Chương 41: Chapter 38: The South Mouth

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"NO!" The word left my body before I knew I was screaming it. My throat was still raw, mouth still open, watching Tre fly through the air in horrific slow motion. My mind was doing that by the way, not the Grindhouse. The scream kept coming. Completely useless. Didn't change a fucking thing. Tre hit the fire and immediately shrieked. The sound assaulted me, reaching through the air and via Mindbleed. The flames caught his clothes first, then his hair, then the vinyl underneath began to soften and run.

The Mother turned to face me, hook raised. If I went for Tre, she'd kill me. If I didn't, he'd burn. Using my ability would buy me two seconds. That's all I had. I dismissed the shield and spear back into my inventory, then activated Adrenal Cascade and hoped for the best. ADRENAL CASCADE ACTIVATE DURATION: 2 SECONDS Time stretched like taffy as the Lake Mother's movements slowed to a crawl. Her hook rose through syrup-thick air.

The flames consuming Tre became individual tongues of fire, moving in slow licks across his body. I sprinted for the fire. My legs felt powerful, each stride covering an impossible distance. Even in slow-motion, the heat's intensity was staggering; my skin felt tighter around my face. The Mother's hook continued its lazy arc upward behind me, too slow to catch me now. Thrusting my hands into the fire to find Tre brought immediate and absolute agony. Skin blistered as my nerve endings screamed all at once.

My palms cooked. The smell of my own flesh burning alongside Tre's melting vinyl filled my nostrils. My fingers closed around Tre's burning arm, and I heaved him out of the fire. Time caught up to us. Behind me, the Mother's hook completed its arc— WHAM —and slammed into the ground where I'd been standing before I triggered the ability. Tre and I hit the grass hard, a few feet away. He was still on fire, flames crawling across him alarmingly fast.

Smothering the flames with my own body, the heat seared through my shirt, burning my stomach. We rolled a few times until the flames went out. I pushed off him, gasping, cradling my ruined hands. The skin was angry red, blistered in places, already starting to weep. HEALTH: 67% [BURNED] Behind me, metal scraped stone. The Lake Mother twisted the hook free from the ground.

"Tre…" My voice came out strangled. He didn't move. His face was scorched, the painted features partially melted. One eye warped, pupil smeared across vinyl like spilled paint.

"TRE!" He coughed. The good eye fluttered open.

"That fucking hurt," he croaked, voice distorted.

"Am I alive?" I checked his stats: HEALTH: 42% [BURNED]"Salve," I gasped, clicking mine. The relief was immediate. My blistered palms sealed, the worst damage disappearing. Tre must've hit his too, because his melted features smoothed over, burns fading to pink patches. HEALTH NORA: 92% TRE: 67% Less than a minute had passed since the Lake Mothers stepped off the dock. SIXTY SECONDS. That's how long it took for the party to collapse into chaos. The Naked Mother approached Tre and me; hook raised for the kill.

A beer bottle exploded against her shoulder.

"HEY! UGLY!" The Mother's head snapped to the source of the voice: Deadpool T-shirt guy. The heroic hemp head stood ten feet away, arm cocked back with another bottle ready to go. I could tell from his glazed eyes that this was pure chemical courage overriding his survival instinct. Two of his stoner friends flanked him, looking like they suddenly regretted this decision.

"Get the fuck away from them!" Deadpool t-shirt launched another bottle at her head. The Lake Mother's attention shifted to easier prey, as she lumbered toward the brave stoners, dragging the fishhook through the grass behind her.

"RUN!" I screamed at the stoners.

"RUN!"

"I'm going to help clear out the cabins," Tre called over his shoulder as he sprinted toward the cabins. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. I scanned the battlefield. The summer camp looked like the set of a disaster movie. Near the cabins, Liam had corralled a group of maybe twenty kids between two bunks, trying to get them to the parking lot.

"MOVE TO THE ROAD! GO!" His voice was hoarse, urgent, but several kids just stood there and stared in horror at the burning dock and Lake Mothers. Isabel sprinted by on my right, cutting across the grass to the cabins on the other side of the bonfire. Once she arrived, she started banging on their doors and walls, screaming at stragglers to run. Behind her, smashing through a picnic table like it was made of wet cardboard, the Bald Mother gave chase.

Isabel dove behind a stack of canoes just as the Mother's hook bit deep into the wood where her head had been a heartbeat before. A new scream turned me back toward the stoners. The Naked Mother had closed the distance and was making quick work of those poor kids. I averted my eyes but couldn't escape the wet sounds of tearing flesh. Can't save everyone. Near the kegs, a group of letterman jacket-clad guys was mid-evacuation when they saw the Bald Mother stalking Isabel.

"GET HER," the lead jock shouted. They charged the creature. Maybe they thought attacking from behind would give them the advantage. One swung a folding chair at her, as if he were John Cena in a choreographed WWE match. The Bald Mother barely registered the hit. She whipped around and grabbed his shoulders, splitting him in half down the sternum. His ribcage peeled apart with a sound like Velcro before it was flung aside. The wet meat slapped to the ground.

The lead linebacker, a massive kid, "STATE CHAMPS" tattooed across his bare chest, lowered his shoulder and slammed into the Bald Mother's distended belly with a tackle that should have crushed her ribs. He wrapped his arms around her waist, trying to drive her back. She didn't budge. Didn't even rock. He might as well have tackled the side of a building. The linebacker tried to pull away. Couldn't. His hands were stuck to her wet skin like he'd grabbed flypaper.

"What the—" He thrashed, panic rising. The Bald Mother looked down at him, her umpire mask tilting with something almost like curiosity. What was left of the Bald Mother's dress split down the center. Beneath it, her turgid, distended stomach opened. Literally. A vertical seam unzipped from her sternum to her pelvis. The swollen flesh of her belly peeled back, like lips opening, to reveal a gaping hole. Rows of translucent, needle-like teeth lined the cavity, and the folds within flexed. Hungry.

The stomach was a mouth. A fucking mouth. The linebacker looked up, still stuck to her flesh. His face flashed from confusion into pure, animal terror in the span of a heartbeat. The Bald Mother slammed her arms around him in a mockery of a hug. The vertical maw snapped shut around his head and shoulders with a wet crunch. His legs kicked wildly, cleats scraping at the grass. Once. Twice. Then he went limp. The Mother's entire torso convulsed as the stomach-mouth swallowed the linebacker.

His body compressed and folded unnaturally before it disappeared into some impossible void. I gagged. FEAR: 88% [TERROR] My vision tunneled. We'd seen a lot of fucked up shit today, but… That's not possible. Bodies don't… that can't be. My brain stuttered, trying to reject what I'd just seen, and in the process, I forgot how to use my legs. I nearly fell on my face, catching myself on a porch railing just in time to see— The cavity sealed itself again with a sucking shlorp.

Behind the canoes, Isabel had both hands clamped over her mouth, eyes so wide the whites glistened in the moonlight. Run, Isabel. RUN! A sound shredded through another football player's throat, turning from a howl of pain into a wet whistle. The vessels in his vocal cords burst as the Bald Mother's nail dug into the sides of his neck. She tossed him aside and spun to a different player, a kid with short, dirty blonde hair. In an instant, she plucked off his arm. Sshlorp. Like pulling a petal from a flower.

The kid grabbed at the stump, screaming. I watched that happen. I watched that happen and still stood there while she beat him to death with his own severed arm. Isabel took the opportunity to bolt from her hiding spot, running toward me, while the Bald Mother continued to shred the football team to pieces. She pulled one player apart piece by piece until all that was left was his headless torso. They are playing with their food. On the opposite side of camp, the Naked Mother had reached the stoner cabin.

Tre and the kids were trapped inside. Shadows moved behind the windows; furniture was being dragged against the door. The Mother raised her hook and brought it down. Wood splintered. The door buckled. Nora! Tre's voice shattered my skull. I gasped, sucking in cold air and thick smoke. The paralysis broke. I'm trying to get these stoners outside, but they think I'm doing a bit! Tre's panic was evident from the pitch of his voice. Tre needed help. Isabel needed help.

Liam's group had finally moved to the parking lot in something resembling order. They were fifty feet from the exit. The Bald Mother ran out of football players to dismember, and her head swiveled, searching for more victims. She landed on Liam's group and started toward them.

"NO!" Liam saw her coming. Started waving his arms in the air.

"RUN! EVERYBODY RUN!" The group scattered, screaming, all semblance of order dissolving into total disarray. Some made it to the parking lot, others ran toward the woods. The most panicked kids turned and ran back toward camp. Nora, help! Tre's voice burst through the Mindbleed again. Isabel stopped beside me.

"That thing's stomach ate that kid! Did you see that?!"

"Tre's trapped in that cabin," I said, pointing toward the stoner cabin, where the Naked Mother was pounding against the door.

"How do we kill her?"

"I don't think we can," I said.

"We don't have the gear. We don't have—""What do we have, Nora?!" Isabel screamed at me. The Bald Mother closed in on Liam's group. The Naked Mother continued to demolish the cabin door. My inventory was nearly empty. The shield looked like it would shatter if the wind blew too hard. We couldn't fight them head-on.

"We don't have to kill them," I said, idea forming as I spoke.

"We just have to be more annoying than everyone else." Isabel squinted.

"Do what now?"

"Saving the kids is our priority. Instead of trying to fight the monsters, let's distract them so they stop hunting everyone else and come after us."

"Sounds like an awesome way to die," Isabel said.

"Yeah." The Bald Mother's health was at 92%.

"Get ready to run." I sparked and tossed my last Molotov. The bottle shattered against the Bald Mother's back in a burst of orange fire that spread across her shoulders, crawling up what remained of her hair. Her health bar barely moved. She pivoted away from Liam's group, locking me in her sights.

"Oh shit." Isabel.

"It worked." My mouth went dry as the Bald Mother shambled toward us. The Naked Mother slammed harder on the cabin door, which was barely holding. The kids inside screamed. Then it all clicked. The propane tank under the stairs. Except I'd just used my last explosive. FUCK. My focus was a frayed wire, sparking from the propane tank to the Naked Mother, to the Bald Mother lumbering toward me. An idea formed. A terrible, crazy, completely stupid idea.

"Take this, keep your distance, and distract the Bald one," I said to Isabel, holding out my spear.

"What?!" Isabel screamed.

"Fucking take it!" I thrust the spear into her hand.

"What're you doing?" She asked, reluctantly accepting the weapon.

"Taking the naked bitch off the board," I said, eyes locked on the propane tank. Isabel clenched the spear, arms shaking. She nodded once and turned to face the Bald Mother.

"Let's go die."