Monster (26 page)

H
e knelt in front of her, looking so good. A healthy
young
man with his whole life in front of him. Maybe
he’
d live to be a hundred thousand years old; she didn't
know.
He'd probably have huge, leathery wings by then,
and
purple talons. His fingernails were black as ink already.
He was
holding the note her grandfather had left her the
previous
morning
.
Now she wondered why it had been
typed
as
Jim
handed it to her.

“I
wrote this,
”
he said.

She glanced at her grandfather's closed door
.
H
e never
shut it when he went out. He always laughed and
said that at
his age he had nothing
to
hide.
Jim
had probably ea
ten him
immediately after their first date. Sneaked back
into the
house and didn't even bother to stop and give his
sleeping
beauty a kiss. But m
aybe he had done her that small favour
before he had stolen away another huge chunk
of her
existence. Maybe it was a kiss that had bestowed
upon her
the vision of the alien world. No
,
it was his blood. Hi
s blood was a concentrated form of the contaminated water.

“I
understand
,”
she whispered. Her lower lip
trembled,
and she bit it and sucked on the blood.
Jim
put hi
s hand
on her shoulder. There was no warmth. A h
uge crab cl
aw
would have been more comforting.

“Mary's dead,”
he sa
id.

“Yes.”

“
You're one of u
s now,” he said.

“I
understand.
”

“
There are lots of us
.”

She looked up.
“I’
d like to meet them
.”

“
Whenever you want
.”

“
Tonight would be good
.”
She forced a smile.
“I’d like
to have a par
t
y here for all of us
.”

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Angela sat alone in the house on her grandfather's bed.
It was
three in the afternoon.
Jim
had
l
eft a few minutes
before.
The party was set for eight
.
She couldn't have it
any earl
ier because she had things to do to prepare for
her v
isitors, and she was going to do them
.
Jim
hadn't
cleaned up
after killing her grandfather
.
What remained
of her
father's dad was not pleasant to view.
I
t was amaz
i
ng
that
she hadn't noticed the smell, but then
Jim
had
s
t
u
ffed
sheets under the door to prevent the stench from
circula
ting to the rest of the house
.
She shuddered to
think
what would have happened if Kevin had peeked
into h
er grandfather's room while he had been in the
house t
he previous morn
ing.
Sweet Kevin
–
she wondered
if she would ever see him again.

A te
ar
ran down her cheek, followed by a sniffle and
anot
her tear
.
She hadn't known her grandfather well, but
what
she had known she had loved. He had been the only
one
who'd wanted to take her in when things were tough
at hom
e. He'd been happy to have her stay with him. She
remember
ed the day he picked her up at the airport with
his lat
est girlfriend on his arm. She had thought the woman
was a
second cousin to her or something. She had loved his
love, so
full of li
fe, so free, so non-judgmental.

But wha
t did
they
know about love? It didn't satisfy their
hunger;
therefore, it was useless to them. Their existence
seeme
d incredibly one-dime
nsional to her. Since that was the case
, she doubted they were very smart. She had sure
fooled
Jim
easily enough. He thought she was one of them
just because s
he had tried
to eat her dog. So her tastes h
ad
changed a lit
tl
e
.
Jim
's walking in a
t
that
ex
act moment
had
been fortunate. He had seen her at her worst and no
w he
trusted her. Now she would have them
all
in one
place.
Mary had never had such an opportunity. Angela suspec
ted
M
ary had greatly underestimated t
heir numbers.

Angela had
already decided she was going t
o blow
up the house when she got them all inside. Since she
d
idn
'
t
have dynamite, she'd have to do it with gasoline. Sh
e
couldn't count on being able to detonate
the
prop
ane
tank.
Jim
had run into it with his truck, and noth
in
g had happened. Sure, if she rigged it with a five-gal
lon
bottle of gas, it would probably blow. But the
tan
k
was
outside the house, where everyone parked. Because th
ere
would be a bright moon, they'd see it
if she used su
ch
an
obvious device. The only place to plant a bomb was in the basement. It was normally closed off from the rest of the house; no one would go down there during the party.

She didn't know the exact firepower she'd get per gallon of gasoline, but she figured that if she could obtain
twelve five-gallon water bottles and fill them to the brim wi
th
gas,
she'd be able to kill ever
ybody in the house. If the propane
tank blew at the same time, so much the better.

But she didn't want to die with the others.
Jim
had
already contaminated her with his blood. It must have been his blood that was changing her, because she'd never
go
ne
through the heavy water-drinking stage that the
others
had. S
ti
ll she would probably end up like the rest
of
them. But she had to give herself a chance. Maybe
she
could lea
rn
to resist the urge to kill even if her bo
dy
insisted that she feed. She couldn't just light the bo
mb
and have it go off in her face.

She needed a fuse. A two
-
minute delay at least.

Unfortunately, she didn't have a box of unused
fire
works lying around. She'd have to make her own
. But
with what? She couldn't take a long piece of rope
and
soak it in gasoline. The flame would jump too q
uickly
along the rope and kill her before she could get back
up
the steps
. Plus the gasoline would smell.
She guessed
that im
proved physical strength wouldn't be the only benefit
of the
human-to-
mons
t
er transformation. Their senses
, includ
ing
s
mell, would probably be heightened far beyond
the no
rmal human range. She'd have to be careful
to wipe a
ll gasoline off the bottles before she sealed
them and bought them into the house.

Gun
powder wa
s
what she'd need to make a fuse.
It,
too,
would
give
off
a powerful odour,
but only once it s
tarted
burning.
Bullet shells had gunpowder in them; shotgun
shells h
ad more. If she could get enough of the latter
an
d
ge
t the shot out of them, she could lay down a long
enoug
h line on the basement floor to give her time to get
out o
f
the house. She could place a piece of rope leading
right
up to the centre bot
tle
of gasoline, which would have a paper cap on top of it with more gunpowder. The stuff
wou
l
d burn through the cap in a second. Then
bang
–
no
more
Mr
.
and Mrs
.
Monster.

Angela fl
ashed a faint smile at the bloody mess in th
e bedroom.

It was
good to have a p
lan.

It wo
uld be even better to watch them die.

Ang
ela collected her purse and left the house. She
didn’t
have to clean up her grandfather's bedroom
–
at
this
party the mess might even be a drawing card. She
worri
ed briefly what she should serve them, then laughed
at the
absurdity of the idea. What should she plan to serve a
bunch
of cannibals who were only interested in one thing?
We
ll,
she wasn't inviting any of her other friends over to
meet
these new kids in town.

Be
fore she was able to do anything she had to stop to
eat.
She bought four pounds of steak and ate half of it in
the car in the market parking lot.
The pounding in her
head
diminished
;
it didn't go away, though. That worried
her. Ev
en
if
she survived the blast
–
how could she live like
this?

“
I'll have t
o face that when the time comes,”
she whis
per
ed
to
herself as she wiped her hands off on the bag
that held the other t
wo steaks. She had also bought a bottle of
Tylenol; she popped four pills before starting the
car and
swallowed them dry. She doubted they'd help. They
didn’t.

It was ironic where she was heading to
steal the e
mpty five-gallon water bottles
–
Point High. The
faculty
apparently drank bot
tl
ed water.
Maybe that's why
they eat
so
lit
tle red meat,
she thought
.
Anyway, she'd
seen the
bot
tl
es at the back near the guys' showers. Th
ere was
a whole pile of them, if she remembered correc
tly. The
water guy must have a huge route and only
stopped
by occasionally, she thought.

Fifteen minutes later Angela discovered that her
‘whole
pile
’
equaled only eight empty bottles. That
was forty
gallons of gasoline. A lot, but would it be enoug
h? Who
the hell knew? She was stuck on the idea of having
at least
sixty gallons. It was already close to four
–
no time
to fool
around. She had to get to the sporting goods store
in the
mall in Balton by five to get the shotgun shells. She'
d worry
about her other containers on the way home
.