Serial Saturday: Road Trip Part 5
Lucien began to speak.
K’yaa hrchlu t’yhalikk.
Israel repeated the words, shouting them across the lot, and he saw the Gasher stagger even as it began to come toward him. Lucien continued to rattle off words of the Old Tongue and Israel continued to repeat them, even as the syllables burned at his throat. He began to get a sense of what the words meant, even though he didn’t want to, as he slowly advanced.
The Old Tongue was affecting the Gasher anyway, though it almost caught him with a staggering lunge as he circled past it. Sometimes, Lucien could give him the words to straight-out control Old Ones, or pin them squirming to the ground, but the Gasher was made of sterner stuff, and Israel was becoming afraid that he’d stumble over one too many words, or his throat would just start bleeding from speaking it. He knelt, still repeating the words Lucien gave him, and scooped up the tow chain.
He began to swing the heavy chain in an arc as he advanced. The Gasher had never been graceful, at least not to human eyes, but it had possessed a freakish speed, and the Old Tongue seemed to be sapping that, maybe just because it made the thing have to think a bit.
All the same, it almost got him as he closed, making a sudden lunge with only a slight stagger. It was sheer luck that the chain was in the right position, and caught it as it came, knocking it to the ground. Still chanting, he got a loop around a limb as the Gasher tried to thrash to its feet, and thought something popped as he yanked it to one side. It was still horribly fast, a tangle of limbs thrashing on the pavement that made him slightly nauseous to watch, but it gave him a second before it got up to double the chain a few times to make a short, heavy flail. There was a crunch and spurt of black liquid as he swung the chain, which was disgusting, but not as bad as watching it move, and he swung three more times, knowing he was going to be feeling all this in his back in the morning.
Somewhere along the line, Lucien had stopped saying anything, but it didn’t matter now; the Gasher was a broken mess. He swung twice more just to be sure, then turned at another scream from the diner. This one was weak and trailing off, so things were probably wrapping up inside, but it was still hard to believe that he’d finished things so fast himself. He turned and headed for his car, dragging the chain behind him. Now he did feel a trickle of blood on his side as the wound there opened up. He skirted the torn-up corpse, and began scanning the ground.
Now that the pressure was off a bit, he spotted his keys almost immediately, of course. He scooped them up, along with the brass knuckles that were lying nearby, and stepped to the Pontiac, taking a quick glance over his shoulder. Half the lights were out inside the diner, making it hard to see in, but he saw a shadow cross in front of the window, a sight that made his stomach lurch even though he couldn’t make it out clearly.
It will run you down on the road, Lucien said as he unlocked the driver’s side door.
“I know, I know” Israel said. He reached under the seat and fetched out the Glock. He chambered a round and thumbed off the safety, then walked a few steps away to pick up his fallen hat. Settling it on his head made him feel better as he approached the diner.
For a long nervous moment after he’d opened the door, Israel couldn’t see the other Gasher. There were too many other things to see–napkin holders, plates, and ketchup bottles scattered across the floor, and there was a wide red smear running along the floor for the length of the room where someone, or a good chunk of someone, had been dragged. The man who’d been slumped over the counter was still slumped there, but it looked like his head was gone. The waitress who’d gotten him his coffee was sprawled over the back of a booth, her ribs exposed and wrenched outward like wings. It turned out that only one or two lights were actually out, but a number of others were covered in blood, and casting a dim, reddish light.
Israel heard a noise from behind the counter, and worked his way slowly around it, pistol ready. The Gasher was hunched over the cook, and it looked like it was slicing off bits of the man and lining them up carefully on the floor for purposes of its own, using its various cutting and grabbing limbs in tandem. That was one of the things that made Old Ones less formidable, sometimes–they would get distracted doing their own thing.
He took another two careful steps, closing to within a few yards. Lucien began to speak again, rattling off a terrible, nauseating string of Old Tongue.
Israel repeated the words, even though they were giving him a headache. The Gasher spun, and stretched to twice the length it had been a moment before, almost catching him, but it stumbled to one side, and he raised his voice, making another of its limbs come up in a warding gesture just before he began firing.
He put twelve rounds into the Gasher almost without pause, stopping only when the slide locked open.
Noisy, Lucien said.
“I know, I know,” Israel muttered as he picked up some shells off the sticky floor. He was leaving footprints in the blood, and there was no way he was going to find all the brass that had rolled under appliances or corpses, so he gave up. If Bryce was on his game, he’d have the place cleaned up anyway, before or after the cops got involved, but he was no longer sure Bryce was on his game. He’d warned him the Gashers were coming, but Israel had expected them on some lonely road if they came, not at a goddamn diner. Bryce was either mad or desperate, or worse had just lost all control of the Old Ones he was trying to use.
He didn’t hear any sirens as we walked quickly out into the parking lot, but that didn’t mean he could just hang around. The cops would be better than anything else that might be making its way toward him, anyway. He glanced over at the kid who’d started everything, still slumped sideways and unconscious on the ground. Israel might have hit him too hard, but he was better off than anyone else left at the diner, even if he did end up with some memory loss. Especially if he ended up with memory loss, actually. Even assuming Bryce got to him and made him part of the cleanup he’d have a nicer death than everyone else here.
He slid behind the wheel and started the car. He drove carefully as he left the diner, not speeding up until he reached the highway.
Copyright © 2011 SM Williams