Old Home, Part 2
#2 of Old Home Series
Despite the monstrous, pulsing infection running through his forearm, Neil maintained a degree of clarity, that told him to be cautious, as he stepped out into the hall. Some ungodly elevator music was playing faintly as he poked the door open and raised his pistol, looking right, then left, toward the stairs.
There was no one around. It was a little town off the ass-end of New Mexico, near the border to Arizona. He'd stopped for gas, and had the fortune of running into one of the few safe-havens around on the road to LA. Folks had been trying to talk him into settling in--the wilderness around was harsh, and scavenging for supplies--water, especially--had always held the risk of wandering into urban areas. Mind you, it wasn't like there were Revenants everywhere you went--they liked the 'oldtowns', places like this, ironically, that had taken a showering of magical space-rocks, and had people too close or for too long without evac--to feast on, or to add to their numbers. Still, the wilderness had its own flavor of spooky. As tonight had proven, Mother Nature herself wasn't immune to a meteorological kick in the ass from Space. He didn't really want to know what other 'things' were... 'fermenting' out there besides corpse people, and so he'd been trying to stay on the road--to make it somewhere safe, with a semblance of sanity.
Needles. He smirked, shutting the door behind him, and hiding a key in the potted cactus on the table by the door--it reminded him of those old Charlie Brown comics. He was sure there was some more formal name, but that's what people called it--a town that had survived a meteor impact, and dug in tight, despite itself. It probably had something to do with how the crater's wreckage had formed a cage--a cradle almost--for all the whacked-out shit on the other side of town. Half the buildings whiped out, and a big ugly glowing wound in the earth, surrounded by walking death--but above it all, a few buildings still remained, and a road led into town like one last vital artery, still giving its all to keep the place alive with new visitors.
That road cut out halfway through town. There was no way but backward, back to desert--back to a long, winding road through howling, dry, desert plain. He'd thought of staying here, maybe getting a rifle, taking potshots at all the Revs as they waddled up to the road, trying to squeeze through the makeshift fence of beaten down buildings and burnt-out cars. Things had seemed pretty in-control here... til tonight.
A sudden shot of pain arced through his wrist, and he winced as his fingertips bled. His claws were growing, again. He wondered if he'd mutate into some kind of slavering creature--he'd only gotten a brief look at the beast before it fled, but it reminded him all too much of loup-garou... a wolfman.
"Zombies and now werewolves." he muttered, trying to fit his ugly, padded finger on the trigger.
He didn't understand it really. Radiation was supposed to make you dead. Sterile, sure--grow an extra limb? Maybe. Not turn you into a creature feature--not like this. Still, as much as he knew about the world, he was wise enough to accept it when a big ugly fact hit him in the face.
He made a passing glance for the stairs, as he gave up and tried to hold the gun properly in his off-hand, disgusted at the feeling of his scratchy-smooth, hide-like palm rubbing roughly against his untouched human flesh like mutant sandpaper. His dominant hand was turning into a big, hairy man-paw, thick with pads like a dog's feet. Already his fingers--or what were left of them, felt tight and webbed, knitting together into something not fit for firing a weapon made for human hands. Instead, they'd only grown bigger, and his muscles had begun to swell in size inside his arm as well.
He wondered if it would keep spreading, til there was nothing left but the very same sort of beast he had fought off in the pub: a slavering coyote; yellow, animal eyes piercing him with aggression as its head came down upon him, hackles raised, mouth wide--sinking its rows of sharp teeth into him. Then, it was gone almost without his recollection--the most vivid thing in his mind; a horrendous yelp as he'd squeezed the trigger again and again--and the stench of canine fear. Bloody paw-prints, in the absence of a body, followed by silence, and shock. He giggled, unstably, pulling back his sleeve to see just how far the fur had spread. Already it was rising past his elbow; a stinking, yellow-brown mat of sleek hair--his own, mutated hair, now more and more, thickening into an animal pelt, coating his reddening skin.
Get a grip, man. You're human still. You're human. Maybe you can find a doctor to amputate... yeah. Yeah...
He reassured himself that there had to be a clinic in town... maybe there were still other survivors he could lean on for help--they'd know what to do. He wasn't keen on the thought of losing his arm--but turning into a monster was another thing altogether.
He peaked into the open elevator, just past the stairs...
"Christ."
Had that really happened while he'd been out musing on the porch? The doors hung open, stained in blood. At the very point that the elevator separated with the floor across from it, there was a big spattering of it... a smear, and then...
"Someone's fucking hand." he whispered, raising his claws to his nose, and then refocusing on his paw, recoiling, shaking his head in surprise, and putting his hand back down where he couldn't see it.
It looked like someone had been at eye level with the floor, and was trying to crawl along, when the doors shut on them. He gulped, and ran down the stairs in a hurry, afraid of what he'd find, leaving the mangled, still-open body part bleeding in the elevator cab.
When he got down to reception, it was as deserted as it had been when he'd returned from the pub slaughter. Then he turned left, and saw the missing piece of the puzzle from upstairs, and his hair shot up.
So much blood, in a body-sized trail, running to--or away--from the shut elevator doors. Dirty, grimy hand-prints all over the floor, like some kind of twisted finger-painting session.
Crunch... nnmg... slurrp... cruunch...
And that's when he turned to the front door, and saw it hanging open--a portal into the darkness.
crrrk... slurp... snap...crrrrrrunch...
It was like the most horrible Thanksgiving dinner he'd ever seen and heard, as he followed the blood trail--sinew and flesh torn off the bone--teeth crunching into marrow, as three cadaverous, naked forms knelt there, savoring the body of a dead coyote. THE coyote, he realized suddenly, sighting the telltale bullet wounds in the creature's exposed gut, even as one of the pallid-skinned revenants reached in and began tearing the creature's stomach open with its talon-like fingers. Then, pausing, it sniffed the air with its wilted, skeletal nose-holes--turned its bald head Neil's way, and let out an airy, spittle-filled hiss, eye sockets glowing an angry gold--not eyeballs, just empty sockets filled with piercing radioactive light--
And it was the first of the three to come to its hands and feet in a feral stance, and scamper angrily his way. The other two rose in kind, both to two feet, abandoning the foreleg they'd been gnawing on together--with a stump that ended abruptly in mangled bone... a stump that should have had a paw...
"Or a hand..." he whispered, the insight dawning on him suddenly, and with irrelevance.
He realized he'd never gun down all three corpses before they were on him, and ran back for the stairs.