Dean Koontz - Phantoms

"By God, you've done it!" Timothy said, turning toward Sara.

Tentacles. Three of them. Behind her.

They rose out of a drain grating in the gutter, fifteen feet away. Each was as big around as Timothy's wrist. Already, the questing tips of them had slithered across the pavement, within a yard of Sara.

Timothy shouted a warning, but he was too late.

Flyte shouted, and Jenny whirled. It was among them.

Three tentacles whipped up from the pavement with shocking speed, surged forward with sinuous malevolence, and dropped onto Sara. In an instant, one lashed around the geneticist's legs, one around her waist, and the third around her slender neck.

Christ, it's too fast, too fast for us! Jenny thought.

She pointed the nozzle of her sprayer even as she turned, cursing, squeezing the lever, spewing Biosan-4 over Sara and the tentacles.

Bryce and Tal stepped in, using their sprayers, but they were all too slow, too late.

Sara's eyes widened; her mouth opened in a silent scream.

She was lifted into the air and No! Jenny prayed.

— flung back and forth as if she were a doll No!

— and then her head fell from her shoulders and struck the street with a hard, sickening crack.

Gagging, Jenny stumbled back.

The tentacles rose twelve feet into the air. They writhed and twisted and foamed, broke open in sores as the bacteria destroyed the binding structure of the amorphous tissue. As Sara had hoped, Biosan affected the shape-changer almost the way sulphuric acid affected human tissue.

Tal darted past Jenny, heading straight toward the three tentacles, and she screamed at him to stop.

What in God's name was he doing?

Tal ran through the weaving shadows cast by the moving tentacles and prayed that none of them would fall on him.

When he reached the drain from which the things were extruded, he could see that the three appendages were separating from the main body of dark, throbbing protoplasm in the drainpipe below. The shape-changer was shedding the infected tissue before the bacteria could reach into the main body mass. Tal poked the nozzle of the sprayer through the grate and released Biosan-4 into the drain below.

The tentacles tore loose from the rest of the creature. They flopped and wriggled in the street. Down in the drain, oozing slime retreated from the spray, shedding another piece of itself, which began to foam and spasm and die.

Even the Devil could be wounded. Even Satan was vulnerable.

Exhilarated, Tal shot more of the fluid into the drain.

The amorphous tissue withdrew, out of sight, creeping deeper into the subterranean passageways, no doubt shedding more pieces of itself.

Tal turned away from the drain and saw the severed tentacles had lost their definition; they were now just long, tangled ropes of suppurating tissue. They lashed themselves and one another in apparent agony and rapidly degenerated into stinking, lifeless slop.

He looked at another drain, at the silent buildings, at the sky, wondering from where the next attack would come.

Suddenly the pavement rumbled and heaved under his feet.

In front of him, Flyte was thrown to the ground; his glasses shattered.

Tal staggered sideways, nearly trampling Flyte.

The street leaped and shuddered again, harder than before, as if earthquake shockwaves had passed beneath it. But this was not a quake.

It was coming-not just a fragment, not just another phantom, but the largest part of it, perhaps the entire great bulk, surging toward the surface with unimaginable destructive power, rising like a god betrayed, bringing its unholy wrath and vengeance to the men and women who had dared to strike at it, turning itself into an enormous mass of muscle fiber and pushing, pushing, until the macadam bulged and cracked.

Tal was thrown to the ground. His chin snapped hard against the street; he was dazed. He tried to get up, so that he could use the sprayer when the creature appeared. He got as far as his hands and knees. The street was still rocking too much. He lay down again to wait it out.

We're going to die, he thought.

Bryce was flat on his face, hugging the pavement.

Lisa was beside him. She might have been crying or screaming. He couldn't hear her; there was too much noise.

Along this entire block of Skyline Road, an atonal symphony of destruction reached an ear-shattering crescendo: squealing, grinding, cracking, splitting sounds; the world itself coming asunder. The air was filled with dust that spurted up from widening fissures in the pavement.

The roadbed tilted with tremendous force. Chunks of it spewed into the air. Most were the size of gravel, but some were as large as a fist. A few were even larger than that, fifty and hundred- and two-hundred-pound blocks of concrete, leaping five or ten feet into the air as the protean creature below formed relentlessly toward the surface.

Bryce pulled Lisa against him and tried to shield her. He could feel the violent tremors passing through her.

The earth under them lifted. Fell with a crash. Lifted and fell again.

Gravel-size debris rained down, clanked off the tank sprayer strapped to Bryce's back, thumped off his legs, snapped against his head, making him wince.

Where was Jenny?

He looked around m sudden desperation.

The street had hoved up; a ridge had formed down the middle of Skyline.

Apparently, Jenny was on the other side of the hump, clinging to the street over there.

She's alive, he thought. She's alive. Dam it, she has to be!

A huge slab of concrete erupted from the to left and was flung eight or ten feet into the air. He was sure it was going to crash down on them, and he hugged Lisa as tight as he could, although nothing he could do would save them if the slab struck. But it hit Timothy Flyte instead.

It slammed across the scientist's legs, breaking them, pinning Flyte, who howled in pain, howled so loudly that Bryce could hear him above the roar of the disintegrating pavement.

Still, the shaking continued. The street heaved up tardier.

Ragged teeth of macadam" M concrete bit at the morning air.

In seconds, it would break through and be upon them before they had a chance to stand and fight back.

A baseball-size missile of concrete, spat into the air by the shape-changer's volcanic smell from the storm drain, now slammed back to the pavement, impacting two or three inches from Jenny's head. A splinter of concrete pierced her cheek, drew a trickle of blood.

The the ridge-forming pressure from below was suddenly widened. The street ceased shaking. Ceased rising.

The sounds of destruction faded. Jenny could hear her own raspy, harried breathing.

A few feet away, Tal Whitman started getting to his feet.

On the far side of the hoved-up pavement, someone wailed in agony. Jenny couldn't see who it was.

She tried to stand, but the street shuddered once more, and she was pitched flat on her face again.

Tal went down again, too, cursing loudly.

Abruptly, the street began caving in. It made a tearing sound, and pieces broke loose along the fracture lines. Slabs tumbled into the emptiness below. Too much emptiness: it sounded as if things were falling into a chasm, not just a drain.

Then the entire hoved-up section colUM with a thunderous roar, and Jenny found herself at the brink.

She lay belly-down, head lifted, waiting for something to rise up from the depths, dreading to see what form the shape changer would assume this time.

But it didn't come. Nothing rose out of the hole.

The pit was ten feet across, at least fifty feet long. On the far side, Bryce and Lisa were trying to get to their feet. Jenny almost cried out in happiness at the sight of them. They were alive!

Then she saw Timothy. His legs were pinned under a massive hunk of concrete. Worse than that-he was trapped on a precarious piece of roadbed that thrust over the rim of the hole, with no support beneath it. At any moment, it might crack loose and fall into the pit, taking him with it.