Alice Henderson - Voracious

When they reached his blue Toyota, he looked up, his eyes haunted. “I’m fine,” he said robotically, as if the question had just registered in his brain. He fished out his keys.

She stared at him for several long minutes. He looked out of place there, her friend appearing in the midst of a nightmare. He was part of the world back home, where, as lonely as things were, they still made sense.

“George,” she said finally. “I don’t want you to come with me.”

He furrowed his brow. “What? Are you crazy? You can’t go against that thing alone.”

She shook her head. “That thing is practically unstoppable. I don’t want to be mean here, but it just wouldn’t matter if you were with me.”

George threw up his hands in exasperation. “It took both of us to throw it off the train!”

“Yeah, but there isn’t going to be a train up there. Just miles of desolate backcountry and a remote cabin to get killed in.”

“I could help get your friend out of there.”

“If he’s even still alive when I get there.”

“Well, you must believe he is, if you’re going to go through with this.”

She hoped he was alive, though the creature could still beat her there, loping through the woods on all fours in a direct route while she had to stick to the roads.

She sighed and took a minute to collect her thoughts. George simply couldn’t come, as much as she wanted him there for sheer comfort’s sake. In reality, she was likely heading up there to her own death. She didn’t want him to get killed, too. “George, please listen to me. That thing has killed hundreds of people, maybe more. I don’t want you to go.”

He crossed his arms defiantly. “I’m not going to let you go alone.”

Since the creature had shown up, Madeline had enlisted the help of numerous people. Steve could have been killed. George, too. The ranger in the backcountry station didn’t even have a chance to meet her before the creature killed him. Now Noah had gone to face it. She had a stake in this and had to go up there to do something. But she couldn’t live with herself if her only friend got killed in the process. This thing wanted her, and she was going to face it alone.

George didn’t belong here. He could die here.

Suddenly Madeline knew what she had to do. Lunging forward, she pushed George to the ground. He cried out in surprise, landing on his shoulder. Wrenching the keys from his hand, she fumbled with them quickly, located the car key, and inserted it into the lock.

“What are you doing?” he asked, suddenly come to life. He started to get up. She aimed a well-placed boot at his chest and knocked him back down, robbing him of his breath. Twisting the key in the lock, she unlocked the door and wrested it open.

George coughed, bringing his hands to his chest as she jumped in the driver’s seat and slammed the door behind herself. Her hand quickly snapped down the lock, sealing her within.

Staggering, George got to his feet and grabbed at the handle. His fists landed on the glass of the driver’s window. “Madeline! Don’t do this!”

She started the car up and pulled away slowly, being sure not to run over George or his feet. She gave him a sad look through the window. “I can’t be responsible for your death, George,” she yelled through the glass.

“And I don’t want to read about yours!” he shouted back as she drove away.

She placed her hand flat on the window, silently said good-bye to her friend, and roared out of the parking lot, heading toward the cabin.

Madeline didn’t know what she’d find as she closed the final mile to the cabin. Maybe the creature would already be there, gleaming spike driven deeply into Noah’s bubbling flesh. Maybe she’d beat the creature there and could talk Noah into leaving with her. Her hands felt slick on the wheel of George’s car, and she worried for her friend she’d left in the parking lot.

Ahead, lights came into view.

Madeline slowed the bouncing Toyota on the pitted, dirt road and came to a halt, switching the headlights off.

The lights ahead, perfectly square, gleamed from the cabin only three hundred feet away. She studied the windows for any hint of movement, but it was simply too far away to see.

Not switching the headlights back on, she pulled the car off the road and parked it beneath a large hemlock. She switched the motor off. As quietly as possible, she opened the car door and climbed out. Locking it, she pressed it closed with her hip and pocketed the keys with nervous, trembling hands.

Ahead lay darkened clusters of pine trees and the glowing windows of the cabin beyond. She crept around the car and moved forward, the pine needles muffling her approach.

Two hundred feet.

One hundred feet.

As she drew closer, a large, hulking shape came into view, obstructing the light from one of the windows. Madeline’s heart jumped until she realized it was just the bulky, dark dimensions of Noah’s Jeep. He had parked right in front.

Bold.

Or stupid.

If Noah was alone in there, he was going about his assassination attempt in a dangerous way, parking his Jeep in full view and turning on all the lights. It wasn’t something she thought he’d do. He was either desperate and not thinking clearly, or something had gone wrong.

Ducking down low to stay out of the cabin’s light, she crept to the front door. Squatting next to it, she reached one shaking hand up to the handle.

Noah arriving at the cabin, full of despair, sobbing…

Leaving the safety of the Jeep, tentatively approaching the front door, determined and full of terror…

Reaching in through the broken pane of glass in the door, letting himself in. Planning to lie in wait behind the bedroom door, intentionally leaving his car in plain sight so the creature would know he was there and be braced for a confrontation, perhaps get his heart pumping so that when Noah cut him, the blood would flow that much more freely into Noah’s waiting mouth…

Noah imagining himself manifesting the gleaming spikes from each arm, impaling the screaming creature against one wall of the cabin, then detaching the spike so the creature could never rise again…

Madeline released her grip on the handle and exhaled, clearing her mind. Bracing her back against the cool wood of the cabin’s wall, she remained in shadow. She studied the front door of the cabin. She saw the broken pane but didn’t know if Noah had entered already, as he’d intended to do in the vision. She would have to touch the inside doorknob to know that.

Silently, heart threatening to beat right out of her chest, mouth gone dry, knees trembling, Madeline approached one of the front windows at an angle. Trying to remain out of sight, she stared in from one far corner, keeping her distance from the pane.

She didn’t see anyone, just the empty front room and the kitchen beyond.

She strained her ears.

The wind in the boughs.

A bat emitting a high-pitched squeak as it hunted moths in the tree canopy above.

Crickets singing.

The roar of a distant waterfall.

Stepping forward, she pressed one ear against the wooden wall of the cabin. For several long moments she remained there, straining to hear anything within.

She heard nothing.

Ducking beneath the window, she crept toward the front door again, her feet shuffling in the soft bed of pine needles. She waited a moment, wide eyes searching the darkness around the cabin to be sure she was alone.

Then, standing up slowly, back pressed against the wall, she peered in at an angle through the windows in the front door. She saw tile and a well-worn welcome mat.

Biting her lower lip and holding her breath, she snaked her hand in through the broken pane, fingers groping for the doorknob on the other side. Her hand closed around a cold, metal knob.