Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters by Clive Barker, Robert McCammon, China Miéville, Joe R. Lansdale, Cherie Priest, Christopher Golden, Al Sarrantonio, David Schow, John Langan, Paul Tremblay Page B
Authors: Clive Barker, Robert McCammon, China Miéville, Joe R. Lansdale, Cherie Priest, Christopher Golden, Al Sarrantonio, David Schow, John Langan, Paul Tremblay
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walk behind without anything tying me to him except the need to stay in the circle of his flashlight.
“Luckily for you,” he said as we walked out of sight of the car on an unpaved path, “we don’t need to go all the way to the top. This tiger is coming to unprecedented lows, or so my guy with the tracking equipment says.”
“Then why are we here?”
“I’ll tell you when this is all over.”
“According to you, when this is all over we’ll be eaten. Or at least our tongues will.” Right now that didn’t even sound like such a bad option.
Doyle waited for me to catch up, but he didn’t answer. I didn’t have the breath for much more conversation anyway, and it did feel as though making noise under these pine trees in this dark would bring something down on us, even if air tigers were bullshit.
Finally, after I’d drained the rest of the water bottle and developed blisters on top of my blisters, we came to an open space.
“This is the spot,” Doyle said. “Or within a quarter-mile of here anyway.”
He clicked off the flashlight, and I felt that I had no option but to sit down too.
I felt pretty calm, like people who’ve been kidnapped often say. I thought maybe he’d doze off and I could grab the flashlight, make a break for the car. Maybe when morning came and we were still alive and had our tongues I’d be able to talk him down. Maybe I could call 911. It seemed improbable that I’d have a signal, but maybe luck would be with me, if he’d just fall asleep so he wouldn’t see the light from my phone.
To distract myself from the pain and how chilly the night was, I stared up at the stars. Out here they looked close. I could pick out the Big Dipper, and the North Star, and . . . well, that was it, actually. So I looked at that, until a cloud drifted by.
The cloud passed on, and over the moon, and Doyle gasped. He fumbled a bit, stood up, turned the flashlight back on and pointed it at the ground.
When I looked back up from that distraction, the cloud was bigger. And expanding, every second. The stars behind it turned pinkish-gray.
Yeah. Not expanding. Dropping.
I glanced over at Doyle. He planned to survive, and I was going to take my cues from him on that even if he was a crazy kidnapping fuck.
He was staring back at me. Waiting to see what I would do, with a big old shit-eating wrong-toothed grin on his face like he was the smartest damn conspiracy theory buff ever.
I scrambled to my feet and turned to run, but he got to me before I could get anywhere and pinned me against a tree.
“Too late to run now anyway,” he said. “It’ll be on us in thirty seconds max. Do your stuff.”
“I don’t have any stuff to do, you dumb shit!”
He looked stunned, and let go of me. Stepped back into the middle of the clearing to stare at me as if I’d let him down, not even turning over his shoulder to see the translucent but now clearly defined mass of death heading for us.
I knew it was no use now, but I didn’t want my body to rot up on the mountain next to this jackass’s, so I pulled out my cell phone anyway. And it did have a signal. God from a machine.
My hands were shaking and my brain was on autopilot, and I wasn’t looking down. I was looking at the thing, which I will not call an air tiger. It looked like a large, pearly amoeba with fine eyelash-hairs all over and a slight pink tinge. It made a moaning sound as it came down on Doyle, who had spread his arms in a Jesus Christ pose, I suppose to die as big a douche as he had lived, all tragic around the red-rimmed eyes. I hit a few buttons that weren’t 9-1-1.
My voicemail started playing back. The volume was turned up all the way, the better to be heard in the noisy womb of Rosemary’s.
The numbers seemed tiny in the woods, tiny compared to the thing on top of Doyle, but it shuddered. The moaning went up a note, the little hairs all quivered in unison. Slowly, like an elephant climbing out of a wallow, it began to
“Luckily for you,” he said as we walked out of sight of the car on an unpaved path, “we don’t need to go all the way to the top. This tiger is coming to unprecedented lows, or so my guy with the tracking equipment says.”
“Then why are we here?”
“I’ll tell you when this is all over.”
“According to you, when this is all over we’ll be eaten. Or at least our tongues will.” Right now that didn’t even sound like such a bad option.
Doyle waited for me to catch up, but he didn’t answer. I didn’t have the breath for much more conversation anyway, and it did feel as though making noise under these pine trees in this dark would bring something down on us, even if air tigers were bullshit.
Finally, after I’d drained the rest of the water bottle and developed blisters on top of my blisters, we came to an open space.
“This is the spot,” Doyle said. “Or within a quarter-mile of here anyway.”
He clicked off the flashlight, and I felt that I had no option but to sit down too.
I felt pretty calm, like people who’ve been kidnapped often say. I thought maybe he’d doze off and I could grab the flashlight, make a break for the car. Maybe when morning came and we were still alive and had our tongues I’d be able to talk him down. Maybe I could call 911. It seemed improbable that I’d have a signal, but maybe luck would be with me, if he’d just fall asleep so he wouldn’t see the light from my phone.
To distract myself from the pain and how chilly the night was, I stared up at the stars. Out here they looked close. I could pick out the Big Dipper, and the North Star, and . . . well, that was it, actually. So I looked at that, until a cloud drifted by.
The cloud passed on, and over the moon, and Doyle gasped. He fumbled a bit, stood up, turned the flashlight back on and pointed it at the ground.
When I looked back up from that distraction, the cloud was bigger. And expanding, every second. The stars behind it turned pinkish-gray.
Yeah. Not expanding. Dropping.
I glanced over at Doyle. He planned to survive, and I was going to take my cues from him on that even if he was a crazy kidnapping fuck.
He was staring back at me. Waiting to see what I would do, with a big old shit-eating wrong-toothed grin on his face like he was the smartest damn conspiracy theory buff ever.
I scrambled to my feet and turned to run, but he got to me before I could get anywhere and pinned me against a tree.
“Too late to run now anyway,” he said. “It’ll be on us in thirty seconds max. Do your stuff.”
“I don’t have any stuff to do, you dumb shit!”
He looked stunned, and let go of me. Stepped back into the middle of the clearing to stare at me as if I’d let him down, not even turning over his shoulder to see the translucent but now clearly defined mass of death heading for us.
I knew it was no use now, but I didn’t want my body to rot up on the mountain next to this jackass’s, so I pulled out my cell phone anyway. And it did have a signal. God from a machine.
My hands were shaking and my brain was on autopilot, and I wasn’t looking down. I was looking at the thing, which I will not call an air tiger. It looked like a large, pearly amoeba with fine eyelash-hairs all over and a slight pink tinge. It made a moaning sound as it came down on Doyle, who had spread his arms in a Jesus Christ pose, I suppose to die as big a douche as he had lived, all tragic around the red-rimmed eyes. I hit a few buttons that weren’t 9-1-1.
My voicemail started playing back. The volume was turned up all the way, the better to be heard in the noisy womb of Rosemary’s.
The numbers seemed tiny in the woods, tiny compared to the thing on top of Doyle, but it shuddered. The moaning went up a note, the little hairs all quivered in unison. Slowly, like an elephant climbing out of a wallow, it began to
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