Sara Reinke - Backwoods

“She’s alright,” Andrew told him. “She’s not hurt.”

He didn’t know if Moore had passed out again or not, at least until the other man nodded once. “Good,” he murmured, a faint croak. His hand flopped out, groping weakly at the front of Andrew’s shirt. “Don’t… let her see me… like this.”

“I’m going to get you out of here,” Andrew said.

Moore peeled back one eyelid and regarded Andrew for a long, wheezing moment. “Son, you’re going to be doing good to… get yourself out of here.”

The corner of his mouth hooked in a smile and Andrew managed a hoarse laugh. “Don’t worry about me,” Moore said. “Just… get Alice out.” When Andrew started to protest, he shook his head. “My aorta is ruptured. I… can tell from my breathing… the pain in my chest. I’m bleeding to death. Do you understand?”

Stricken, Andrew stared at him.

“You… can’t stop it,” Moore continued with a grimace. “There’s nothing you can do. So promise me…please.” Again, his hand hooked against Andrew’s shirt, pulling the younger man near. “Take care of Alice,” he whispered. “Please.”

“Alright.” Andrew nodded, but it was too late. Moore’s fingers uncurled, limp and loosening, his hand drooping to dangle lifelessly in the open doorway. His breath rattled to a moist, strained halt and his eyelids drooped to a sleepy, eternal half-mast.

Oh, Jesus. Andrew stumbled back from the door, leaning against the barrel of the rifle, teetering unsteadily. He cut his eyes around, but there was no sign of Alice. He thought he could hear the soft sounds of rustling from somewhere across the room, in the direction of Dani’s desk.

Then he heard another rustling, this one much closer and when he turned, he realized that, contrary to popular misconception, Major Prendick was alive and well. Or if not well, then at least lifting his head from the wrinkled hood of the truck.

“Oh, Jesus,” Andrew said.

“ Glaaaggghhh.”

Prendick uttered a horrible cawing sound, his mouth slack-jawed and agape, blood drooling down in thick streams over the outer edge of his bottom lip. His eyes punched into Andrew, round and wild, the cornea on his left side stained red with hemorrhage. His hands moved against the hood of the cargo truck, fingers splayed wide and outstretched, scrabbling and slapping at the crimped metal.

He’s still alive. Andrew shrank back in horror, hopping on his good leg as he snatched the M16 between his hands. Oh, God, how can he still be alive?

“ Glllaaaaaggghhh,” Prendick squawked, his fingernails scraping the metal hood like a slate chalkboard: Screeeeeech! He began to shrug his shoulders and wriggle at the waist, twisting from side to side slowly at first, then more quickly, fervently, furiously.

He’s trying to get loose. Oh, Christ, he’s trying to get to me.

What had Dani had told him about firing the rifle?

Turn the safety off. There’s a switch on the side panel. Turn it to semi.

“Major Prendick, you…you shouldn’t be moving,” Andrew stammered helplessly, pawing at the rifle, thumbing the toggle switch to arm it. “You’re pretty messed up.”

Prendick uttered a warbling croak, then vomited blood, sending a thick torrent splashing against the smashed front end of the truck, down into the steaming, exposed engine components. Still, he thrashed against the grill, and Andrew heard a moist grinding sound as flesh and bones, meat and guts began to rind and rip.

“Stop,” he cried out, hoarsely, shouldering the rifle. His hands were shaking, his balance unsteady, and the barrel waggled erratically this way and that. “For God’s sake, Prendick, stop it!”

With a sickening, wet tearing sound and even more horrific POP as his spinal column snapped like a pencil bent too far too fast, Prendick wrenched himself free. Or, more specifically, the top half of him. His upper torso, head, shoulders and arms all suddenly toppled to the floor in front of Andrew, leaving the rest of him—everything from the navel up—pinned against the side of the cargo truck. Blood immediately spurted in grisly fountains from severed blood vessels, and a heaping pile of entrails left exposed from his torn abdominal cavity spilled out.

“ Jesus Christ!” Andrew forgot himself in his shock and horror, and stepped down onto his maimed heel in recoil. Immediately, pain lanced through his entire right side, and with another cry, he collapsed to the floor. The gun slipped from his fingers. With a strained grimace, Andrew reached for it, arm outstretched. His fingertips brushed the butt and he crawled forward on his belly, mewling at fresh pain.

Just as he slapped his hand against the stock, Prendick grabbed hold of the rifle by the barrel.

“ Glagggh,” he said and Andrew screamed again because there was no way Prendick could still be alive, no way in hell Prendick could still be moving around, never mind grabbing for a goddamn gun, not cut in two like he was, with half of his guts on the garage floor behind him, the other half smeared out across the front end of the cargo truck.

Andrew stared in terrified shock down the short length of the muzzle and into Prendick’s face. His brows were furrowed, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a blood-stained smear. Again, he uttered that awful, cawing sound— “Glllaaaaagghh!” —then Andrew pulled the trigger.

He’d inadvertently set the gun to burst again, not semi, and a wild stream of bullets suddenly spewed from the barrel. The rounds ripped into Prendick, punching baseball-sized craters where his left eye had been, pulverizing his nose, shearing back the skin of his cheek and splintering teeth beneath. Andrew screamed the whole time, even as the gun jerked and shuddered in recoil, forcing him to lose his grasp. As his finger slipped from the trigger, the gun fell still and silent, leaving a thin film of acrid smoke lingering in the air between him and Prendick.

“Andrew,” he heard Alice cry out, frightened.

“It’s alright,” he called back, but his voice was strained and shrill, sounding anything but alright. But God, oh, man, the last thing he wanted was for Alice to come barreling around the corner and find the bisected remains of Mitchell Prendick sprawled on the floor, not to mention the body of her dead father still slumped behind the wheel of the truck.

“But you were shooting,” he heard her hiccup, a tremulous, tiny sound. “I heard you scream.”

“Everything’s okay.” He managed to sit up, get his knees beneath him, then flipped the safety back on and used the rifle to prop him as he stood. “Just stay where you are. Okay? I’m coming to you.”

And then, through that thin haze of gun smoke, he saw something moving on the floor, something wriggling and twitching, like an oversized earthworm caught on the sidewalk on a warm summer’s day, a nightcrawler struggling to make it back to the loam.

A whole nest of them, in fact, Andrew realized, as the smoke thinned further, and he could see more of them now, those peculiar, snakelike things squirming on the floor. Like fingers, he thought. Reaching for me.

“Oh, shit,” he whispered.

The gunshots had at first covered a sound he now heard clearly, like a rotten walnut slowly cracking open to reveal blackened, festering meat within. Snap-crackle-POP went this curious, nasty sound, then something crawled out of the smoke and shadows underneath the wreckage toward him.

It wasn’t Prendick, not exactly, not anymore.

Like they had with Langley, the lower sets of his ribs had broken free from the bands of costal cartilage securing them to the sternum. In Langley’s case, these ribs had grown, protruding through the flesh in new, arm-like appendages. With Prendick, they had lengthened, but also sprouted articulations, like the jointed legs of a spider or scorpion. These spindly limbs fanned out beneath the ruins of his torso, while he used his hands to arch what remained of his spine back, lifting his head, cobra-like, from the ground. Again like Langley, the mess of his eviscerated guts seemed to have come alive, a writhing, intertwining mess of intestines and colon, like the tails of a swarm of rattlesnakes thrumming in menacing admonition.