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.
“How many shots left?” Tim asked.
“Five, I think,” he said. “You two get inside. I’ll go check on Frank.”
“No,” Mallory cried. She leapt to her feet. “Dad, that thing’s not dead. It’s just out there somewhere, waiting for us.”
“She’s right,” Tim added. “This is the safest place there is.”
Her dad ran a shaky hand across his face then stepped to the edge of the steps.
“Frank,” he shouted.
His cry echoed in the distance, answered by a flash of lightning and a growl of thunder.
Mallory gasped at the sight the lightshow revealed, clutching her father’s arm.
Under the glare of the storm, they spotted a fallen tree at the far side of the lot and a man’s hand reaching up from behind it.
And from what they could see, his skin was covered in blood.
“Becky… Becky, wake up.”
“What happened to her—Oh, God!”
“Help me, Lisa.”
“There’s so much blood. Is she dead?”
“No, she’s breathing, but—”
Becky stirred at the voices of her friends, suddenly realizing she wasn’t dreaming. At first she couldn’t remember anything. Then the night’s fiendish roller coaster of insane events thundered out of a black tunnel in her memory and she jolted awake, sitting up fast enough to make Adam and Lisa jump in surprise.
“What happened?” she cried.
She recalled the inky pool of strange liquid and the freakish forms she’d glimpsed within its depths. Then something exploded. She’d stood to flee from the horrid vision in the pool when she witnessed the strobe of the detonation in the corner of one eye. Part of her thought a lightning bolt struck the ground beside her, whereas a more sinister inner voice suggested someone had shot her pointblank in the head.
Now she looked to the faces of her friends, trying to understand their expressions of mixed terror and disbelief.
Following their gazes, she looked down at herself.
And saw the blood.
Huge splashes of red streaked her arms and legs; a terrible wetness soaked her shirt.
Fear whispered all manner of possible injuries in her mind, but when she looked around she discovered the huge stone obelisk lying in the dirt beside her.
“It’s not mine,” she said. “I’m not hurt. I must’ve got splashed when that thing fell over.”
Adam helped her to her feet. “You’re lucky you didn’t get crushed.”
Becky opened her mouth to reply, but stopped short when a sudden noise overpowered her words.
A wire snapping.
The noise came again, and again, followed by a crash that sounded like it came from behind them.
Inside the ambulance.
Everyone swung around to see the vehicle rocking on its shocks. The paneling of the front doors screeched against the tree trunks with each shift, while a clamorous tantrum of activity raged from inside.
“It can’t be,” Adam said. “It just can’t.”
“It is,” Becky cried.
“No,” Lisa mewed.
And before Becky had a chance to voice her suggestion to flee, the blasphemous patchwork monstrosity tore free from the vehicle. It kicked the back doors out of its way, sending both flying off their hinges with a shriek of rent metal. The thing slid out the opening, using its massive arms to peel back the roof and make way for its head.
Becky stood paralyzed by the sight, her sanity grappling with emotions that surpassed all the rational boundaries she’d developed in the scope of her lifetime.
Beside her, Lisa fainted. On the other side, Adam had vanished.
Becky remained immobilized, certain the walking mound of reconstructed corpses would come after her next.
Instead, it strode toward the church, laying waste to everything in its path.