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  Insatiable Series Box Set

  Skin

  Crackers

  Flesh

  Patrick Logan

  Skin

  Insatiable Series Book 1

  Patrick Logan

  Prologue

  Burnt Grass

  Come.

  The air was so dry that the dust it carried irritated the Leader’s flesh like grit under an eyelid.

  Come.

  But he had no time for such trivialities; it was calling to him—like a celestial beacon, it summoned him, and this took precedence over all else.

  The seven Askergan tribesmen had been following the fire in the sky for more than six hours. Over hills, creeks, and through the heavily wooded terrain they ran, their wide feet grasping the varied landscape as effectively as the feet of their ancestors. They did not speak during their trek, but this was not a consequence of fatigue; the trained long-distance hunters that they were, running for six hours or more was not challenging, particularly given the slow trajectory of the flaming object that traced a line through dawn. No, there was another reason for their lack of exchange: there was something disturbing about the way it slid through the atmosphere, not like a wayward, tumbling asteroid, but determined, as if the object had a purpose. It was this directness that put all seven tribesmen in a state of unease and stiffened their tongues.

  Although the Askergan didn’t see the object touch down, they heard it. There was a slight fizzle, and then a crack like dry lightning boiling the warm air only moments after the flaming ball dipped below the tree line.

  The Leader pulled into the clearing first, and as soon as he broke through the wooded area, he stopped fast. The man’s eyes, usually even and emotionless, scanned the field like a starving animal seeking prey. Then, like his forward advance, his saccadic eye movements suddenly stopped as they focused on something in the middle of the clearing: a radius of burnt grass—blackened in some places, more charcoal grey in others—surrounding a large hole that was roughly six feet in diameter.

  The Leader calmly bent and grasped a branch that lay beside his fan-like feet. Then he took two aggressive steps toward the hole, the deliberate act a signal to the other Askergan members to spread out.

  As the Leader approached the hole, he picked up a strange smell, one that quickly overwhelmed the still lingering odor of charred vegetation—something that neither he, nor the other men who surrounded him, had ever smelled before: an indescribable thickness, as if the air had suddenly been infused with some unknown element. Despite this new, uncomfortable sensation, the Leader’s advance did not falter. With a few more deliberate steps, he closed in on the burnt radius. It was only when he reached the charcoal-colored grass that he stopped advancing, prodding the scorched earth with an inquisitive foot. To his surprise, the burnt undergrowth seemed cool to the touch, even more refreshing than the living grass beneath his other foot. Curious, and not completely trusting the soles of his calloused feet, he bent and cautiously reached for the darkened lawn.

  Rubbing the ashy remains between thumb and forefinger, the Leader confirmed that it was indeed cool—maybe even cold—to the touch. The air was also thicker down near the hole where he crouched, and it forced him to breathe more deeply, his diaphragm fully contracting in order to pull in the requisite oxygen. There was something in that strange air; something that evoked a desire, a need, to look into the hole. But for now, the Leader resisted this urge, and instead used the branch to push himself back to his feet.

  Drawing his calm blue eyes from the earth, he looked up, his gaze darting to each of the frightened faces of the tribesmen that had formed a semi-circle around him. Then he held his hand out in front of his face, spreading his fingers as wide as possible. He even turned his body to ensure that every one of them took note of his gesture, of which the meaning was clear: stay. It was only then, standing tall, fingers spread out in front of him, that he realized that the clearing was completely silent. Listening closely, he could not hear a single bird chirping, and even the seemingly ever-rustling and stirring leaves in the forest behind seemed paralyzed.

  The Leader squinted his eyes, then turned his attention back to the ground before him.

  The hole was roughly four feet deep, a perfect cylinder in the earth, and nestled at the bottom, as if carefully placed instead of having just fallen from the sky, was a translucent oval roughly the size of a human skull. When the Askergan tribe leader tentatively tapped the egg-shaped orb with the branch, the jelly-like exterior appeared to harden and a pink substance swirled beneath the transparent membrane. The object also seemed to thrum upon impact, releasing a bizarre electrical energy that vibrated the man’s crooked brown teeth and made the hair on the back of his shoulders and arms stand at attention. But instead of being frightened, the man with the calm blue eyes grew curious.

  Come.

  The Leader withdrew the branch from the hole, and the cloudy substance within the object rapidly dissipated until it regained its liquid-like state.

  Intrigued, he brought the branch back above the opening in the earth, but instead of tapping the object as he had before, he flipped the branch with a sharp twist of his wiry wrist and forearm so that the jagged, broken end hung over the opening like a spear. With only a moment’s hesitation, he thrust the sharp end of the stick into the opening, the branch sliding effortlessly through his open palm.

  Unlike when he had tapped the object, this time it didn’t harden and go dark. Instead, the sharp end pierced the rubbery skin and the liquid inside instantly churned, tiny pink beads moving about each other faster and faster, increasing not only in speed but also in number.

  The Leader dropped to his knees and leaned closer to the hole in the earth, watching in awe as the gelatinous skin reformed around the wound that the makeshift spear had made. But before the lesion could close completely, the pink fluid began to accumulate around the edges of the branch, rapidly building into a froth. As he watched, a few ounces of the foamy pink fluid began creeping up the shaft like tendrils—no, more like fingers—twisting and curling around the knots in the wood like new, malignant vessels.

  The Leader leaned closer, and although his eyes remained calm, he became acutely aware that the thick air down by the hole in the earth was again making it difficult for him to draw a full breath. When the creeping pink liquid reached halfway up the branch, the Leader shifted his body to one knee with the intention of standing. In that instant—in that fraction of a second before he pushed his palms flat against the burnt grey grass and stood—it happened.

  A massive cloud of pink dust shot out of the earth and engulfed the Leader’s head. After hovering in the air for a moment, the pink mist coalesced into seven individual strands, twisting in the air like ethereal cotton threads, before each one was individually inhaled by every orifice on the Leader’s face: one for each tear duct, ear, and nostril, and a large, tumbling rope that didn’t enter his gaping mouth so much as it burrowed down his throat. The Leader’s head suddenly snapped back, and in an instant the cloud was gone, sucked into his face with alarming speed. This—the puff of pink air, the condensation, and the inhalation of the odd pink cloud—happened so fast that it would have been easy for the tribesmen to chalk it up to their imagination, fueled by the mild fatigue from their long run and the incessant, unrelenting hot sun beating down on them.

  Nevertheless, when the Askergan tribe leader’s head w
hipped forward violently and he crouched on his knees, fists embedded in the burnt grass, none of them stepped forward to lend a hand. It could be that they were just obeying his last order—stay—or, more likely, it was the strange smell that suddenly wafted toward them, a stench that reeked like wind through the ribs of a decaying deer. Or maybe it was their memory of the fiery object that had streaked across the sky for the better part of a day. Whatever held them rooted in place kept them there for a good minute until their Leader slowly raised his head.

  Even at a distance, they could see that his eyes were closed and that his cheeks were slightly puffed, as if he were holding his breath. A moment later, the Leader’s back hitched and he expelled a surprisingly tight cloud of pink air that, unlike the previous ball that had engulfed and then entered his head, quickly dissipated into the atmosphere. Then he said a word in a voice that was not quite his.

  “Oot’-keban.”

  The tribesmen’s eyes went wide when the word reached them—it was a word they hadn’t heard in a very long time. It was a word that went unspoken, one that brought about visions of an evil that had nearly destroyed the tribe many decades prior, an ancient Askergan lore that transcended generations. It was a term that meant, quite simply, evil skin.

  The Leader opened his eyes, and when the tribesmen saw the dark pools that were hidden behind those thin brown lids, they turned and ran.

  * * *

  The Leader knew he had made a mistake even before he had caught and killed the remaining three tribe members. The first two had been easy, almost too easy, and, in the end, this was his downfall.

  Within minutes, he had caught the two nearest tribesmen, and moments after stripping them of their skin, he had consumed their entire bodies whole—their blood, their guts, their bones—leaving nothing but their disgusting skin to dry in the hot sun like thick, moist sausage casings. The next took a little more time—not much, but more than the first two—as his already bloated and stretched body was becoming difficult to propel across the uneven terrain. After consuming this tribe member, his sides tore slightly, the skin around his ribs splitting in ribbons. Even the corners of his mouth were torn, necessarily so to permit the consumption of some of the larger bones—the femurs, the hips, the skull—and inside these tears, a milky green pigment peeked through.

  Despite his massively distended body, the Leader managed to catch the last three Askergan tribesmen. Although the men shouted and screamed, “Keban! Keban! Keban!”—Evil! Evil! Evil!—they did not fight, the fear induced by his appearance doing nearly as much damage as his calloused hands and long, pointed fingers. But now, as his tan-and-green-striped flesh soaked in their blood, he realized that he had eaten too much, too soon: his ribs had broken, the front halves flipped outward like angel wings to contain the meat within his torso, and his neck had been stretched nearly as wide as his shoulders.

  A pain shot through his body; despite what he had already consumed, he needed to eat, and he needed to eat now—he needed to feed his children, his palil, and he needed the tribe members’ skins to incubate them.

  Squatting amidst the wasted skins of what had once been his loyal followers, he closed his eyes and drew foul, thick air from somewhere deep within his core into his mouth, filling his flaccid cheeks. Then he let the vulgar gas out in a pink puff and opened his eyes.

  “Come,” he uttered in a baritone whisper that seemed to skip across the terrain like a flat stone over water.

  It was no use. They had travelled so far that even if the other members of the tribe heard his call, they would never reach him in time.

  The beast tilted its head and listened; nothing—the forest was silent, all of the inhabitants having fled beyond the reaches of his summons.

  But Oot’-keban needed to eat now.

  The beast shifted its weight and stood, feeling the skin of the Leader’s body tear completely on its left side and fall away like a hunk of ice off a warming glacier.

  A noise partway between a belch and a moan—a bastardized expression of pain—exited the thing’s ragged mouth. The membrane peeking through tears in the Askergan leader’s skin was immature; a milky white green that had not yet fully developed.

  Too fast, I ate too fast.

  Changing focus, the thing pivoted and lumbered back in the direction it had come, its stuffed body tumbling ungainly with every step.

  The shambling green mass, trailing tendrils of what once had been the Askergan tribe leader’s skin, eventually made it back to its gelatinous pink orb, but by then it was too late. The beast collapsed on the cool circumference of burnt grass that surrounded the hole in the earth, taking minor comfort in the sensation.

  Come Come

  Come

  Come Come

  Come

  With a final effort, the beast rolled its massive body into the hole, and what was left of the Leader’s shoulder struck the gelatin orb within with a dull thud. As before, the object hardened, the pink liquid swirled, and the thrum that ensued brought with it a final moment of clarity.

  I will return—one day I will return. I will not make this mistake again.

  Earth spilled into the hole, choking out the hot sun, burying the strange, celestial object and its lone inhabitant beneath several feet of charred grey soot.

  Come.

  Chapter One

  The Storm is Not Coming

  1.

  “Leap Pad, Daddy.”

  Cody Lawrence flicked on the wipers, clearing the thick snowflakes that had settled on the windshield.

  “Sure, Henrietta,” he answered, briefly glancing in the rearview mirror. His three-year-old daughter was wrapped so tightly in her jacket and snow pants, and wedged so firmly in her car seat, that her head and face barely peeked out from beneath the folds of fabric and faux fur. She looked like a submarine sandwich that had been squeezed too tightly at one end.

  “Marley, couldn’t you have at least taken off her boots?”

  His wife turned to him from the passenger seat, and although he had meant the comment to be more humorous than malicious, her stern look made it clear that she was not amused. Cody quickly turned his attention back to the road.

  “Leap Pad, Daddy,” Henrietta repeated.

  “Yes, sweetheart,” Cody answered, but despite his affirmation, he doubted that wrapped up the way she was, the girl would be able to lift her sausage-like arms to hold the darn thing, let alone use the pen. He turned back to Marley.

  “Maybe you can reach back and pull down the zipper of her—”

  “I had to do everything to get the girls ready,” Marley interrupted.

  Cody opened his mouth to say something, but his wife quickly continued before he could speak.

  “And I had to pack all of our bags, including yours. So before you go on saying that Henri looks uncomfortable, maybe you could have helped out just a little.”

  Cody cringed.

  Henri.

  He hated when she called their youngest daughter that.

  It wasn’t like I was doing nothing, Cody thought, and then, as if Marley had read his mind, she added, “Your writing could have waited, you know.”

  Yet despite her harsh words, Marley’s tone had softened somewhat.

  Well, if it were up to you, my writing could always wait.

  Cody was about to say as much, but thankfully his daughter spoke again before he had the chance to dig an even deeper hole for himself.

  “Leap Pad, Daddy.”

  Marley twisted suddenly in her seat and spoke in a tone that was probably—hopefully—more aggressive than she had intended.

  “For Christ’s sake, Corina, get your sister’s Leap Pad out of the bag and give it to her!”

  Marley’s frustration went unnoticed.

  “Corina!”

  Cody glanced in the rearview mirror at their eldest daughter who, although not yet thirteen, already appeared to be entering the dreaded mid- to late-teenage years. She sat with her head pressed against the car window, the br
eath that puffed out from between her full red lips leaving rhythmic condensation on the cold glass. Her bright green eyes—who the heck did she get her green eyes from?—although halfway open, were vacant. It wasn’t that she was ignoring her mother—not intentionally. Rather, the white headphones from which even Cody could hear the Top 40 beats emanating were the underlying cause of her disobedience.

  “Corina!” Marley shouted again, this time grabbing at her daughter’s leg.

  Corina removed one of the earbuds and finally turned to face her mother.

  “What, Mom?” she asked, clearly annoyed.

  Cody turned his eyes back to the road and instinctively increased the speed of the windshield wiper. The snow was coming down heavier now, blanketing the already white road and trees with thick, fresh flakes.

  “It’s too loud, Corina! And pass your sister her Leap Pad!”

  As if suddenly reminded of her request, Henrietta raised her round face.

  “Leap Pad, Daddy.”

  Cody sighed and wondered, not for the first time, if making the long drive north in the snow had been a mistake.

  2.

  Oxford Lawrence Awoke With a start, a scream caught in his throat. The veins in his neck flexed and jutted and his eyelids pulled back so far that he felt his eyes bulge from their sockets, precipitously close to falling out of their orbits. A few painful, diaphragm-paralyzing moments later, he finally managed to gulp air like a guppy struggling for oxygen on land.

  What the fuck—?

  But when he looked down, Oxford knew ‘What the fuck’.

  The hypodermic needle lay embedded in the crook of his left elbow, a belt—his belt—loosely wrapped around his biceps. A sigh bubbled in his throat then, but he caught it before it could escape his lips.