Dagon Rising(10)
The first man spoke. “Tony Genova.” It wasn’t a question.
“Sorry.” Tony casually slid his hand into his pocket. His heart rate sped up. “You got the wrong place. My name’s Larry DiMazzio.”
“No,” said the second man. “Your real name is Tony Genova.”
“Real names are important,” the woman said. “They give you power.”
“Listen, you got the wrong guy. Now fuck off. Whatever you’re selling, I ain’t interested.”
Tony tried to shut the door, but the first man reached out and caught it with his hand. Tony grunted. Suddenly, moving the door was like pushing a boulder. The guy was a few inches taller than Tony, and of medium build, and didn’t look that strong.
“Motherfucker…”
Forgetting about the door, Tony’s fingers encircled the pistol. He tried to withdraw it from his robe, but before he could, the second man reached out and touched him on the neck.
“Sleep.”
“Fuck,” Tony whispered.
Then his legs gave out and the room went black.
He slept, just as the man had told him to do.
THREE
The researchers died quickly and messily. Most of them had run out onto the beach, attracted by the initial commotion like insects to a light bulb. By the time they realized what was happening, it was too late. The massacre had begun in earnest.
The initial force had already moved inland, following along in the wake of the two-story behemoths. Now, hundreds of Clickers rushed ashore, driven forward by the Dark Ones. They streamed from the ocean on their giant, segmented legs, enraged and hungry. Dark Ones sat astride some of the more domesticated creatures. Other Clickers were totally wild, lashing out at anything that moved. The beach descended in pandemonium. People fled, crashing into each other and falling to the sand, or stampeding over one another in an effort to escape. A professor from Princeton died of a broken neck and an anthropologist from London suffered a heart attack as their peers trampled them. They were the lucky ones. The others who fell barely had time to scream as the horde swept over them. Claws and tails lashed out, severing appendages and impaling bodies. The air was filled with shrieks and screams and tearing sounds—and the noise of the Clickers’ claws clacking together.
CLICK-CLICK! CLICK-CLICK! CLICK-CLICK!
A maintenance worker grabbed the arm of a friend and engaged in a ghoulish tug-of-war with a massive Clicker. The game ended only when the creature snipped his friend in half. The worker toppled backward as two more Clickers lurched toward him. He scrambled across the sand on his hands and knees, gasping a prayer to a God he’d never believed in until now, and then leapt to his feet. As he turned to run, a segmented tail whipped forward. The impact of the stinger jabbing him in the chest felt like being shot. The loathsome beast raised its tail, lifting the hapless victim off the ground. He hung in the air, thrashing and kicking, gore gushing from his open mouth, as the monster pumped venom into his body. Within seconds, his skin began to bubble and hiss. Then it sloughed off his frame and splattered onto the sand. Other Clickers rushed forward and began to shovel the sizzling, soupy mess into their beak-like mouths.
Myrna and Julia, two women from the research center’s food services division, ran toward an outcropping of rocks jutting up from the sand. They tried to clamber up the slick surfaces but kept sliding back down. A group of Clickers pursued them, waving their claws in the air. The helpless women backed up against the stones and wept. One creature pushed Myrna against the boulder and then snapped her head off with one scarlet claw. Blood jetted from the stump of her neck and the monster bathed in it, feeding greedily. Julia screamed in horror as her friend’s severed head rolled at her feet, staring up at her with eyes still open. Julia had always heard that a decapitated head was still conscious for a few moments after death. It could still see and register what was happening. Julia wondered if Myrna’s last impression would be of this—and then a barbed stinger rammed forward, spearing her in the abdomen.
Perrin Tempel, an expert in linguistics from the Univer-sity of Minnesota, found himself unable to move as a Clicker advanced toward him. He wanted to, but fear had rooted him to the spot. He couldn’t run, couldn’t scream, couldn’t even blink as the monster advanced. All he could do was watch. During their last invasion, he’d seen the creatures only on television and the web. Up close, they were very different. For a moment, he was struck by the bizarre beauty of the beast. The Clicker’s serrated pincers were tinted with a delicate crisscross pattern of red and magenta, deepening to a thick shade of black at the tips. As it drew closer, Perrin’s bladder voided. The front of his pants grew wet. The Clicker made a warbling sort of hiss and darted forward. Deciding not to look at its claws or stinger, Perrin focused on the thing’s black, stalked eyes. His last thought was that they reminded him of ball bearings. Then the Clicker seized him. It briefly waved Perrin back and forth in the air like a trophy before cutting him in half. The linguist’s innards spilled out all over the swaying grass. His blood arced through the air, splattering against the thing’s hard shell. Ignoring the other fleeing humans, the Clicker paused in its murderous frenzy to slurp up the pile of Perrin’s spilled intestines and other organs. Half of Perrin’s lifeless body still dangled from its claw.