Jack Kursed (41 page)

He pushed Travis aside as he leaned
toward the microphone.

"Victoria?"

Everyone in the lab jumped and looked
at each other. They all rushed to the terminal in the lab, Victoria
winning out by shoving everyone back.

"Jack?"

"Are you having a little party in
there?"

"You bet. I’m glad you
could join us."

"Is this...magical?"

She shook her head. "Afraid not. This
is our new friend, science and medicine, at work here."

A man with graying blond
hair tried to muscle his way to the camera. "Who is that? Who the
fuck are you?"

"Donaldson, if you don’t
back up, I will beat you," Victoria said. "Jack, as you can see,
this place has all gone to Hell."

"And I still say it’s all
your fault," Donaldson shouted.

"Okay, so what’s going
on?" Jack asked.

"We’re trapped, more or
less. We’ve got maybe two hundred ghouls here total. I’ve been
reviewing the video, and it looks like they got careless. This
place was being destroyed when I got here. A scientist got bit, and
you can guess what happened next."

He narrowed his eyes.
"Actually, no, I can’t. This isn't the movies. Ghouls aren’t
contagious. They eat the living, sure, but they don’t create more
ghouls."

"Well, these ghouls do.
This isn’t magic we’re dealing with."

"Alright, we’ll talk more
when I get inside. What room are you in?"

"Go inside?" Travis
interrupted. "I’m not going in there."

Jack smiled. Travis was very
correct.

"We’re in lab 302. Third
floor. Jack, I don't think they can hurt you, but there are still a
lot of them."

"I know. Immune or not, I don't want
fifty corpses pinning me down."

"How are you gonna even get in the
gate?"

"I've got an idea about that. We'll
talk in a few minutes."

"I'm not going in there,"
Travis repeated. "You're on your own on that one. I've taken you
this far, I'm not taking you any further."

Jack studied the yard. He
wasn't sure if the doors were locked or not, but didn't want to
take the chance of hitting a locked door with a dozen shambling
corpses behind him. There was an open office window near the corner
of the building.

"You're right, Travis. You won't be
taking me in there."

He raised the gun at his
side and shot Travis in the leg. Travis screamed and collapsed to
the ground. Jack climbed in Travis' car and pulled as close to the
fence as he could. Travis was trying to crawl away as Jack left the
car and stalked him.

"What are you doing?" Travis
said.

Jack pulled him to his
feet and dragged him onto the roof of his car. The ghouls moved to
their position along the fence and moaned at the scent of fresh
blood.

"There's one more thing you can do for
me," Jack said.

"No, please, no." He cried
as Jack had him halfway over the fence. Two ghouls grabbed him by
the shirt, but Travis had a solid grip with his one good hand.
"It's not human."

"Neither am I."

Jack kicked Travis'
fingers, and over the fence he went. Ghouls came from all
directions as they converged on Travis. He screamed in agony as
they feasted on him, ripping and pulling. Jack calmly moved the car
down another twenty feet along the fence and used the roof to scale
the fence.

He walked at a steady pace
across the yard. If he ran, he knew he'd catch the ghouls'
attention. They were thoroughly engaged in their meal, and he
wanted to keep it that way.

He pulled himself into the
office through the open window. The office was dark and had been
torn to pieces. He nearly tripped over a dead body as he made his
way to the door. A man in a shirt and tie lay on the floor, an
empty wine glass in one hand and a gun in the other. He'd taken his
own life with a bullet to the temple, a wise decision. Jack had
tried the same thing many times over the decades, just to see if
mankind's advancing firearms could break his curse.

Cracking the door open
slowly, he saw two ghouls wandering near the end of the hall. A
stairwell was across from him. He grabbed the dead man’s gun,
adding it to the weapon he took from Travis. After taking a nervous
breath he crossed the hall and entered the stairwell. He had no
doubt he was immune to the bite of a ghoul, but didn’t want to drag
thirty of them to lab 302.

The moans above told him
he wasn’t alone in the stairwell. As he passed the door for the
second floor he ran into two of them, wandering on the stairs. One
lunged for him, a ghoul wearing a torn suit. Jack easily dodged its
grasp and dumped him down the stairwell to the floor below. The
second ghoul grabbed Jack’s arm and bit down hard. He winced in
pain for the moment it lasted, and then struck the ghoul in the
head with the butt of his gun. He nearly shot it, but didn’t want
to make any more noise than necessary. Wrenching his arm away, he
simply kicked the ghoul in the knee, shattering it. The ghoul
buckled and fell down the stairs, landing at a strange angle near
the landing.

Jack opened the door to
see two dead bodies against the wall across from him. Lab 302 was
just ahead, near a hallway intersection. He heard the moans, but
didn’t see any ghouls nearby.

The door to Lab 302 was locked. He
lightly knocked on the glass window and saw a flurry of movement. A
woman tried to unlock the door, only to be stopped by a
man.

"Do not let him in here!"

"Victoria said he’s okay.
He’ll help us."

"Fuck Victoria, that
monster."

"Donaldson, get out of my
way."

"We’re doing things my
way. We’re not listening to a bloodsucker."

Jack raised an eyebrow as
a scuffle broke out behind the door. There was a ghoul around the
corner, judging from the moan. The door finally flew open, and a
hand pulled him in by the shirt and locked the door behind
him.

A few of the lights in the
lab were out, leaving pockets of darkness. Examination tables and
equipment were everywhere. The man Jack recognized as Donaldson
leaned against the wall with a bloody lip. A man and woman stood
together not far away, looking beat up themselves. Torn lab coats,
circles under the eyes, blood on their pants.

"Who are you?" the woman
asked.

Jack said nothing, and
searched the room for Victoria. She was laying on a table near the
back of the lab, her hands folded across her stomach. He went
straight to her, leaving the mortals behind to argue. Victoria was
paler than usual.

"Victoria?"

She stirred at the sound
of his voice. "Took you long enough."

"What the hell is going on here? Are
you okay?"

"I haven’t had a drink in
a few days. And I can’t drink from them. They’re
infected."

"Infected?"

She took a breath. "This
all started out as an attempt to cure vampires, but it backfired on
them."

He nodded. "Baltimore, two years
ago."

"Yes. Well, this time they
figured they could control the feral vampires, make weapons out of
them. But the virus changed, and now we’re dealing with
ghouls."

The man and woman joined
them.

"We thought we had
everything under control," she said. "When the vampires went wild
we opened the ceiling, frying them. But the sunlight didn’t affect
some of them, and they changed into what you see now. Our bosses
thought they'd make greater weapons, and killed all the vampires.
These...ghouls are just as contagious. One bite, and you’ll
change."

"Jack, this is Diane,"
Victoria said. "Her partner, Eli. That irritating bastard over
there is Donaldson. They’re all that’s left of this wonderful
project."

"You should have called me
the moment you found this place," Jack said.

"I tried. No signal. Eli had to rig up
something just to get a five second call out to you."

Jack still had many
questions, but Victoria’s health was the most important
thing.

"These humans are
infected?"

"Yes," Diane said sadly.
"We’ll be ghouls in another day or so."

"Okay," Jack said, putting
a hand under Victoria’s head. "First things first, drink from
me."

It was a topic they’d
joked about before, but never had to entertain.

"You really think that
will work?"

"My blood is human, just
with a little magic spell. I’ll heal as you’re drinking. I’ll be
fine."

"What...are you?" Eli
asked.

"Shut up. You ready?"

Victoria nodded, and Jack
helped her up. Her fangs grew as she angled for his
neck.

"Are you crazy?" he said.
"There’s no reason to make this erotic. Drink from my arm. It’s
weird enough I’ll be getting a hard-on from you."

She smirked, and sank her
fangs into his forearm above the wrist. Jack felt no pain, didn’t
even feel the blood leaving his body. But he did feel aroused, like
earlier in the laundry room with Erica.

"That's about enough," he said after a
minute.

Victoria held up an index
finger, drawing a chuckle from Jack. She continued to drink, and he
had to grab the edge of the lab table to help keep
focus.

"Victoria, I really don't feel like
shooting a load with walking corpses all over the
place."

She pulled her fangs from
his flesh and watched the wounds heals instantly. The color
returned to her cheeks as she smiled and swung her legs over the
table.

"Holy shit. Your
blood tastes...
very
good."

"That's what all the women
say," he said, shifting his jeans slightly as the arousal faded
away. "I ran into three ghouls getting up here. You could have
escaped at any time, even running off of little blood."

"I know. But it's not about escape,
Jack. This place has to die."

"You're right."

She raised an eyebrow. "I
am?"

"We're an hour away from
Parkville. There's no way I'm letting this get out. I'm adopting
Tiffany, and Erica, well...we've got some new things we're gonna
try out soon."

"Getting soft," she said..

"Yeah, I know. I'm not exactly happy
about it."

"You two shut the
fuck up," Donaldson said. "Listen, we can't just destroy this
place. We're
so
close. We're dealing with the future here, and we can't kill
it just because a vampire and some freak says
so-"

Jack raised his gun and
shot Donaldson in the head, not caring if the ghouls heard. He
couldn't take one more word out of his mouth. Donaldson fell to the
ground between two examination tables. Diane opened her mouth to
scream, but Eli hugged her from behind and covered her
mouth.

"So much for soft," Victoria
muttered.

Jack approached Eli and
Diane, looking them both in the eye.

"I'm going to destroy this place.
Every computer, every ghoul. Are either one of you gonna tell me
otherwise?"

They shook their heads in
unison.

"Okay, now, tell me what you mean by
you being infected?"

Diane held up her hand to reveal a
bite mark. It wasn't ugly or bleeding, but it did break the skin.
Eli gestured to his shoulder.

"We've both been bit. We've been
taking some medicine we cooked up to slow it down, but there is no
cure."

"Then you'll both die,
too."

A tear ran down Diane's cheek and her
lip quivered, but she held it together. Eli put a hand on her
shoulder and nodded.

"We know."

He looked at Victoria. "Can you handle
the ghouls?"

"I don't know. There
are a
lot
of them
out there. And
you
might be immune, but I have no idea of what a bite from one
of them would do to me. I'm sure I can take a lot, but those
bastards swarm like bees."

The corner of his mouth lifted. "Too
bad there's not a witch nearby we could kill."

"Very funny."

"Hold on," Eli said. "I
might have an idea. Diane, come here."

The two walked to a nearby computer as
Victoria jumped down from the table. She stretched her arms over
her head, obviously feeling better. Jack read the sadness and
frustration in her eyes.

"What's wrong?"

"Just...mortals.
They're so determined to kill themselves. They never learn. First
it was spears and rocks. Then, it was guns and bombs. Now, it's
this bullshit, twenty-first century science and medicine. I cracked
that laptop. This whole thing is privately funded by a few
billionaires who want to make even
more
billions."