By the third day, Black Hollow was no longer a town.
It was a slaughterhouse with water for walls.
The merged thing in the chest had grown too big for the wood. It now rode on Harlan's back like a grotesque backpack — a writhing mass of pale flesh, multiple arms, two fused heads, and a vertical mouth that split its torso open. Every few minutes it would reach over Harlan's shoulder and lick the blood from his neck with a long, black tongue. Harlan didn't mind. The creature's saliva made him stronger. His muscles felt like iron cables. His teeth had sharpened overnight.
The family moved like an unholy parade through the flooded streets.
Harlan led, axe over one shoulder, the creature riding the other.
Old Jeb walked beside him, now seven feet tall, skin splitting open to reveal new black muscle underneath. He carried a chain of severed heads — Dale Parker, the pregnant woman, the schoolteacher — swinging them like trophies.
Billy and Sadie rode on a raft made from church pews. They had skinned three corpses and wore the raw hides as cloaks. Sadie had braided human intestines into her hair. Billy's necklace of teeth and fingers now reached his waist.
Darlene brought up the rear, dragged on a plastic sheet by the children. Her torso was completely hollowed out; the fetuses had eaten everything below her ribs. Yet she still breathed, still smiled, still whispered, "More family… more meat…"
They hit the first remaining trailer at dawn.
Inside lived the Jenkins family — an old couple and their three adult sons who had barricaded themselves with guns and canned food. The McCoys didn't knock.
Harlan kicked the door off its hinges. The creature on his back screeched with delight and shot out six long arms at once. Two sons were yanked off their feet and pulled screaming into the mass of flesh. Bones crunched. Blood sprayed like warm rain. The third son managed to fire a shotgun blast directly into the creature's chest-mouth. The thing only laughed, swallowed the buckshot, and grew another arm.
Old Jeb took the old man by the head and twisted it clean off like a bottle cap. He drank straight from the neck while the headless body kept twitching.
Billy and Sadie played with the old woman. They tied her to the kitchen table and took turns carving thin slices from her thighs while she was still conscious. "Like bacon," Sadie giggled, frying the strips on the gas stove and feeding them to the creature.
When they were done, nothing usable remained. Even the bones were cracked open for marrow.
The family moved on.
By noon they had cleared four more homes. The water was now chest-deep and thick with gore. Corpses floated everywhere, but the McCoys only took the freshest meat. The rest they left for the crows and the rising thing in the flood.
At the county road bridge — the only way out of the holler — they found resistance.
Sheriff Harlan Briggs (no relation) had gathered what was left of the living: twelve deputies, some National Guard stragglers, and a news crew that had been filming the flood. Roadblocks, floodlights, even a couple of boats.
The sheriff raised a bullhorn. "Harlan McCoy! Drop your weapons and surrender! This is over!"
Harlan stepped forward, water swirling around his waist. The creature on his back opened every mouth and answered for him in a chorus of wet, childlike voices:
"Nothing is over. Everything is dinner."
The battle was short and disgusting.
The creature extended its limbs like tentacles, grabbing deputies and pulling them screaming into its body. One man was swallowed whole; you could see his outline struggling inside the translucent flesh before he dissolved. Billy and Sadie swam underwater like alligators and dragged people down by the ankles. Old Jeb tore through bullet-proof vests with his bare claws.
Darlene, lying half-submerged, laughed as bullets punched through her empty torso. "Tickles," she wheezed.
The news crew tried to film. The cameraman got his head bitten off mid-sentence. The reporter was stripped naked and eaten alive on camera while still screaming, "Oh God, they're eating us—!"
Harlan personally split the sheriff from skull to groin with one swing of the axe. He pulled out the man's still-beating heart and offered it to the creature like a communion wafer. The vertical mouth opened wide and accepted the gift with a grateful moan.
When the last scream died, the McCoys stood on the bridge surrounded by floating bodies and abandoned rifles.
The creature had doubled in size again. Now it was taller than Harlan. Its many arms cradled the survivors' guns like toys. One of its heads turned to Harlan and spoke clearly:
"We are ready. The county is next. Then the state. Then everything."
Sadie climbed onto the creature's back and kissed one of its many eyes. "Can we eat the governor? I want his fancy suit."
Billy was busy making a new necklace from deputy badges and ears. "And the soldiers. Their guns taste like metal and fear."
Old Jeb wiped sheriff's blood from his chin. "I remember when this road used to lead somewhere. Now it only leads to us."
Harlan looked down the long county road that disappeared into the rain. Lights of the next town glowed faintly in the distance — houses, stores, churches, schools. Thousands of people who still thought the world was normal.
He smiled, teeth longer and sharper than yesterday.
"Load the meat," he ordered. "We're going visiting."
Darlene, barely more than a talking ribcage, whispered from the water:
"Tell them the McCoys are coming for supper."
The creature opened all its mouths and began to sing — a wet, beautiful, terrible lullaby that echoed for miles across the flooded valley.
And every living thing that heard it felt a sudden, terrible hunger bloom inside their own guts.
(End of Chapter 6)