Something in the Water

TWENTY-FIVE

Gwen didn’t have nearly enough ammunition to shoot her way out of this kind of trouble. She counted half a dozen water hags in front of her, and, flicking her head around, counted another four or five behind her. They were closing in, slowly, inexorably. Their long, bony fingers waved slowly, vicious claws glinting in the moonlight.

Where was everybody? Where were the cops? Never around when you needed them!

The water hags in front of her parted and Saskia Harden walked through. There was a bullet hole in her raincoat, on the right-hand side, just underneath where her collarbone should be. There was some kind of dark stain seeping through the material around the hole, but it wasn’t blood. It was a deep, inky green colour. As she approached, she unbelted the raincoat and let it slip from her shoulders with a casual shrug.

She was naked beneath. She took three more steps and then, passing through a shadow, her body seemed to ripple slightly. Gwen stared as she walked back into the light of the street lamps and then, with sudden clarity, realised what was happening. Saskia was shucking her human disguise like she had her raincoat.

At first, it looked as though water was streaming over her skin, running down her face and body as if she was standing under a shower. The shimmering passed over her like a sudden glimpse of silver scales, a fish-like iridescence that coursed through her features, robbing them of all humanity, flowing down between her breasts and out beneath the rest of her skin. She darkened, quickly and permanently, as if she was burning up without any visible flames, the flesh crisping into a rough, gnarled texture full of cracks and fissures.

‘Keep back,’ Gwen said, her voice firm as she carefully aimed her gun. She felt as if, finally confronted with the hideous wrongness, a preternatural resolve was flooding through her. She wouldn’t go down without a fight. ‘I swear I’ll shoot if you take another step.’

The water hag smiled. Or at least that’s what Gwen thought it must have been doing. She could see a lot of teeth, but its facial expressions failed to correspond with anything Gwen recognised. All her natural, instinctive behavioural cues were missing. With dreadful fascination, Gwen realised that she was looking right into the eyes of a truly alien being.

The eyes were narrow, pus-yellow, with latitudinal slits like those of a goat. They were set deep in the face, surrounded by a thick web of shadows. The nose was little more than a jutting blade surmounting vertical holes like those in a skull. Beneath this was the wide, crescent-shaped mouth, parted to show the grey, needle-like teeth and a thin, flickering black tongue.

And when the smile came — and now Gwen knew it was a smile — the thin lipless crack opened wider and wider until the horrible teeth seemed to reach right up to where the ears should be. If Saskia yawned now, Gwen thought, the entire top half of her head would tip back on a hinge. No wonder she could bite the head off a dog.

It was, quite simply, the smile of death.

Gwen held her ground, kept the pistol aimed levelly. She held it in a two-handed grip, sighting down the barrel until she was sure the next shot would go straight through the water hag’s forehead.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ Saskia said. Her voice was low, rippling, as if she was speaking underwater. Her once blonde hair now hung like seaweed around her head.

‘I’m not frightened,’ Gwen said. She hoped she sounded more convinced about that than she felt. Now that she was closer, Gwen could see that the water hag’s skin was full of mud and moss and crawling with tiny worms and insects. The dark yellow eyes never left hers.

‘Of course you are. But you can relax. I’m not going to kill you. I need you alive.’

Somehow that sounded far worse than a simple threat to kill her. Gwen couldn’t feel her fingers any longer, and the gun was slipping in her grip as her hands perspired. She could feel her heart beating so hard that her pulse had to be visible in her neck.

The other water hags were much closer now. Gwen could smell them all around her, the stench of something wet and rotting. She couldn’t kill all of them. Even if she shot Saskia, how would she get the others? They’d rip her throat out before she could do anything.

‘W-what are you, really? Where are you from?’

‘Here and there. A world a long way from here, originally.’

Keep her talking. ‘What was it called?’

‘Strepto. Not that it matters much. It’s disappeared, vanished. I was away, travelling. When I went home it was gone. So I came here on my own, the last survivor.’

‘On your own?’

‘At first. Not any more.’

‘What d’you want?’ Gwen was gripping the automatic ever more tightly, keeping the heavy gun — it was so heavy — trained on Saskia’s forehead.

‘We need to get in there,’ Saskia replied, pointing down at the ground.

The Hub. Where Jack and the others all lay dying.

Saskia took another step closer. The muzzle of Gwen’s gun was no more than thirty centimetres from her head now. ‘My turn to ask the questions now. What’s your name?’

‘Gwen.’

‘You’re going to take me in there, Gwen. I’m not interested in you or your friends, but I need what you’ve got down there.’

‘You won’t get it.’

‘I think I will. With your help.’

‘I’ll shoot you dead and take my chances. You’re not getting into the Hub.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

Gwen gripped the pistol tighter. ‘Try me.’

‘Pulling that trigger will be the last thing you ever do, Gwen.’

Gwen’s mouth felt so dry she could hardly speak. ‘And watching me do it will be the last thing you ever do.’

Saskia took another step closer.

‘I’m warning you!’ Gwen shouted.

Saskia smiled.

This was it, Gwen realised. The final act of her life. Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt in her chest, hurt deep inside her stomach. She felt like she wanted to just stop and cry, but she knew that she couldn’t. This was the final act. She thought of Tosh, clever and gentle Tosh, and the talk they’d had in the motorway services, of Professor Len, and Rhys. Tears were running down her face and she knew she was incapable of speaking now. There was only one thing left to do. She said a silent, choking goodbye to Rhys and pulled the trigger.