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At the sound of his scream, Burl began moving faster. The sticky suction of the mud tried to slow him, but Burl’s face became a mask of bestial hunger and he tore his feet free, step by step, and reached with hooked fingers toward Jake.
That’s when something in Jake’s mind snapped.
The tethers anchoring him to the civilized man he was parted and that part of him floated away like a mask being removed to reveal his true face. It was an older, simpler, far less evolved face, and the eyes of the ultra-primitive saw the oncoming threat and the synapsis of the ancient lizard brain triggered unthinking and immediate reaction.
Jake screamed again, but this time it came out more as a growl, as a snarl of denial and fear and determination. He pushed himself backward, his legs kicking at the mud for purchase, finding it, taking his weight, propelling him into a crouch on fingers and toes. He skittered backward like a dog, hissing at the pain instead of with it, then he slewed around and launched himself away, rising into a sloppy run, falling, getting up again, running. And all the time screaming.
Burl and Vic and the others followed like a pack of rabid dogs.
Jake angled toward his front-end loader, putting it between himself and the pack. The keys were inside the cab. If he could only get to them.
But Burl and Vic split, each one heading toward one end of the machine as if this was something they had rehearsed. On some level Jake knew that they were simply taking the shortest route for each of them, but it felt like a coordinated attack. Jake glanced up at the cab and then to each side.
He wasn’t going to make it.
If he got inside, would the reinforced safety glass keep them back?
Even if the glass held, the door didn’t lock from inside.
He began backing away from the machine. The trailer they were using as a temporary office was forty yards away. Jake spun around, deciding to make for it. If he could get inside, the doors had locks. There were desks he could push in front of the door to block it. The windows were tiny, too small for someone like Burl to climb in through.
All of that flashed through his brain as he took the first step toward the trailer. Burl lunged for him, actually jumping like an animal to try and grab him. Then suddenly Burl’s head snapped to one side and his leap turned into a twisted tumble that send him splatting down to the mud, where he slid to a twisted stop.
His face was gone.
Simply gone.
Jake stared at Burl, trying to understand this new mystery, this new insanity. Even his lizard brain didn’t know how to process this.
Then something pinged off the bucket of the front-end loader and went whizzing past his ear with a sound like an angry wasp.
There was a second ping. A third.
That’s when he heard the sounds.
Distant. Small. Hollow.
Pok-pok-pok.
He whirled and crouched, staring into the rain.
Someone was firing.
Cold hands suddenly grabbed him from behind and Jake was falling. He twisted violently around to see Vic right there, tearing at him with torn fingernails, snapping at him with cracked teeth.
Vic was tall, over six feet, and nearly two hundred pounds. Jake towered over him, though, standing six-eight and packing an extra hundred pounds of muscle and mass on his frame. With power born of fear and desperation, he swung a punch into Vic’s face that knocked the man five feet back. Teeth and blood flew. Vic hit the side of the bucket, spun, fell to his knees, and then was abruptly flung sideways as a fusillade of bullets tore into him, punching holes in thigh and hip and ribs and skull. Vic dropped and lay utterly still.
Jake wanted to stand and stare. He needed to take a moment to reset all of the dials in his head. However bullets pinged and whanged off the machine and behind him the other … things … were still coming. Jake cut them a single quick look and realized they were paying no heed to the bullets that pocked the mud around them. Or to the bullets that tore into their own flesh. Jake saw clothes puff up as rounds struck them. He saw chunks of bloody skin go flying into the rain.
It was insane.
It was like they didn’t care. Or couldn’t feel.
Or were …
His mind teetered on the edge of saying what he thought it was or might be.
Instead he turned and dove for cover as more bullets hammered into the yellow skin of the Caterpillar. The bucket was still low to the ground where he’d paused it when everything started turning to shit. Beneath the bucket was a trench cut by the scoop, and Jake wriggled into that. Big as he was, the trench was deep enough for him to get below ground level, but it was already half-filled with muddy water that was stingingly cold.
