The Raven (A Jane Harper Horror Novel) (29 page)

I back up a step, and Talbot keeps pace.

That’s when the rest of…
it
comes into view.

Arms and legs jut out in every direction. Some push against the floor. Some against the walls. Some against the ceiling. Talbot has been made the figurehead of a conglomeration of human body parts. And his isn’t the only full body in the group. I see several more still partially concealed by shadow. I grind my teeth. Some of them are child-size. The bodies seem to be bound together by rubbery mucus. It’s like a human caterpillar, but instead of spiky hair, it has human limbs—still-functional limbs.

When the thing moves forward, it’s propelled through the hallway by all of its limbs working together. The people are no longer individuals under the control of parasites, they’re one organism joined together.

It’s the Queen
, I realize. The last time I saw something like this was when the island-locked Queen merged a man’s legs and Jenny’s head with the decayed body of Áshildr, the Queen’s vessel.

The parasite watching me through Talbot’s eyes must see the understanding in my expression because Diane’s face rises up behind Talbot’s head. She laughs. “It’s the closest thing to beautiful I could do with these horrible bodies.”

The Queen-thing moves closer, revealing even more bodies. The part of the abomination now in the light stretches ten feet back. For all I know the shadows might hide another ten or fifty. She might have merged the horde and all those poor children. And the worst part is that the Queen could be
anywhere
inside the mass. Killing the portion that is Talbot, or Diane, won’t make a difference. They’re all interconnected and have more brains than I can possibly hope to destroy with a sword. Or a bazooka, for that matter.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask.

“Come closer, Raven,” Talbot says. “Gimme a hug, and you’ll know everything.”

I step back as he/it/them floats closer still. The distance between us is shrinking. I’m starting to feel like a rat facing a king cobra. It’s just biding its time, putting the fear of God in me. When it decides to strike, it’s going to be a blur. My only hope is to keep it talking long enough for me to reach the maintenance area at least a hundred feet behind me.

“I get why you want to kill me,” I say. “But what about the rest of the world? The people from this ship. From the other ships. Why kill them?”

Diane shakes her head. “We’re an endangered species, Jane. Why wouldn’t you want to protect us? Isn’t that what you do?”

I keep my backward pace slow and steady. “Killing one species to save another isn’t—”

“Killing?” Diane says. “Why, Jane, they’re not dead.”

Talbot’s head goes slack for a moment. When it lifts again, his expression has changed. Instead of anger and loathing, there is fear and horror. Looking through the eyes of the parasites, he sees me. “Jane?”

He looks down at his hands. At his mucus-covered body and the arms protruding from his sides like a spider’s limbs. His lips quiver. “I can feel them. I can feel all of them.” His eyes widen. “I was right. I was right about everything—yeargh!” He quakes with pain.

“Tell her, Ed,” Diane says. “Tell her you’re not dead.”

He shakes his head. “We’re not dead.” His voice is shaky. Weak. Defeated. “We’re not dead.” His voice is more firm. “But we’re in hell.”

He grits his teeth. His body arcs. The parasites are causing him pain. “Kill us, Raven,” he manages to say, and I’m pretty sure he’s actually speaking for the lot of them. “Kill us!”

He screams as the pain becomes intense. Then he’s a rag doll again. His arms and legs have gone limp. His head hangs. But his mind is still there. I know because he’s weeping. Draugar don’t cry.

“You see,” Diane says. “The relationship is symbiotic. Both species live.”

I’m not sure if she’s taunting me or if she honestly believes what she’s saying.

“Evolved parasitic species don’t interfere with the health of the host,” she says. “But the most successful are those that actually benefit the host, as we do. Our hosts live indefinitely.”

I let a snicker slip out and quickly feel worried about it. This is decidedly
not
funny. So I’m either mocking her or close to hysteria, neither of which strikes me as a good thing, and I suspect the truth is a little of both.

“Talbot,” I say. His head comes up a little. “What do you think? Is this beneficial to you?”

He groans again, not wanting anything to do with anything that reminds him of what he’s become. But my real intention is to confuse the Queen. “It’s like a weight on your hip,” I add.

Step back.

“Weight on your hip,” Diane says, testing out the phrase. She has no idea what I’m saying. But will Talbot? And if so, will that understanding transmit to the Queen?

Talbot takes a sharp breath.

His head comes up.

His white eyes go wide.

Diane’s head looks at him in confusion. And then understanding.

Whatever time it takes for the Queen to transmit her thoughts to the parasites controlling Talbot, it isn’t as fast as his quick draw. Talbot’s pistol slides from the holster in a blink. The weapon rises. The barrel is leveled.

Talbot’s eyes scrunch in pain as he fights the creatures reasserting their control over his mind. With the last of his free will, Talbot pulls the trigger.

I shout in pain at the loud pounding sound of the gunshot’s blast, reverberating in the small hall. Talbot’s head bursts and splatters against the wall.

He did it
, I think.
He set himself free.

A pain-filled scream rises from Diane’s lips, soon joined by the next head. And the next. A wave of high-pitched wails rolls back through the hall as each of them experience Talbot’s suicide.

They felt the pain
, I think.
They all felt it!
But I don’t think it was Talbot’s death that set them off. It was the parasites inside his hollowed-out brain. When Talbot put a bullet through his own head, he took a good number of parasites with him.

The monster quakes. Diane lets out a gurgled shout. Her eyes are wide and staring at the ceiling. Talbot’s body moves, but he’s flopping around due to the movements of the others, not under his own power. His dead body is being shed from the whole. He slips toward the floor as tendrils of mucus stretch and snap.

This is the only chance I’m going to get.

I turn and run.

Diane and a hundred other voices shriek angrily. The sound is nearly loud enough to make me stumble. But I push past the pain stabbing my ankle with each step.

When the shriek repeats, I look back.

Oh shit!

Talbot’s body has been discarded.

Hundreds of limbs work as one, pushing the monster forward like a subway car though a tunnel.

The entrance to the stairwell that leads to maintenance is just thirty feet ahead on the right. I ignore the thunder of countless feet and hands pounding the hall’s four surfaces and run faster.

But I’m not nearly fast enough.

The living train closes the distance and strikes me from behind.

I fall to the floor, just ten feet from my goal.

The pounding run of merged bodies slows, but the sound is replaced by another, far more disturbing cackling. Each and every one of the people bound by the Queen bursts into manic laughter. It grows louder still when a hand takes my injured ankle and pulls me back.

I scream in pain and roll onto my back. My intent is to cut myself free, but I’m shocked into inactivity once more.

The Queen has modified the merged bodies more than I knew. With Talbot’s body missing, there is now an open gap at the core of the creature. Where Diane’s stomach should be, there’s an opening like a mouth. The flesh inside undulates, as though eager. Hungry.

The Queen doesn’t want to kill me.

She wants to consume me.

S
o this is how it ends. Eaten by a giant parasite formed from human bodies and millions of tiny asshole worms. But I won’t be killed and digested. At worst, I’ll be disassembled and merged to the beast, while my consciousness lives on and my memories are hijacked. At best—well, there is no best. I’m pretty much screwed no matter which way you look at it.

Look at me now, Dad
, I think.
Bet you didn’t think my life would end like this.
I’m not even sure he’d have any hard-edged advice for me now. Probably would just feel terrified for his daughter. Hard as he was, he still cared, and my fate would probably leave even that man speechless. If he’s watching now, I hope he has the good sense to turn away, or maybe put a gun to God’s head and tell him to help me out.

There’s no more taunting from Diane. No more mocking. Our scintillating back-and-forth has come to an end.

My
end.

Or at least, that’s the intention.

Still, I’m holding a sword that’s sharper and stronger than any parasite or the human body it possesses.
Attagirl
, I hear the Colonel say. “You don’t have to go down fighting,” he told me once. “Just refuse to go down.” If the Colonel is watching, he’s not looking away, he’s shouting at me to kick some ass.

“No!” I shout. “You can’t have me!”

With my foot just inches away from being shoved inside the mouth of the writhing mass like a chunk of steak, I sit up, bring the sword down hard, and sever the arm pulling me. The monster twitches, and somewhere far beyond my vision, one of the trapped bodies shouts in pain.

I fall free, but before I can scramble away, a second arm reaches out and catches my foot.

This time, when I swing, I don’t aim for the arm. I aim for the body. I hack and slash, back and forth, weakening Diane’s form with wide slices. When the maggot-like parasites start falling from the wounds, screaming erupts. The sound of men, women, and children shouting out with each swing of my sword nearly causes me to stop.

Then I remember what Talbot said. They’re not alive. They’re in hell. Instead of swinging, I thrust. The blade slides in nearly to the hilt, piercing several bodies.

The monster quivers and shifts away from me. But the hand is still holding fast, and I’m pulled along on my ass. A quick swing remedies the situation, and I’m free once again, staggering to my feet. But only for a moment.

The artificially created mouth, which now oozes blood and parasites, opens wide. Tendrils of what I think are human intestines coated in parasitic goo lunge out and wrap around my legs. One tug and I’ve toppled onto my back. I land hard. The air is knocked from my lungs and the sword from my hand.

I reach for the blade, but it’s just inches out of reach.

I stretch for it. My fingers brush the handle.

“No!” I shout as I’m pulled away from the weapon. With my only means of defense out of reach, I do the only thing I can: turn forward and look my enemy in the eyes.

Diane leans forward so that her body and face are directly above mine. Her arms are free, but she’s held aloft by the limbs of the Queen’s other victims, which poke out from the core like short, jointed tentacles.

She pauses for a moment, her face just a foot from mine. I think she’s going to start talking again, which would be fine by me, but she doesn’t. Instead, she snarls and takes hold of my cheek. Her hand squeezes tight. Pain and pressure force my mouth open.

She grins savagely, taps into some part of Diane’s memory of me, and says, “I’ve always wanted to do this.”

Her white tongue extends from her mouth. She waggles it seductively over my face. The parasites buried in the pink flesh spasm with excitement, preparing to free themselves and infect me.

She angles her tongue for my open mouth.

At first, I’m rage incarnate, struggling, shouting angrily, punching at her.

But when the first of the small parasites is licked against my upper lip, my tough exterior cracks. Tears bleed from my eyes, and my shout becomes a whimper. I’m having trouble seeing. I try to shake my head to the side, but her strong arms hold me fast.

“Hey!” a voice roars.

Diane’s head snaps up.

The tongue recoils as her eyes widen.

A blur passes me, and then I hear a wet crunch.

When I can focus again, I see that Diane’s face has been cleaved in half vertically.

Her ruined head folds back, and the mass behind her recoils from me as a chorus of screams fill the hall.

“Jane!” The voice is like a drug. All of my fear fades. Willem is here.

“I can’t move!” I shout as I try to tug free from the retreating creature.

He rushes past me and swings down with the ax. The pressure on my legs drops away, and I kick free from the loops of intestine. The creature, experiencing Diane’s pain, is in full retreat, thrashing wildly and bucking hard, throwing itself into the walls and ceiling.

Willem takes my hand and pulls me to my feet.

I quickly look him over, searching for wounds, and notice that he’s doing the same with me. “I’m fine,” I say.

He nods and pulls me behind him. “This way.” After picking up my sword, I follow him down the hall.

As we retreat from the defeated monster, I look back. It’s shedding Diane’s body in the same way it did Talbot’s, pulling her limp body from the mass. Strands of red-tinged but clear slime, like viscous dog drool, stretch out between the monster and the corpse. The slick tendrils snap, and the body comes free. Diane is cast aside, her corpse of no further use. As the thing’s limbs flail angrily, the sconces illuminating the hallway are smashed. The thing is plunged into shadow once more.

Willem pulls me into the large stairwell. The stairs are carpeted in the same blue and gold pattern and look wide enough to allow eight people passage. Steven stands on the stairs to the left, which lead up. Beside the stairs is a door labeled “Maintenance—
Poseidon Adventure
Crew Only.”

The door is closed, and a red light on the keycard shows that it’s locked.

“Did you get inside?” I ask, looking at the locked door.

“We did,” Willem says. His voice is strangely quiet, but I don’t notice at the moment.

“Are we all set?” I ask.

“Fifteen minutes,” Steven says. He’s halfway up the stairs to the next level, holding an unlit Molotov cocktail in his hand. The keycard belonging to the captain of the
Poseidon Adventure
hangs from a chain around his neck. “We need to get the hell out of here before Jakob blows the ship.”