B. Larson - Shifting

I was gaining ground, I was sure of it, and after another hundred yards I looked back again and there were three of them now. One appeared to be a large woman and the third was a child. The child seemed to be crawling rapidly on all fours like a kid pretending to be a spider. Perhaps, I thought, this kid wasn’t pretending. I hurried on up the beach, sure I had no more than a half mile to go.

In the middle of one long look back at those that followed me, I almost walked into the fourth one. He was dressed in a bathing suit with red flowers on a black nylon background and was dripping wet. Clearly, he’d been in the water a moment before and now had risen up out of the waves. He had his arms up as if to embrace me.

I shoved him back and his cold, bloated, purplish skin ripped open like tissue paper. I could see right off he was dead. I made an odd croaking sound in my throat in shock and disgust. I shoved him back and he made no utterance, but simply reached for me again. I had my saber out in a smooth motion and slashed at his reaching arms. Flesh peeled back to reveal bones and his left hand hung at an odd angle but still he tottered after me.

I ran. More of them came. I don’t know how many, but they were coming out of the summer cabins and floating in the water. By the time I reached the pile of stones I’d built to mark the spot that led down into Elkinville there had to be more than a dozen of them, coming from both directions along the shore and from out of the forest as well. They were slow, but if one of them got a good grip on me and the others piled on… I ripped the top off of one of potions Wilton had given me and tossed it down. I tasted like urine mixed with bathroom cleanser. My stomach hitched and I fought not to sick it up.

Looking both ways at the approaching swarm of dead things, I realized that if she had meant to trap me, she’d done a good job after all. I grabbed up the rocks from my marking pile and shoved them in my pockets for ballast. I found my pistol there and took aim at the closest group of silent shambling monsters and emptied the only clip I had into them. I saw them rock back, I saw bones shatter in their legs and I watch the side of one woman’s skull pop, but they still kept coming. All of them.

I waded out into the waters of the Lake and put the empty pistol into my pocket for more weight. It takes a few minutes to work, I heard Wilton’s words in my head and they sounded to me like an epitaph.

I was ten feet from shore and the cold waters of the lake had filled my boots and begun to sting my legs. I gasped when the shocking cold reached up to my waist. About then, the things on the beach finally reached the shoreline. The first ones there were the crawling kid and the very first one I’d seen. I realized now that he had no foot on the end of one leg. He’d been walking on a shard of shinbone and had made pretty good time for all that. He wore a nice shirt and a tie and, incredibly, still had sunglasses on. I could only imagine what kind of vacation he’d been enjoying when some ghastly fate had befallen him in the beach house he’d paid good money for had turned into an abattoir.

The crawling kid came out in sort of a dog-paddling motion and I laid into him with my saber. He never complained, but simply took the strokes. I grabbed his hair, finally, to keep his snapping teeth away from the meat of my thighs while I took his head and his limbs off. After that, the limbs kept thrashing but with less purpose. I pushed him off and he floated way harmlessly. I backed further into the water, chest deep now, and realized I could not retreat much further or I would be unable to move freely due to the water, but there was nothing for it. Already, my toes were going numb from the cold.

I threw the kid’s head at the guy with the sunglasses and knocked him off kilter. He recovered and reached for me with gray fingernails which I sliced off with one wild swipe. His other hand I took off at the wrist, I grunted with the force of that swing and was shocked to see the saber cut right through bone. The sharpening stone had indeed worked some magic on my blade, I realized. Five stubs and one stump still reached for me, and then I tripped.

I went over backwards into the water and sank down. I had stepped off a shelf or into a hole and was underwater. I blasted bubbles from my nose and thrashed about. I put the point of my sword out blindly and felt it sink into something. It was the chest of the man with the sunglasses and he kept coming, forcing the blade into his ribs.

I struggled, the rocks in my pocket were doing their job, pulling me down. I thought I was about to run out of air and felt that bubbling, squeezing panic that comes with being down too long, like when you are a racing a friend underwater and start to feel you aren’t going to make it. I expected any second to see red flashes and feel my lungs bursting in open panic. I heaved up and took in a gulp of air. I sank back down with Mr. Sunglasses on top of me, his finger stubs massaging my scalp, my sword lodged into his ribcage.

With a great heave, I threw him off me and nearly lost my sword in the process. His body had deteriorated enough over the summer, however, that it released my blade and I swam backward with great kicks. I sank as I swam and I felt tired and heavy. I wondered if I would ever taste another lungful of sweet air.

More or less standing on the bottom, at least ten feet down, I gazed upward and ignored the stinging in my open eyes the cloudy water brought. There above me was a splashing company of things . They churned at the water and flopped up there. Some had sunk a bit, but most seemed to be floating, as bodies will do when they are dead. They lacked the coordination and self-control necessary to swim downward deliberately. I wondered if the Preacher or the Captain was among their number.

It was just about this moment that I realized I had been holding my breath for a remarkably long time. In fact, I felt no need to breathe at all. This set off a moment of panic, but I fought it down. I concentrated on the idea that I was holding my breath, and that I was simply holding it for a very long time and didn’t need to worry about it. This worked pretty well. My lungs felt strangely empty and deflated, however, as I had released a lot of air in my struggles. I worried that if I kept releasing it, in little bits, I might collapse a lung eventually with no air to replace it. Still, for the moment, I wasn’t drowning.

I turned and headed toward the bottom of the Lake. I walked downhill with slow-motion strides into the green-black unknown.

I saw the light down there, and it was entirely different underwater. From the surface, you might only notice it at night, but when you were underneath the silvery-blue line that made up the border between air and light and the depths of the lake, it shimmered with bluish radiance. Just looking at it, you could tell it wasn’t a normal light; it wasn’t a huge sunken light bulb. It looked more like a flame, a dancing, wavering blue flame that glowed in the murky distance.

I walked slowly toward it, feeling like a moth drawn by fascination to burn my wings upon a magical candle. As I descended, I ran into huge water weeds that stood at least a dozen feet high. I slashed and cleared a path. If nothing else, the path might help me find my way back to shore. But I felt doubtful that I would ever be making that return trip.

It was a horrid feeling, being down there. It wasn’t pleasant or funny. It was terrifying. I had no idea when the potion would wear off and I would be left choking at the bottom of the lake, or when I would find some underwater horror waiting for me. Or, possibly worst of all, the sun would go down and I would be left on the bottom of the lake, lost in blackness and bitter cold. A tiny part of my mind even wondered if I was already one of them, one of the things back on the beach. Perhaps, a tiny, evil monkey in my mind whispered, I no longer breathe because I am no longer alive.