Bloody Kisses (6 page)

T
hings that Dr. Elizabeth Wollstonecraft
was prepared for while conducting an autopsy: strange sounds, strange smells, odd variations in what people think the human body should look like, and all the nitty gritty parts of being human—including bowel and bladder evacuation upon death.

Those things had never affected her.

The corpse on the table in front of her was something different, mainly because of the erection.

Most death erections were caused by a violent death that damaged major blood vessels causing priapism—the most common of these to cause the condition being hanging or strangulation. Her John Doe shouldn’t have been subjected to either.

She’d been led to believe that it was the injection of PrPM3.

Elizabeth examined his throat and found ligature marks.

What the actual hell was going on?

Polidori leaned over his work and moved quickly, scraping under the John Doe’s fingernails, drawing a blood sample and preparing the bone saw. “We need to get a look at his brain as soon as we can.”

“Wait, he’s been strangled. He was murdered,” Elizabeth said.

“Was he?” Polidori looked as if he already knew that.

“Just tell me what’s going on. Stop with the surprises. I can’t do my job effectively without all the facts.” Elizabeth gripped the side of the table, the cool metal grounding her and reminding her to breathe.

“Get a load of his Angel Lust.” He nodded to the erection.

“Yes, I saw that. That’s why I was checking for ligature marks, and I found them,” Elizabeth said, exasperated.

The hand on the table jerked.

Elizabeth wasn’t fazed. While muscle movement after death was rare, it wasn’t unheard of. Neither was the sudden vocalization. The long, dry, death rattle that was simply air leaving the lungs.

What was unheard of, however, was when she pressed the scalpel to his chest, his eyes opened and he grabbed her wrist.

Elizabeth wasn’t ashamed to admit that she almost shit her pants.

She shrieked and Polidori grabbed him, pried his fingers from around her wrist, breaking them as he did so.

PrPM3 had done something to this man, something that made him not living and not dead.

His eyes were all white, yet not sightless. They tracked her. His jaw creaked and cracked as it separated, much like a snake’s as he dove for her arm. Venom dripped from newly sharp teeth—he had a mouth like a buzz saw.

“Elizabeth, if you’d please exit using strategy A, I’ll follow. The manacles will hold him until we’re free.”

As he spoke, the manacles in question clamped around his wrists and ankles, even his neck. The dead man turned his head at an unnatural angle to look at her. There was a rage in his unseeing eyes, something dark and unholy.

Fear knotted around her, and she found herself frozen to the spot.

This, what they’d made, it was wrong. “The phenobarbital,” she began.

“You have to understand, we need to study these specimens in real time. I thought you understood that now.”

“Goddamn it, Polidori.”

“I thought we agreed I didn’t need to read you any more nursey rhymes? Now, please. Do as I’ve asked. This one is stronger than we anticipated, and the manacles won’t hold him long.”

She pressed her lips together and looked between the escape and Polidori. “I won’t leave you alone with him.”

“Oh, my dear, I’m dead. He can’t hurt me. But you… he could hurt you very much. He’s obviously venomous, but I don’t know if he’s infectious. I don’t believe that’s how you imagined the end of your day.”

He was right. She did as he asked, trying not to think about what else he hadn’t told her or what other horrors awaited them. Elizabeth could do that later. Right now, she needed to get herself to safety, to the room beyond this containment unit.

They’d known what they’d done, what was going to happen. It was why the transport team had left so quickly. They’d dropped their parcels and evacuated the island like it was…

She got herself on the other side and, as soon as she was secure, Polidori released the thing.

He broke through the manacles as if they were nothing more than paper.

Jesus, it was strong. She wondered if the containment unit would be able to hold him. She ran back over all the exit routes from the installation, the safe houses and hiding places they’d shown her on the tour.

This was all supposed to be worst case scenario, something that happened due to forces beyond their control—not something they’d engineered on purpose.

She cringed at her own naiveté. Had she ever really believed such a thing? Deep down in the dark places of her heart where only truth could breathe?

No.

Now was the time for protocol.

She watched as it ignored Polidori, as if he was inconsequential to the thing. It followed in her steps, like a dog sniffing out her trail, and tracked her to the door. It dropped to all fours and licked the floor, venom and spittle pooling at the corners of its mouth. It gnawed on the doorframe with those horrible nightmare teeth. Not getting the result it wanted, it lifted its nose to the air, scenting.

Polidori eased his way around the room, edging toward the door. Waiting for it to explore some other avenue.

It seemed like hours they stood there, frozen. In reality, she knew it had only been seconds. Her fingernails had cut half-moon wounds into her palms and, when Polidori moved toward the exit, she held her breath.

His fingerprint opened the door and suddenly, the creature turned its head and darted for him, moving faster than she thought possible.

Her idea of what a reanimated corpse could do had been shaped by Hollywood, and this was a thousand times more awful. It seemed as if he was more sentient than she would’ve thought, with deductive reasoning.

The idea of a mindless hungry automaton was terrible, but put human cunning behind it with only a primal need to feed, and the possibilities were the stuff of nightmares.

It knew she was there. It still had no interest in Polidori, only that his fingerprint could open the door.

John made it into the decontamination sally port and, after he’d been rendered safe, he stepped through to the observation room where she waited.

With dawning horror, she watched as the creature put his finger up to the door as Polidori had, mimicking his actions to open the door. He splayed one hand on the window while he pressed the buttons with his other.

“He’s trying to talk!” John exclaimed.

Elizabeth fumbled with the controls on the comm and set it to record. This would all be transmitted back to the Bureau 7 mainframe for study and observation.

Proof, really.

His voice echoed with a death rattle, long drawn out exhales of what had to be putrid breath from dead lungs.

What he said made it all the more horrible.

“Help me,” he hissed in that singular voice. “Help me.”

“You know there’s no help for him, right?” John looked at her.

“Of course there is. It’s a one-two shot to the back of the head.”

He laughed. “I’m glad you’re not on about putting him down humanely. I don’t know that anyone should get that close.”

“I don’t know that it would work.” She wasn’t sure if it was fear or bile crawling up the back of her throat. “And a bullet to the cerebellum is pretty humane.”

He pressed himself more fully against the glass, his dead, white eyes fixed on her. They seemed to bore under her clothes, under her skin, and deep into the meat—meat he wanted to mash between those awful jaws.

As they watched, he began to bash his head against the door with all the supernatural strength in his reanimated body.

Smash after smash against the door bloodied his head. There was an audible crack to his skull, but it didn’t stop him. He licked at the gore on the window, devouring those bits of himself with a manic glee. All the while, he continued to watch Elizabeth.

She could practically feel his teeth tearing into her.

And he smiled. He grinned, a stretched maw, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.

For all she knew, maybe he did.

“What’s going on with the other subjects? Were they all injected with PrPM3 before transport?” Elizabeth tried to pull up the vid feeds on the comm.

“No, only three of them. They were part of another study at the installation in Athens. Or that’s what it’s showing in the file.”

“So can we pull up the vids of what happened on transport? Why was this man killed?”

Polidori began typing, entered his clearance code and the vids from the transport came up. They showed nothing out of the ordinary until she saw a woman she recognized from her case files.

“Oh my god, stop it. Stop it there!” She pointed at the screen. “Zoom in on her. Dressed like security detail, but look, just there at the back of her neck.”

“Fuck,” Polidori hissed. “If that tattoo is any indication, she’s X.”

X was a group of paranormal militants that wanted to lift the veil, wanted to stop hiding in the shadows. They wanted to bring all of their kind out into the light so to speak.

That would induce a mass panic and anarchy that the world wouldn’t survive. At least, not the world of humans.

Leaving a vacuum for the paranormals to step in and take over. Humans would be used as slaves and livestock—the various secret organizations who worked within this world to protect humankind fought a constant battle.

They continued the playback and watched as the woman injected their test subject with something and then broke his neck with a quick snap. She looked up at the camera and smiled before injecting three other subjects.

She’d still be in containment with them.

How many others had she injected? What was that shit?

“Damn it,” she growled.

“We have to get a sample,” John said what they were both thinking. “I’ll go back in. He’s not going to hurt me.”

“I’m going to call security and let them know we have a breach.”

“Let me get the sample first. Whatever this stuff was, we need to know. If we call for a lockdown, we’ll never know, but that crap will still be out there, a ticking bomb.”

“You’re right.” Elizabeth scrubbed a hand over her face and sighed. “Okay, so you’re going back in. What can I do?”

“There’s a secret compartment behind the cabinet.” Polidori pointed. “Open it.”

“Can’t you?” She narrowed her eyes.

“There’s a weapon in there that will key to your biometrics. You need to open it so it will key to you. I don’t need it. I have my own weapons.” He clicked his teeth together to accentuate his meaning.

He stood precariously close to the entrance, and there was something about the situation that felt wrong, but against her better judgement, she opened the panel.

Instead of the weapon he’d promised, a hidden door opened revealing a secret room, and from what she could see of it from the outside, it looked to be a panic room.

Polidori was abandoning her.

“I’m sorry, Elizabeth. If you’ll recall, I tried to talk you out of coming in today.” Polidori gave her a smile that was more pity than anything.

“So you’re part of this? Part of X?” She refused to acknowledge the panic rising in her chest.

“No, not at all. I’m part of Team John. See, your monster is coming. I can’t be here when he arrives. It would probably be better for all involved if you never met him.” He shrugged. “This way, the rest of us have a fighting chance.”

“What are you talking about?”

“No time to chat, Elizabeth. I’ll miss you.” He slammed his palm down on the door to the containment unit and the snarling, slavering creature was free.

It charged toward her just as the safe room door closed and left her alone with the revenant.

“I’ll kill you, Polidori. I don’t know how, but I will kill you,” she cried. Jesus, she didn’t know what had possessed her to say that. She wasn’t a killing kind of person.

Of course, being cornered by a flesh-eating zombie could change one’s constitution.

There was an ax encased in glass on the wall—goddamn it, why hadn’t she seen that sooner? Polidori with his—
oh shit!

She slammed back into the wall and put her elbow through the glass. Elizabeth was suddenly grateful for the self-defense class all employees of Bureau 7 had to take. She grabbed the ax just in time to put it between them.

He was strong, so incredibly strong, and his breath and body were fetid. He smelled as if he’d been dead for days, not hours.

Elizabeth wasn’t sure how long she could fight him off, and if he was infectious…

A horrible flash played out in her mind’s eye. There was no way out of this. He was stronger than she was, faster than she was…

And she was alone.

Alarms blared and a calm, recorded voice came over the comm. “This is a Code Black. Prepare for containment and cleaning protocol. Please secure your stations and proceed to the nearest safety pod. This is a Code Black—”

She shuddered to think what was going down outside their lab. Even if she defeated this one, how many more were there?

“Safeeeeeety pod…” he hissed in her face.

Suddenly, he was ripped from her by Barton Smith, head of security on Kythnos. He was just as strong as the revenant, fighting him with his bare hands. When Barton wrestled him down, Elizabeth didn’t hesitate.

She swung the ax in a mighty arc and brought it down on the creature’s neck, severing the head. It rolled from the body, those razor teeth still clacking together as if still searching for meat.

The body jerked and twitched, but finally stopped—even as the teeth continued snap and chatter, the head chewing on its own lips and tongue now as it died.

She shuddered with revulsion.

“You okay, Dr. Wollstonecraft? Did it bite you?” Barton checked her over, turning her this way and that with his big hands.

“I don’t think so.”

“Let’s hope not. We lost Sector 4.”

“Sector 4?” That was the housing unit. “All of Sector 4? How the hell does that happen?” Her voice hit a higher pitch than she meant. She was trying like hell not to freak out, but she was losing ground rather quickly as the world around her went to shit.