The Last Town
People shoved past Harold.
Someone’s shoulder butted him back into the wall of crumbling concrete.
The screams of the dying were getting closer.
Harold started running, sandwiched between two women, their elbows punching into his side as they raced ahead of him toward the diminishing firelight.
He didn’t think they had that much farther to go. Three, four hundred yards at the most before the tunnel opened into the woods.
If they could make it outside, even half of them—
The torch in the distance vanished with a shout.
Instantaneous dark.
The screams tripling in volume.
Harold could taste the panic in the air.
Some of it his own.
He was knocked down in the stream of water, feet trampling over his legs, then his body. Tried to get up, got knocked down again, people scrambling over him like an obstacle, someone stepping on his head.
Rolling out of the way, he climbed back onto his feet.
Something streaked past him in the dark.
It reeked of decay.
Several feet away, a man begged for help over the sound of bone and cartilage crunching.
Harold’s nerve flattened under a veil of crushing disbelief.
He should go.
Just run.
The poor bastard beside him went quiet, and now there was only the sound of the monster devouring its kill.
How could this possibly be happening?
Fetid breath hit his face.
Inches away, a low growl began.
Harold said, “Don’t do this.”
His throat felt suddenly hot. His chest turned wet and warm. He could still breathe, and he felt no pain, but there was so much blood jetting out of his neck.
Already he felt light-headed.
Harold sank down in the freezing stream as the beast opened his stomach with a swipe.
There was only a distant, blunted pain as the abby began to eat.
All around him were the moans and cries of the dying, the scared.
People still rushed past him in the dark, fighting to get to safety.
He didn’t make a sound.
Didn’t fight back.
Paralyzed by shock, blood loss, trauma, fear.
He couldn’t believe this was happening to him.
The thing ate him with the intensity of a creature that hadn’t fed in days, its rear talons pinning him down by his legs, front talons nailing Harold’s arms to the concrete.
And still no pain to speak of.
He was one of the lucky ones, he figured.
He’d be dead before the real pain hit.
ETHAN
—Pure human suffering and terror.
Chaos.
Ethan shouted, “Don’t stop! Keep going!”
Thinking, Had another group been run down in an adjacent tunnel?
Unimaginable.
To be overtaken down here.
People climbing over one another to escape as the monsters reached them.
Torches dropped.
Extinguished in the stream.
Devoured in the dark.
Up ahead, the torchlight in Ethan’s group had disappeared.
Ethan said, panting, “Where’d they go?”
“I don’t know,” Hecter said. “The light just vanished.”
The water under Ethan’s boots was rushing now and they were moving into a cold, steady breeze.
They emerged from the tunnel onto a rocky streambed, and for a moment, the sound of the abbies was replaced by the roar of white water, close but invisible in the dark.
Ethan stared up the hillside, saw the torches trailing up into a forest.
He pointed them out to Hecter and Maggie, and said, “Follow the lights.”
“You’re staying?” Hecter asked.
“I’ll be along.”
The shrieks of the abbies cut through the crush of the falls.
“Go!” Ethan said.
Hecter and Maggie headed off into the trees.
Ethan racked a fresh shell into the tube and climbed several feet up the bank to a flat perch. His eyes were slowly adjusting. He could discern the silhouettes of trees and even the cascade in the distance, the black water starlit against the sky where it arced over a ledge several hundred feet above.
Ethan’s quads burned from sprinting through the tunnel, and despite the cold, his undershirt was soaked with sweat.
An abby exploded out of the tunnel and stopped in the streambed.
Took in its new surroundings.
Looked at Ethan.
Here we go.
Its head twitched to the side.
When the slug hit the abby’s center mass, it fell back into the stream.
Two more abbies ripped out of the tunnel.
One rushed to its fallen comrade and let out a low, pulsing cry.
The other made a beeline for Ethan, scrabbling up the rocky bank on all fours.
Ethan racked a new shell, shot a slug through its teeth.
When it fell, the other one was right behind it, and two more were already out of the tunnel.
Ethan pumped and fired.
The other two were coming and still more screams rising up behind them.
He took the first one down with a gut shot but missed the head of its partner.
Racked another shell.
Fired at point-blank range and hit just below the neck.
Blood sprayed in Ethan’s eyes.
He wiped his face as another abby joined the party.
Ethan pumped, aimed, squeezed the trigger.
Click.
Shit.
The abby heard the noise.
It lunged.
Ethan threw down the empty shotgun, drew his Desert Eagle, and put a round through its heart.
Gun smoke clouded the air, Ethan’s heart hammered away, and there were screams still coming up the tunnel.
Go, go, go!
He holstered the pistol, grabbed the shotgun, and climbed away from the stream, clawing his way through rocks and dirt until he reached the trees, sweat pouring into his eyes with a salty burn.
There were lights in the distance.
Screams behind him.
He slung the shotgun over his shoulder and ran.
After a minute, the sound of the abbies changed.
They were outside now.
Many of them.
He didn’t look back.
Kept going.
Kept climbing.
III
ADAM TOBIAS HASSLER
HASSLER EXPEDITION
NORTHWEST WYOMING
678 DAYS AGO
Brightly colored algae rims the bank, and jets of mineral water bubble where they surface up from the molten underworld below. The smell of sulfur and other minerals is strong.
Hassler strips naked in the falling snow and covers his clothes and gear under the stinking duster. Hustling through the grass, he glides into the pool and groans with pleasure.