Chapter 13: The Crawl

Chapter 13: The Crawl

The silence that followed Mike’s last, gurgling breath was absolute. For a moment, the only sound in the universe was the high, insistent buzz of the industrial floodlights. The world, which had been a chaotic storm of violence and terror, was now preternaturally still. Mike’s blood, hot and thick, pooled around Eli’s torso, a grotesque blanket that was already beginning to cool and congeal on his skin.

The adrenaline, that beautiful, miraculous liar, began to recede. It drained away like a tide going out, leaving behind the jagged, sharp reality of his body. The pain, which had been a distant roar, came crashing back in a tidal wave of exquisite agony. The stumps of his legs screamed, a symphony of severed nerves and traumatized flesh. His arms, having performed their one, desperate act of rebellion, felt like they were filled with molten lead.

He lay there, pinned by his own dead weight and the cooling corpse of his tormentor, and a new fear began to dawn, a fear more chilling than the immediate threat Mike had posed. He had won the battle, but he was still in the abattoir. He was a hundred yards from a road, miles from a town, bleeding out on a concrete floor in the middle of nowhere. Killing the monster didn't save him; it had only left him alone with the consequences.

Survive.

The word wasn't a thought; it was an instinct, a spark that ignited in the deepest, most animal part of his brain. It was the same spark that had driven him to fight the blackout, to grab the knife. It was all he had left.

With a guttural groan that was more animal than human, he began to move. He shoved, twisted, and writhed, his body scraping against the blood-slick concrete until he finally managed to worm his way out from under Mike’s dead weight. He was free, but the movement sent a cascade of fresh torment through his legs, tearing at the crude stitches, and a thin, strangled sob escaped his lips.

He was a ruin. A man bisected. But his arms worked. He planted his palms, slick with a mixture of his own blood and Mike’s, onto the gritty floor and pushed. He lifted his torso, his mangled lower body dragging uselessly behind him. This was how it would be. He was a slug, a broken insect.

His goal was the faint rectangle of indigo that marked the barn door, a promise of the world outside this brightly lit hell. Every push forward was a new dimension of pain. His stumps scraped against the rough concrete, the raw, stitched-together ends catching on the uneven surface. He left a wide, gruesome trail behind him, a smear of red that marked his agonizing pilgrimage. The hundred feet to the door felt like a journey across a continent.

He paused halfway, his body trembling with exhaustion and shock, his breath coming in ragged, shallow pants. The buzzing of the lights seemed to mock him. His gaze fell upon the wall of tools, the neat, orderly rows of cleavers, hooks, and saws. They hung there, clean and silent, their work for the night finished. He had wanted to understand the mind that used these tools. Now, the knowledge was carved into his own body.

He reached the massive sliding door. It was heavy, built of solid oak and steel. He found the handle and pulled, his muscles screaming, his wounds screaming louder. The door didn't budge. Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through him. He pulled again, and again, pouring every last ounce of his remaining strength into the effort. The door groaned, its rusted rollers protesting, and slid open just enough for him to squeeze his broken body through.

He tumbled out onto the gravel, the sharp stones digging into his palms and his raw stumps. The cool night air was a shock to his feverish skin, rich with the smell of damp earth, pine, and distant rain. The indifferent chirping of crickets replaced the hum of the floodlights. Above, a billion stars glittered in a black, velvet sky, utterly oblivious to the horror show that had just concluded below.

The freedom was terrifying. In the barn, the threat had been contained, singular. Out here, in the whispering darkness, the threat was everywhere and nowhere. Mike had mentioned his parents. Was his story of their deaths true? Or was there another monster sleeping in the small, shabby trailer whose windows glowed with a faint, weak light at the top of the rise? Was every rustle in the woods the approach of something else, drawn by the scent of blood? The fear of the known monster was gone, replaced by the infinitely greater terror of the unknown.

He had to get to the trailer. It was his only chance. A phone. There had to be a phone.

He began the crawl.

It was a slow, torturous journey through hell. The gravel was like a bed of broken glass. Sharp stones tore at his hands, his elbows, his stomach. Weeds and thistles scraped against his face. He moved inches at a time, a grim, bloody pendulum of push and drag, push and drag. He kept his eyes fixed on the dim light of the trailer window, a distant, hazy star that was his only salvation.

Time lost all meaning. There was only the scrape of gravel, the burn in his shoulders, the relentless, throbbing agony from the ends of his legs. He was no longer Eli, the arrogant intellectual. He was just a piece of meat, a wounded animal dragging itself toward a burrow, driven by a single, mindless imperative: live.

He reached the flimsy wooden steps of the trailer. They looked like a mountain. He reached up, his bloody fingers finding a hold on the splintered edge of the first step. He pulled. His body, a dead weight, refused to cooperate. He pulled again, a raw, desperate roar tearing from his throat. The stitches in his left stump gave way with a wet, ripping sensation, and a fresh gush of hot blood poured down his side. The pain was so intense it made him see stars, but he didn't stop. He hauled himself up onto the first step, then the second. He collapsed onto the small, dirty porch, his body a single, quivering nerve of agony.

The trailer door was unlocked. He fumbled with the knob, his bloody hand slipping twice before he could turn it. He pushed the door open and fell inside, landing on a patch of filthy, threadbare carpet.

The squalor inside was overwhelming. The air was thick with the stench of stale beer, unwashed clothes, and old, rotting food. Piles of trash and dirty dishes covered every surface. It was the den of a creature that had long ago given up on any pretense of humanity. This was where his great partnership had been sealed over a drugged can of beer.

He scanned the chaos, his vision blurring. A phone. He needed a phone. He saw it on a small end table, half-buried under a stack of old magazines—an old, yellowing landline with a coiled cord. And beside it, a small miracle: a pile of mail.

He dragged himself across the floor, his progress marked by a thick, wet smear of blood on the disgusting carpet. He reached the table, knocking a tower of old newspapers onto himself, and grabbed a crumpled envelope. A utility bill. Through the grime and the blood on his fingers, he could make out the name and, more importantly, the address. He repeated the street and number over and over, a desperate mantra, burning it into his fading consciousness.

With trembling, clumsy fingers, he picked up the receiver. The dial tone was a loud, steady drone, the sound of civilization. His fingers, slick and unresponsive, kept slipping off the buttons. He stabbed at them, once, twice, finally managing to press the three numbers that were his only hope.

9-1-1.

A calm, female voice answered. "911, what is your emergency?"

Eli tried to speak, but only a dry, rattling hiss came out. He swallowed, the effort a searing pain in his dehydrated throat.

"Help… me," he rasped, his voice a wrecked, unrecognizable thing. "I've been… attacked. I'm hurt. Badly."

"Sir, can you tell me your location?"

He recited the address from the envelope, the numbers and letters a clumsy, slurred sequence.

"Okay, sir, help is on the way. Can you tell me what happened? Is the attacker still there?"

"He's dead," Eli whispered, the words tasting like ash. "He's dead."

He let the receiver fall from his grasp, the plastic clattering against the floor. It was done. He had done everything he could. He slumped against the base of the filthy couch, his strength gone, his body a trembling, broken wreck.

He closed his eyes and waited, listening to the sounds of the night outside the thin trailer walls. Every cricket’s chirp, every rustle of leaves in the wind, sounded like footsteps. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat of terror. The wait was its own special form of torture, a long, dark corridor of suspense.

Then, a new sound. Faint, at first, but growing steadily, unmistakably louder. A high, piercing wail that sliced through the night. Sirens.

Relief, so profound it was physically painful, washed over him. He started to laugh, a broken, weeping sound. He was going to live.

The sirens grew to a deafening roar as multiple vehicles screeched to a halt on the gravel outside. Bright, flashing red and blue lights strobed through the dirty windows, painting the squalid interior in frantic, chaotic patterns.

"SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT! OPEN UP!" a voice boomed through a megaphone, a sound of absolute authority.

Eli couldn't move. He couldn't speak. He could only lie there, watching the door.

There was no second warning.

The front door exploded inward, ripped from its hinges by a battering ram, the sound a deafening crash of splintering wood and tortured metal. The small trailer was instantly flooded with men in dark tactical gear, their faces grim, their bodies bristling with weapons. The brilliant white beams of their flashlights cut through the darkness, pinning him in their glare.

He saw a dozen guns, all pointed directly at the bloody, broken thing on the floor. At him. Rescue had arrived, and it looked like an execution.