The thing below appeared again. Ken got his first semi-decent look at it, and his knees almost went out from under him.
Like the rest of the creatures that had followed Ken and the others in the storm drains, it was a baby. Had been a baby. Its face was gone. Not the way that some of the creatures’ faces had changed to accommodate huge eyes and scaly growths.
No, its face was truly gone. There was nothing of the human left in its countenance. No eyes, no nose to speak of, though in the quick glimpse Ken had before the thing moved away again, he thought he could see a pair of nostrils. Even they were in the wrong locations, moved far to the side so that one hole was on each side of the thing’s face, just in front of the ears.
The jaws had enlarged and shifted, moving forward and changing. The teeth….
The thing appeared again. The teeth moved, and the sound that had been only a shriek now became the sum total of Ken’s auditory world.
The thing’s jaw had split into four or perhaps five pieces. Hard to tell, because all of them were vibrating so fast Ken could barely see. The thing’s teeth were at the end of the jawbones, and the skin had pulled away from all of it so that what was once inside was now an external feature.
The thing put its mouthparts to the underside of the floor and sparks flew, raining bright floral arrangements on its face.
It paid no heed. Just kept sawing at the floor. Chewing through steel.
Its plan wasn’t hard to figure out. It was going to cut the floor away a bit at a time. And the survivors would either fall to their deaths, fall to its reach, or be forced to stop the bus.
Ken looked out the back window.
He couldn’t see any trace of the horde, could see no sign of Derek.
But they were there. He knew it.
The thing below kept cutting.
It stopped for a moment. Coughed that ratcheting cough, then started cutting again, and now it seemed the grinding sound of its teeth was even louder, stronger.
19
Sally hunched behind the gaping hole in the center of the bus, back arched so high the cat was nearly bent in two. But he still didn’t make a sound. His muzzle drew back from his teeth and spittle fell in ropy strands to the metal floor.
Then another section of the floor fell away and the cat nearly fell away as well. The portion of the center aisle that he had been standing on plummeted to the asphalt below, bounced and clattered and tossed up another sparkling floral arrangement. Then the whole bus jounced as the steel sheet went under the back tires on the driver’s side. Another pop.
The bus started listing.
“Do something about that!” shouted the driver. Both her hands were on the wheel at the ten o’clock position, pulling hard to compensate for the fact that the massive vehicle was trying to veer into a building on the side of the street. But she didn’t slow down. If anything, Ken felt like they were going faster.
“You do something about that!” Christopher shouted back.
Sally roared as though not wanting to be left out of the argument.
Aaron shoved Christopher out of the way. He moved to the edge of the newly-widened hole, holding tight to the broadsword. Ken had a moment to wonder where exactly their driver/rescuer had gotten the school bus and a cache of medieval weaponry from before Aaron swung the sword.
Ken caught a glimpse of the thing under the bus. It scampered away, barely avoiding the edge of the sword.
It chittered.
The sound made Ken’s legs grow weak again, and made his stomach feel loose in his guts. It was a wholly inhuman noise, the vocalization of something far removed from homo sapiens. It was no longer a child, but a thing.
So why did it bother him so much that Aaron was stabbing at it? Trying not only to knock it away from the bus’ chassis but to stab it; to kill it?
The thing scampered around the underside of the bus, always there, always just out of reach. Ken caught sight of it a few times. What remained of its skin was wet and suppurating, pus leaking from it so thick and fast that it fell not in drops but in sheets. The thing looked like a grub; a maggot recently wriggled free of dying flesh and rotten meat.
A strange lump bunched around its hips. Ken didn’t see it clearly for a moment. Aaron’s sword kept getting in the way as he swung at the tiny demon whenever he caught a glimpse of it below his feet.
The saw-screech came again. Another section of the floor fell away. This time below Christopher. He barely danced out of the way before it dropped into the rushing sea of air and pavement below the bus.
“Hurry up!” he screamed.
“This ain’t like shooting fish in a barrel,” Aaron shouted back. “Not like I got a lot of practice at it.” He was moving back and forth between the two holes now, trying to find and kill the tiny monster below them.