Matt Hults - Husk

With another metallic thunderclap the station wagon’s engine crashed through the radiator and grill, still tethered to the inside by a twisted umbilical of cables, wires, and hoses. The oil pan hit the dirt hard enough for Frank to feel the impact in his bones. One of the hooked appendages cut the air under his chin, trailing a cool breeze across his throat. He tripped over his own feet when the second claw swept past his chest, coming close enough to snag his shirt and tear a hole. The mechanical monster reared up and lunged again, dragging it’s titanic bulk toward him with smoke and oil spraying from its shattered crankcase.

He shuffled backwards, seeing the forest’s tree line slip into his peripheral vision.

The jagged claws poised to strike.

“Now, Paul, now!” Frank screamed.

From behind came the pop, pop, pop of gunfire, followed by the hollow sound of the bullets punching through the station wagon’s paneling. A window shattered. Then another.

The creature laughed, expelling a grinding noise from the crevices of its reconstituted body. The torso-like accumulation of motor parts swung to gaze across the vehicle’s roof at the church. Frank used the diversion to pull his cell phone and keyed in a number.

He pressed the ‘send’ button and—

The phone exploded in his hand.

Agony lit a fire in his palm, then across his forearm and chest when his body began to register the bits of the phone’s battery now imbedded in his flesh.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, Frank looked up to find the monster had rolled forward and now loomed above him. The engine’s fan sawed the air.

“Technology will not save you this time, Frank. Nor will calling on your friends. Weapons cannot harm me, and you have now s’khem to send me back. I rule this world now.”

Frank didn’t bother to tell the creature he hadn’t called for backup. Instead, he pushed to his feet and threw himself over the skeleton of a fallen tree. He collapsed on the other side and pressed himself to the moist dirt, flattening himself against the wood. He knew from his talk with Officer Hale that the local cell phone towers had been disabled, but his signal only needed to reach the receiver in his duffle bag, the one wired to a time-delay detonator and three pounds of explosives currently sitting in the station wagon’s bac—

The night lit up like a day in Hell.

“There it is,” Melissa said.

She indicated to the smashed Lexus once it materialized out of the summer night’s gloom, illuminated by the truck’s only remaining headlight. She started to tell Jimmy to slow down when a blinding flash exploded in the forest to her right, accompanied by a blast of sound that shook the truck’s cab.

Jimmy jumped in his seat, shouting what sounded like four swear words rolled into one.

He slammed on the brakes and brought the semi to a halt.

“Keep going,” Melissa ordered.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Just keep moving.”

“But what the hell was that?”

“We don’t have time to waste.”

“Sounded like a goddamn explosion,” Jimmy said. “You never said anything about—”

A crumpled mass of machinery dropped out of the night twenty feet ahead of them. It hit the ground with earth-shaking force and shattered the asphalt at the edge of the road. It was blackened and heat-scarred, but Melissa thought it looked a lot like a car engine. One end had been pulled apart like a flower.

Jimmy gaped. “Are you kidding me?”

“Just move this heap,” Melissa pressed. “The turnoff is right there.”

She faced forward to point out where the church’s dirt driveway joined the road.

And saw the officer.

He lay crumpled on the roadside, almost lost among the tall weeds. If not for the truck’s lofty cab, she may have missed him entirely.

“Holy shit,” she gasped.

Jimmy saw the man at about the same time, and Melissa jumped out the door before he finished asking, “Is he dead?”

She raced around the front of the truck and ran to the fallen officer, her brain reminding her that she’d returned to the spot where her otherwise normal life had derailed into unthinkable realms. The skin-prickling sensation hit her with the same force as when she’d chased after Frank in the woods, and once again she glanced around like a soldier treading in enemy territory.

She waded into the weeds and knelt beside the collapsed policeman, now close enough to see the blood splashed on his face and uniform. He lay on his back, limbs splayed in a gruesome parody of a discarded rag doll; the divergent manner in which his hips and legs rested in comparison to his torso made her stomach roil with distress. Yet he still had a pulse. Melissa held her fingers in place several beats longer, confirming its presence, finding it strong and true.

“Hang on, just a little longer,” she whispered. “Help’s coming. I promise.”

Leaving the man, she hurried back to the truck.

“Is he—”

“He’s alive,” Melissa said, climbing inside the cab. “Give me the radio. Hopefully we can get some people over here from the accident site.”

After making the call, Melissa pointed out her window and indicated where the old road cut into the trees. “Okay, that’s where we want to go, over to the right.”

Jimmy hesitated. “Shouldn’t we wait for the cavalry?”

“There’s no time. Now go!”

Frowning, the trucker downshifted and squinted at the shadow-heaped forest. “Miss, there ain’t no way we’re gonna fit down that narrow-ass path.”

“Just do it,” Melissa ordered. “I told you, lives are at stake here, kids’ lives.”

Jimmy grimaced but throttled forward, swinging the semi wide to make the turn. They arced all the way across the road, where the driver-side bumper collided with the stalled Lexus and forced it off the shoulder, into the ditch.

Plowing onto the forest trail, the huge truck mowed down dense clusters of bushes and flattened several saplings. Pushing on, the branches of taller trees raked the cab’s walls, screeching across its roof and windshield and hissing past Melissa’s door.

Mallory huddled with Tim and her father at the top of the church steps. Her ears still rang from the unexpected explosion that destroyed the station wagon in a single annihilative blast. The invisible hands of the shockwave had shoved her in the chest, knocking her flat. She’d fallen against Tim, both of them landing on their backs to the sight of a fiery orange cloud rolling skyward above the church.

She sat up.

The back half of the station wagon now lay in a twisted pile in the middle of the parking lot and smaller fragments continued to rain down through the surrounding treetops. Other than that, the night had taken on an eerie calm in the aftermath of the vehicle’s destruction. Even the storm entered an uneasy lull.

“Is everyone okay?” her dad asked.

He’d been in the process of attempting to force open the church’s doors when the blast occurred, and he’d been flung through the boards amid a whirlwind of dust and rotted wood.

Tim pushed to his feet and moved to the staircase’s railing. “We’re okay,” he said. “But what about the man you arrived with?”

Mallory looked to her dad and saw him swallow hard. At the far edge of the parking lot, beyond Derrick’s disabled Mercedes, the ground at the forest’s tree line looked like an old war photo out of Vietnam. The nearest trees bristled with dozens of bright gashes where shrapnel had stripped away their bark, and a hundred deformed auto parts lay scattered across the dirt.

Mallory watched her dad stand up, noticing he still clutched the pistol he’d fired at the creature.