Monster Island(94)

What was left of Gary leaned up against the rim, one sagging shoulder pressed hard against the bricks. Gary’s legs were nothing but scorched sticks of bone that stuck out from the charred mass of his abdomen. They looked like the legs of a stork, perhaps. Something of his torso remained and his arms, club-like appendages that were curled across his chest. His head was still smoldering. It had sustained less damage than the rest of him-the one part of his body that hadn’t been made mostly of combustible fat. His eyes were gone, as well as his ears and nose, but I could sense somehow he was still in there.

“Dekalb,” he coughed. “Come to gloat?” His voice was nothing but a dry rasp.

“Not exactly.”

“Come closer. I’m glad for the company in my last couple of minutes, I guess. Come on. I don’t bite. Not anymore.”

I figured I could handle him now by myself. The voice-the ghost, or whatever it had been-had told me Gary could no longer control the undead. It would just be the two of us. At least, that’s what I was thinking when I stepped closer to the tub. Then I heard a rattling noise like a length of chain being dropped from a height. Exactly like that, in fact. Jack must have climbed up his own chain-then laid in wait, in ambush, for somebody, anybody, to walk directly underneath him.

He was on my back, his legs wrapped around my waist, his teeth in my neck. His fingers grabbed at my face, one of them sinking into my left nostril and tearing, ripping at the flesh there. I shook back and forth, desperately trying to dislodge him as warm blood ran down my already-stained shirt. I heaved backward, unable to catch my breath, my body still stunned by the force of impact. No, I thought. No. I’d come so far, so far without getting badly injured, without being killed “Sucker,” Gary chortled, without lifting his head.

David Wellington - Monster Island





Monster Island





Chapter Nineteen


I threw myself backward, knocking Jack against the wall, trying to crack his spine, trying to break his hold on my face. It only made him more determined. Jack had been a lot stronger than me in life. In death he was strong and desperate. He wrapped a forearm around my throat and pulled, trying maybe to break my neck. He succeeded in pinching closed my windpipe.

I swung around wildly, my hands pulling at the legs he had wrapped around my waist. I might as well have tried to bend iron. The little air in my lungs turned to carbon dioxide but I couldn’t exhale and suddenly dark stars were spinning in my vision, sparkles of light like signal fires, one each for the neurons dying in my head as I asphyxiated. I lost it, lost all reason at that point and just panicked. Without a thought in my head I dashed forward, away from the thing on my back, my subconscious mind unable to realize that it was still attached. Jack’s grip on me merely tightened as my feet dug for purchase in the brick floor. Like a mule pulling a plow I tried to pull away from him.

Anoxia distorted my hearing-the sound of my heart beating was a lot louder than the noise of Jack’s vertebrae cracking inside his neck. He let go of me in a sudden and unexpected way and I slumped forward, catching myself on my hands, spit streaming from my mouth as my body heaved for air. Not so much breathing as swallowing oxygen, gulping it down. I tried very hard not to throw up. If I had I would surely have aspirated something and drowned on my own vomit.

My eyes hurt, the tiny blood vessels inside them burst open by the fury of Jack’s assault. I blinked them madly to get some tears going and then turned to sit down and tenderly touch my throat, trying to soothe the burning flesh there. I looked up.

I did a double take when I saw what had saved me. Jack hung from his chain, the links wrapped tight around his throat. Tight enough to be buried in his deliquescent flesh. Somehow while waiting to ambush me he’d gotten mixed up in the chain. It probably hadn’t bothered him-he had no need to breathe-until the constricting pressure had shattered the bones in his neck. His body dangled limply in the coils of the chain like so much cast-off clothing.

His head remained animate. His eyes stared hard at me. His lips moved in anticipation of one more bite of my flesh. I looked away…

…and realized I was bleeding to death. I looked down at my chest and the fresh blood that covered me. I reached up two trembling fingers and felt out the contours of my wound. Jack had bitten me very close to a major artery. He’d taken a chunk out of my body where my shoulder met my neck. I tore a strip off of my shirt and jammed it into the gaping hole-anything to stop the flow of blood.