Nightworld

Hank didn't know how long he'd been phasing in and out of consciousness, but eventually he felt strong enough to move. His head felt three times its normal size and throbbed viciously, but he forced it off the pavement to look around. The movement triggered an explosion of pain through the left side of his skull as the world spun around him. He choked back the vomit that surged into his throat, squeezed his eyes shut, and held still. And while he held still, he tried to remember what had happened.

He recalled loading the van, driving down the Turnpike, turning in for gas—

Oh, Lord. The State Trooper. The pistol. The shot.

Hank reached up and gingerly touched the left side of his head. A deep wet gash above his ear there, clots and soft crusts all up and down the side of his head and neck.

But he was alive. The bullet had glanced off his skull and plowed a deep furrow through his scalp. He was weak, sick, dizzy, hurting like he'd never hurt before, but he was alive.

Hank opened his eyes again. He was looking down. A puddle of coagulated blood was pooled on the pavement a few inches below his nose. Keeping his eyes fixed on the blood, he pushed himself further up, pulled his knees under him, then straightened. The vertigo took him for another twirling ride, but when it stopped, he took his bearings.

Green metal bins on either side of him—garbage dumpsters. Framed between them he could see the rest stop gas pumps a hundred or so feet away.

Deserted now. No phony attendants waving cars forward. To his left was the stuccoed side of a building. The restaurants. Bob's Big Boy. Roy Rogers. TCBY.

They must have dragged him over here out of sight and left him for dead while they lay in wait for the next hapless traveler.

Clenching his teeth against the pain and the nausea, he pulled himself to his feet and peered over the dumpsters. The whole rest stop was deserted. Beyond the pumps the Turnpike stood quiet and empty. The cars he'd seen parked over here earlier were gone now.

So was his van.

Hank wanted to cry. Robbed. By state cops, no less. Lord, what was happening to this world? The human monsters acrawl during the day were as bad as the inhuman ones that ruled the night.

Night! He glanced at the sky, at the horizon. Good Lord, it was getting dark. In a few minutes those horrors would start flying and crawling from their holes. He couldn't be caught out in the open.

He hobbled to the door on the near flank of the restaurants. Locked. He made his way around to the front entrance. The glass double doors were chained shut from the inside. He peered through. A shambles within. It looked as if the place had been ransacked and looted before it had been locked up. No matter. He wasn't worried about food now. All he wanted was to get to shelter.

He looked around in the failing light for something to break the glass—a rock, a garbage can, anything. He found a heavy, stuccoed trash receptacle nearby but no way could he lift it.

Near panic now, he circled the rest stop, desperate to find a way in. He was half way around the back when something whizzed by his head, its jaws grinding as it passed. Then another. He couldn't see them in the dusky light but he didn't have to. Chew wasps. Here already. There must be a hole nearby.

In a low crouch he ran for the dumpsters on the far side of the building. Maybe he could hide in one of them—crawl inside and pull the top down over him. Maybe he'd even find some scraps of food among the refuse.

When he reached the dumpsters he hoisted himself up the side of the first and saw that its hinged top was gone. Same with the other. Now what?

As he eased himself back down his foot caught in a slot in the pavement. A storm drain. His foot rested on the rusty grate.

Try it! he thought, bending and yanking on the grate. It was square, a couple of feet on each side. No problem getting through if he could pull it free.

Another bug whistled by—close enough to ruffle his hair. A spearhead.

Ignoring the throbbing in his skull that crescendoed toward agony with the effort, he put all of what little strength he had left into lifting the grate. The metal squeaked and moved a quarter inch, then half an inch, then screeched free of its seat. Hank pushed it aside and slid through the opening into the darkness below. Four feet down, his feet landed in a puddle. No problem. Not even an inch deep. He reached up and slid the grate back over the opening. When it clanked into its seat, he slumped into a crouch and looked up at the sky.

Dark up there, but still lighter than down here. As he watched a lonely star break through the dispersing haze, a huge belly fly plopped onto the grate directly over Hank and tried to squeeze through. Its acid sack strained against the openings, bulged into the slots, but it was too wide. Buzzing angrily, it lifted off and flew away.

He should have been relieved, happy he'd found a safe haven. Instead, Hank found himself sobbing. Why not? No one around to see. He was alone, hurt—still bleeding a little—cold, tired, hungry, no food, no money, no ride, and now he was hiding in a storm drain with dirty, stagnant water soaking through his sneakers. He'd really hit bottom now.

He forced a laugh that echoed eerily up and down the length of the drain. If nothing else, he could soothe himself with the knowledge that things couldn't get worse.

Something splashed off to his right.

Hank froze and listened. What was that, oh Lord, what was that? A rat? Or something worse—something much, much worse?

He eased his feet out of the water and inched them up the far side of the pipe until he spanned its diameter. If anything was moving through the water, it would pass under him. He peered into the darkness to his right, straining ears and eyes for some sign of life.

Nothing there.

But from his left came a furtive scurrying, moving closer…countless tiny clicks and scratches as something—no, somethings!—with thousands of feet slithered toward him along the concrete wall of the drain.

More splashing from the right, bolder now, lots of splashes, hurried, anxious, eager, avid, frantic splashes coming faster, racing toward him. The storm drain was suddenly alive with sound and movement and it was all converging on him.

Hank whimpered with terror and dropped his feet back into the water as he slammed his palms against the grate above and levered it up from its seat. But before it came completely free a pair on tong-like pincers vised around his right ankle. He shouted his terror and agony but kept pushing. Another set of pincers lanced into his left calf. His feet were pulled from under him and he went down to his knees in the stagnant water.

And then in the faint light through the grate above he saw them. Huge, pincer-mouthed millipede creatures, like the one he'd seen wriggling from the throat of the corpse in the lobby this morning. The pipe was acrawl with them, five, six, eight, ten feet long. The nearest ones raised their heads toward him, their pincers clicking. Hank slapped at them, trying to bat them away, but they darted past his defenses and latched onto him, digging the ice-pick points of their mandibles into his arms and shoulders. The pain and horror were too much. His scream echoed up and down the hungry pipe as he was dragged onto his back. His arms were pulled above his head and his legs yanked straight as he was positioned along the length of the pipe. Cold water soaked his clothes and ran along his spine. And then more of the things leaped upon him, all over him, their countless clawed feet scratching him, their pincers ripping at his clothing, tearing through the protective layers like so much tissue paper until every last shred had been stripped away and he lay cold and wet and naked, stretched out like a heretic on the rack.

And then they backed off, all but the ones holding him who continued to pin him there in the water. The drain grew quiet. The sloshing and splashing, the scraping of the myriad feet died away until the only noise in Hank's ears was the sound of his own ragged breathing.

What did they want? What were they—?

Then came another sound, a heavy, chitonous slithering from the impenetrable darkness beyond his feet. As it grew louder, Hank began to whimper in fear. He began to thrash in the water, struggling desperately to pull free but the pincers in his arms and legs tightened their grip, digging deeper into his already bleeding flesh.

And then in the growing shaft of light from the rising moon he saw it. A millipede like all the rest, but so much larger. Its head was the size of Hank's torso, its body a good two feet across, half-filling the drain pipe,

Hank screamed as understanding exploded within him. These other, smaller horrors were workers or drones of some sort; they'd captured him and were holding him here for their queen! He renewed his struggles, ignoring the tearing pain in his limbs. He had to get free!

But he couldn't. Sliding over the bodies of her obedient subjects the queen crawled between Hank's squirming legs until she held her head poised over his chest, staring at him with her huge, black, multifaceted eyes. As Hank watched in mute horror, a drill-like proboscis extruded from between her huge mandibles. Slowly, she raised her head and angled it down over Hank's abdomen. Hank found his voice and screamed again as she plunged the proboscis deep into his abdomen.

Liquid fire exploded at his center and spread into his chest, it ran down his legs and his arms, draining the strength from them.

Poison! He opened his mouth to scream again but the neurotoxin reached his throat first and allowed him to give voice to little more than an especially loud, breathy exhalation. Hank's hands were the last things to go dead, and then he was floating. He still lay in the water but could not feel its wetness. The last thing he saw before tumbling into a void of blessed darkness was the queen horror with her snout still buried in his flesh, sucking greedily.