Page 17 of Them

Behind him, a cornstalk crunched.

The man whirled around—there! Between the dying rows of gold. Between the bright crop and reclaiming weeds. A flash of black. The rustling cloak of the Reaper.

And then it was gone. Nothing there but dead corn.

Suddenly, a moose-sized shape erupted from the overgrowth, bounding toward him. The man scrambled away in a zigzag pattern, running as quickly and unpredictably as his body could manage. The heavy shadow flew past him and sent itself skidding elsewhere into the cornfield, buying the man precious seconds.

He suddenly stopped on a dime, then crept a few feet off to the side and dropped down to the dirt. He needed to pause; his lungs were choked with barbed wire, and his head pounded like a screen door in a windstorm. Adrenaline going now. But that throb in my head. The concussion. Their fault.

The man tucked himself beneath a thick clump of corn leaves. He knew he wouldn’t be able to outrun it. His only chance was to make it to open land and find a house, but if the Scorpion came upon him before then, he’d be done for.

Best to stand here, then. Fight to flight.

The creature’s footsteps—there was only one of them, he was sure—slowed. He could see the tips of the stalks stir in a nonexistent breeze. It was smaller than most Scorpions, hopefully a novice hunter. Older than the baby last night, but still not tall enough to breach the top of the overgrown cornfield. Sympathy for the devil? It was coming closer. Timid for a monster, but stones don’t roll no more. Everything stands still now. Everyone gone.

Last stone rolling. Crush as many as I—

The Scorpion stepped into view.

The head was shaped like a black, crystalline football. The eyes were such pale blue that they were almost white, the color of a little boy’s bedroom night-light. A color that used to keep boogeymen at bay. It walked almost feebly. Innocently.

In the juvenile predator’s mandibles, it held the man’s hat. Tasting his scent.

The man crept closer, crouched step by crouched step. His lack of size was suddenly an advantage in this dense, abandoned agriculture. The heavy leaves shrouded him, and his human stench was still dilu—

The Scorpion suddenly craned its neck thin and high above the crop line, stretching to its full height. Its blue eyes scanned the field as it chewed on the hat. Masticating.

The man dropped onto his belly, nearly spotted. The bastard wasn’t as small as he’d first thought, its long scrawny neck poking above the crops. Its eyes flickered between the leaves. But he’d been right about its age. It was young. A child or maybe teen, whatever their abominable equivalent was.

The stalker hadn’t seen him. Not yet. But it wouldn’t be long. Already had his scent.

The prone man readied his pistol, the dirty metal dull and gray beneath the sun. There was no other choice. Wouldn’t be long at all. Others would come.

He found his aim, braced his heart for the explosion of gunpowder, and pulled the trigger.

The beast’s head froze in surprise as death blazed a trail through its middle left eye. The bullet penetrated the baseball-sized orb, shattered the thin bones of its cranial sinuses, and tore out the opposite ocular cavity. Blue geysers of blood erupted from both sides.

“RRRRAAAAAAAAA!” it screeched as it bit down on the hat. “RRRRAAAAARRAAAAAAA!” as its mandibles sprayed spittle to the sky, a three-pronged satellite broadcasting pain. The remaining four eyes searched frantically for their attacker as the Scorpion’s limbs flailed, wildly lashing out at the stalks and whatever threat was hiding among them.

Five more gunshots echoed throughout the field. A trio of bullets emerged from the storm of dust and crop before ricocheting off the jagged obsidian skull, falling fruitlessly to the soil… but two others found their mark. The remaining eyes exploded and began to gush blue blood.

From what little remained of the junior leviathan’s eyes—those deflated flaps of pale mucus—a viscous aqua liquid began to ooze. Blind now, the Scorpion attacked violently, with neither discretion nor direction. Its bladed legs mowed like scythes. Nowhere within its reach was safe.

“RRRRAAAAAAAAAAA!”

The man turned and ran.

“RRRRRAAaaaaaa!”

The corn seemed never-ending. Oh yes, they were coming now. The rest. He knew. They had to have heard the commotion.

“Rrrraaaaa…”

When he broke free from the stalks, he saw a farmhouse. But it stood so close to the corn. Too damn close. They would know what a gunshot meant.

“… raa…”

They would know what vile breed of creature had fired it and they would know that the infant’s frightening dream last night had not been a dream at all, but a memory.