Terminal Freeze

48

Very slowly, the thing resolved out of the blackness. Striped shadows flexed to the motion of muscled flanks. Ekberg stared in horror as-creeping inch by inch into the half-light, like a swimmer emerging from a dark pool-outrageous and terrible details gained form. The huge, shovel-shaped head, covered with short black hair, coarse and glistening. The overhung upper jaw, fronted by an array of huge fangs and flanked by two tusks, behind which-horribly-hung hundreds of narrow, razor-sharp tendrils, like the vibrissae of a walrus. The wide mandible, small and set back by comparison yet anchored to the skull by a massive hinge of bone. And-most shocking because she had seen them before, at least a lifetime before, encased in ice-the unblinking eyes that stared back at them with a mixture of lust and malice.

“Christ,” Conti murmured beside her. “Christ. It’s magnificent.” Slowly-very slowly-he aimed the camera, armed the Record button, and began to film.

Wolff was standing right behind him. He began to raise his gun, but he was shaking so badly Ekberg could hear his teeth rattling. “Emilio,” he said in a strangled voice. “For the love of God-”

“Quick, Kari,” Conti interrupted in a whisper. “Sound.”

But Ekberg could not move. She could only stare.

Moving so slowly she could not be sure it was even moving at all, the thing began its approach down the dappled hallway. Its massive forelegs were bowed slightly, like a bulldog’s, tapering to bulbous, hooflike paws barbed with cruel talons. It was fully visible now, the length of a young horse. The line of its back tapered from high broad shoulders down to squat, powerful haunches matted with coarse hair. She stared, mouth agape. Then, almost unwillingly, her gaze returned to the mouth: the curved fangs; the countless, unutterably hideous mass of tendrils that hung down behind them. She noticed that the tendrils did not just shake gently in time to the monster’s steps, but seemed to slither among themselves with independent movement…

The pain in her head was spiking cruelly, her heart laboring in her chest. And yet she could not retreat, could not even move. She was transfixed by fear. Now the creature stopped again, crouching, maybe twenty feet from them. But not once did it blink or look away. It seemed to Ekberg that its eyes were hard and deep as topaz, burning with fierce inner fire.

It remained motionless for perhaps sixty seconds. The only sound was the low whirring of Conti’s camera, her own strained breathing. And then, once again, it began creeping toward them.

This was too much for Wolff. With a low groan he wheeled around and went tearing back down the corridor, gun clattering unheeded to the ground.

The thing paused again, more briefly this time. A narrow tongue, forked and pink, peeped out from below the vibrissae. It extended-farther, farther-licking first one tusk, then the other.

It was at this point Conti seemed to go a little mad. He began to laugh, softly at first, and then louder. At least, in her paroxysm of horror and disbelief, Ekberg thought it must be a laugh: a strange, high sound.

Eeeeeeee, Conti keened, still louder now, the camera tilting visibly as his shoulders shook: Heeee-eeeeeeeeeee…

“Emilio,” she whispered.

“I’ve got it!” Conti cried, almost hysterically. “It’s a wrap. It’s a wrap! Eeeeee-heeeeeee-”

In two bounds the thing was on him, knocking him violently into the air. The camera sailed down the hallway, hitting a wall and then falling to the floor, shivering into pieces. As he fell, the creature caught Conti between its enormous front paws and began to spin him, like a craftsman using a lathe, clutching him close and running the wriggling razor tendrils hanging from its upper jaw back and forth along his form, from head to foot and back again, working him like a cob of corn. Gobbets of blood began raining out in all directions, spattering the walls and ceiling and causing nearby lightbulbs to pop and sizzle. Conti’s banshee laughter morphed into a sharp scream, rising violently in pitch. Abruptly, the creature jammed the director’s head into its mouth and bit down. There was a low crunching sound and the scream stopped. The beast opened its mouth again and Conti dropped heavily to the ground. And then at last Ekberg found her feet and began to run, past Conti and the nightmare beast that was hunched over him, heedless of the dark, heedless of any obstacles in her path. And as she hurtled headlong down the shadow-haunted corridor and away from the insanity, Conti began to make noise again: not laughter or screams, not this time, but the sharp snapping of bone: crack, crack, crack…