Davidson’s lungs were torn with exhaustion, and it was clear he was losing the pursuit. Having gained on the procession, it was now moving off faster than he had strength or willpower to follow.
He stopped, bracing his arms on his knees to support his aching torso, and looked under his sweat-sodden brow at his disappearing salvation. Then, summoning up all the energy he could muster, he yelled: Stop!
At first there was no response. Then, through the slits of his eyes, he thought he saw one or two of the revelers halt. He straightened up. Yes, one or two were looking at him. He felt, rather than saw, their eyes upon him.
He began to walk towards them.
Some of the instruments had died away, as though word of his presence was spreading among them. They’d definitely seen him, no doubt of that.
He walked on, faster now, and out of the haze, the details of the procession began to come clear.
His pace slowed a little. His heart, already pounding with exertion, thudded in his chest.
— My Jesus, he said, and for the first time in his thirty-six godless years the words were a true prayer.
He stood off half a mile from them, but there was no mistaking what he saw. His aching eyes knew papier-mâché from flesh, illusion from misshapen reality.
The creatures at the end of the procession, the least of the least, the hangers-on, were monsters whose appearance beggared the nightmares of insanity.
One was perhaps eighteen or twenty feet tall. Its skin, that hung in folds on its muscle, was a sheath of spikes, its head a cone of exposed teeth, set in scarlet gums. Another was three-winged, its triple ended tail thrashing the dust with reptilian enthusiasm. A third and fourth were married together in a union of monstrosities the result of which was more disgusting than the sum of its parts. Through its length and breadth this symbiotic horror was locked in seeping marriage, its limbs thrust in and through wounds in its partner’s flesh. Though the tongues of its heads were wound together it managed a cacophonous howl.
Davidson took a step back, and glanced round at the car and the highway. As he did so one of the things, black and red, began to scream like a whistle. Even at a half mile’s distance the noise cut into Davidson’s head. He looked back at the procession.
The whistling monster had left its place in the parade, and its clawed feet were pounding the desert as it began to race towards him. Uncontrollable panic swept through Davidson, and he felt his trousers fill as his bowels failed him.
The thing was rushing towards him with the speed of a cheetah, growing with every second, so he could see more detail of its alien anatomy with every step. The thumbless hands with their toothed palms, the head that bore only a tri-coloured eye, the sinew of its shoulder and chest, even its genitals, erect with anger, or (God help me) lust, two-pronged and beating against its abdomen.
Davidson shrieked a shriek that was almost the equal of the monster’s noise, and fled back the way he had come.
The car was a mile, two miles away, and he knew it offered no protection were he to reach it before the monster overcame him. In that moment he realized how close death was, how close it had always been, and he longed for a moment’s comprehension of this idiot honor.
It was already close behind him as his shit-slimed legs buckled, and he fell, and crawled, and dragged himself towards the car. As he heard the thud of its feet at his back he instinctively huddled into a ball of whimpering flesh, and awaited the coup de grace.
He waited two heart-beats.
Three. Four. Still it didn’t come.
The whistling voice had grown to an unbearable pitch, and was now fading a little. The gnashing palms did not connect with his body. Cautiously, expecting his head to be snapped from his neck at any moment, he peered through his fingers.
The creature had overtaken him.
Perhaps contemptuous of his frailty it had run on past him towards the highway.