Titan Song Dan Stout (top 20 books to read txt) 📖

see? You rub it on whatever hurts. He even offered some for me to try on my arthritis.”

With an ear-popping crackle, the store radio began to blare music, yet another Dinah McIntire track. At the same time, a dissonant grinding noise came from inside the store. I snarled a quick “Stay here!” and slammed the patrol door shut.

I sprinted back into the store, looking at the tarp and assuming that Glouchester or Klare had come back for another peek. The thought of them interfering brewed a strange rage inside me. As if they’d betrayed us somehow, and I had an impulse to give them exactly what they deserved. But the tarp material was untouched, and I shook the thoughts from my head. The crowd of lookie-loos was milling about, many of them with furrowed brows, as if struggling through their own thoughts of betrayal.

I dashed through the store entrance and found the manager frantically slapping at the control panel I’d seen earlier. He was panicked, shouting, “It won’t stop! I don’t know why it won’t stop!”

Across the store not-Stevens and Jax were searching for a way to unplug the display as the corpse of the teen stock clerk was dragged from one side of the window display to the other. Finally Jax pulled a bundle of wires from under the elevated stand, and the nightmarish thing ground to a halt as Dinah McIntire’s wail dropped an octave and trailed off. My heart was still thumping, but I had time to let out a breath. Then the body wrenched backward and shoved, prying itself off of the display in a series of wet pops as it came free from the nails still embedded in the backing material.

The teenager’s face was bisected by a vertical slit, like the one Saul Petrevisch had grown. But the dead teen’s mark continued down his throat. As he lurched forward, discarding the torn and nail-perforated apron, it was clear that the slit traced a line down his narrow chest. I braced myself, sure that I knew what was coming next. And sure enough, Brandon’s body rushed at me, just as Bobby Kearn and Saul had done. Ignoring the screams and shouts around us, I drew my revolver, focused on the transformed center of mass . . . and froze.

As Brandon galloped toward me, his shirt fell open and the line down his chest was revealed to be a mouth. The skin of his chest and belly pulled back, revealing layers of thin triangular blades, like rows of shark’s teeth, and beyond them were the pinks, purples, and whites of his muscles, organs, and ribcage. I had enough time to process what I was seeing, and then he was next to me . . . and then past me, leaving me untouched.

The dead teenager ran straight through the entrance, plunging into the crowd trying to peer past the tarp to get a glimpse of gore. That was when the screaming began in earnest.

The crowd fled into the street. There was a screeching of tires followed by a metallic crunch, the unmistakable sound of a collision. That was what snapped me out of my shocked stare. I turned to not-Stevens and pointed at the door. “Control the crowd, and radio in for help!” Not bothering to look, I shouted, “Jax, with me!”

I turned and ran, revolver held at a high ready. I exited the front of the store to find the crowd fleeing. To my right, an utterly ordinary traffic accident: a beetle-driven Therreau wagon had collided with a sports car. The tibron beetle, like all of its species, never stopped moving. Almost as large as the sport coupe it had run into, it had crawled halfway onto the vehicle’s hood. I glanced at the Therreau driver, but he was in the back of the wagon, cowering in terror as his supplies rolled out of the rear, bouncing across the uneven street. I followed his gaze, and my mouth fell open.

Brandon had dropped to all fours, traveling in great bounds, vaulting across the sidewalk and onto the cobblestone street. Then he abruptly slowed, as something dangled below him.

With no flesh holding them inside, Brandon’s intestines had fallen through the jaws in his stomach, striking the pavement in a wet pile. The mouth stretched forward, shark’s teeth pressing past the shell, scraping across the cobblestones and closing on the intestines. The sound of chewing was wet and horrible, the boy’s organs pulled back into his body only to fall out again in clumps. He moved forward again in a sudden dash of speed, loose innards dragging across the ground as he leapt ahead, the maw in his stomach crunching wetly.

The teenager slammed into the side of the patrol car with immense force, enough to throw open the trunk and shatter the near window. The old man scrambled across the seat. He slapped his hands against the far window, muffled pleas barely audible over the noise and chaos around us. He was trapped in there, unable to open the door or roll down the window to escape. And I was the last one to close that door.

I lowered my weapon and fired. To save our murder suspect. To end the danger. But more than anything, to destroy the waking nightmare before me. The handgun slugs ripped through Brandon’s torso, but weren’t enough to halt his progress. Brandon threw himself at the patrol car once more, jamming one arm through the broken window and seizing Alto by the throat. I scrambled to reload my revolver. The older man’s screams grew high-pitched; his struggles intensified, then stopped altogether. I raised my weapon once again, uncertain what good it would do.

Then a thunderclap over my shoulder left my ears ringing, and Brandon’s head snapped back and froze, as if suspended in amber. My eyes focused, and I saw that much of his face was missing. I turned. Jax stood by the rear of the patrol car. The broken trunk was open, and he’d retrieved the shotgun from its rack.