the puncture wounds.
All of that was ghastly and intimidating. But something was off. The scale , he thought. He focused the telescope on the eyes of the skull-helmet. Rammed into the eye sockets of the monster skull were smaller skulls.
Human skulls.
Oh shit…
Brian pulled the telescope from his eye again and looked down the slope at the thing approaching them.
“The guy is at least fourteen feet tall. He’s massive,” Brian muttered.
“What are you talking about,” Billings snapped at him.
“He has human skulls for eyes. We don’t stand a chance.” Brian turned, looking at the road leading back to town. “We should leave. We’re supposed to leave. Not fight.”
“Like hell,” Drake said, then he swung the barrel of his M-16 up and fired at the approaching monstrosity.
The others took the cue and raised their own weapons, opening fire with a storm of bullets. Brian and Jim joined in, all of them firing in uncontrolled bursts.
Their target merely raised his free arm, the snake gauntlet acting as a shield and deflecting the oncoming storm of lead.
And then he started running up the slope.
Each footfall shook the ground beneath their feet.
The giant man emerged from the smoky haze and hefted his long pike, raising it up like a sword. The man—if he was a man—stood twice Brian’s height.
Magazines ran dry, and the barking of the M-16s stopped.
Then the slaughter commenced.
As the men fell apart, literally, all Brian could focus on was the man’s fearless skull eyes.
15
“What are those?” Frost asked Griffin, inclining her head toward the keys he jingled in his hand, as he sat in the passenger seat of the cruiser.
“Oh,” Griffin said, as if just realizing he’d been playing with the keys. “Kyle asked me to bring his bike back from the farm.”
Dodge and the Turkette woman were silent in the back. They were heading back out to the farm, an unlikely group ready to confront Ellison, and if they found her, Barnes. Frost still couldn’t wrap her head around the notion that Julie Barnes even owned a gun—let alone shot Cash with one.
They were armed to the teeth, but the weapons didn’t give Frost any comfort. The recent revelation that no one could heal from their wounds in this world, meant that any wound could be fatal. She felt fine, herself, and she was glad that she didn’t have any injuries. But she’d noticed Griffin scratching the still-healing lizard bite on his arm. She wanted to ask him how the wound had been faring before the recent shift, but she dreaded hearing a truthful answer from him.
We have to get home. We’re all dying on this cosmic Ferris wheel. Some just faster than others. It’s time to get off the ride.
She turned the cruiser onto the gravel drive of the farm. The last time she’d been out here, she noticed a beat up pickup parked on the side of the drive. It was gone now. She knew it didn’t belong to Laurie, Kyle or Cash and had assumed Charley had somehow gotten a hold of another truck. She didn’t think he could have made it out here on foot.
She wondered where the man had gotten another truck, but then her thoughts turned to the idea of him charging blindly into the tunnel after Barnes. Where did Charley Wilson suddenly find courage, if not in a bottle?
She recalled his feat of withstanding torture out at the National Guard depot, and decided to give the man an easier time of it, the next time they met. There was more to Charley than met the eye. Frost glanced in the rearview mirror at Dodge, as she put the car in park and killed the engine. She’d misjudged him, too.
If there’s one good thing coming out of this mess, it’s that people are showing their true colors. Although with Barnes, that hadn’t been a good thing.
Griffin got out of the car, rubbing one of his shoulders. “So where’s this bunker?”
Dodge slid out of the car on Griffin’s side and pointed across the field.
Suddenly there was a brilliant flare of
Phil Jackson, Hugh Delehanty