Threnody (036).

(This is a 500-word-a-day novel project.)

Ugh, Ryan said. Hey kid, close your eyes for a little bit, all right?

The boy did as she was asked, and then Jesse saw what Ryan had. The driver was still in the car, and it appeared that the impact of the crash had sent the steering column directly into his chest. There was blood everywhere, covering the windshield that was cracked but still mostly intact, running in thin rivulets down the door. The blood was little more than dark lines running over the smashed slashes in the paint job, but it still dripped onto the ground as if the accident had happened only moments before their arrival. Jesse’s heart beat quickly beneath her breast – she waited for the man in the driver’s seat to raise his head and talk to her, and was glad he was pinned by the steering wheel. He wouldn’t be able to come after her.

There’s another one, Ryan said, pointing to a Le Gerard Morningstar with the T-top windows popped out; sticking out from beneath it like the Wicked Witch of the East were a pair of blue-jeaned legs ending in thick engineer boots. And that wasn’t the only one: the more they walked, the more wrecks they saw, trucks smashed into trees, cars tipped over, mini-vans torn in half, their front ends facing their rears. Quite a few of them had bite marks on them, and claw marks torn across their chassis; some of them were burst open like obscene flowers. Incredibly, they even found a small plane, sticking tail up, the front of it collapsed in like an accordion. There was no sign of the pilot, but there was blood, thick in a puddle on the ground beneath where the door had been, still wet and sogging the ground. The boy stepped on it, his feet squishing in it.

Bad things, he said.

Then they all heard it. A smacking sound, wet, guttural, the sound you made while eating fried chicken, really digging into it. It was coming from the other side of the plane. Ryan reached out for the gun and Jesse gave it to him, and with it in both hands he side-stepped around the metal carriage, with Jesse and the boy close behind. There was some sort of animal feasting on a pile of body parts stacked almost primly against the plane’s side. But it wasn’t an animal. Its skin was mottled gray and greasy looking, like residue left on a restaurant wall from years of cigarettes smoke. Its head was bald but covered with hundreds of blisters, and its front covered with a fine down of silver hair that shone flatly in the darkness. It raised its head and considered them, its jaw working slowly, blood raining down its chin. Its eyes were a yellow that defied description, department store windows right into Hell. Nearly three quarters of its face seemed to be taken up solely by its teeth, each one jutting forward like a jagged arrowhead.