If you’d care to start our story at the beginning:
Part One: Desert Stray
Part Two: Fragile Hosts
Part Three: The Final Ride Of Joe Pesci
Part Four: Hunter and Prey
Part Five: Low Voltage
Part Six: Fire and Smoke
Part Seven: Juggling Act
* * * * *
J.J.’s Garage
Street
6:50 p.m.
Rory took note of the old truck that slow-rolled behind the B&S. Something felt off. He excused himself from the paramedic who was dressing his wounded arm.
“Sir, you’re still bleeding,” she announced, as though it wasn’t Rory’s shoulder that was seeping blood down his back.
“You can finish in a second,” he told her. He walked away from the carnage at J.J.’s Garage and into the five-story building next door, drawing his sidearm along the way.
Blake & Summers Building
First Floor
7:12 p.m.
Lauren held a baseball bat in one hand — it was the only weapon in Dusty’s arsenal that she felt comfortable with — and her little green flashlight in the other. Just in case the lights went out. She wasn’t overly fond of the dark.
Dusty walked ahead, his long coat covering the loaded shotgun he was wielding. This was the night he killed the creature. He could feel it. Every step led toward their final confrontation.
The first floor was nearly clear.
He had taken two or three more steps before he realized that Lauren was standing still. He looked back for an answer only to find her holding her hand to her face.
Her nose was bleeding.
“It knows what she can do,” a voice rang out from one of the empty offices around them. Dusty couldn’t tell if it was a male or female’s, but the owner was definitely under the creature’s thrall. “And so, she must be removed.”
Dusty brought his shotgun out from under his coat. Pretense was no longer necessary.
“You hope to eradicate such a beautiful life with such a mundane instrument?” The voice questioned. “You are too late. Lu eribu, wardum!”
Dusty laughed.
“Seems you’re not strong enough to feed through sound yet,” Dusty mocked the voice and thereby the creature.
“No need,” the owner of the voice, a young man whose arms were blackened from exploded blood vessels, stepped from the last office on the left. He raised a handgun and pointed it into the office diagonal from him.
“Dusty, look out!” Lauren screamed. “He’s going to–”
The first floor exploded.
Blake & Summers Building
Fourth Floor
7:18 p.m.
The creature hated losing a host, especially one that had served so well as the meatsuit that called itself “Bobby,” but it had all but used what meager material Bobby had to offer. The manform would have diminished soon anyway.
It was so close to its goal! If only it could manifest into one more manform, it could regain enough of its former glory to feed off of these cattle in its mother tongue.
So close.
But, at least the blast from the explosion had supplied a new host a mere twenty feet up. Now, if the creature could only keep this fresh host from acting on its baser instincts long enough.
Blake & Summers Building
West Stairwell
7:27 p.m.
Rory groaned, picking himself off the stairs. The explosion on the floor above seemed to have come from the east side of the building, but the blast had still been forceful enough to knock him down the stairs.
He looked for his gun but couldn’t find it by the low glow of the red emergency lights.
“Anybody read me?” he asked his shoulder radio.
Nobody answered.
Feeling woozy, Rory went on up the stairs to the first floor.
Upon opening the exit door, smoke filled the stairwell. Rory could hear the sirens of the firetruck that was en route.
“Anybody alive in here?” he asked, assuming he already knew the answer.
A low moan came from nearby.
Rory came around the corner, peeking around first to try and gage the situation. A young blonde girl was only then starting to get up from under some rubble.
“Are you okay?” Rory asked, kneeling to the girl.
“Wait!” the girl tried to shout.
But someone had already kicked Rory in the side of the face, knocking him to the ground.
Blake & Summers Building
Fourth Floor
7:35 p.m.
Christopher, sitting cross-legged on the floor, synched the backward-rigged motherboard to the cell that he and Marcus had reconditioned.
“Try that,” he told the older man.
Marcus beamed as power surged his gameplan to life. He clapped Christopher on the shoulder.
“Well done, us!”
Then he picked up the chair he’d been sitting in, lifted it above his head, and smashed it down onto Christopher’s.
“I told you it would work amazingly!” Marcus yelped, jumping into the air and landing both of his feet onto Christopher, who was laid out cold from the chair blow, crushing the younger man’s throat in the process. He then proceeded to kick the now lifeless body joyously.
“I just,”
Kick.
“Don’t know,”
Kick.
“Why you don’t,”
Squelch.
“Listen to me,”
Squelch.
“When I tell you things!”