Dawn broke red over Harlanville — not from the sun, but from the flames licking the Walmart. The McCoys had set the building ablaze after stripping it of every edible scrap. Thick black smoke rose like a signal fire, visible for thirty miles.
The creature had grown monstrous overnight. It was now the size of a city bus, a pulsating cathedral of pale flesh, dozens of arms, multiple fused torsos, and a vertical maw large enough to swallow a car. Its skin had split in places, revealing rows of new, hungry mouths. It no longer needed the chest. The chest was gone — digested.
Harlan rode on its back like a king on a living throne, rusty axe replaced by the sheriff's severed arm still clutching a pistol. Old Jeb marched beside it, now a giant of black muscle and bone blades. Billy and Sadie had woven themselves into the creature's flesh — literal extensions, their bodies half-absorbed so they could ride inside its pulsing meat, peering out through translucent windows of skin, giggling and waving at the horror around them.
Darlene's head had been sewn onto the front of the creature with barbed wire and intestines. Her eyes were wide and joyful. "Faster, darling," she cooed to the beast. "Mama wants city folk."
They spilled onto the interstate like a biblical plague.
I-64 was a parking lot of abandoned cars, people fleeing the flood and the rumors. The McCoys moved down the center lane at a leisurely pace, the creature's many legs crushing vehicles beneath it with wet, metallic crunches.
The first convoy of National Guard Humvees tried to stop them.
Machine guns opened fire. Bullets tore into the creature's flesh, but every wound simply birthed new mouths that laughed and spat the rounds back out. The creature extended twenty arms at once. Humvees were lifted into the air, flipped, and their occupants shaken out like candy from a piñata. Soldiers screamed as they were pulled apart — arms first, then legs, then torsos — and fed piece by piece into the vertical maw.
Harlan stood tall and addressed the dying men: "Tell your generals the McCoys are coming for dinner."
Billy and Sadie, still half-buried in the creature's body, darted out like parasitic worms. They swarmed over a flipped troop carrier, biting through Kevlar and dragging soldiers underwater into the flooded median. One young private begged for his life. Sadie kissed him on the mouth, then bit his tongue out and swallowed it whole while he gurgled.
Traffic jams became feeding grounds.
Families trapped in minivans watched in frozen horror as the creature tore roofs off like sardine cans. A soccer mom in a pink tracksuit was yanked through her sunroof and eaten from the feet up while her children screamed in the back seat. The creature saved the kids for last — soft, tender, screaming morsels that made its many mouths purr with pleasure.
Old Jeb found a Greyhound bus full of evacuees. He ripped the door off and climbed inside. For ten glorious minutes the bus rocked violently while wet crunching and screaming echoed from within. When he emerged, his belly was distended and his crown of skulls had gained three new additions.
By noon they had cleared twelve miles of interstate.
The creature was now the size of a house. Its shadow fell over entire sections of highway. New limbs sprouted constantly — some ending in clawed hands, others in fanged mouths. Darlene's head had multiplied; three identical versions of her face now grinned from different parts of the beast, all talking at once.
News helicopters swarmed overhead. This time the military tried to shoot them down to stop the footage, but it was too late. The images went viral worldwide:
A living mountain of flesh devouring an 18-wheeler full of cattle like it was a snack.
Children with black teeth waving from inside translucent skin.
Harlan standing atop the horror, blood raining around him, shouting, "Come and get it, America! Supper's ready!"
Social media exploded. #McCoyFeast, #AppalachianHorror, #EatTheRich — all trending at once. Conspiracy threads claimed it was a government experiment. Religious leaders called it the Rapture gone wrong. Late-night hosts tried to joke about it and failed when the feed cut to a live shot of the creature swallowing a news van whole.
The family didn't stop.
They reached the outskirts of the state capital by evening.
The city had declared martial law. Tanks rolled down the streets. Fighter jets screamed overhead. But the creature simply grew taller, sprouting wings large enough to blot out the sun. It lifted off the ground for the first time, flying low over the highway, raining blood and half-digested body parts onto the panicked crowds below.
Harlan laughed into the wind, voice amplified by the creature's many throats:
"We were hungry in the hollers for generations.
Now the whole country gets to feel what that's like."
Inside the creature's flesh, Billy and Sadie sang in perfect, eerie harmony:
"Row, row, row your boat…
Gently down the stream…
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…
Life is but a scream."
Darlene's three heads laughed together. "Bring me the fat ones from the suburbs. They taste like denial and cheeseburgers."
Old Jeb, now completely inhuman, roared with delight as he tore the roof off a rushing police cruiser and ate the officers like popcorn.
The creature opened its central vertical maw — now wide enough to swallow a city block — and spoke with the combined voices of every person it had ever consumed:
"Feed us.
Join us.
Become us."
And for the first time, millions of Americans watching from their living rooms felt a strange, terrible pull in their own stomachs.
A new kind of hunger.
The rot had learned to travel at sixty miles per hour.
And it was only getting started.
(End of Chapter 8)