A whipping tendril of vile flesh lashed towards us—and wound around Baxter’s belly with twenty more feet of length to spare. The extra bight looped around me. A terrible pressure closed around my ribs. And the endmost part of the tentacle began choking my neck. From the very tip of the tentacle, a baleful eye glared at me. Meanwhile the main body of the shoggoth was catching up, bedizened with eyes and teeth, like a stadium full of doughy aliens smushed into one.
I gargled a scream, yanked my pistol from its holster and fired into the meat of the tentacle that held Baxter and me. My bullets made no difference at all. And then I was out of ammo. I could hardly breathe, I was seeing spots. I tried my knife—nothing doing. The flesh healed itself as fast as I could stab.
But now Baxter, on t
