Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore

     The tickling woke Mason Protheroe to semi-consciousness.  With complete detachment he watched a huge centipede flow across his naked belly.  Another worked its way out from beneath his outstretched legs.  Rearing up from its midsection, the one on his stomach pointed its head toward his face.  Weird, as if it were trying to tell him something.  After a moment it dropped back down.  Both monsters scuttled away into the further reaches of the darkened cellar where they coiled around one another in some unfathomable arthropod dance.

     He had on only his Dockers but they were filthy, stained with dark blotches.  What was he doing, semi-naked, barefoot, in the basement?  It was unfinished, and he only ever came down to use the washer/dryer.  He frowned slightly, trying to remember.  It was like he had a cold; there was that same clogged, wooly feeling between his eyes.  He wondered if he had fallen on the rickety stairs and hit his head.  If he were dazed from falling it would explain why he was unaffected by the sight–and touch–of the huge centipedes.

     Grey light filtered in through the dirty windows.  Irregular metallic rattling from the propane tanks outside told Mason it was still raining lightly, drizzling.  He couldn’t tell what time of day it was, early or late.

Drip drip.  The sound jarred something loose in his memory.  A slow-moving Caribbean hurricane tracking up the Eastern seaboard had wandered inland and stalled somewhere north of Stroudsburg, up in the Poconos, deluging land already soaked from unseasonably heavy rainfall.  The radio warned of flooding “Possibly worse than in 2005,” as the NPR announcer in Philly put it in a tight voice.

Sure enough, for the next two straight days it rained, and rained.  Mason, an advertising rep for the Bucks County Herald, drove around collecting ad copy as usual, while the weather worsened.  Yesterday—Wednesday, as nearly as he could recall–he hustled to finish early so he could get back to Jersey and keep an eye on his house.  Wendy, his live-in girlfriend, was an ER nurse for Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington.  She had worked the midnight to eight shift that day and wasn’t scheduled to go in again until the weekend.  She was having breakfast when Mason got home.

They put Mack on a leash and went outside to look around.  There was relatively little wind plucking at their umbrellas.  Rain poured down heavily, the load of water forcing tree boughs down nearly to the ground.  Runoff rushed through the ditches alongside the road, tentatively reaching across the asphalt in places as though testing its bounds.

They nervously watched the river rising as Mack pulled at his leash, eager to get down to the water’s edge where he smelled whatever it was that got dogs excited.  Something dead, washed up by the swollen river, no doubt.

     Mason hadn’t wanted to evacuate.  The house was high enough up the hill, he argued.  Wendy didn’t doubt it, but she remained anxious.

They went back in.  Around five PM the power flickered then went out.

Not at all abnormal during a storm, in that rural section of western Hunterdon County, smack up against the Delaware.  Candles were at hand, and Coleman lanterns.  Some householders owned generators that automatically kicked in when the power grid crashed, but Mason couldn’t afford one.

He went downstairs to check the breaker box, more to placate her than because he thought he could do any good.  And then–

     He sucked in a breath, remembering.  Yes, the centipedes!  Huge, monstrous things like nothing he’d ever seen.  Not normal house crawlers these, but colossal horrors more than two feet long, red and brown, things out of a rotting, Carboniferous rain forest.  They roped out from behind the old coal bin before he could react and attacked him, biting with armored jaws shining in the glare of his Maglite.  Things went fuzzy and vague.  Venom in the bites, perhaps.  He must have passed out.

     He held up his arms and inspected the punctures.  Yes, they’d bitten him, all right; more than once.

     The convocation at the far end of the basement broke up and the two ’pedes flowed past like insectile express trains on their way to—wherever.  He watched them go up the stairs to the first floor, not finding them at all revolting or horrible.  They seemed no more threatening than buttercups.

     I must have whacked my head, he thought, feeling in vain for bumps or contusions.

     He looked around for the flashlight and spotted it a few yards away on the cindery floor.  Rising slowly to his feet he went over to pick it up and thumbed its switch.  Nothing.  How long would it take those batteries to drain?  Three hours?  Four?  Had he lain here all that time?  Longer, surely; it had been night when he came down here.

     Mason realized he wasn’t wearing his glasses, yet somehow his vision was perfectly clear.  Clear enough to see the spider, poised motionless on the wall next to the breaker box like an obscene, twisted asterisk.

     It was nowhere near as big as the centipedes, just a common wolf spider, the sort that usually didn’t head indoors until cooler weather.  This one had obviously decided to wait out the unaccustomed wet in the basement.  Motionless, it was probably hoping he hadn’t noticed it.  Its body was about the size of the first joint on Mason’s thumb, with legs an inch or so beyond that.  Big, but no threat.

     Terrified, he backed away, scrabbling in the dirt until he fetched painfully up against the stairs.  Keeping his eyes fastened on the creature Mason scrambled backwards up the steps.  He plopped down on the linoleum tile floor of the kitchen, breathing hard, wondering what the hell was the matter with him.  He’d never been afraid of spiders, never; yet here he was panting like a frightened little girl, sweating, even feeling faint.

He took several deep breaths to steady his stomach.  Then he smelled the blood.

That coppery scent couldn’t be anything else.  Sudden dread wormed through him.  Where was Wendy?  How long had he been unconscious in the basement?

He scrambled to his knees and, in the brighter light of the kitchen, saw bloody streaks across his midsection.  He was coated with dried blood.  Now that he saw it, he noticed its faint scent.  But the thick, cloying aroma filling his nostrils was different; not fresh, partly spoiled, yet somehow not unpleasant.  This odd lack of revulsion made him more uneasy.

     Slowly he got to his feet.  The stench drifted to him from elsewhere in the house.  Every step he took toward it increased both his dread and his vague wonder that the dread was not sharper, more lacerating.  What in God’s name is happening?  A corner of his mind wondered where the ’pedes had gone.  Then he noticed the doggy door he’d put in for Mack slowly swinging back and forth in decreasing arcs.

     Mason walked unsteadily past the kitchen island, where he saw the limp remains of salad in a big bowl, and through the door into the hallway beyond.  The smell of blood grew stronger.  He lowered his head and lifted his eyes, staring at the stairs.

     Whatever it was, was up on the second floor.

     Mumbling and moaning he made his way slowly, very slowly up the stairs.  Tears began leaking from his eyes.  When he wiped his hand across them, the fluid looked greenish.

     With his gaze cast down on the familiar carpeted steps, he couldn’t help seeing dried brownish stains.  The splotches increased in size as he ascended.  His eyes came level with the floor of the hallway.  On the carpet, more dried blood:  a lot more.  How long would it take for that much blood to dry?  A day?  Two?

     To his right at the top of the stairs was a bathroom.  Directly ahead, a window overlooking the back yard.  The hallway hairpinned back from the staircase toward the front of the house.  He turned, seeing the trail of bloodstains leading toward the front bedroom.  For the first time he heard the buzzing of flies.

     It was like being in a dream.  Mason knew something bad was in that room but he kept being distracted.  Blood on the wall… how’ll I get that off?  Can I use OxyClean on the rug?

     The combined reek of dust, damp and old gore would, should, have made him ill.  Now they almost comforted him as he took the last few reluctant steps into the front room.

     Gripping the doorframe, he slowly peered inside.

Wendy was there, most of her.  And Mack, but not much of him was left apart from bones.  Their remains lay heaped to one side of the bedroom, Everything–the rug, the bed, the TV set, the dresser–was coated with blood.  Some of it must have sprayed from torn arteries and veins, because loops and splatters of it laced the walls and had dripped down to dry like spilled wine.

     Something had torn Wendy’s very guts from her abdomen.  What remained of them lay in the blackened, fly-glutted body cavity like fat purple eels in a dreary underwater cavern.  Her face was partially eaten away, but glazed, collapsing eyes staring up at the ceiling.  Twisted into the wreckage of her once lovely face was a jagged expression of astonishment and horror.

     Mason sagged against the bedroom doorway.  The streaks of blood on his hands looked smeared as if they had been hastily wiped.  Blackened material had caught under his fingernails and when he sniffed at them with his heightened sense of smell, then he caught the faint stench of rotting blood.  Sobbing, he willed himself to remember.

     He had done this.  After the centipedes’ bites injected their venom, the poison’s hellish hallucinogenic properties had kicked the slats off his sanity and sent him careening upstairs to rend his lover and his dog, to feast on their flesh.

     And now?  Somehow he had regained his senses.  Or some of them, he thought bitterly, turning in revulsion from the evidence of his murderous actions.  Enough of them to know what he had done.  Enough to torture him for the remainder of his days.

     He wished with all his heart that he had remained stuck in his frenzy, unaware of what he’d done.  Perhaps someone would have killed him.  It would have been a mercy.

He stumbled downstairs in a daze and found himself outside, walking numbly in the drizzle.

     Maddened by centipede venom or not, how could he have been driven to kill the love of his life?  The shattering fact of it was only beginning to sink in, and Mason hardly comprehended where he was going.  He wandered toward town with the vague intent of finding help.  Just who he was looking for, or how they could possibly help a damned soul like him, he didn’t know.

     He still remembered the day he met Wendy, just a few short miles south of Sherwoods Landing in Stockton, at the Prallsville Mill.  He had decided to take a plein air oil painting class given by a local painter.  Among the other wannabe Impressionists was a small, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman from Flemington.  Before the eight-week class was over, Mason knew two things:  one, as a painter he was a good mechanic.  Two, he and Wendy had struck some serious sparks that were easily fanned into a blaze of lust and love.  He didn’t even care that she was a far better painter than he would ever be.  Mack approved of her, and that was that.

     That had been two years ago.  Since then she sold her condo and had come to live with him in his small house, directly on the river.  Everything had been fine until now.

     While the day’s light wallowed into a drenching evening mist, Mason caught glimpses of movement in the trees around and above him, and heard rustling.  He halted, peering warily upward at several big shapes.

     They snaked down the tree trunks like squirrels, head first, dropped to the ground and stood slowly erect, regarding him unblinkingly from sunken, tortured eyes.  Human; as human as he was.  They slouched out from beneath the trees, slow moving shapes, hair lank in the wet, their clothing streaked with red.

     He was, then, not the only damned soul in this ruined town.  Cold comfort.

     Snake-like, two centipedes squirmed through the underbrush and erupted into the roadway.  The shambling survivors came to a semblance of attention as the creatures reared up onto their last few body segments.

     Mason watched the ghouls staring intently at the enormous ’pedes.   At the same time he felt a sort of mental tickle.  It wasn’t until the ’pedes swayed around, facing him for a moment, increasing the odd sensation in his head, that he realized the monsters were communicating with the humans.

     Revolted, Mason staggered back a few paces.  The “linked in” feeling faded, leaving him enough presence of mind to stumble off into the gathering darkness back to his house.  He barricaded himself in, hammering boards up across the windows and doors, even Mack’s doggy door in the kitchen.

     He cleaned up in the bathroom as best he could, then sat, bathed in self-loathing, in the living room while darkness cloaked his surroundings.  He tried to turn on the TV but the power was still out.

                             #

     By dawn some things had become.  Sleep seemed no longer necessary.  During the night he had occasionally fallen into a sort of trance state for short while.  Now he felt reasonably refreshed and in need of no other sort of rest.  Also, he had apparently lost all desire for his usual vices.  Prior to being bitten he had smoked about a quarter of a pack of cigarettes a day, sometimes more, sometimes less.  The craving for nicotine had vanished.

     His new-found fear of spiders probably came from the fact that centipedes and spiders were natural enemies.  He went through the house, killing every spider he found, no matter how small or large.

     Starving, though, yes–he was growing weaker for lack of sustenance.  But the rotting stuff in the fridge didn’t tempt him in the least, nor the canned goods in his cupboards.  Instead, he kept thinking about the decaying corpses up in the master bedroom, but he could not bring himself to consciously descend to such a depth of depravity and horror, despite what he had obviously done while deranged.   Not yet.  Still, he had to find some way of nourishing himself.  He wasn’t ready for death.   Finally he cleaned himself up as best he could, then yanked a few boards off his front door.  The skies had not yet cleared, though the rain had slackened to a dreary drizzle.  Just down the road he followed a trail of blood to a wrecked car, a late-model Saturn.  It had tilted into a ditch as the driver apparently tried to get round a downed tree.  Mason recognized it as belonging to Frank Diamond, a neighbor.  Realizing that the blood led away from the car rather than to it, he backtracked and found Frank, cradling a smashed forearm and sitting on his front steps looking hollow-eyed and pale.

     “Mason!” Diamond called.  He was a hatchet-faced man who worked at a medical advertising agency in Yardley, not far from Trenton, and sang in the church choir.

     “’Lo, Frank.”  The first words Mason had spoken in three days.  Tottering from weakness, he made it up Diamond’s front walk and carefully lowered himself down on the steps next to him.  “Hurt yourself there,” he said.  The delicious fragrance of Diamond’s fresh blood almost swamped rational thought but he forced himself to remain calm.

     “Where’re your shoes?” asked Diamond.

     “Hmmm?”  Mason looked down at his feet.  He’d completely forgotten he was barefoot.  “Dunno, lost ‘em somewhere.”  His eyes returned to Frank’s injury.  “How’d you cut yourself?”  He sat quivering while Diamond talked.

     “Gashed it on a piece of metal getting out of my goddam car,” Diamond growled.  A strange light glowed in his eyes.  “Soon’s we saw the river rising I made Susan and the kids get out of here and go to her mom’s place in Bedminster.  I figured to stay here and keep an eye on things until they got back, but with the power out, you know, the food has all gone bad so I figured it was time to go.  Like an asshole I had Susan take the Jeep four-wheel and I kept the Saturn here.  Smart, huh?  Well, there’s a tree across the goddam road, and I tried–”

     Mason clouted him with a rock.  He dragged Diamond’s body to the back of the house and gave in to his hunger.

                             #

With the fiercest pangs alleviated, Mason crouched over his neighbor’s torn carcass, able to think more clearly.  Frank hadn’t seemed aware of the ghouls, so perhaps their appearance wasn’t widely known.  At least part of the town was evacuated.  Other folks must have fled the rising waters as Frank’s family had done.  Maybe there simply weren’t many ghouls around, or perhaps they were only just now emerging from their hidey-holes, as he was.  That wouldn’t be the case for long, though, if the ’pedes were building up to infestation levels.

     But Mason could apparently pass as a normal human being.  The ghouls he had seen in the woods obviously could not, with their ashen complexions and red eyes.  Mason let himself into Diamond’s house, where he cleaned up and examined himself in the bathroom mirror.  No, aside from some dark circles under his eyes, he looked about the same as ever, a stocky man of somewhat less than middle height with dark wavy hair, a pale complexion and a fleshy face vaguely reminiscent of the comedian Lou Costello.

     Feeling relatively clear-headed, Mason set out for the main part of town.

     Still mostly a rural township, Sherwoods Landing consisted of little more than a bed and breakfast or two, a gas station with an attached store selling videos, gifts, and the like, a pizza place, a post office, a tavern, and a small boat landing.  The 1955 flood drove most of the village’s businesses to higher ground, but by the late 1990s they were back, in time to be flooded in ’04 and ’05, and again now.

     A tenth of a mile or so down the road Mason halted.  Ahead through the trees he saw the roof of Kip Augustine’s barn, the only blue one in the region and much beloved of plein air painters from Bucks County, just across the river.  Something about that barn…

     He shook off an uneasy feeling and resumed walking, wiping his face with a rain-dampened rag ripped from Diamond’s clothing.  Presently he arrived in town, which seemed deserted.  Papers were scattered everywhere.  One or two store windows were smashed.  A car had T-boned another at an intersection; their doors hung open with blood splashed on the windows.  One of the cars, a new BMW, looked vaguely familiar.  He knew it wasn’t his or Wendy’s.  Just past the crash site a road intersected the main one, leading east.  Glancing up its length, Mason saw two forms, a man and a woman, moving slowly toward the Augustine farm.  In the grey light it was hard to be sure, but it looked as if they were following a couple of the giant centipedes.  Mason wavered for a moment then turned to trail after them.

     The pair tottered through the gate at the end of Kip Augustine’s driveway, which was about a hundred feet long and unpaved.  By the time Mason arrived at the end of it his feet were thick with mud.  Walking a little faster than the man and woman ahead of him, he caught up in time to see them pass through the open doors of Augustine’s barn.

     It wasn’t a working farm.  Kip, in his early forties now, had been in the first Gulf War, from which he’d returned badly wounded.  A long recuperation had left him reclusive and sullen, quite unlike the ballsy high-school track star he had been.

     Now he lived on disability and seemed to spend his time watching old science fiction movies on DVD and chatting with other veterans on-line.

     Mason entered the barn to find himself standing among a group of ten or fifteen ghouls.  Most were adults, but there were two or three children.  He thought he recognized eight-year-old Copley Cheyne, but she stood in a deep shadow so he couldn’t be sure.  All the ghouls stared at him with dull suspicion.  Slowly, they moved away, putting some distance between him and them.

     Swaying slightly, Mason said, “What’s the matter?  I’m just like you.  Those, those monsters.”  He gestured at a group of three centipedes to one side.  “I was bitten.  I’ve done… things.  I’m like you,” he finished lamely.

     The girl in the shadows stepped forward.  Pale and blood-streaked, it was indeed Copley Cheyne.  The last time he’d seen her, she’d been riding her bike with friends, laughing and singing.  Now she was slack-jawed, with dead eyes.  “Not like us,” she murmured as if speaking was a terrible effort.  She shook her head.  “I mean, you’re like us, but different.”  Without turning away from him Copley stepped backward to her place with the others.

     “Well, that was helpful,” he muttered.  Ignoring them he gave his attention to the insects.  He felt the power emanating from them, and recognized it as the same intangible influence he had sensed from them yesterday.  They obviously had more effect on the other survivors, who no longer seemed fully capable of independent thought.

     Did that mean that the ’pedes were controlling them?  If so, he, Mason Protheroe, was immune to some extent.  He leaned against an old horse stall in Kip Augustine’s barn and thought about it.  Wendy, for example, had never been bothered by poison ivy, whereas he just had to look at the stuff to break out in hives.  And there were always people who, for whatever reason, had a natural immunity to disease, even bubonic plague.  Apparently he had a partial immunity, at least, to whatever x-factor in centipede venom rendered other victims susceptible to the ghoul-sickness.  Ghoul he might be, but the ’pedes could not exert their full thrall over him.

     But there were only three here now… how would he fare against the combined influence of five?  Ten?  Two dozen?  Uneasy, Mason decided it was time to go.

     A thin, lank-haired man around Mason’s age limped into the barn.

     “Hey, Kip,” Mason said.  By the circles under Augustine’s eyes, Mason supposed the vet hadn’t been sleeping much lately.

     “Hey, Mase.”  Augustine approached, halting a bare two feet away.  At that distance, Mason could easily see the glaze of servitude in Kip’s eyes.  Augustine’s years in the armed forces had turned him surly and simmering, the sort of man who’d beat a dog if he had one.

     “Are our friends bivouacking here?” Mason asked, gesturing at the ’pedes and the other ghouls.

     Kip managed a cheerless grin.  “I’ve got plenty of room,” he said.  “You’re welcome, if you’ve a mind to.”

     “Thanks, but my place is good,” Mason said.  “Got a food supply there.”

     Kip shook his head.  “Won’t last,” he said.  “Sooner or later, someone’ll be by to see what’s what.”

     Mason nodded slowly.  Kip had a point.  You couldn’t go around eating citizens without it causing some concern amongst the survivors.

     “We gotta consolidate, Mase,” Kip mumbled.  He turned away, and shambled over to the ’pedes.  Mason stared after him.  Kip seemed a bit more autonomous than the others.  Was Kip partially immune to the ’pedes’ venom, or was this something deliberate because the insects needed a human cat’s-paw, someone able to act as a go-between?

     If so, the ’pedes were operating on a truly repellant level of intelligence; they could plan.  Holy shit.

     What was the true goal of these monsters?

     Almost without realizing it he found himself backing slowly away, toward the exit.

     Maybe there was an antidote.  He turned and walked out into the open air, fists clenched.  He wasn’t sure he deserved one.  What he deserved was death, or lifetime imprisonment.  But the regulars, those unaffected by the plague or whatever it was, didn’t.  He should warn them.  Yes, that was it.  They had to be warned.  What they’d do to him didn’t matter right now.

     With these thoughts whirling through his muddled mind as he regained the main road, he almost walked into Lafferty Hoffman’s Land Rover.

     “Hey there, Mase, you okay?”  Hoff leaned out of the driver’s window and looked narrowly at him.  “You cut yourself or something?”

     “Uh, no, my dog got hurt,” Mason said.

     “Oh, Mack?”  Hoff’s tone turned instantly sympathetic.  “He okay?”

     “Uh, listen.  Hoff–”

     “Yeah?”

     Dammit, this was the moment to spill it all!  And here he was, with his tongue stuck, starting to sweat.  “I, look, you seen anything odd going on around here?”

     Hoff coughed out a short ironic laugh.  “What, you mean apart from the worst flood since ’05 and the power out and the town cut off?”  He gestured expansively at the trees, one hand on the steering wheel.  The CB radio in the vehicle’s cabin muttered something.  “Mase, I’m not a cop anymore, but I still think like one.”  He had been shot by a drug dealer from Trenton, and now worked for the New Jersey Parks Department as a ranger.  “And I’ll tell you what.  We got three kids missing, went camping two nights ago when it started raining.  Last night someone killed Bobby Cheyne, and we can’t find his wife and kids.  So, yeah, Mase, things are going on.  You shouldn’t be walking around alone.”

     “Bobby?  Oh, God.”  Cheyne was one of the township’s two remaining full-time police officers.  “Marge missing, too?”  The ’pedes; it had to be the ’pedes.  That explained Copley Cheyne’s presence in the barn.

     Hoff nodded grimly.  “We got a serious asshole wandering around, Mase.  I was just sort of patrolling.  Listen, you want a lift home?  I know you own a gun.  You oughta make sure it’s loaded and at hand.  Where were you headed, anyway?”

     Mason took a deep breath.  “I think you have more than one asshole to worry about.”

                             #

     Hoff listened to Mason Protheroe’s tale with growing alarm, but he kept his face rigid and expressionless.   Ghouls?  Cannibalism?  Murder?  A nest of horrors at the Augustine farm?  It was all too much to believe, and Hoff started thinking of ways to get Mason down to the jail so he could restrain him for a few hours until Dr. Saperstein could take a look at him.  As a law enforcement officer, he was all too familiar with what prolonged stress and tension could do to people.

     Hoff had bigger problems than Mason.  Someone had killed Bobby Cheyne, and his wife and kids were among those missing.  The river wouldn’t even crest until sometime tomorrow.  The town’s troubles were far from over.

     And Mason with this crazy talk about man-eating ghouls!  The stress had obviously gotten to him.  He was filthy and he smelled, but Hoff had seen plenty of other unkempt folks in the past two days.  Mason’s manner was distracted and somehow… feral was the only word Hoff could put to it.  Mason needed help.

     Hoff was stressed himself.  All the damp and rain made his gunshot wound ache, and he hated watching the river ruin the peaceful little village that was his home.

     Then Mason started talking about Wendy.

     Hoff stood it as long as he could.  “Look, Mase, why don’t you get in and we’ll go take a look?” he finally asked, struggling to keep calm.  His body tightened as Mason walked slowly around the front of the Land Rover and tried to open the passenger door.

     Hoff didn’t unlock it.  Instead he slid out, saying, “Aah, I forgot; fuckin’ thing’s broken,” he said carelessly.  “I gotta use the key.  Hang on.”  He came around the vehicle and started to reach past Mason with his keys.  Instead he grabbed the smaller man and slammed him against the side of the car, handcuffing him.  Mason turned slowly, grinning in a strangely nasty way.

“Hoff,” he said quietly.  “This won’t do any good, man.”

A cold trickle of sweat wandered down Hoff’s spine but he kept his voice even.  “Oh?  Why’s that, Mase?”

“It’s just that I’m a lot stronger now.”

“Well, okay, Mase, I’m sure you are, but you know, you sit in the back here and I’ll go take a look around your place.”

Mason shrugged.  “Whatever it takes to get you to believe me.”

Hoff drove slowly to Mason’s house.  Mason sat quietly in the back seat, staring out at the dripping foliage.  The clouds poured by overhead.

Hoff pulled up in front of Mason’s front door and started to get out.

“You’ll want to check Frank Diamond’s place,” said Mason.

“Why?  D’ja kill him, too?”

“And ate some of him.”

“All right, then, Mase, just sit quiet for a bit while I have a look around.”

“Sure.  Hoff.  Uh, front door’s unlocked.”

“Thanks.”  Hoff managed to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.  He mounted the steps and entered.  As soon as he got inside he realized that at least part of Mason’s tale was true; the reek told him that something was dead in here.  Perspiring, he carefully searched the first floor, feeling an odd reluctance to venture upstairs.

When at last he did, it was as bad as he could have imagined.  Worse.  As a cop, Hoff had seen terrible things, including horrific auto accidents and several shotgun victims.  But nothing came close to the scene in the front bedroom.  He barely made it to Mason’s bathroom before vomiting.

He walked unevenly downstairs and outside.  Mason stood by the car, staring abstractedly into the trees across the road.  Hoff glanced that way and saw the leaves rustling.

“Whoa, whoa!” he said, doing a double-take.  “I left you cuffed in the back seat!”

Mason held up his wrists.  They were still cuffed but the chain linking the manacles was snapped.  “Told you I was stronger,” he said almost apologetically.

A cold wave of fear sluiced through Lafferty Hoffman.  “What’s going on here, Mason?”

“Well, I’ll tell you about it, but we better get inside,” Mason said, nodding toward the trees.  “Copley Cheyne is up there and I think she’s got her eye on you.”

“Copley’s eight years old!”

Mason shook his head.  “She’s hungry, Hoff.”

Hoff looked at Mason for a moment.  He glanced at the broken chains dangling from the man’s wrists, then toward the trees, where a violent disturbance shook the leaves.  He thought he caught a flash of pink.

Mason hadn’t bolted after freeing himself.  Hoff wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but one fact stood out:  the reporter seemed to know something about what was going on.  That put him ahead of former law enforcement officer Lafferty Hoffman, who still felt a responsibility to protect, serve, and defend the people of Sherwoods Landing, New Jersey.

He nodded once, shortly.  “Okay, Mase, you win.  Let’s go inside.”  He pointed his keychain at his car and thumbed the LOCK button, then followed Mason Protheroe, ghoul, into his house of horrors.

Without bothering to ask his host’s leave, Hoff headed straight for the kitchen, since it was the room furthest from the stairs leading to the second floor.  But the reek of decay reached even here, and Hoff knew he wouldn’t be able to stand it for long.

He swallowed against his rising gorge, gagged once, and said, “Mason, what the fuck is going on here?”  He listened without speaking while Mason laid it out:  the power outage, going into the basement, the attack by the centipedes, the awakening many hours later, the discovery that Wendy and Mack were dead.  His own guilt.

Mason spoke almost without emotion, and that was what Hoff found most inhuman about him:  because he knew Mason Protheroe as a demonstrative, cheerful guy, someone with a grin and a good word for everyone.  This dour man looked and sounded like Mason, but all the humanity had been wrung out of him by his experiences, leaving a husk.

A flesh-eating husk.

“These centipedes, with their venomous bites,” Hoff said, after Mason had finished speaking.  “Where did they come from?”

Mason shrugged.  “All I know is, they’re here and they’re nesting.”

Hoff looked around apprehensively.  “What, right here?  In the house?”

“No, no.  But they’ve found a central… bivouac.  Kip’s farm.  I was there.  They’re using it as a base.”

Hoff stood by the door, staring blankly out at Mason’s drenched backyard.  “Mase,” he said, “you have to know how crazy this sounds.  Giant poisonous centipedes turning people into ghouls?”

“I can’t help how it sounds,” Mason said from his place at the table.  “It’s all true.”

Hoff took a step away from the door.  “Well,” he said, “I am starting to believe it.”  Across the yard, heading straight for the house like snakes swimming in a pond, came two enormous reddish-brown centipedes.

Mason stood up, a far-away look in his eyes.  “Hoff,” he said quietly.  “I think I can manage to keep them away from you.  Probably.”  He motioned toward a door.  “Get in the pantry.  Keep the door cracked so you can watch.  If anything goes wrong, well, you have your gun.”  He looked at Hoff through haunted eyes.  “It’d probably be best to shoot me in the head.  I doubt anywhere else will do much good, though it would certainly slow me down.”

Hoff ducked into the pantry just as he heard the scrabble of claws on the back porch.  The dog door banged open and the ’pedes flowed into the room.

Hoff braced the door with his booted foot, watching through a crack he hoped was small enough to keep the monsters out should they try to get at him.  He gritted his teeth as he watched the things zip straight for Mason, and crawl up his body and all over his torso.  It seemed like more than any human could bear, but Mason’s breathing remained calm and even.  Evidently the creatures didn’t bother him one bit.

Yet they obviously had some sort of effect on him, because his eyes closed and he swayed slightly as the ’pedes swarmed over him.  Without warning the insects spiraled down off Mason’s body, across the floor and out through the dog door.  The entire episode had taken less than thirty seconds.

Mason remained motionless, eyes closed.  After another half minute or so Hoff came hesitantly out of the kitchen.  Mason’s eyes opened slowly.

“Augustine’s farm,” he said faintly.  “We need to go there.”

“Wait a minute,” Hoff said.  “You said that’s where your bug buddies are lairing up!”

“Yes, but something going on.  We need a closer look.”

Hoff took a deep breath.  “Mason, from what you’ve told me, you’re responsible for Wendy’s death.  Not to mention your dog.  My responsibility is to take you into custody and let due process take its course.”

Mason simply stared at him until Hoff became uncomfortable.  “Hoff,” he said at last, very gently.  He raised his still manacled hands.  “How are you gonna make me do anything I don’t want to do?”

Hoff’s hand drifted down to his gun.  Mason shook his head.  “I could have killed you already if I’d’ve wanted,” he said.  “I want to help, can’t you see that?  I didn’t summon these things; I didn’t ask to become whatever it is I am.  What I’m saying is, let’s go investigate and see what we can do to stop more of this from happening.”

“All right, Mase,” Hoff said, feeling a cold sense of foreboding.

It was a short drive to the farm, but Mason began reacting almost as soon as they reached the end of the Augustine driveway.  “They’re… pulling at me,” he murmured, clasping his head in both hands.  “It’s a, a spell or something, broadcast like radio.”

“I don’t feel anything,” Hoff said, parking the car.

“You wouldn’t.”

“They’re just bugs, Mason!”

“Individually, yeah, that’s right.  But the more of them there are together, the smarter they get.”

“What, like a beehive or an ant colony?”

Mason shrugged.  “Something like that.”

They stood at the foot of the driveway looking up toward the house.  “We can’t go this way,” said Mason.  “They’ll be waiting.  Guards.”

Hoff looked around.  “I suppose we can sneak in through the woods, but it’ll be pretty wet going.”  Mason shrugged again.  Hoff shrugged back and they entered the woods.

Before a minute passed both men were thoroughly soaked.  Had it not been a warm muggy August day, they would have been chilled to the bone.  Hoff let Mason lead the way; on the one hand, he seemed to know exactly where he was going, and on the other hand Hoff felt more comfortable being able to keep an eye on him.

After a few minutes Mason halted.  He remained motionless so long that Hoff finally nudged him.

“Mase?” he whispered.  “What is it?  You hear something?”

     Mason turned slowly and Hoff’s hackles rose.  The eyes staring out of the reporter’s face were wide, glazed; hungry.

     Mason opened his mouth in a feral growl showing yellowed teeth, and leaped.

     “Jesus Christ!” Hoff cried, trying to fight him off, but Mason was incredibly strong.  Hoff felt like a child against him.  Then Mason’s teeth found his arm, and bit down–hard.

     Hoff screamed, struggling against the snarling monstrosity gnawing his arm.  With his free hand he reached down between Mason’s legs, grabbed and twisted as hard as he could.  The ghoul stumbled back but recovered almost at once and jumped forward again.  This time Hoff was ready, and he sprayed Mason full in the face with a can of repellant.

     Without waiting to see how effective the strategy was, Hoff whirled around and fled, crashing through the damp foliage.  A howl behind him was answered by other, more distant ones, and Hoff realized that Mason’s cries had attracted the other ghouls on the farm.

     Terror galvanized Hoff.  Ignoring the ache from his old gunshot wound and the new lacerations on his arm, Hoff ran as he had never run in his life.

     He burst out of the woods a hundred or so yards from his Land Rover.  With the sounds of pursuit growing louder behind him he pounded toward the vehicle.

     A pale form materialized ahead of him.  Copley Cheyne.

     He slowed.  He remembered her birth, her christening.  He’d even sat through one or two of her school recitals.  She raised her hands and yowled to alert the pack.

     Hoff drew his gun and shot her in the head.  Copley went down in a fountain of blood.   He ran past her body without looking, tears mixing with the drizzle on his face.

     Fumbling for his key ring he pressed the UNLOCK button.  The car’s locks popped up.  Hoff grabbed the driver’s door, yanked it open, and scrambled in.  Down the road more figures scurried out of the forest.  Hoff started the car.

     The passenger door flew open.  Mason!

     Hoff went for his gun.

     “No no no!” Mason shouted, backing away.  “I’m okay, I’m far enough away to resist them!  But get me out of here now!”

     Hoff stared at him for a long agonized moment.  Mason had shaken off the effects of the mace inhumanly fast.  His face was still smeared with it.  But Hoff saw the misery and horror in Mason’s eyes.  “Get in,” Hoff said.

     Mason got in and Hoff slammed the transmission into gear.  Twisting the wheel he k-turned, heading back toward town.  “Where the hell can we go, Mason?”  He glanced at his companion.

     Mason gasped.  Hoff saw he was looking out the windshield.  He turned his head as the car slammed into another vehicle parked across the road. 

     When he came to he was being dragged along the road by Mason.  “We don’t have much time,” Mason muttered.  “They blocked the road while we were in the woods, I guess.  Come on, Hoff, snap out of it!”  He let Hoff slip to the ground, and doused his head in the water rushing through the ditch beside the road.  Spluttering, Hoff came up for air.

     “They’ll catch us on the road,” said Mason.  “They’re as strong and fast as I am, Hoff, probably more so.”

     “The woods,” Hoff gasped.  “If we can get up over the hills we can make it toward the National Guard armory up on Route 12.”

     “That’s nearly five miles from here!”

     “I’ll listen to any better idea,” said Hoff.  “Maybe you wanna head for the radio station?  WCHR?”

     “The Christian AM outfit?  Why there?”

     “Nice strong stone building with a big-ass transmitter we can use to holler for help,” said Hoff.  “And it’s only two miles.  We can make that.”

     Mason pondered it.  “All right, all right.  You okay to walk?”

     “Yeah.”

     “Good.  Bind up where I bit you.  The smell is…  kinda distracting.”

     They set out over wet rocks and slippery, muddy ground.  By now they were both so wet it no longer mattered.

     “What put you over the edge back there?” Hoff panted.

     “’Pedes,” Mason said.  “There’re more of them there now and I couldn’t fight the influence when we got closer to the farm.  I’m okay now, though, they aren’t following us.  It’s just the ghouls.”

     “Oh, that’s a fuckin’ relief, thank you,” said Hoff.  “How long they likely to chase us, d’you think?”

     “No way to know.  Not far, I expect.  Too risky for them to show themselves before they’re really consolidated here.”

     Hoff puffed on in silence for a few moments, considering Mason’s statement.  At last he said, “But by the same token, they won’t want us getting away,” he said.  “I mean, I could be written off as a nut if I talk about this, but you… you’re one of them.  Incontrovertible evidence.  I mean, physiologically… you aren’t the same.”

     “That’s true.  Well, I dunno, Hoff.  You’re probably right.”

     “Which means that right now they’re trying like hell to get ahead of us, to get between us and any safe way out of the area.”

     “Maybe.  Keep your gun ready.”

     The land rose sharply from the road along the river.  They scrambled through the underbrush, coming out on Warsaw Road.  Ahead the road turned sharply left over a culvert through which runoff water gushed noisily.  They had just reached the bridge when Hoff spotted movement among the rocks ahead, where the road bent right again and resumed its climb.  He grabbed Mason’s arm.

     “I see them,” the ghoul murmured.

     Slithering down the shiny black rocks, naked, greasy as eels.  Five, maybe six people, so coated in mud and filth that they looked like huge snakes.

     Hoff’s gun was in his hand before he realized it, and he was firing.  He hit one, a man, but the others flashed apart, splitting up.  Mason picked up a rock and hurled it with deadly aim, catching a woman in the chest.  She fell back gurgling, the rock lodged between her breasts.  Then she got back to her feet and came on again.

     Hoff fired again, and again, scoring two more head shots, including the woman with the rock in her breastbone.  Their foes, reduced to two, a man and another woman, came on more warily.  Hoff and Mason fell back, a few yards down Warsaw Road.  Hoff glanced behind, down the road.  Other pale forms were running toward them.

     “We’re cut off,” he said.

     Mason started to speak, then gasped.

     “What?  What?”

     Mason could only point at the two advancing ghouls, now creeping over the bridge.  “Wendy!  It’s Wendy!”  He started forward.

     “No!” cried Hoff, grasping his arm.  Mason shook him off and went to meet her on the bridge.

     “Wendy,” he said in a broken voice.  “Thank God.  I thought I’d killed you.”

     The ghouls paused as Mason joined them.  The woman stared up at him when he took her hands.  “Wendy,” he breathed.

     She yanked herself free and slammed her clasped fists into his head.  He staggered back and she leaped on him, going for his throat.  The other ghoul raced toward Hoff.  Hoff aimed and fired.  The bullet punched through the man’s head, blowing out the back of his skull in a gush of blood and brains.  He staggered to one side and toppled over the railing into the stream.

     Without waiting to see more, Hoff ran to where Mason and Wendy rolled around on the road.  He seized Wendy’s shoulders, trying to drag her off the barely resisting Mason.  She whirled on him, snarling and drooling.  Overpoweringly strong, she forced him backward and they staggered into the rocks opposite the bridge.  The maddened woman snapped ferociously at him.  His arms quivered as he tried to hold her at bay, but she lunged nearer and nearer.  Her teeth gleamed.  He could not keep his eyes off them.

     Hoff heard a thud and she stiffened.  Another, and blood splashed his face.  She fell limply away, her head a red ruin.  Mason stood there with a rock in his hands.  Wendy’s blood dripped over the side of the bridge, red threads joining the flow of water.  Mason kicked aside some bits of bone and chunks of scalp with hair attached.

     “Let’s get out of here,” he said emptily, dropping the rock and not looking down at his girlfriend’s corpse.

     Hoff started up the hill toward the top of the ridge.

     Mason shook his head.  “Not yet,” he said.  “My house is over that way a quarter mile,” he said, pointing.  “I need to go there.  Whoever is upstairs, isn’t Wendy.”

     “What about them?” Hoff asked, gesturing down the road.

     Mason shrugged.  “They’ve got two nice fresh bodies to keep them busy,” he said.  “They’ll feed before coming after us.  We’ve got an hour, maybe.  Besides, Hoff, my motorcycle’s there.  We can use it about now.”

     Hoff sighed.  “Okay, let’s get going.”

     Back at Mason’s house they ducked inside.  Hoff followed Mason upstairs, covering his mouth against the burgeoning stench of rot.

     Mason knelt by the half-eaten corpse.  Hoff averted his eyes as best he could from the worst of the damage, and found himself staring at her legs and feet.

     “Mase?”

     “Yeah.”

     “Look at her shoes.”

     “What about ‘em?”

     “Well–they’re dirty.  Caked with mud.  Wendy was inside the whole time, right?  That night?  Whoever this is came from outside, Mase.”

     “Yeah, maybe so.”  Mason looked doubtfully at the feet.  “Wait.”  He pointed.  “Her ankle.  See the little rose tattoo?”

     He and Hoff locked eyes.  “Wendy’s sister, Sandra.  She has a tattoo just like that.”  Mason turned his gaze to the corpse’s torn face.  “They always did look a lot alike.”

     “This is Wendy’s sister, then?”

     Mason nodded.  “I remember now; I saw a familiar car the first time I left the house… after, you know.  A brand-new BMW.  I couldn’t place it, being half out of my mind.  It was Sandra’s car.”

     “What was she doing here?”

     “I dunno, she’d stop by now and then to visit.  She lives in Philadelphia, she liked to come out here for the day, go antiquing and all that.”

     Hoff felt his gorge rise and fought to control himself.  “Wendy killed her own sister?”

     Mason nodded.  “The ’pedes must’ve got Wendy at the same time they got me.  Makes sense.  My system reacted differently, and I went comatose or whatever, in the basement.  But Wendy turned into a full-fledged ghoul.  It was Sandra’s bad luck to show up right then for a visit.”

     “That being true,” said Hoff, “why didn’t Wendy stay here and finish, you know, eating?”

     “She felt the tug.  You saw what happened to me out in the woods.  I got too close to the epicenter, or whatever, of the ’pedes’ influence.  Wendy went under right away.  I guess she took Sandra’s car but was too addled to drive and wrecked it.  Then she wandered off.”  He sighed.  “Now I see why I was so hungry when I woke up.  I thought I’d eaten Wendy and Mack, but I never did.”  He looked up at the lawman.  “I’m gonna help you get those fuckers, Hoff.  Every last ’pede on Augustine’s farm, and every last goddam ghoul.”

     “I appreciate that, Mase, but it’s getting late.”

     “Okay, let me find some shoes and we’re outta here like Vladimir.”

     Hoff followed him outside to the garage, where a nearly new Kawasaki Vulcan 1600 gleamed in the dimming light.  It was black with red trim.

     “Here,” he said, grabbing a helmet from the workbench.  He tossed it to Hoff.  “We better get moving.”

     “Isn’t it dangerous driving these things in the rain?”

     Mason just looked at him.  “Okay, okay,” said Hoff.

     Mason turned on the machine’s ignition.  “Hey, Hoff; you know what model this is?”

     “Hell, no, I don’t know anything about bikes,” Hoff said, settling the helmet on his head.

     To his surprise, he saw a slow smile spread across Mason’s pale face.  “It’s a Mean Streak,” said the ghoul.  “A Kawasaki Mean Streak.”

     Hoff threw a leg over the back saddle.  He grasped Mason around the middle, trying not to flinch at the ghoul’s faint, nauseating scent of decay and blood.  I must be out of my frigging mind, he thought as the machine emerged from the garage.

     Mason’s laughter trailed after them as they roared off into the dusk.