Chapter 20: On the Knife’s Edge

Whoever thought the contrary was either a sadist, blind, or worse: a wishful, hopeful, big-hearted idiot.

There was no way he was fine. Not when he was lying on a cold, hard, metallic ground, coughing his lungs out with a very sore throat and bruises that ached right down to his bones. And that was just the end result. His current situation, how he got to it, had been an ordeal of a much bigger order.

The big monster had gotten tired of trying to impale him through the ceiling and decided to stop playing a game of whack-a-mole. It had landed on the ground behind a closed shutter and tore it down to get inside the burning room.

A golden opportunity for Rick, who had no way out until then and would have died from smoke inhalation within minutes.

With a newly created way out, Rick dodged a strike from the monster by sliding under a swing of the gigantic, deformed, razor-sharp clawed arm. He quickly got on his feet and ran down the narrow path presented to him. As fast as he could, because he was being chased.

He ended up on a platform of some construction site. A huge red, heavy container took most of the space. The kind of container transport trucks carried all over the roads of the country. Big enough for a car or two to be parked inside.

Rick believed it complicated his survival greatly at first. There was no way out, as best as he could see, and the space available to fight was about five yards squared, give or take. Then he saw a console to the side beyond the container. It commanded the movement of a crane, to which a thick steel cable was attached to the container.

Without hesitation he had hit the big red button, hoping it would activate the crane and remove the container so he could have some breathing room. To his relief, it did. Now, with the whole platform to move around, he could fight and, more importantly: dodge.

Rick unloaded his shotgun as much as he could onto the thing. He honestly didn’t know where to aim. The monster had mutated greatly since their last encounter. Besides being way taller and bigger, it now had two heads. One was the human one with blonde hair, which seemed to be absorbed into the flesh of the chest. From its position on the body, Rick thought of a heart.

The other head was monstrous. Big and without a nose or skin. A mass of flesh, muscle, and sinew. The lack of lips displayed huge white teeth that looked like they could bite a limb off in one try.

Since his survival was at stake, he ended up aiming for neither head. Instead he shot at the eyeball on the huge mutated shoulder. During their first encounter, the eye had already been big, but now it was like it had doubled in size. The impact of the pellets from his .12 gauge shells had barely enough stopping power to slow it down a bit, except when they hit the eye.

The abomination wasn’t stupid, however. It was very aggressive and not the brightest, but it wasn’t mindless. Thinking otherwise, or not discerning that fact fast, was a mistake. A mistake that Rick made.

When he jogged past the monster to shoot at the small eye on its back, he was caught by a backswing. He had been too close and took a hit that sent him stumbling onto the floor and over the ledge. It was purely by reflex that he caught it and didn’t fall into the abyss below.

Rick ignored the pain in his side and climbed back up by the strength of his arms, his feet having no support. It was done in urgency because his opponent had gotten back up. His whole body was almost completely on the floor when, for the third time that night, he was caught in a chokehold.

The monster raised its other hand and put it over his whole face. Rick immediately thought his head was about to get popped but was quickly disabused of that. Something was pushed inside his mouth and down his throat. The next thing he knew he was flying through the air and landed ten yards away, right next to the crane console.

That’s how Rick got to this point. Coughing up a storm and hurting all over.

He crawled away, the monster taking slow, short steps toward him. There was still some fight in him. His will to survive was burning strong. Stronger than ever. Stronger than it ever had.

Perhaps that was why Lady Luck smiled upon him. Maybe there was a god somewhere who took pity, or thought he had suffered and amused them enough, and decided to throw him a bone. It was probably none of that and more likely just another iteration of weird objects being in weird places he observed the whole night. All Rick knew was that a flashbang rolled out of nowhere and hit his hand.

Immediately, his eyes lit up. His brain went into overdrive and was already finalizing a plan that would see him get out of this predicament alive. As he heard the loud stomp of the beast’s feet impacting the ground, he drew his gun. The only weapon left since he had dropped his shotgun when he got hit earlier. Turning around, he shot at the big eye to hurt and stop his attacker’s advance. The flashbang was thrown at its feet, and Rick extended his arm to hit the big red button on the crane’s console again.

An alarm blared, a yellow warning light blinked on top of the crane. More importantly, the container that had been carried to the other side of the area was moving again, and fast.

The monster shook off the effect of the flashbang. Getting up from its knees and shaking its head, it focused on Rick again. It ignored the bullets hitting its body. They weren't quite mosquito bites, but as long as they hit its flesh, it didn’t hurt. Putting a foot forward to balance itself, it wasn’t ready when the container came in like a wrecking ball and impacted it from the side.

Rick watched with cold, calculating eyes as the abomination was pushed toward the ledge of the platform. For a fraction of a moment, he believed this last-ditch effort would be enough, right until the thing tried to push back against the container.

It was a futile endeavor. The momentum was too great, and the monster was pushed away beyond the ledge. It still tried to fight it. Hard. This resulted in the steel cable containing the container snapping and falling, dragging the thing with it. It flailed its arm around, trying to grab something to hold onto, but failed.

Breathing heavily, Rick finally relaxed his body, only to suddenly lurch forward in pain. His chest burned so hotly he wanted to claw it out to make it stop. Gritting his teeth, he chose to endure it. He holstered his gun back on his hip, then went to pick his shotgun up.

Looking around for an escape, he saw heavy steel beams and plates had fallen right across the chasm between the platform he was standing on and another close to the wall ten feet away. Beyond it was a recess in the wall, and if his memory of the layout of the place served him right, at the end of it should be a door leading back to the area he had last seen Claire.

Testing carefully if the makeshift bridge that the thing had inadvertently created while falling was stable, he walked across it to the other side. It didn’t take long for him to be back at the bottom of the stairs behind the electrically unlocked door.

Climbing up the stairs to get back to the control room was difficult. His chest wasn’t just burning now; it physically hurt. There was something inside of him. Something foreign that was moving. The thought of Irons’ burst chest crossed his mind. At this point, he didn’t care. If a chest-burster clawed its way out, it was fine. As long as he didn’t feel pain anymore, it would be fine.

Reaching the console area with the huge windows, he found Claire was nowhere in sight, neither was Sherry. The only way out was the door at the other end of the room, and Rick dragged himself there. He didn’t get far. A burst of pain made him stumble to the side. His body leaned against the windowed wall for support. Another burst, and he fell down onto his hands and knees. He could feel it; the parasite or whatever it was was moving. Up.

“RICK!”

He didn’t even register Claire’s panicked call of his name. Something was in his throat, blocking his windpipe. His body reacted naturally. His muscles tensed painfully, and he vomited all over the floor. Bile, blood, but also something that looked like a dark grey and brown worm with pincers at its head. Like an insect.

The parasite writhed in utter pain. Right to left. In a final squirm, it contracted into itself and died.

Rick was heaving heavily. He felt something touch his shoulder, and his instincts took over. Immediately, he pushed down whatever was touching him, his hand reaching for his boot knife. In one swift move, he went for a stab. It didn’t connect; his wrist was tightly gripped.

“Rick! It’s me!”

Finally taking a good look, Rick saw Claire lying on her back right under him. The blade was a couple of inches away from her eye. Realizing what he had nearly done, he slowly pulled away and let her take the knife from his hand.

An apology was at the tip of his tongue, but the words that came out were different.

“I bet… you liked…oh, god.” He fell to his side, completely spent.

Claire got out from under his legs and quickly checked on him. A hand on his face, another on his chest. “What the hell happened?”

“It thought… I was its… type.” Rick heaved again and let himself be sat up by Claire. “Gimme… minute… And I’ll… be good to…”

He couldn’t even form complete sentences, but it was enough for Claire to understand him. Putting his good arm around her shoulder, she lifted him to his feet. “I’m sorry, we don’t have the time. Sherry has been infected. Her mom said she could treat her if we hurry.”

Putting one foot after the other, doing his best to match Claire’s pace, he spoke. “Her… mom?”

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you once we’re inside the cable car.”

Rick simply nodded in acknowledgement. More than the revelation of Sherry’s mom’s involvement, he felt himself regaining his strength by the second. His breath stabilized and returned to normal, the pain was receding, and he didn’t feel as if he was burning from the inside anymore.

By the time they crossed the small bridge leading to the cable car, he could walk on his own.