Liar's Harvest (The Emergent Earth) Read Free Page B

and shoulder, becoming dark and mottled at the ends of its arms and legs. The limbs were out of proportion with the body, longer than you would expect, and all four ended in a powerful looking hand that was clawed, but otherwise appeared human.
    A pair of shiny black spider eyes floated over a lipless mouth full of needle-sharp teeth as thick as a finger. They were spaced a good inch apart from each other and were clearly designed to interlock when the jaws were closed.
    The creature shot past me on a collision course with Leon, its claws throwing up chunks of dirt and weeds as it gained speed. Leon fired a split-second before the creature slammed into him.
    The crack of the gunshot echoed out into the silent woods.
    And every single grave in the five acre cemetery vomited forth a shrieking nightmare.

6

    W hile the graveyard was small by today’s standards, five acres is still a square with sides over a thousand feet long. And we were smack in the center, surrounded by pissed off, corpse-eating nightmares looking to defend their territory.
    Anne reacted first. She’s a lovely person both inside and out, and enjoys shopping and flowers and talking about bands that frankly all sound the same to me, and for the most part is exactly the kind of charming person she appears to be.
    But underneath all of that is a woman who was relentlessly trained from childhood by her grandfather to put bullets into things she doesn’t like, as quickly and accurately as humanly possible. That part of her is without humor or pity, and is frighteningly efficient.
    Anne’s aim snapped to the nearest creature’s head, and she fired her P250 twice in rapid succession, the shots so close together that they seemed to merge into one stuttering blast. The top of the creature’s skull vanished in a grisly spray that painted the headstone behind it.
    Chuck fired wildly at a creature that was charging at Anne’s back, but missed. It abruptly changed course and leaped onto him a split-second later, slamming him to the ground in a tangle of thrashing limbs.
    Two seconds in, and already half of us were down. By some miracle I was in the clear, so Anne and I had a few precious seconds to help the others.
    I bellowed over the din of the screeching creatures. “Help Chuck! I’m going for Leon!” Anne nodded and bolted for Chuck, already trying to line up a safe shot.
    The creatures seemed confused, dashing around randomly and blundering into tombstones and other creatures, and more often than not lashing out on impact. The way they were turning their heads toward the ground made me think that the daylight was blinding them.
    That would have been good news, except that I saw one of the creatures rake furrows into a headstone with its claws after crashing into it. Blinded or not, if we didn’t get out of the swarm soon, we were going to be torn apart.
    An enraged creature bleeding from an encounter with one of its own was racing towards Leon. He saw it before I did and was desperately yanking on the stock of the shotgun behind his head, since his pistol had been emptied into the first creature.
    The shotgun was pinned to the ground beneath the seat back, with Leon and the dead creature on his chest pressing down on it. There was no way it was coming free.
    It was pure luck that I was close enough to body check the inbound creature before it reached him.
    We hit the ground with me on the bottom. It had to weigh three hundred pounds, easy. The impact took my breath, and before I could recover it had wrapped all four limbs around me. Two of its clawed hands tore into my back and the other two dug into my thighs.
    I barely managed to get Hunger between its teeth when it went for my face. Broken bits of fang dropped down onto me as the massive jaws slammed shut on the metal bar between my hands. It bore down and shook its head like a dog, but I kept my grip on Hunger, barely. It was even stronger than it looked, and it looked like it could chew up an engine