Chris Holm - The Big Reap

The creature misinterpreted Castillo’s subsequent collapse as he and I both lapsing into unconsciousness, when in fact I had escaped mere seconds before. It descended on him in a fury of wet tearing sounds and low grunts of effort and animal desire, eager to feast before this new light — this new snack — was upon it.

Luckily, Mendoza’s stomach was still empty, and my sudden peristaltic seizure did little more than spray the tunnel floor with spittle. He’d shouldered his rifle at some point, likely deciding he could travel faster with it on his back than in his hands, leaving him with the lit lantern in one hand, and his pistol, an outsized Magnum-knockoff, in the other. The lantern swung wildly on its hinged handle as together he and I closed the gap between us and poor, doomed Castillo, the world swaying like a boat in choppy seas by the arcing lamplight. And as its sphere of illumination blazed like sunrise up Castillo’s legs, I got my first true glimpse at the creature I’d been sent to kill.

It was a lean, spindly thing, once human in form, no doubt, but warped somehow by its environment, by its predilections, by the dark mojo that created it and demanded constant sacrifice to sustain the very blasphemy of its existence, into something… less. Something terrifying. It was naked, sickly gray-brown, and emaciated, which, its vaguely humanoid form aside, gave it the appearance of a stick-insect. The creature crouched over Castillo’s gaping chest — his ribcage split open at the middle like a clamshell — its hands buried deep inside the dead man’s viscera, its ropy forearms purple with gore. Disproportionately long legs angled out on either side, famine-skinny and liver-spotted. Flesh stretched paper-thin across its ribs, and its stomach was bloated and swollen. Its head seemed outsized for the neck on which it sat, perhaps rendered so wide to accommodate the manic grin of needle-sharp teeth that gleamed, blood-streaked yellow, back at me. Gore dripped black off its pointed chin. Its skull had warped itself around two massive, bulbous eyes — the better to see you with, my dear — which swam a liquid red in the lamplight like twin IV bags of blood, no whites or pupils to be seen. Twin slits sliced two short lines between those eyes in a hasty suggestion of a nose. As the light hit the beast, it recoiled, its leathery lids clenching shut. Then it threw its arms wide in challenge, gnarled, clawed hands stretching from one wall of the tunnel to the other and flinging offal everywhere, and roared, its mouth hinging impossibly wide.

The sound shook the very ground around us, and loosed a flurry of dust and pebbles. The stench of rot and death was carried on its breath. Some fragile, child-me portion of my psyche wanted to crawl beneath the nearest set of bed sheets and hide. Adult-me damn near pissed himself at the sight, the sound, at the perfect, wordless threat. Mendoza, hardened drug-runner that he was, huddled penitent in the back of his own mind, and rattled off over and over a mantra in hushed Spanish that even I recognized as the Lord’s Prayer.

Sure, now His name be hallowed, I thought at him. But how many times have you and your cohorts played the part of the evil from which innocent folks are begging to be delivered?

But Mendoza wasn’t taking questions from the peanut gallery at the moment. And since I was pretty sure the Big Guy wasn’t about to take his call, I figured it was up to me to take care of Captain Ugly here. It had a good three feet of reach on me, so my odds of getting past those claws to gain access to the withered lump of God-knows-what that passed as its soul weren’t great. So, as it gathered on its haunches and launched itself at me, I did what any red-blooded American who wants to keep said red blood on the inside woulda done in my shoes: I shot that fucker in the face.

Well, the eye, to be precise. And had I not been terrified at the thought of imminent violent pointy-sharp death hurling toward me, I might have curled fetal at the world of gross doing so unleashed. Hot wet chunks of mottled tissue and vitreous eye-goo sprayed the cave like the devil’s own ambrosia salad, but still the creature kept on coming. It hit me like two hundred pounds of razor-tipped clothes hangers, all knees and elbows and teeth and claws. We tumbled to the ground as one, my gun-hand aimed harmlessly away thanks to the creature’s iron grip around my wrist, my lantern dropped as I kept the creature’s snapping jaws away from the tender flesh of Mendoza’s face with a palm to its misshapen forehead.

A whoosh of hot kerosene breath, too close for comfort, Mendoza’s lantern setting the spilled fuel from Castillo’s broken one alight as the former shattered against the hard-packed earth. Our world went briefly campfire-orange and choking hot. The creature’s one good eye slammed shut against the bright, its jaw still snapping all the while. I held it away from my borrowed face as best I could, but my/Mendoza’s best wasn’t gonna cut it for long. Our smoker lungs seared, our vision went dim. Our elbow was on the verge of giving out.

Guam, here I come, I thought.

Then Solares — that beautiful, brave, stupid son of a bitch — came barreling around the corner, popping five shots into the beast quick as a drum machine. Chunks of flesh tore free of the creature, gouting green-black blood, and it howled in pain and animal fury. Then all the sudden, the goddamn thing was off of me. I watched in horror as it sailed through the air toward Solares with all the deadly grace of a jungle cat. He popped off three more shots before it tackled him. All three shots landed center-mass, but they didn’t slow the monster down a bit. He and it bounced off the rusted honeycomb of chicken wire holding back the loose dirt of the tunnel wall, and wound up a tangle of limbs amidst the mess that was Castillo. When teeth and claw found flesh, Solares didn’t even scream.

Then it ripped his throat out, and he couldn’t if he tried.

I wanted to mourn him, to apologize for dragging him into this. But there wasn’t time. Not while this thing was still breathing.

The spilled kerosene on the tunnel floor burned off, and the fire extinguished itself, leaving the tunnel full of thick black smoke and precious little oxygen.

My eyes stung. My lungs burned for cool, clean air. I crooked my elbow and breathed through Mendoza’s shirtsleeve, blinking back tears as I cast about for a weapon.

Guns were useless against this thing, they didn’t do shit. And there was no skim blade in this private hell of mine, replica or otherwise.

There was, however, rebar.

The men who’d constructed the tunnel had used it to anchor the chicken wire. It jutted from the dirt floor and walls as well. Not everywhere, just here and there. Took a good thirty seconds of fumbling in the smoky dimness to find some. It poked out cold as nighttime desert from a nearby wall, and came out reluctantly. I can’t say how long I yanked at it before I finally freed it from the wall. Long enough for the beast to disappear into the deeper dark of the eastward tunnel, I suppose, because when I looked back toward Solares, where I’d last seen it, it was gone.

It didn’t stay gone long.

I heard its ragged breathing, back and to my left. I spun, but saw nothing.

A sudden pop like a gunshot, only quieter. Then another, then another. All to the west, from whence I came, which was now as dark as was the eastern passage.

The creature had broken the nearest three light bulbs.

A rustle of scale-dry skin. A flash of slightly paler dark amidst the black. And then needles in my shoulder. Teeth or claws, I didn’t know.

I swung blindly at the creature’s point of contact with the rebar, and hit the fucker so damn hard, I heard something crack. If its reflexes had been better, that crack would have been my meat-suit’s collarbone. Instead, given the muffled yowl the beast let out, I’m guessing I took out its jaw. No telling how long that jaw would take to mend. Minutes, maybe less. This thing had been feasting, after all. Its powers were no doubt at their peak.