Bestial (27 page)

But they would get to him sooner or later. They would deal with their problem, then come for him. They would look in through the bars at him, then open the door and come into his cell.

He stretched his aching body out on the bench and tried to get comfortable. It was impossible. He lay there for what seemed a long time, staring up at the ceiling.

Footsteps sounded from somewhere outside the cell. They sounded tentative at first, then came faster, growing closer. Keys jangled softly.

George made a small whimpering sound in his throat. One of them was coming for him.

“George.” The whispered voice was female and was quickly followed by a metallic rattling sound.

He sat up and saw Ella unlocking the door of his cell. He quickly got to his feet as she came in.

“Oh, God, it’s good to see you,” he said.

She put the keys on the bench and began to unbutton her blouse. “They’re preoccupied right now, but we don’t have much time.”

“Much ti—Ella, what are you doing?”

Taking the blouse off, she said, “Listen to me, George. Your options are pretty limited. They’re going to kill you and eat you. Not necessarily in that order. They’re cruel. Sadistic. Sometimes they like to start eating their prey before its dead, just to hear the prey scream and beg. Are you listening to me?” She wore no bra and her bare breasts swayed with her movements as she kicked off her shoes.

George stood there wearing the facial expression of a man who had just received an electrical shock. “Luh-listening? Yes, yes, I’m lis—what’re you—”

”I need help, George. I can’t take them down alone. But I’m just one person. I have the advantage of being like them. I need your help.” She pulled off her jeans.

“
My
help? What can I—”

”In your present condition, you can’t do much. But we can change that.”

“Change... change... “

”You can face them and be eaten. Probably alive. You’ll die screaming while they bite into your flesh and tear it away. They’ll—”

”Stop it! What, what’re you—”

”Or we can fuck. Right now. But we have to do it
now
if you’re going to turn in time to be of any help to me. Even now it might be too late. It varies with each individual. We’ll just have to hope it works fast in you.”

“You want—I mean, we’re—you want to—”

She stepped forward, naked and beautiful, and clutched at his belt, jerking it hard to unfasten the buckle.

“Quit babbling. We have to do it
now
, George. Are you with me?”

“I-I-I—”

”Are you
with
me?”

He thought of what she’d just said:
You can face them and be eaten. Probably alive. You’ll die screaming while they bite into your flesh and tear it away.

He thought,
What choice do I have?

The cell floor was hard and cold and uncomfortable. But they weren’t interested in romance.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Handling the Problem

Sheriff Irving Taggart stood at the end of a long corridor on the third floor of Sisters of Mercy Hospital with two of his deputies, Jeremiah, Dr. Rodriguez, and Gregg Dunfy, chief of hospital security. He struggled to conceal his excitement. He kept his face stony, his mouth in a straight line. It simply wouldn’t look good for the sheriff to be
happy
about the fact that a small, vicious creature that already had killed one person and injured two others was running loose in the hospital. But he was.

There was another one like the First Born. It had not been a fluke. It had happened again, and would continue to happen. This supported Taggart’s suspicion that they were evolving, improving, becoming something more than they already were—something that would be dominant, if it wasn’t already.

He’d gotten the whole story from Dr. Rodriguez and knew that the infant’s mother—some fat teenager who apparently had engaged in sex with a member of his pack—was being kept in the hospital for observation. The bloodbath that had taken place in the Emergency Room a few hours ago was under control. His deputies had secured the scene and were doing everything possible to keep the story from getting out. Dr. Rodriguez had been instrumental in the proper handling of the situation. His phone call had alerted Taggart to the problem immediately, and the doctor had been working with them for the last few hours to find the infant. They behaved as if they did not know each other, as if they did not share a secret.

“The last sighting we know of was on this floor,” Dunfy said. His hair was mussed and he looked rumpled after being dragged out of bed by Dr. Rodriguez and the nursing supervisor, Mrs. Padaczeck. The doctor had not been satisfied with the security officer on duty—he’d insisted to Mrs. Padaczeck that the head of the department be involved, and he had called Dunfy himself. “A nurse in the south wing reported to one of my men that something small had raced by her and knocked over a small table.” He turned to Dr. Rodriguez and squinted slightly, his upper lip curling with confusion. “
What
kind of animal did you say this was?”

“I didn’t say,” Dr. Rodriguez said. “We, uh... aren’t sure. It came in through the open door of the ER earlier tonight and attacked a couple of people just before I came on duty.”

“It
attacked
people?” Dunfy said. “Was anyone hurt?”

Dr. Rodriguez cleared his throat. “There were injuries, yes.”

Dunfy frowned. “And
they
don’t know what kind of animal it was? The people it attacked, I mean?”

Clearly annoyed by Dunfy’s questions, Dr. Rodriguez said, “It was a chaotic situation and apparently the, um, animal was very fast.”

Taggart turned to Dunfy. “I think we’ve got this under control now, Mr. Dunfy,” he said. “My deputies and I will corner the animal on this floor and get rid of it. I appreciate your help, but I think you can go home now and go back to bed. Sorry to have bothered you at such a late hour.”

Dunfy said, “Oh, I don’t mind being here and—”

”That’s good of you, Dunfy,” Taggart said, raising his voice slightly to overwhelm Dunfy’s words. He put a hand on the security chief’s shoulder and squeezed firmly. “But really. We’ve got things under control.” He was a few inches taller than Dunfy and looked down at him, his good eye narrowing slightly. He squeezed Dunfy’s shoulder again. “Really. Go home now.”

After Dunfy was gone, Taggart turned to Jeremiah and said quietly, “What’s taking them so long?”

Jeremiah stood beside the sheriff, tall and slender, his hands join behind his back. He tipped his head toward Taggart and said quietly, “I just spoke with Carmen a moment ago. She said they were on their way.”

Taggart frowned impatiently, but nodded once. He turned to Dr. Rodriguez. “Are we going to have any problems with anyone from here on?”

Keeping his voice low, the doctor shrugged and said, “Well, obviously there are patients and nurses everywhere—this
is
a hospital. No one in authority will get in your way, but I’m sure any witnesses will have questions.”

Taggart said, “I’ll worry about that.” To Jeremiah and the two deputies, he said, “Keep track of who sees what. Get names whenever possible. We’ll have some cleaning up to do once this is over.”

“What about George?” Dr. Rodriguez whispered.

Taggart said, “Who?”

“George Purdy, the man I told your deputies about. He could be... troublesome. To say the least.”

“Oh, him. Don’t worry. He won’t be any trouble. He’s under lock and key for now, and he’ll be taken care of later.” They stood in silence for a moment, then Taggart sighed and said to no one in particular, “Goddammit, what’s taking them so long?”

Jeremiah removed his cell phone from his pocket and punched a button with a long, bony forefinger. He spoke briefly and quietly, then slipped the phone back in his pocket as he turned to Taggart and said, “They’re coming.”

At fifty-three, Wilma Radnitch had been a registered nurse for twenty-eight years, and normally she was very good at her job. But this was not one of her better nights in any respect, and she had difficulty concentrating on the work.

“You feeling okay, Wilma?” Ana asked. Ana was a Certified Nursing Assistant in her twenties who had started on the floor only a month ago.

“Just tired,” Wilma lied as she prepared a Heparin injection for a patient. “I’m fine, Ana, thanks.”

With a slight frown, Ana said, “You look... I don’t know, like you might be angry. You’re sure everything’s all right?”

Wilma’s face tended to appear angry whenever she was in deep thought or bothered by something, a trait she hated. She made an effort to relax her features, then smiled. “Really, I’m fine.” She placed the syringe on a small tray the size of a paperback book and headed down the corridor.

But she was not fine. The day before, she had learned that her husband Brandon, a pharmacist, was having an affair with a twenty-something cashier in his pharmacy, some tart named Debi. With an “i”—just thinking about the name made Wilma’s stomach burn. It had been going on for almost two months. When she’d confronted Brandon about it, he’d said he had no intention of ending the relationship.

“I don’t love her,” he’d said calmly, as if he were discussing the weather. “It’s not at all emotional, it’s just sex. You haven’t been interested in sex in years, so why should you care?”

Not interested in sex in years?
she thought as she approached Mrs. Dorcy’s room.
I’ve
always
been interested in sex, but he lost interest in
me
.
She thought of all the times she’d tried to stir him, tried to instigate sex, and either had been ignored or told he didn’t feel like it.

When he’d told her she hadn’t been interested in sex and shouldn’t care about his relationship with Debi, first Wilma had wanted to slug him. Then she’d wanted to pick up something heavy and bludgeon him with it. She was devastated, and his refusal to discuss it any further made her feel worse. Their thirtieth wedding anniversary would be in February. She wondered if they’d still be together to celebrate it. She worried about how their son and daughter would react to all this. If possible, she’d like to keep them from ever finding out.

By the time she got to Mrs. Dorcy’s room, her face had regained its dark expression. She broke it with a slight smile as she pushed through the door.

Mrs. Dorcy, a woman of sixty who’d just had a total hip replacement, was asleep and the room was dark. Wilma left the door open, and light from the corridor fell into the room as she went to Mrs. Dorcy’s bedside. She reached up and turned on the light above the bed.

There was a small sound in the room. It came from the beyond the curtain that was drawn between Mrs. Dorcy’s bed and the second bed in the room, which was occupied by a morbidly obese sixty-nine-year-old widow named Mrs. Woodlawn, who’d had knee surgery. Wilma stopped and listened to the sound a moment, then decided it was Mrs. Woodlawn smacking her lips in her sleep.

“Mrs. Dorcy,” Wilma said gently, touching the woman’s arm. “Mrs. Dorcy, it’s time for your Heparin shot.”

Mrs. Dorcy stirred as Wilma pulled down the covers and moved her hospital gown out of the way. It was not necessary for the patient to be fully awake for the shallow injection into the subcutaneous tissue of the abdomen.

Mrs. Dorcy opened her eyes slightly and muttered, “Mmm... blood clot shot?”

“That’s right,” Wilma said.

Mrs. Dorcy drifted back to sleep almost immediately.

Wilma’s smile did not last long. Her teeth were soon beginning to clench as she imagined plunging the needle she held into Debi’s eyes. Then, even better, into Brandon’s eyes.

As Wilma went about her task, she realized she could still hear that quiet smacking sound beyond the curtain. Was Mrs. Woodlawn
still
smacking her lips? She administered the injection, replaced Mrs. Dorcy’s gown, tucked the covers back up, and turned off the light.

As Wilma started to leave, a wet, guttural sound came from the other end of the room. Wilma stopped and listened, frowning. She heard it again—like someone trying to make a noise through a constricted throat. She went around the edge of the curtain that fell between the two beds. In the bad light, it took a moment to understand what she was seeing.

Something—her first thought was that it was a monkey—was hunkered atop the hill of Mrs. Woodlawn’s enormous belly. The pale blanket and sheet seemed darker than they were supposed to be.

Wilma’s heart began to pound. She still could not quite make out what she was seeing—dark shapes, no detail in the bad light—but whatever it was, it was wrong. She reached up and swept the curtain back. The light from the open door splashed over Mrs. Woodlawn’s bed.

There was blood everywhere, and the blanket and sheet had been shoved to the foot of the bed. Mrs. Woodlawn’s great belly had been torn open. The little creature on top of her lifted its head. Its silver eyes fell on Wilma as the lips of its bloody snout peeled back over red, meat-flecked fangs, and it growled.

Wilma’s scream cut through the silent room like a piercing alarm as she swept her arms up defensively. The tray and syringe sailed through the air as she threw herself backward away from the thing. She was so horrified by the growling creature that her brain seemed to become momentarily disconnected from her body. Her feet stumbled clumsily over each other and she fell backward. She was still screaming when she hit the floor.