“Man, you know,” Chad said, “if it’s not hurting them, maybe be better to take our chances.”
“I wouldn’t base anything on what happens to them,” Eric said. “I blew holes in that girl and she—”
All of a sudden, Tania let out a bawling screech so loud it cut through and over the birds’ cries. Rima heard herself gasp as Tania gave a sudden, violent lurch, as if she’d been grabbed around the ankles. Her hands flew up as she dropped, straight down, the dark liquid instantly closing over her head.
“Jesus,” Bode said. “Like quicksand.”
“No, it’s too fast,” Casey said. Outside, more and more of the creatures had wheeled around to try and run, but what was left of the snow was breaking apart under their feet, the surface crumbling and collapsing. Silent before, the creatures now brayed in rusty barks. Black sludge steamrolled over the snow in a remorseless juggernaut, slopping over and slurping up the white. The crazed, ravening birds were so low now, they swarmed directly overhead, thick as blowflies over dead meat. “They’re not sinking,” Casey said. “It’s like they’re being pulled back.”
“Or down,” Eric said. “Like something’s grabbing—” He broke off as a violent shudder vibrated through the truck. “Oh boy. Bode, Bode.”
Chad’s eyes bugged. “What the hell?”
“Oh God,” Rima said, and then screamed as the vehicle suddenly jolted downward, canting at a crazy angle. “It’s happening to us.”
“We’re sinking!” Chad braced himself against the dash. “Jesus, it’s got us, we’re sinking, we’re sinking!”
“Can you get us moving, Bode?” Rima said. The boy shook his head, and, as the truck rose, Rima’s stomach swooped, then tried cramming behind her teeth as they plummeted on the other side of a swell. “Then what do we do?”
“I know what I’m doing!” Chad popped his door. “Bode, we got to go, we got to go, we got to go go go!”
“No, Chad!” Bode and Eric screamed at the same time. “Chad, stop!” Bode shouted. “You can’t go out there!”
“Well, I’m not dying in here!” Chad shouted, and then he was flinging himself out of the truck.
“Get him!” Rima shrilled, even as Chad tumbled out. She tried springing over the backseat, but Casey grabbed her waist and held her back. “Casey, no, we have to get him! Bode, don’t let it touch him, don’t let it—”
But Chad was out. The moment his feet hit the churning black, Chad … didn’t sink. The surface actually stilled, as if it were holding itself steady in order to make sense of this strange new taste. Maybe I was wrong. Still hunched up against the Dodge’s ceiling, with Casey’s hands battened onto her waist, Rima stared as Chad cautiously straightened. Maybe it will let him go. Maybe it senses that we’re different.
Then she saw how the surface shuddered, just a bit, and what echoed through her mind then wasn’t a sight but a sound: that squeaking, wet-fingers SMEE-smee of Father Preston’s meat inching over glass. “Chad!” she said.
“H-hey,” Chad exhaled, as if suddenly realizing what he’d just done. Turning, he looked back and spread his arms. “L-look, man, it’s coo—”
Flashing out from the murk, a black tendril shot out like the sticky tongue of a chameleon unfurling to snatch a moth on the fly. Chad shrieked as it roped around his left leg.
“Chad!” Bode bawled.
“God, get it off, get it off!” Chad wailed, struggling to pull himself free. His clothes were cooking, the steam rising not in white but black curls. As he bent to snatch at the black tongue around his leg, another spun out to wind around his right wrist. “JESUS GOD!” Chad threw back his head in an agonized scream. The first tentacle had coiled all the way up his leg to his groin, and Chad’s pants were shredding, dissolving to threads. The flesh of both his left leg and right arm began to bubble, as if Chad were a plastic bag filled with water reaching the boiling point. Then, all of a sudden, fountains of blood jetted in pulsing red ropes from where the flesh had been burned, and Chad let go of a wild shriek: “Bode, it’s burning, it’s burning, IT’S EATING ME!”
Of them all, it was Eric who reacted first. “Oh my God, oh my God.” He swept Rima out of the way and scrambled into Chad’s seat. “Chad, Chad, grab my hand, grab it!”
“Eric!” Letting go of Rima, Casey lunged for his brother, and just in the nick of time, because Bode, wide-eyed and ashen, was still paralyzed, seemingly unable to move. As if sensing what Eric meant to do, the inky tarn gave a mighty heave, and the truck dropped again with another stomach-churning lurch. Off-balance, only inches from the open door, Eric pitched forward. With a yell, Casey made a snatching grab, hooking Eric’s waistband, and then he was working his way up Eric’s back, hugging Eric in a tight embrace. “I got you, but hurry, Eric, hurry!”
“Chad!” Eric had stretched himself on the seat until his chest hung over the pulsing muck, now less than a foot from his face. Maybe a taste of Chad was all it had needed, because the black goo had morphed into a writhing sea of muscular, ropy tentacles that coiled over and around Chad to burn into his skin and draw out his blood. Everywhere they stung Chad, fresh black steam smoked, drifting up in an inky cloud toward the birds, which were so close and thick, it was as if they were all that was left of a sky.
“Chad!” Eric shouted again, and thrust out both hands, straining as far as he could. “Chad, grab my hands, give me your hands!”
Saturated with blood, blind with pain, his skin steaming and bubbling and tearing open, Chad tried. He was crumpling now, not sinking so much as being eaten alive, dissolved in a vat of black acid, but his left arm was still free. Twisting, Chad made a frantic grab—and missed.
“No!” Eric shouted. Rima thought he would have leapt from the truck if not for Casey and now Bode, who finally seemed to have snapped out of it, was dragging back on Casey to keep them both from falling. “Chad,” Eric screamed. “Chad!”
Shrieking, Chad fell, dropping into the embrace of a thousand stygian tentacles. One snaked over his eyes, and yet another probed at Chad’s mouth and slid inside—and then Chad was no longer screaming but choking as the tentacle worked and wormed into his throat. Chad’s skin was turning, going from white to a deep plum and shading to black, as if the tentacle were a hose, pumping ink—or dissolving Chad from the inside out.