense of it all. He gazes down at Mary's body, her bloody skin and misshapen skeleton spread out over the floor, split open like an enormous bloody tiger rug.
He looks around at the posse lying on the floor in mangled positions, their mouths and lips covered in blood, still lightly convulsing.
He gazes out into the woods to see the parasites rushing away like an ugly wormy army, shaking the brush as they head off in different directions.
Parasites crawl over rocks and out of the forest and onto the ranch. The Strutemyer farmhouse looms nearby.
.
.
Kylie is taking a steamy bubble bath. Her head is back, her eyes shut; she's enjoying the warm water. The tub faucet drips lightly in an uneven rhythm.
.
.
The parasites squirm up the side of the house, sticking to the wood siding.
,
,
Kylie glances out the window beside the tub, at the starry sky and crescent moon, beautiful and still.
There's a knock on the bathroom door. Kylie turns toward the door - as she does, a parasite crawls across the window behind her, streaking a moist slimy trail.
"Kylie! You're gonna turn into a plum in there!"
"Prune, Mum. Plums turn into prunes."
Kylie's Mum is at the bathroom door. "I know what turns into what. You got school tomorrow. Finish up in there and get to bed."
Kylie GRUNTS in vague agreement.
Kylie's Mom trots down the hall, to another door.
She knocks once, then opens the door to see Kylie's younger sisters who lay in single beds, reading Goosebumps by bed-lamps clipped to the headboards.
"Time to turn in, ladies."
"Just a couple more pages, Mum?"
"Come on now."
The girls sigh in lazy protest, but still turn off their reading lamps.
"G'night." The mum says firmly.
"Night, Mum. Night."
Kylie's Mum starts to close the door. "Sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs bite."
Numerous parasites slither up the side of the house, approaching the girls' bedroom window, which is open a few inches for air. Kylie's Mum shuts their door completely. The girls turn on their sides and close their eyes to sleep.
And the parasites pour in through the cracked window. They slither over the walls. Their slimy black-red bodies contrast sharply with the pretty flowered wallpaper.