The Burning Man (29 page)

“What is it?” Kieran asked.

“We can’t just leave it here,” Olivia said.

“What if it’s contagious?” Annie asked.

“Jesus,” Olivia said, wiping her hands again.

At that moment, that weird harmonic scream sounded in the hallway and something slammed against the bed that was blocking the doorway.

All three of them jumped, startled, as thousands of questing, hair-thin red cilia squeezed in around the edges.

The child lifted its head toward the commotion, a thin breathy whine coming from the slits in its face as it reached toward the bed frame.

“It’s Becky’s baby,” Annie said, face lit with incredulous realization. “Look at it. It wants mommy.”

The cilia wrapped around the frame and snapped it in half, flinging the two pieces in separate directions while the intact mattress fell forward, toward the child.

Olivia lunged forward to catch the mattress and prevent it from falling on the helpless child, but to her amazement, she didn’t have to.

It stopped, suspended in midair just a foot away from the child, then eased back and away, toppling off to one side.

Becky came through the doorway like a trapdoor spider, snatching the child up with way too many uneven arms and clutching it close, cooing softly as bloody tears filled her bulging eyes.

Olivia was utterly transfixed. Her mind was relentlessly picking at all these impossible details, twisting them into theories and rejecting one after the other. She thought of all the preserved fetuses in the morgue. What was Doctor Lansen doing here anyway? Messing with the human reproductive system?

Was he trying to do to her what he’d clearly done to Becky. Impregnate her? But
why
?

“Um... guys...?” Annie said quietly. “I think we really ought to...”

Olivia snapped out of it.

She looked over saw that the girl had managed to locate the electronic latch that allowed her to push back the dividing wall, just enough for them to squeeze through. She was already slipping through, and was motioning for Olivia and Kieran to follow.

Olivia gave one more glance back at the monstrous Madonna and child. The sobbing mother’s unruly liquid flesh was curling in tongue-like tendrils around the dying child’s body, and the child’s own flesh responded by rippling like a pond around a dropped stone.

Then she slipped through the gap in the dividing wall, leaving the monsters behind.

But not the questions.

When she turned to take in the new room, she realized that it was occupied.

On the bed lay a massively pregnant woman. Her face was wizened and skull-like, both childish and ancient at the same time, like a starving kid in one of those charity commercials.

There was a rubber feeding tube hanging from one of her nostrils and an IV needle in her bony right arm. Heavy canvas straps kept her bound to the bed, completely immobilized. The entire left side of her body was riddled with tumors, some small and smooth like clustered pink grapes and others weighty and irregular with a texture not unlike the surface of a human brain.

Although it took a minute for Olivia’s mind to process what her eyes were telling her, she realized that the girl’s huge bare belly had a variety of small floating objects orbiting around it, like an asteroid belt.

A plastic cup.

A catheter.

A box of tissues.

A bottle of liquid soap.

Her belly was horribly bruised and blotchy, speckled with pinpricks of blood and as they watched, Kieran’s keys sailed out of his jacket pocket and started to bash themselves repeatedly against the traumatized skin. The woman opened her dry lips and let out a barely audible mewling sound of hopeless misery.

Kieran reached out a shaking hand and, with a struggle, snatched the keys out of the air. This action caused all the other objects in the asteroid belt to jitter and jump, and then swoop down to peck at the girl’s belly like attacking birds. Her cries of pain got louder and more desperate.

“Come on,” Olivia said, grabbing the soap bottle and wrestling it free from the vengeful gravitational force. “Help me!”

The three of them caught the flying objects, one by one, and—following Olivia’s lead—threw them into a metal cabinet with a latch to hold it closed. Once all the objects were locked up and safely out of reach, the thing in the girl’s belly started flailing in mindless fury, punching and kicking against the flesh from inside with what looked like far too many limbs, tenting the tortured skin.

All around them, the cabinets and drawers shook as if rattled by an earthquake. This lasted for a terrifying thirty seconds, then subsided.

“My god,” Kieran said. “What kind of place is this?”

Olivia was standing by the bed, trying to figure out what to do next, when the emaciated girl feebly gripped her hospital gown in one bound hand. She was trying to say something, but her voice was the ghost of a whisper. Olivia bent down to put her ear closer.

“...eating me...” the girl was saying.

“What?” Olivia asked, wrinkling her nose at the appalling smell of the girl’s strange, almost fishy breath.

“It’s... eating me... from inside.” Her voice cranked up to raspy, breathless shout. “
It’s eating me!”

Olivia flinched away, turning to Kieran with wide eyes. Then she saw Annie.

She was leaning back against the far wall, shaking her head with both hands over her mouth and tears rolling down her pale cheeks.

It’s hitting her
—Olivia realized
—what Lansen has been doing here.

But there was nothing she could do to comfort the girl right now.

“Kieran,” she said. “Unbuckle those straps.”

“Why?” he responded. “We can’t save her.”

“Just do it!” Olivia snapped, turning away and rummaging through the drawers and cabinets until she found what she needed.

Kieran did what she asked. As soon as her arms were free, the girl grabbed Kieran’s jacket.

“Help me!” she begged... “Please, Don’t leave me like this.”

Kieran turned, anguish and pity and revulsion all mixed up in his eyes. Olivia ignored him and concentrated on selecting the largest hypodermic needle she could find. She removed it from its sterile paper packet and began to fill it from the vial she’d chosen.

It wasn’t easy with the cast on her arm, but she managed.

She walked back to the girl’s bedside, shouldering Kieran aside.

“Listen to me,” Olivia said, putting the loaded hypodermic in the girl’s good hand and closing her fingers around it. “This is morphine. Five hundred milligrams, a lethal dose. Do you understand?”

The girl nodded, bright tears in her tormented eyes.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

“Come on,” Olivia said to Kieran. She didn’t want to stick around to watch that poor girl put an end to her own suffering. “Let’s get the hell out of this house of horrors.”

Back out in the hallway, the area around the stairwell had been transformed into an abattoir. Blood was everywhere, shattered bones and glistening organs scattered like party favors. The rich, coppery stench made Olivia feel sick, but if they wanted to get out of this underground hell they were going to have to walk right though that mess.

Meanwhile, Kieran didn’t look so hot. He was pale and sweating, eyes wild and too wide. Olivia was worried about him. About his heart. If they got into some kind of physical confrontation, she could try to step in and protect him, but if they had to run, he might not make it.

Suddenly, the overhead lights came back on and the side doors all slid shut. Whatever damage Kieran had done had been rectified. However, the door to the stairway remained propped open—held that way by a boot with the previous owner’s foot still in it.

A white-coated figure appeared in the stairway, on the other side of the door. It was Doctor Lansen.

He stepped into the gory hallway with his attention riveted on Annie, as if she were holding a loaded gun. He had a split and swollen lip and blood was crusted around his hairline. His lab coat was torn and there were lurid bruises blooming around his neck and jaw.

“Annie,” he said, taking one step toward them, then another. “Listen to me. I’m so sorry I got angry with you. You know how I get wrapped up in my work sometimes. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Don’t listen to him, Annie,” Olivia hissed, putting a hand across Kieran’s chest and backing him toward the elevator. “Remember what he did to you! He doesn’t love you—he’s just using you, like he’s been using all these girls.”

“Shut up,” Lansen snapped. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.

“Annie,” he continued, pitching his voice low and soft. “You know we have something special. Something that other people don’t understand. Please, come back upstairs with me.”

She took a hesitant step toward him, her expression conflicted and pained, tears welling in her eyes.

“That’s it,” he said. “Come on.”

Annie cast a guilty glance back at Olivia, then walked slowly down to the end of hallway, where Lansen stood waiting.

Olivia was out of back-up plans. The doctor stood between them and the exit, and she didn’t think she could make it back up the elevator shaft. And even after everything Annie had done, Olivia didn’t want to leave the girl in that scumbag’s clutches.

Lansen was holding out his left hand, his right hand slipping into his lab coat pocket. His body was turned toward Annie so that she couldn’t see it, but Olivia could. As she took one more step back, she saw the glint of a syringe in his hand.

“Annie!” she called. “Look out!”

Her heel bumped against something soft, and when she looked back she saw the body of the guard with the tranquilizer gun. His fallen rifle was just three feet away.

If she took the time to think about it, she’d be too late. She just pictured herself back at Deerborn, running drills with the rifle team. Hands moving confidently, automatically. Gauging the distance, locking in on the target.

An icy calm flooded her veins as she grabbed the air rifle and drew a bead on the little slice of skin between Lansen’s ear and his collar. She blew all the air out her lungs, and squeezed the trigger.

Lansen yelped and dropped the syringe, hands scrabbling at the dart now protruding from his neck.

Annie turned back toward Olivia with anguish in her eyes, then bent to scoop up the broken syringe. As she held it up to examine it, Lansen went down on his knees, sagging against the wall and collapsing onto his side.

For a few heartbeats, the three of them all just stood there.

Then, from behind one of the closed doors came that weird harmonic wail, only this time it wasn’t a sound of rage. It was a heart-wrenching sound of bottomless grief. The terrible, unmistakable sound of a mother who has just lost her baby.

Becky.

Annie turned toward the sound, and then back to the syringe. In that moment of realization, all his lies seemed to peel away as the terrible reminder of what kind of man her beloved doctor really was sank in. A deep flush reddened her pale face.

“Annie,” Olivia began, dropping the air rifle.

To her amazement, Annie let out a furious shriek, and Doctor Lansen’s limp body levitated up off the floor. It started whipping back and forth like a toy shaken by a dog, slamming into one wall and then the other. Olivia could see his bones cracking and snapping in the air, flesh being pulverized as if he was being crushed from inside.

Within seconds, his body was reduced to a pulpy, lifeless rag, but it didn’t stop flying back and forth, over and over.

“Annie,” Olivia said. “Jesus, Annie, stop it!”

The girl turned, her face splattered with Doctor Lansen’s blood and eyes wide and bright with jagged madness. She covered her face and dropped to her knees, drooping into a sobbing C shape.

Olivia ran to her side, then exchanged a glance with Kieran, who was making frantic gestures toward the stairway.

“Annie?” she said softly.

“Just go,” the girl responded without uncovering her face.

“I won’t leave you,” Olivia said, putting a hand on Annie’s shuddering shoulder.

Annie’s head jerked up, and Olivia could see the skin of her face straining from within. Straining and tearing, veins bulging as black hematomas spread across the surface of her eyes. Olivia backed away in horror as Annie started to levitate off the floor, blood flowing down her cheeks like sacred tears.

A throaty, earthquake rumble started deep in the walls around them.

“GO!” Annie cried.

Olivia grabbed Kieran’s arm and ran for the stairwell, as the ceiling and walls started to collapse all around them. Massive cracks appeared in the floor, forcing them to zig zag.

By the time they reached the stairs, the entire hallway behind them had caved in, filling the air with blinding dust.

The wild destruction poor, crazy Annie had started in the basement set off a chain reaction of tremors through the core of the building. If they didn’t get out soon, they would be buried under thousands of tons of concrete and steel.

She had to get Kieran out of there.

She could barely see him through the swirling dust, but she held tight to his wrist and started making her way up the stairs. By the time she reached the next landing, the dust was so thick that she felt like an arctic explorer, trapped in a white-out blizzard. She could barely breathe, and could hear Kieran coughing and hacking beside her.

“Liv,” he said, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Here, I think I found a way out.”

She reached out in the direction he led her, and found the door. Together they pushed on the bar that should have opened it.

Nothing.

It was locked.

“Do you still have that key card?” Olivia asked, pulling the neck of her hospital gown up over her nose and mouth.

“I think so,” he said. She could barely make out the shape of his arms, fumbling through his pockets. “Here. Where’s the lock?”

“It’s to the right of the doors, up on the ward,” Olivia said.

“Found it,” Kieran said.

There was a beep, then a click as he pushed the door open. Together, they tumbled through and found themselves inside the parking structure.