Page 40 of Them

The man’s free foot scrambled for footing at the bottom of one of the stinger’s plates. With the strength of countless nights spent walking, he ground his heel into the demonic armor. After a dozen seconds of red-faced effort, the plate inched upward, revealing the thinnest strip of pulsing skin the color of a summer sky after a storm. Intense heat swept over him, as if he’d uncovered a flesh-fueled starship.

The man immediately stabbed the shotgun barrel into the fleshy opening and pulled the trigger.

BOOM!

The night exploded with gunpowder and blood. A segment of the tail disintegrated in a burst of lava lamp liquid and biometal shrapnel. The Scorpion stumbled forward, tottered, and then crashed to the pavement, sending shock waves down the road.

The man emptied the final two shells into one side of the Scorpion’s face. Its big blue eyes exploded into glowing raindrops, alien cries echoing in the night.

“KURRAAAA!”

The man rose to his feet and hobbled toward the moon-shadowed shoulder, the amputated stinger still coiled around his leg. He bashed at the tentacle with the butt of the shotgun until it finally relinquished its grip and began flopping around on the pavement like a scaly black eel out of water.

“KRRRAAAAA!”

Moving as fast as his injured leg would allow, anxious to put as much distance as he could between himself and the wounded Nightwalker, the man fumbled in his pockets for more shells. But his palms were slick with blood and sweat, and he dropped one. No time to stop now. No time for anything. He gave up on reloading the shotgun and instead focused on readying his flashlight. Stealth and defense be damned; right now, he needed to run.

“KUKURRAA!”

Behind him, the goliath struggled to stand, three bladed legs rising as one. A fountain of blood leaked from the side of its face, a deep luminous waterfall gushing onto the street, the inner light rapidly fading as it puddled on the pavement. All three of its right eyes had been shredded by the shotgun blast. Nothing remained but flaccid bioluminescent tissue wavering in the breeze.

Towering over the road again, the living tripod slowly pivoted to face the man, revealing three intact and functional left eyes. The Scorpion was wounded, but none of the shots had penetrated its obsidian skull. Instead of slaying the dragon, he’d merely earned its furious attention.

In a show of horrific dexterity, one orb stared at the amputated stinger discarded on the side of the road, and another was fixed on the bloody nub left behind, while the third gazed directly at the man. The brilliant blue color hadn’t faded from any of them, not like the youngling’s had. The Nightwalker wasn’t dying yet. Not yet.

“K’ORK KURRAAAAA!”

A screech of unearthly ire, like a million minerals thrown into a grinder, pierced the man’s eardrums as he fled deep into the woods. Tree trunks soon exploded behind him, sending shards of wood shrapnel into the air. The same thick oaks the man struggled to dodge in the dark, the enraged Scorpion burst through like a children’s piñata. That horrible, undulating glow was gaining. Razor-sharp splinters dug into the man’s back with increasing force as the three-eyed titan with no stinger descended upon him. It didn’t blaze a trail so much as razed one as maples fell upon pines, which in turn fell upon hickories falling upon cedars. It drew closer, leaving total destruction in its wake, ripping through Earth’s giant pacifists with but one purpose in its hellish hearts: to show that it was made of something greater.

The man could feel the sky opening up behind him, the thick, interwoven canopy disintegrating at the monster’s touch. He could sense the cold heat growing closer, like frostbite gnawing at the back of his neck. The whirlpool of blue lightning thirsting for him, hungering for him, drowning him, pulling him down, down, down…

The man kept his eyes forward and chased the beam of his flashlight, stumbling over roots and rocks. He gasped for air. His legs burned, eyes watering, his—

Suddenly, then, the wicked light behind him began to fade. The thunderous shattering of trees continued, but like a dwindling storm, the booming sounds grew muffled and further apart.

Thank God, the man thought, tears of relief staining his filthy cheeks. Finally.

The Nightwalker was slowing down. Bleeding out. Dying.

But it’s still dangerous. It’ll still kill me if I let it.

Head eerily clear, battered body coursing with adrenaline, the man slowed his pace and tried to catch his breath. He needed a second wind, to put as much ground between him and that freak as possible. His leg ached and he was bleeding from a dozen places, shirt and pants torn and tattered, but he was still alive. That’s all that mattered. He was still on his way to DC.

He hurried along. The forest soon gave way to the dirt shoulder of a narrow two-lane road. Across the street was a dilapidated elementary school. Two small brick buildings separated by an overgrown playground and a single blacktop basketball hoop. The pickup lane out front was jammed with the corpses of minivans and SUVs. The man leaned against a black Suburban, its hood wiped clean by tonight’s rain, and took the time to reload the shotgun.

Behind him, in the distance, trees continued to fall. The Scorpion’s speed and power had been diminished, yet still it persisted. How long would it keep chasing him? How long could it stay alive?

The man switched off the flashlight and entered the playground. The clouds had cleared shortly after the rain stopped, and the emerging moon was barely bright enough to light his way. He jogged past deflated footballs and basketballs, rusted-out jungle gyms with insects nesting in the mulch, and vacant, lonely swing sets. His lungs were burning and he felt a dizziness coming on. His body cried out for some Advil, anything to dull the pain in his leg. He needed to tend his wounds, but all he wanted to do was just sleep again. For about a hundred hours or so.

The man forced himself to keep walking. Past the playground and into a weed-ravaged soccer field. Two goals, their nets long lost to the elements, sat fifty yards apart. Beyond the sidelines stood another stretch of wood, this one marked by the yawning dark mouth of a hiking trail. The man sidestepped an old metal bench to investigate.

A wooden signpost, broken at its base, lay in the weeds not far from a faded Gatorade cooler. He stood there in the shadows, listening for the Nightwalker. All he could hear were the crickets and the shrill bellow of a toad. The owl was silent.

The man readjusted the backpack on his shoulders, turned on the flashlight, and entered the forest.

Before he made it even thirty paces, the man understood that the path through the woods had not been a hiking trail at all, but rather a well-traveled shortcut. The flashlight beam fluttered over a crushed stone walkway that wound its way about the trees before splitting off into three separate paths, each one leading to what he assumed would be a different neighborhood. A wood-slatted signpost, this one still standing, marked the juncture and pointed the way with a trio of stacked arrows.

To the left was FOREST HILL.