Sara Reinke - Backwoods

Alice cried out, a confused and frightened mewl, and Andrew felt her press herself against his side, trembling beneath the shelter of his arm.

“What happened to the lights?” he asked Moore, tightening his grip on the gun lest the doctor use the opportunity to try and wrestle it from him.

“They knocked them out,” Alice whispered from beside him. “They must’ve killed all the soldiers and now they’re coming for us.”

“Who did?” Andrew asked, again directing the question not to her, but to her father. “Who’s coming?”

When Moore cut his eyes briefly away, back down the hall in the direction of the infirmary, Andrew felt a sinking, sickening horror because he knew.

The screamers.

Andrew ordered Moore to take him to the lab to get Dani.

“You don’t want to do that,” Moore had said, just as another patter of gunfire echoed from deep in the woods. The sounds had grown sporadic, nearly disappearing in full, and Andrew was of the frame of mind this was not a good thing.

“Yes, I do.” Andrew had gestured demonstratively with the gun in response.

“We can barricade ourselves in here,” Moore had said. “Even without the power. We’ve got food, potable water, enough so that we—”

“I said we’re going to the lab.” Andrew had mashed the barrel of the pistol into Moore’s nose, flattening it. “Now.”

As it had been earlier, when Andrew had trekked out in search of O’Malley, the woods around them lay heavy, still and silent, unnaturally so. Even the wind seemed to have gone dormant and the air felt cold and thick around them, seeping through their clothes and skin, sinking deep into their bones with an unsettling chill.

Andrew tried to do some quick math in his head, in spite of his mounting panic and the fact his senses were still somewhat reeling from where he had been struck with the gun. How many soldiers did Prendick send out into the forest? There were twenty-four to start with, Dani told me, less seven from Alpha Squad, and Lieutenant Carter, who were all shipped home. That makes sixteen, then minus one for Prendick, another O’Malley and Dani…

“Twelve,” Alice whispered to him. He hadn’t realized he’d been thinking out loud until her quiet voice interrupted him. “Prendick sent twelve soldiers into the woods.”

When Moore tried to take Alice by the hand so she’d walk with him, Andrew pulled her protectively behind him. “She’s with me.”

“I don’t trust you with my daughter.” Moore’s voice was tight and clipped, his eyes narrowed into slits.

“Yeah? I don’t trust you period,” Andrew shot back.

They reached the house of pain, the main door, and Andrew held the gun out, his finger poised against the trigger. “Open it.”

“I can’t,” Moore replied. “With the power out, the building is sealed.”

Swinging the gun away from Moore’s head, Andrew aimed for the center of the plate glass door. It was tempered, but not bullet-proof, and when Andrew squeezed the trigger, sending out a sharp, booming report, it punched a single hole, no bigger than a silver dollar, through the center of the heavy pane, with a spider web of cracks and fragments—thousands of splinters and shards—spreading out in a broad circumference.

The recoil from the pistol shot shuddered through Andrew’s hand, up his arm and into his shoulder, nearly staggering him. Alice had tucked her face into his side at the thunderous shot, hands clamped to her ears, her entire body rigid. She looked up, remaining huddled next to him, coughing on the acrid gun smoke that lingered in a thin haze.

Cringing, shoulders hunched, Moore blinked at Andrew in wide-eyed aghast. “You’re crazy,” he gasped.

“I’m getting there,” Andrew agreed, motioning with the gun. “Now help me kick that glass out. Come on.”

The entire building was silent, save for the quiet crunch of their footsteps in broken glass and the quiet, insectile buzz of emergency lights sporadically recessed in the ceiling. Running off limited battery power alone, these cast pale splotches of glow in narrow circumferences, lining their path like a dot-to-dot puzzle in a kids’ activity book.

“Which way?” Andrew asked.

“I locked her in my office,” Moore replied.

Good, Andrew thought. He’d been to Moore’s office before and still had a dim recollection of the way. Hopefully enough so that I’ll know if he tries any tricks, takes me anyplace else but there.

“Move.” He waved the gun again. “Go.”

With a glower, Moore started off, Andrew and Alice trailing behind him. “You’re not going to shoot me,” Moore said. “Not in front of Alice.”

“You sure about that?” Andrew asked and he fired the gun again, sending a round into the drywall. The gun shot was deafening in the confined quarters of the hallway and Alice screeched in frightened surprise. Moore whirled, wide-eyed with alarm.

“I’m crazy, remember?” Andrew said to him. “Your words, not mine.”

Moore glared at him. “You’re wasting your bullets,” he said at length through his teeth, bristling as he turned and started to walk again.

They ventured deep into the darkened building for ten minutes. When Andrew had been locked inside by himself, trying to find an exit, he’d easily gotten lost because all of the corridors had looked alike to him. Without the overhead glow of numerous fluorescents and only the dim light of the emergency bulbs to guide them, they were even more confusing. So much so, that when Moore drew abruptly to a halt in front of him, Andrew had no idea if it was because they’d reached his office or not. For all he knew, they could have backtracked to the exact spot they’d started from and he wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.

“What is it?” he asked. “Why did you…”

His voice faded as he heard a noise in front of them, emanating from one of the dark, shadow-draped spaces between the faint circumferences of emergency light.

“…stop?” he finished clumsily, because he recognized the wet snuffling, like the jowls of a water-logged bloodhound dragging against the floor while it tried to pick up a scent. O’Malley had made a sound like that because that’s exactly what he’d been doing, trying to smell Andrew in the infirmary.

Shit, he thought.

“Shit,” Moore whispered, backpedaling. Apparently the prospect of Andrew and his pistol didn’t intimidate him as much as whatever lay ahead of them in the hallway, and that fact alone raised the hairs along the nape of Andrew’s neck all the more uneasily.

Shit, he thought again.

“Shoot the heart,” Moore hissed at him.

Andrew cut him a glance. “What?” Then out of the corner of his gaze, he saw movement, and looked back down the corridor in time to see something step out of the shadows, emerging slowly into nearest proscenium of light.

Ashen and nude, the creature’s neck was indistinguishable from its broad shoulders and hunchbacked spine thanks to bulbous, swollen growths that had erupted from its skin. Like O’Malley, these tumors had threatened to cover its face and upper torso. However, unlike O’Malley, the growths had overtaken its forearms and hands, covering them in heavy layers of swollen nodules and scaly, wart-like growths, almost like tree bark. Its fingers had fused together, leaving it with three unnaturally elongated, talon-like claws. Beneath the surface of its pale flesh, a tangled network of prominent veins were visible, blood vessels that pulsated and throbbed like live snakes or eels.

“A screamer,” Alice whispered, trembling as she shied behind her father’s hip, her fingers clutching anxiously at his shirt tail.