Chapter 10: The House at the edge of Town (10)

“Of course,” she snapped, watching the cocoon yank Gorchov bodily off the ground again, “of course you’d pull this now.”

The thing did not give him time.

The moment Gorchov’s fingers brushed his phone, the massive arm tightened and whipped him sideways. He struck the ground with enough force to pulverize stone, the impact punching a fresh crater into the earth.

Dirt, blood, and fragments of what used to be the house sprayed outward in a violent halo.

The phone skidded away, shattered.

Gorchov coughed, ribs audibly rearranging themselves. “That’s… inconvenient.”

Another slam.

This one vertical.

The ground buckled inward like wet clay, swallowing half his torso before spitting him back out in a geyser of gore.

The cocoon throbbed, silk rippling with furious intent, its embedded human limbs twitching and scraping as if cheering.

Lena clenched her fists.

“You see?” she yelled into the empty air where the boss’s voice had been moments ago.

“THIS IS WHY WE DON’T DO THIS MID-FIGHT.”

The cocoon responded by slamming Gorchov again.

And again.

Each impact was worse than the last, the creature clearly learning, adjusting its force, its angle, its rhythm.

The craters overlapped now, the ground reduced to churned mud and blood-soaked debris. Gorchov’s body bent around the blows, bones snapping and resetting with angry, wet cracks, but even he was slowing.

He reached for his phone again.

The arm immediately reacted.

It whipped him upward, spun him midair, then drove him headfirst into the earth with enough force to create a shockwave that knocked Lena back a step.

The phone flew free again, bouncing uselessly across the ground.

“That’s it,” Lena snarled.

She turned.

The car she’d landed on sat crooked nearby, half off the road and half sunk into torn earth, as if the ground itself had tried, and failed, to swallow it. The hood was caved in where her weight had hit, metal folded like paper. The windshield had shattered inward in a dense spiderweb of cracks, shards glittering faintly in the low light. Steam hissed steadily from beneath the hood, white plumes curling up and away, and somewhere inside, the engine was still running, uneven, angry, but miraculously intact.

She sprinted.

Her boots pounded against gravel and dirt, glass crunching violently underfoot with every step. The sound was sharp and wrong, but she barely registered it. She vaulted onto the hood, hands slapping against dented metal, nearly losing her balance as her foot skidded on something wet. Blood, hers or someone else’s, she didn’t know. She slipped, caught herself on the edge of the windshield frame, then lunged for the driver’s door.

It tore open with a metallic scream.

She threw herself inside.

Shards bit into her palms and forearms as she slid across the seat, pain flaring bright and hot, but she ignored it. The door slammed shut behind her with a hollow, echoing thud that felt far too thin to count as protection. For half a heartbeat, the car smelled like burned oil, blood, and fear.

The cocoon noticed her.

Its massive arm paused mid-swing, the motion halting unnaturally, as if the thing had suddenly remembered another threat existed. The silk rippled along its surface, tension shifting, attention snapping toward the car like a predator locking onto movement.

Lena jammed the key into the ignition.

Her hands shook, slick with blood and glass dust, but muscle memory took over. 

She twisted.

The engine roared.

The sound was deafening inside the cramped cabin, raw and violent, the whole vehicle shuddering as if it were offended by being asked to move again. She didn’t wait for it to settle. She slammed her foot down on the accelerator.

The car lurched forward violently.

Her head snapped back against the headrest as the suspension screamed, tires bouncing over broken ground, traction coming and going in sickening jolts. The steering wheel bucked in her grip, but she held on, knuckles whitening, teeth clenched hard enough to hurt.

She aimed straight for the cocoon.

Not its center.

The arm.

The massive, grotesque limb anchoring it to the ground, the one wrapped around Gorchov, fingers buried deep, holding him like a prize that hadn’t yet decided how to be consumed.

“HEY!” she screamed, voice tearing out of her throat. “OVER HERE!”

She wrenched the wheel, lining up the angle, gripping it hard enough that the metal frame beneath the padding groaned. Her arms burned. Her vision tunneled.

The cocoon reacted too late.

The car slammed into the arm at full speed.

Metal shrieked as the front end crumpled further, the sound high and agonized, a tortured scream of steel being folded past its limits. The hood buckled inward another inch, then another, panels collapsing into each other as if the car were trying to curl in on itself. The noise cut through everything, louder than the engine, louder than her own breath.

Silk tore with a wet, ripping sound that carried through the air like fabric being shredded underwater. It wasn’t a clean tear. It stretched first, resisting, fibers whining under impossible tension before giving way in uneven bursts. Strands snapped and recoiled, slapping against metal and ground alike, slick with dark fluid that smeared across the windshield.

The impact drove straight through the vehicle and into her bones.

Lena’s teeth clacked together violently as the force slammed through the steering column and up her arms.

Pain exploded behind her eyes in a burst of white, her vision flashing and stuttering as if the world itself had skipped a frame. Her ribs screamed. Her shoulders burned. Every joint in her body protested at once.

The creature reeled.

Its massive bulk shuddered, the force rippling through it like a shockwave through gelatin, distortion traveling visibly through its form. The cocoon lurched backward, silk stretching and compressing in sickening waves as momentum transferred inward. What had been anchored and immovable a heartbeat ago now staggered, balance thrown violently off.

The arm spasmed.

Not once, but repeatedly, violent, uncontrolled jerks tearing through it as joints buckled under stress they were never meant to endure. Fingers clenched reflexively, then loosened, then clenched again, grip faltering as internal coordination broke down. The pressure on whatever it held shifted erratically, no longer precise, no longer certain.

The car continued to push.

Tires screamed as they spun uselessly, rubber burning against dirt, stone, and slick silk. The smell flooded the cabin, hot rubber, scorched oil, blood. The engine howled in furious protest, redlining, every vibration threatening catastrophic failure. Warning lights flared on the dashboard in frantic bursts of color, unnoticed.

Lena kept her foot down.

Her leg shook with the effort, muscles trembling as she forced it to stay planted. Her hands were locked around the steering wheel, fingers numb, grip so tight she no longer felt the texture of the leather beneath her palms. The wheel juddered violently, threatening to wrench free, but she refused to give it even a centimeter.

Another jolt.

The arm struck the ground hard, shock traveling up through the car again, but this time the resistance was weaker. Silk continued to tear, fibers peeling away in long, stringy lengths that snapped back uselessly. The arm’s movements grew sloppier, delayed, strength bleeding out with every second of sustained pressure.

Lena screamed, raw, wordless, and leaned forward into the force, as if sheer will could add weight to the impact.

She didn’t let up.

Not for a second.

Not until something finally began to give.

She didn’t look away.

The arm thrashed, striking the ground once, twice, trying to reassert control, but the angle was wrong now. The silk binding it stretched past tolerance, fibers snapping and recoiling. The grip on Gorchov faltered, tightening reflexively once, then slipping.

The car pushed again.

Another jolt.

Another tear.

The arm finally gave way just enough, fingers peeling back as if pried loose by sheer, stupid force.

Lena screamed, whether in triumph or terror, she couldn’t tell, and held the accelerator down as long as the engine would give her anything at all.

Behind the windshield, the world blurred into noise, impact, and motion.

But the arm was no longer steady.

And for the first time since she’d hit the ground, Lena felt something dangerously close to hope.

The cocoon howled, not with sound, but with a violent distortion that made the air ripple and the trees bend away.

Gorchov fell.

He hit the ground hard, bounced once, then slid to a stop in a smear of blood and mud.

Lena didn’t stop.

She cranked the wheel, slammed the accelerator again, and rammed the cocoon a second time, this one angled upward, tearing more silk free and forcing it back another few feet. Embedded limbs ripped loose, slapping wetly against the ground as the creature recoiled.

The car finally died with a strangled cough, engine smoking violently.

Lena shoved the door open and jumped out before it could catch fire.

“GO,” she screamed, already moving.

She snatched her phone from the ground, screen cracked but intact, and hurled it toward Gorchov with everything she had.

“ASK. FOR. AUTHORIZATION.”

The cocoon recovered fast.

Too fast.

Its remaining arm slammed down between them, carving a trench that split the earth and sent Lena sprawling. She rolled, came up on one knee, blood running freely now, vision swimming, but she kept her eyes on Gorchov.

The phone hit his chest.

He caught it.

Barely.

His fingers shook violently as he brought it up, bones in his hand visibly shifting into alignment with loud, irritated pops. Blood dripped onto the screen, smearing it crimson.

The cocoon surged toward him again, silk rippling, pressure skyrocketing as it prepared to reclaim its prey.

Gorchov didn’t look at it.

He raised the phone to his ear.

“ASTER-” he coughed, blood spraying across the dirt, “-OID Authorization requested.”

The words landed like a detonator.

The cocoon froze.

Not stopped.

Hesitated.

The pressure in the air spiked violently, reality shuddering as though something deep beneath the world had just been tapped on the shoulder.

Silence.

Back in the diner, the boss wiped his hands on a towel and answered without hesitation.

“Authorization granted,” he said calmly.

He paused, flipping a bun one last time.

“Make it quick.”

The line went dead.