What the Hell Did I Just Read

30. MOBILE SURGERY

John

A bang and the sound of shattered glass. Everyone hit the floor. Maggie screamed.

Dave yelled for Amy and ran to her, pulling her away from the door, telling her to get down.

John risked a look through a side window. NON agent Josaline Pussnado’s black sedan was parked behind them, engine running, headlights illuminating twin horizontal shafts of glistening raindrops. She was standing behind the open driver’s side door, wet shirt plastered against her bosom, aiming a pistol. She fired again, then moved toward the open door of the RV, shooting all the way like the goddamned Terminator, rain steaming off the gun. John ducked. Windows shattered along the length of the RV as her bullets whistled through.

From behind John, a female voice said, “HERE!” and there was Joy, running out from Marconi’s office in the back. She had in her hand the obsidian spear that had been leaning in the corner. She tossed it to him.

John hefted it, felt its weight, then sprinted up toward the door. He leaped over Dave, who was still on the floor, shielding Amy with his enormous body. John was far from proficient when it came to spears, but you go to war with the weapons you have.

He leaned out of the door. Agent Pussnado hadn’t so much as changed her clothes since Ted put an assault rifle round through her sternum—her white shirt looked like she’d had a mishap carrying a punchbowl. John found the scorched hole in her shirt, just off-center from the row of buttons between her perfect breasts. That would be his target.

He flung the spear with all his might, the shaft whizzing through the rain. The obsidian blade plunged itself into Pussnado’s chest, right into what John was sure was her still-healing wound.

She stumbled back and stopped shooting, but did not die. The agent looked down, let out a groan of annoyance like she was having just the worst day, and tugged the spear out of her chest. She tossed it aside, reloaded her gun, and started walking toward the RV again.

John pulled the door closed and yelled, “Get us out of here!” to no one in particular.

Joy shoved past him. She threw herself into the driver’s seat and started the engine. “Hold on!”

They rumbled out onto the main road, Pussnado’s bullets clanking off the rear of the RV. When the shots stopped, John got a look in one of the side mirrors and saw the agent hobbling back into her sedan, intending to continue the pursuit. If nothing else, John hoped NON remembered her at bonus time.

Amy

The sound of Maggie wailing in the back was the worst thing Amy had ever heard. Pain and terror and helplessness, a plaintive wail that was absolutely raw and absolutely real. Amy and David clumsily climbed to their feet. David—who looked anxious but clearly was not hearing what Amy heard, glanced back that direction, then looked nervously at Joy, who was pushing the RV to its limits down dark, submerged streets.

Amy uttered a question that, considering the context, sounded ridiculously casual. “So, uh, where are you from?”

Joy, who was hunched over the steering wheel as if she could make the sluggish RV go faster with body language, smiled.

“You’re sweet. Phrasing the question that way. I can tell you’re cool.”

John stepped toward them, with that look on his face like he was beginning to puzzle something out. Without a word, he held out his hand. Joy knew what he was doing; she took her right hand off the wheel and held it out to him. John examined it like he was admiring an engagement ring.

Four of Joy’s fingers came off in his hand. While John held them, they transformed back into one of those worker bug things, which sat calmly on his palm.

David let out a long breath that carried with it the word, “Ooooookay.”

Joy, trying to steer with her partial hand, said, “I do kind of need that back.”

John handed the fudge roach back to Joy. It crawled into place and became fingers again.

John said, “Well, that actually makes more sense than any of the other possibilities. At some point during the lost weekend, I learned how to control a flock of fuckroaches. That’s all. Must have learned to train them or something.”

I said, “Is there a, uh, larva in there…”

“No.”

“Why can’t we see through the disguise?”

Joy said, “Because you don’t want to, dummy.”

Amy said, “And you forced them to take the form of a Korean porn star. So you could do what with her, exactly?”

Joy said, “Ew, no. That would not be cool.”

David said, “And we, uh, trust her to drive the bus?”

Joy said, “It’s not that hard. If people aren’t distracting you.”

“That’s actually not what I—”

Maggie howled again and Marconi shouted from the back that he needed their help.

They ran to the back, where Maggie’s mother was trying to hold the little girl still while Marconi tended to her. Blood was everywhere—it covered the narrow sofa and had splattered onto the floor. Amy couldn’t imagine that tiny body even having that much blood in it.

Amy yelled back toward Joy, “You’re taking us to a hospital, right?”

Me

Marconi’s tan suit looked like he’d just gotten home from a double shift in a butcher shop. Beads of sweat covered his forehead.

He said, “We can’t keep her still.”

The squealing maggot was thrashing around … and growing. The goddamned sulfur pellets were still burning through its flesh and I thought that if Hell was a real place, I now knew exactly what it smelled like.

Marconi said to the half-eaten Loretta, “All right. Run into my office, through that door there. On my desk is a large stone bowl. On the shelf to the right of it is a glass jar full of sand. Bring them both to me.”

To John, he said, “Hold her still.” Marconi had a long pair of forceps that he’d been using to try to fish out the sizzling pellets.

To me, he said, “I tried to cut the wound wider to grant us better access, but her skin snapped the blade off the scalpel. Utterly impenetrable. Then I tried to extract the projectiles…”

He shook his head and handed me the forceps.

I said, “What the hell are you doing? No. This is … no.”

“Mr. Wong, I cannot see the patient. I’m seeing a little girl with an abdominal wound.”

“I am not a doctor!”

“You believe a doctor would be more qualified to perform this operation? You’re locating the projectiles and digging them out. They are not difficult to find—they are sizzling and glowing like miniature suns.”

That part was even truer than he knew; the creature’s skin was translucent, it looked like a dirty plastic tarp wrapped tightly around twenty gallons of Vaseline. I could see four pellets, each the size of a pea, burning their way down to various depths. The worst was about two inches down.

Start with the deepest first.

John leaned over the monster with his forearms on either side of the surgical site, trying to at least keep the little patch I was working on stabilized.

Loretta came back with the bowl and the jar. Marconi poured the sand into the bowl and set it next to me—a place to set the burning projectiles where they would not ignite the interior of the RV and create a forty-sixth deadly problem for us to deal with.

I pushed the forceps in and the maggot howled, a noise like a screeching exotic bird being forced through a long section of pipe with a sharp stick. Loretta, watching over my shoulder, gasped and wept. I didn’t want to imagine what she was hearing.

I had to try to force the wound wider to get the forceps around the sizzling projectile. Impossible—the skin was like thick leather, I could change the shape of the wound, but not make it bigger. Then, when I got the instrument deep enough, I found I couldn’t really squeeze the burning ball because the grabby parts at the end of the forceps were the wrong shape to grip a sphere—it kept slipping every time I squeezed, and the maggot howled louder every time I missed.

Loretta was offering me panicked, unhelpful suggestions every step of the way. From up front, Joy was yelling something about having caught up to the convoy, and I thought I could hear sirens.

Finally, I got the first ball tenuously clamped in the forceps, gingerly drew it out, then promptly bumped my hand and dropped the glowing orb on the sofa. It burned right through the cushion, a little tongue of flame licking up from the spot. I quickly dug out the projectile and dropped it in the sand bowl, John rolling the larva out of the way of the burning cushion. Marconi slapped out the fire, whipping it with his suit jacket.

Three projectiles left. I was shaking. Sweat was stinging my eyes. The larva continued to swell and pulse.

I said, “What if it’s already too—” and stopped myself. I wanted to ask what if it was already too late, meaning too late to stop the thing from hatching. But Loretta was standing right there and she would definitely interpret that the wrong way.

I leaned in to start working on the next deepest projectile, then almost toppled over when the RV swerved.

Joy shouted, “Hang on!”

The windshield in front of her was a kaleidoscope of flashing red-and-blue lights dancing across streaking beads of rainwater. I could hear sirens and shouts and Harley mufflers.

We’d driven right into the chaos.

Amy

They swerved again and Amy had to brace herself against the wall. She stumbled up to the cockpit. Joy had steered them around the scene of a multivehicle accident turned pitched battle.

Detective Bowman’s SUV was on its side, blocking the right lane, exposing its mechanical underbelly. Its red lights were still swirling and flashing across the expanse of rain-splattered blacktop. The tailing squad car had then run into it, its snout crumpled between the SUV’s tires. The squad car had on its hood a smoking motorcycle and its enraged rider, the guy having apparently gotten sandwiched between the two police vehicles. The rear tire of the Harley was still spinning, sending sprays of water whizzing across the police car’s windshield.

Off in the standing water next to the highway was one of the NON trucks, having run off the road. It had a grappling hook and line tangled around one of the front tires. Cloaks were pouring out of it and shooting, pinning down several bikers who had skidded to a stop behind them.

The RV got clear of the wreck and Amy could hear muffled gunshots—the rest of the convoy was just ahead.

There were layers to the madness. Directly in front of them was Ted’s camouflage pickup. The RV’s headlights illuminated Ted, crouched in the bed with his assault rifle. His soaked blond hair was matted to his skull, his green jacket flapping in the wind. He was in the middle of reloading the gun and even in the darkness, in a moving vehicle in a howling rainstorm, the reloading process was smooth and fluid. Practiced hands. His fingers did not shake.

Ahead of him was an undulating swirl of taillights belonging to three Christ’s Rebellion motorcycles that were still in pursuit, weaving back and forth, conducting a running battle with the two remaining NON trucks that were side by side, one of them driving with abandon in the oncoming lane. The bikers were shooting at the trucks, little fists of flame popping from their stubby shotguns. The rear windows of the trucks were scarred with white marks where the shots had landed, to no avail. These were military vehicles, made to withstand this sort of thing. Directly ahead of all that was the school bus, a vehicle that simply was not built for speed and thus couldn’t get any kind of separation from its pursuers.

Also: it was clear that all of them were driving into the flood.

They were heading directly toward the river, which meant they were entering neighborhoods that had already been evacuated because their roads were impassable. There was an inch of water over the street and the next sudden movement could send them hydroplaning off in one direction or another, at which point the top-heavy RV would no doubt go tumbling over—wounded little girl and all.

Not that the vehicles involved in the pursuit ahead seemed to care. As Amy watched, the NON truck ahead and to the left picked up speed to overtake the bus. Once it was alongside, it swerved over and slammed into it, the black truck trying to drive it off the road, into the overflowing drainage ditch. The bus swerved, kicked up a rooster-tail spray of water with its rear tire, then swung back on the street. That driver, Amy thought, could pilot the heck out of a school bus.

Something caught Joy’s attention in the side mirror and she cursed.

Headlights—the black sedan of the NON agent, racing up from behind.

The car sped up past the RV in the left lane, then passed Ted’s truck before he had time to register it.

The three bikers, focused on trying to peel the NON trucks away from the bus full of their precious children, hadn’t been expecting an assault from the rear. The sedan swept into their lane and slammed into the rear wheels of two bikes, sending both careening off the road, flipping and splashing into the standing water.

Ted tried to bring his assault rifle around to get a clear shot at the sedan. He fired into its side window. The sedan swerved over, smacking into the pickup and sending Ted tumbling over. The pickup slammed on its brakes, causing it to jerk into the third motorcycle, flipping the driver into the side of the truck and then onto the pavement.

Joy yanked the wheel and the RV swerved to avoid running over the tumbling body of the biker. When she swerved back, they ran over a pair of orange street signs now lying flat in the middle of the road, their stands knocked aside. They both said in all-caps:

BRIDGE OUT.

Me

The Maggie larva was now about 50 percent bigger than when we started. I could feel puffs of frozen dread pouring from the wound. It was a unique sensation; the best comparison I can offer is if you opened your fridge to realize something was rotten in there, then when you opened the cheese drawer, you found a photo of your mother fucking a Dalmatian.

This swelling effect did have the benefit of stretching the wounds slightly, though the pellets were getting deeper by the second. My plan to go for the deepest one first had been idiotic, the idea had been to extract them in order of threat level but in the time it took to dig it out, the other three had burrowed down just as far.

Still, I had the second burning pellet out and clinched in the forceps when the RV slammed to a halt. We all went lurching forward like the crew of the Enterprise when a torpedo hits. I came this close to dropping the pellet right back into the goddamned wound. People were shouting up in the cockpit.

John yelled, “What’s happening?”

Joy said, “Bridge is out!”

Amy, sounding frantic, said, “They’re in the water! They’re getting swept away!”

“Who’s in the water?”

“Everyone! The cloaks are going after them!”

I heard the RV door open. John turned and yelled, “Amy! Wait!”

Amy was gone, having run out into the storm to do god knows what.

John got up and ran after her. The larva started thrashing under me, John no longer there to restrain it. I screamed after both of them. Neither returned.

Two pellets continued to scorch their way into the husk of the larva. The creature squealed and sucked and chittered. Loretta ran over and tried to hold it still, putting her hands in all the wrong places, whispering to the thing that it would be okay, that everything would be okay.

From the darkness in the wounds, I thought I could hear voices, calling my name.

I blinked sweat out of my eyes and went back to work.

Amy

The bus was sinking. The children were screaming.

The bridge that was out was in fact the same bridge they had stood on a few weeks ago, when they were pursued to it from the other direction. This was the spot where she had chucked the Soy Sauce vial into a current that at the time had already been just feet below the rusty junk bridge that should have been replaced decades ago. Now, the river had overwhelmed the bridge and rolled it aside, rusty beams jutting out of the rushing whitewater rapids to Amy’s right. Directly in front of her was the rear bumper and emergency door of the white and red bus, now tipped up toward the sky at a 45-degree angle, the front end submerged in the dark current. The rear wheels were still rolling helplessly in the air.

Amy had watched the Christ’s Rebellion bus try to stop, but it was a lumbering, clumsy beast skidding through a few inches of standing water—it hadn’t even been close. The bus had splashed face-first into the rushing current and Ted’s pickup had soon followed. Ted’s friend behind the wheel had tried to swerve around the bus wreck to the other lane, only to see the pavement vanish from under him.

So now there was Ted, upstream to Amy’s left, standing on the bed of his sinking pickup and smashing at the rear window with the butt of his rifle so the driver could climb out. It wasn’t working. Amy had the thought that the guy had probably already drowned. Meanwhile, tiny hands were slapping and clawing at the rear windows of the school bus, children and panicked biker moms screaming from within.

The hulking black NON trucks had in fact gotten stopped in time, and were now parked on either side of Amy. They were disgorging the black cloaks all around her, ready to finish the job. Behind her was the RV, headlights casting shadows across the chaos in the river. She could hear John shouting something from back there.

Then, two more headlights joined the party—the sedan of the unkillable female NON agent.

There was a scraping and a groaning noise from the bus, and it lurched to Amy’s right. The current was grabbing at it, trying to yank it downstream, to swallow it up, to drown everyone on board.

Amy ran toward the rear of the bus, yelling, “Cover me!” in Ted’s direction. No idea if he could hear her—all she could hear were screams and the thundering stampede of angry water. She would have to jump to climb up on the rear bumper …

The air exploded around her, and she tumbled down to the pavement.

She heard shouts—Ted yelling strategy commands that meant nothing to her. He was crouched on the bank of the river, water breaking and spraying around his legs, shooting in her direction. Not at her, but at the black cloaks that were now right on top of her. The cloaks fired back at Ted, leaving orange afterimages in Amy’s vision like fiery claw marks.

She scrambled to her feet and ran toward the bus once more. It lurched and scraped again, getting pulled along the bank. She tried to jump up onto the bumper but at the last moment, a strong, bony hand seized her by the arm, yanked her back, and tossed her. She went face-first into the flooded area along the riverbank, nostrils burning as she inhaled water. She lost her glasses. She sputtered and tried to get to her feet. She heard screams and turned—a black cloak climbed up on the bus, ripping open the rear door.

John

The cloak was about to start pumping brimstone down onto the larvae and John knew he only had a window of about two seconds to do something about it.

He hadn’t brought a weapon. Fortunately, the universe quickly granted him one: Ted, firing from the riverbank, nailed one of the cloaks between John and the bus, the thing’s strange shotgun flipping into the air and right into John’s hands.

John aimed and pulled the trigger. Yellow threads of fire laced through the air.

He hit the cloak right in the back. It stumbled forward, almost falling down into the bus, then turned to face him.

It was Babyface.

John reminded himself that, under the cloak, the thing was wearing body armor.

John aimed and pulled the trigger a second time, aiming right for that stupid puffy-cheeked face. There was only a dry click.

John tossed the gun aside, ran, and leaped up onto the back of the bus. He tried to wrestle the cloak’s gun out of its hands, face-to-face with its ghoulish infant features and those tiny little rubber teeth.

They tussled and John felt something shoving his feet aside. Giant maggots were boiling out of the rear door of the bus, squirming out in every direction. The cloak took advantage of the distraction and smacked John in the jaw with the butt of his gun. John stumbled back, grabbed the cloak, and both went tumbling into the water.

Me

The larva was pulsing.

The two empty wounds from which I’d extracted the first pellets were now black holes, staring at me like shark eyes, a calculating, gleeful intelligence behind them. I could sense it talking to me, taunting me, making me promises about what awaited once it was free from its shell. Every time the forceps slipped off a projectile, it laughed. So ready to be free, gazing upon our world and seeing a new toy to play with, a helpless thing to torture.

I blinked and tried to concentrate. The two remaining pellets were deep—too deep for the forceps—and I couldn’t get a firm grip on either one because the maggot kept thrashing around. Loretta had been joined by Marconi, both of them failing to keep my “patient” still.

I fumbled with the projectile, the larva howling under me.

I couldn’t get it. I glanced at Loretta, who was watching me, eyes wide. The life of her baby slipping out of my trembling, incompetent hands. She saw the apology in my eyes and I watched her die a little inside.

Desperate, I screamed, “Joy! Get back here!”

She appeared.

“Can you, uh, see what’s going on here? Really see? Not just Maggie, but the…”

She nodded quickly.

“Help me hold her down.”

“Why can’t we roll her over?”

“What good would—”

Instead of explaining, Joy just pushed everyone back and rolled the swollen larva off the sofa and onto the floor, wound-side down.

She slapped the larva twice.

Then she rolled it back, and two smoking little balls were lying there on the floor, cooking the carpet. They had just fallen right out.

Amy

Amy saw John and the cloak tumble into the water. Kids were trying to crawl out of the rear door of the bus, climbing over each other, crying out for their parents.

The shooting had stopped from Ted’s end and Amy could sense from his manner that he had run out of bullets. That infuriated Amy. How could he run out of bullets? Always having lots of bullets was his whole thing. That was like an Internet provider running out of snide indifference.

Ted pulled out a knife and splashed out of the water, advancing on the one remaining cloak who was still on dry land and upright.

Amy moved toward the bus once more. It shifted again under the force of the current, tilting now, almost tossing the escaping children overboard. Could they drown?

She yelled for them to be calm, said she was coming, then there was a gunshot from behind her and Amy swore she felt the bullet whistle by her ear this time. She thought she might have peed her pants a little.

She turned and there was the female agent with the bloody shirt, Amy could no longer remember what name they were calling her.

Amy said, “You can’t hurt me! Remember! It will blow back on you!”

The woman said, “Just step aside, it’s been a long week.”

Slung over her shoulder was the shotgun they’d given to David back at the wellness center, only Amy assumed it was now functional.

Amy said, “This may seem like a weird time to ask, but what’s your name again?”

“Bella.”

“Listen, Bella. Shooting them causes them to hatch. That’s what they want!”

The agent sighed. “And who told you that?”

“I don’t—we figured it out! You have to trust me!”

“So these creatures, whose entire process is based around deception, convinced you that they can’t be harmed, and you don’t see why I’m skeptical of this claim? What exactly is your plan? Long-term, I mean.”

“I DON’T KNOW! I don’t know, okay?”

The look of disdain on Agent Bella’s face burned right through the downpour. The rain had spread her bloodstain down her shirt, fading to pink around the edges. Children were yelling. Nearby, Amy could hear what sounded like Ted stabbing a cloaked figure to death.

The agent brought the shotgun around and marched forward.

Me

We lifted the larva back onto the sofa. The four wounds were no longer smoking, but they also weren’t going away, either. I held a hand over the holes and felt what I thought an astronaut would feel if he found a crack in the ship’s hull while floating in the most desolate, frozen void at the edge of the cosmos. Not just coldness, but darkness and a sense of the vast, inhuman eternity that lay beyond. Was it too late? The larva was swollen, now in the shape of a football, tugging and straining on the gashes in the translucent leathery hide.

I said, “So … I’m not sure how to treat the wounds on this…” I almost said “thing” but Maggie’s mother was right there, and already seemed pretty confused. “… uh, situation.”

Marconi said, “Is there bleeding?”

“Not blood, no.”

Loretta said, “There’s blood everywhere.”

Joy said, “Then treat the wounds.” She looked at Marconi. “Treat the little girl. Same as you would anybody.”

He looked at me. I shrugged. The larva was no longer thrashing around and howling with its piercing wounded bird noises. It just lay there and made a low, squishy moaning sound. In the sand bowl, all four pellets continued to crackle and burn, the stench of brimstone filling the RV.

Marconi dug out packages of gauze from his first-aid kit and went to work.

Outside, I heard gunshots and Amy yelling at someone. I left the larva and its three caretakers behind and ran for the door. When I grasped the handle to open it, I found my hand was sticky. I was surprised to find it was covered in blood.

Maggie’s, I guess?

Whatever.

Just as I was about to step out, I noticed that leaning next to the door was Marconi’s antique spear, wicked chiseled notches in its gleaming obsidian head. I grabbed it and shoved through the door, into the maelstrom.

John

If John and his attacker had fallen on the downstream side of the sinking school bus, he’d no doubt have been whisked down the river, on his way to the Gulf of Mexico. Instead they fell upstream, meaning the current was now crushing their bodies against the side of the bus. There was no ground under John’s feet—the only thing keeping his head above the surface was the current pinning him to the white metal wall and the grip of his left hand, which was clutching a grating next to the bus’s wheel well.

John had lost track of the cloak that had tumbled into the river with him and he had hoped maybe it’d gotten swept away. But then a hand erupted out of the water and clutched John around the throat. The fingers felt thin and sinewy, like the talons on a bird.

Up from the water came the baby-face mask, only blackness behind the blank eye holes.

In a voice that sounded like a colon tumor that had grown a mouth, the cloak said, “Even now, you do not believe you can die. Do you know what awaits you, once you have been plunged into the black swarm? A most profound penetration that will split you wide, a violation without end, your shock their narcotic, your despair their aphrodisiac. How can you not already hear their lustful howls, you who bear the mark of Min?”

The bony hand forced John’s head under water. He struggled to grasp the side of the bus, to pull himself up, but his fingers peeled loose and he was drowning, the crush of the water an incomprehensible force, pushing the last air out of his lungs.

John clawed helplessly at the talons around his neck. Feeling his own numb fingers growing weaker.

Then there was a shape in the water above him, visible only as a shadow in the rippling reflection of the headlights from the shore. Something floating toward him, carried by the current.

Whatever it was, the cloak was distracted by it, turning away from his prey. John seized the opportunity and wrenched free of the claw, pulling himself up out of the water, sputtering and spitting. John wiped water out of his eyes and saw what was bobbing his way:

A pink silicone ass.

Ted’s pickup was now fully submerged upstream and the truck’s rubber ass cargo had spilled into the rushing water. The cloak stared in wonderment as one ass after another flowed its way, two dozen of them, bobbing along majestically.

The cloak screamed in despair, “The prophecy! It is true!” It turned its vacant eyes upward, rainwater filling the holes of the mask and dribbling out like tears. “You have summoned him!”

A pale blur whipped down from the sky. It snatched the cloak, whisking it from the water. It carried the struggling figure up, then flung it off into the distance, the cloaked thing landing soundlessly somewhere downstream.

John climbed up the side of the bus, shook wet hair from his face, and yelled, “HEY PUSSNADO, IT LOOKS LIKE YOUR SHIP JUST HIT AN ASSBERG! BECAUSE YOUR MAN JUST GOT ASSASSINATED! HEY, DO YOU MIND IF I ASS YOU SOMETH—”

Amy

No one could hear what John was yelling from the water.

“You know what really gets me?” said the agent behind the gun. “The sheer arrogance of it all. You’ve convinced yourself you’re taking some kind of moral stand, but you don’t care that you’re putting the whole world at risk for it. You’re so sure you’re right. I bet you win every argument with your boys. The little nerd girl? Bitch, your ego could blot out the sun.”

Ted was shouting now, joining the chorus of shouts from almost everyone in the vicinity. He was standing over the defeated black cloak, looking up at something, mouth agape.

He screamed, “GET DOWN!”

Amy didn’t even have time to obey. She and the agent both looked up in time to see a pale blur whoosh down from the sky.

The BATMANTIS??? landed heavily on one of the NON trucks.

Gunshots rang out—the female agent was unloading on the beast with her brimstone shotgun. The monster leaped off the truck and pinned her to the street, water breaking and splattering around her shoulders.

The agent didn’t drop the gun. She worked the barrel around and pressed it right to the BATMANTIS???’s face.

The creature made a quick swipe with one of its serrated claws and something went rolling away, splashing through the standing water at the side of the road.

It was the agent’s severed head.

“AMY!”

It was David, running toward them, hands and shirt covered in blood, carrying some kind of pole. He frantically looked back and forth from Amy to the winged beast.

Amy screamed, “I think it’s helping us! That’s why it kept turning up! It’s trying to help!”

But the BATMANTIS??? chose that moment to lunge at her, swiping a claw and missing only because it clumsily stumbled over its own misshapen feet.

David yelled, “No! It’s an asshole! Get away!”

The beast lurched in her direction. Amy dove and rolled away. She sprinted toward David.

He brandished the object she now realized was a spear from Marconi’s collection, putting himself between Amy and the monster.

The beast spun around to face them. Instead of teeth, it had a ragged kind of beak. Powerful jaws. It was no herbivore.

David yelled, “NO! We did not survive all this shit just to get eaten by your stupid ass. Just go away!”

Amy said to it, “We’re the good guys! It’s okay!”

The thing snatched at David. He thrust the spear at it, backing it off.

“NO!” he screamed at it. “No! Don’t you see, you dumb son of a bitch? We don’t want to kill you! Can you even hear me, you fucking animal? I will put this through your goddamned neck!”

The thing just looked confused. Not evil, Amy thought—just scared and hungry and lashing out blindly at a world it didn’t understand.

The BATMANTIS??? lunged again—not at David, but past him. It was going for Amy.

David growled, “NO!”

He jabbed at it with the spear as it passed. He got it, right in the side.

It recoiled. Dark blood oozed. The thing screeched.

And then the monster … smiled.

Amy was sure of it. As if it finally had a fight, like this was what it had come for.

The BATMANTIS??? whipped a claw through the air with a pale blur, and David’s spear went flying.

David, in a blind rage, did not back down.

“COME ON! Come over here and die, you fucking animal! I’ve fought shit that would keep you for a pet!” He turned quickly toward Amy. “Run! I’ll keep it busy!”

She didn’t. The BATMANTIS??? swung a claw, bashing David to the ground. Effortless.

It jumped on him, pinning him just as it had done to the agent moments ago. Amy screamed.

David yelled again for her to go. She stayed.

He clawed at the thing’s face, yelling, “LOOK AT YOU! YOU ARE A MISTAKE! A MALFUNCTION! YOU EAT ME, I WILL FUCK YOU FROM THE INSIDE!”

The thing raised a claw, meaning to lop off David’s head.

Amy suddenly remembered the Taser. She yanked it out of her back pocket, ran up and pressed it against the monster’s neck, the blue flashes of electricity popping against its skin.

It didn’t paralyze it, but it did cause it to recoil again, to stagger backward.

Amy stabbed a finger at it. “Last chance! You have to go. You understand? We have been more than patient.”

The monster snarled, then yelped and stumbled forward. Something had slammed into it from behind.

John

There were now six of the huge, squealing maggots clinging to the top of the bus and more were crawling out, crowding each other. John was thus having trouble finding purchase on the upturned rear and thought it would look bad to Amy if he just started shoving children off into the water to make room.

John heard someone from shore tell everyone to get down, then the BATMANTIS??? swooped overhead, landing on a vehicle nearby. There were gunshots and then the shots abruptly ended.

Then it looked like the beast was confronting someone, its jumbled limbs and wings thrashing around in the silhouette of the RV’s headlights. John heard enraged and panicked cries through the rain. Dave and Amy were confronting the monster, and from the sound of it, losing.

Frantic, John awkwardly climbed around to the rear bumper of the bus and tried to get his feet over the pavement—only a small corner of the bus still overhung solid land. He managed to drop onto the street. Two of the maggots were already there, having crawled off the bus.

John turned …

A man was running past him.

It was Ted.

Running with purpose and rage.

Running to confront the beast he believed had taken his child.

He was carrying the backpack containing the brimstone bomb.

Ted jumped onto the back of the BATMANTIS???, getting it in a chokehold, a muscled arm wrapped around what passed for the thing’s neck. The creature thrashed and tried to reach back for him, its clumsy mismatched limbs badly failing at the task.

Frustrated, the winged beast jumped and took to the air, Ted still on its back, as if the BATMANTIS??? intended to get him up high and shake him off. Up the two of them went, up and up, a flash of lightning illuminating the pair for just a split second, revealing a glimpse of tiny flapping wings and a desperate, thrashing struggle in midair.

Then it was dark again. John lost sight of them in the starless sky.

He stared, squinting against the raindrops that were dive-bombing his face.

And then, a flash of light, like a new sun being born. Bright enough to blind.

The boom hit two seconds later.

Down came a spectacular rain of brilliant, sizzling particles, filling the sky, landing in the floodwaters around them with a soft hiss.

It only took John a moment to put together what had happened, that Ted had known the creature would try to take off with him attached, that flight was its only advantage. Ted was a soldier, a good one, and a hell of a lot smarter than the beast had been. He had just needed the BATMANTIS??? to get high enough, away from the innocents below.

The last of the falling embers burned themselves out and it was dark once more. No remains of either man or beast fell from the sky.

For a moment it was just silence, and the rain.

Then, the rain stopped.

Amy

The rescue effort was an awkward disaster at first. The combined efforts of the three of them managed to get a whole two additional kids off the bus—the children were terrified of the rushing water and didn’t want to jump off onto the jagged ledge of partially submerged pavement for fear of slipping off and getting swept away. Amy couldn’t blame them.

But soon there was a rumble of motorcycle mufflers and a flock of headlights, the rest of the biker gang showing up late to the party. They formed a human chain from the street up to the wobbling bus, handing the children down to safety one at a time. Rather than get in the way, Amy, John, and David trudged back toward the RV.

Amy had been so overwhelmed by events that it didn’t occur to her until she stepped inside that she was bringing with her news that Loretta was now a widow and that Maggie was now fatherless. She made her way back to the lounge and sucked in a breath when she saw the blood. It covered mother and daughter, Marconi, the little sofa, and the floor. Loretta sat there, cradling Maggie’s head in her lap, and Amy wasn’t sure which one looked more exhausted.

Loretta said, “What blew up?”

Amy started to reply, but found she couldn’t.

John said, “Ted blew up the monster. It’s gone. But he died in the process. I’m, uh, sorry. He sacrificed himself, to save Maggie. And you, and all of us. Maybe the world. If anybody ever tries to say otherwise, you can tell them to come find me. Because I saw it myself.”

Loretta closed her eyes and leaned back against the window behind her—the corner was shattered where a pair of bullets had punched through at some point. She pressed her lips together and swallowed. Amy sensed the woman was cutting off the grief, like crimping a hose. Her daughter needed her, and there would be time to grieve for her husband later.

Amy said, “How is Maggie?”

From behind her, Marconi said, “From what I can ascertain, the four pellets perforated her small intestine. I have stopped the bleeding and given her something for the pain. But she needs a hospital.”

David said, “She … does?”

Amy glanced out at the huddle of kids standing on the pavement outside, being tended to by their parents. The bus driver was among them. Amy had written her off for dead, and she now imagined her at the bottom of the bus, down where it was filling with water, lifting up the children one at a time so they could breathe. A hero.

With a tortured squeal of scraping metal, the empty school bus was wrenched free from the shore and went rolling down the river, colliding with the wreckage of the bridge. Several of the kids cheered.

Marconi fixed his gaze on David and in a lowered voice, said, “What I observe, with my five senses, is a child that has a very survivable wound, but that needs medical attention or else loss of blood or sepsis will finish the job. That is what I observe.”

From the driver’s seat, Joy said, “Hang on!” They were already moving before she finished the second syllable. Taking them to the hospital. How did she even know where it was?

David said, “Guys, we can’t just leave. We have to … watch them, out there. Contain them. Figure out a way to, you know. Take care of them. The right way.”

Marconi said, “What do you propose?”

David started to answer, but the words never came.

Me

I sat there and stared out of the bullet-riddled rear window, watching the RV shit a stream of wet highway, the biker kids shrinking in the distance. The farther away we got, the less I cared. I was so tired, and so cold, and so wet. Above all else, I just wanted to be dry again. Then maybe to sit down with a beer and hug Amy while she watched some terrible Japanese cartoon about magical girls learning the power of friendship.

No. I wouldn’t do any of those things.

I would see this through. This, and whatever came after.

I turned my back on the window and watched the Maggie larva carefully. Then I blinked, and there was Maggie, the little girl. Bloody hair matted to her face, pale cheeks, a little gap in her front teeth. The Sauce was wearing off.

So small, so fragile, chest barely rising and falling as she clung to life.

Maggie opened her eyes with what seemed like a monumental effort. Looking right at me.

With all her strength, she raised one tiny hand, extended it toward me, and gave me the finger.