Bestial (23 page)

The lot was quiet and there was no activity, no one else out there other than Bob. Tall lights stood at regular distances around the edges of the lot. A mist was beginning to move in, curling around those lights like thin ghosts.

Bob could not arrange his thinking into clear, coherent thoughts. It was as if his brain were babbling inside his head, gibbering nonsense like some kind of crazy person.

He kept seeing that...
thing
—

Impossible,
he thought vaguely,
that thing was impossible, it couldn’t exist, it couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t...

—kept seeing the baby it had been, then suddenly, the creature it became, with a fanged snout that jutted from the small, round face, the eyes suddenly silver and animal-like—

...
that couldn’t have happened, I couldn’t have seen that, things like that don’t happen, it’s impossible, I couldn’t have seen that.

—kept seeing it clamping onto Ted’s crotch, onto Dr. Dinescu’s wrist—

Did I see that? Really? Did I
really
see that, or is something wrong with me? Am I losing my mind? Am I mentally ill? Am I having some kind of breakdown? the

—wriggling across the floor with impossible speed, chewing noisily and sloppily on Hannah’s intestine. He tried to make the images stop, but he had no control over them—they infected his mind like some kind of virus, seized him like a fever as he staggered through the parking lot.

He was halfway to his car when his stomach seemed to explode. He began vomiting a moment before he bent forward, the contents of his stomach spewing in an arc before splashing onto the pavement.

Bob stood in place for a long moment, bent at the waist. He swayed back and forth a little as he waited to see if more was going to come up. When it did not, he moved on, staggering around the puddle of vomit. But even as he walked, his head began to feel like a balloon filled with helium. It seemed to lightly lift off of his neck and rise higher and higher in the air above his body.

He was unconscious before he fell to the pavement and was unaware of the fact that he had fainted.

There was no one else in the parking lot. The night was silent except for the sound of a cricket chirping sharply and the almost-inaudible pattering of moths throwing themselves against the glass covers of the parking lot’s tall lights.

After awhile, a faint sound rose somewhere in the distance. It grew for a moment, then faded, and stopped. It could have been a train sounding off somewhere, or a horn. Or a howl.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Aftermath

Abe sat in a chair while Irene cleaned, disinfected, and dressed the wound on his wrist. It wasn’t as bad as he’d first thought—it had bled so much that at first he’d worried he might lose his hand. He had not spoken a word since Karen and Gavin had pursued that hideous little creature out of the ER.

Before going to work on Abe’s wrist, Irene had pulled the curtain around the booth where Hannah lay dead with her abdomen open, her intestines dangling over her side and onto the table.

Everyone was still rocked by what had happened and no one was behaving normally. Irene’s hands and arms shook as she tended to Abe’s wound. Winona kept humming—a tuneless, almost monotonous sound that went on and on—as she nervously tried to go about her work. Maggie sat at the desk and occasionally burst into laughter for no apparent reason. She tried to fight it, but she could not hold it back and bursts of it came out of her again and again. Gretchen and Penny were in a booth quietly comforting each other, too shocked to deal with anyone else. Ted was in a booth as well, being cared for by Hugo and a nurse named Carly, whom he had brought in from outside the ER.

Hugo had arrived only minutes ago, shortly after Karen and Gavin had left the ER. He’d walked in with no expression on his face, ready to go to work. Suddenly, he’d stopped, and his mouth had dropped open as he looked around in disbelief at the blood on the floor and at Abe’s bleeding wrist.

“Jesus Christ, what the—” Hugo had said breathily. Then he’d seen Ted on the floor, back against the wall, sitting in a silent, frozen state of white-faced shock, his crotch a bloody mess.

Hugo had gone to work immediately. He’d run out for just a moment and had come back with Carly, then he’d gotten Ted into a booth.

“Have they come back yet?” Abe said. His voice was dry and hoarse.

“Who?” Irene said.

“Those two private investigators.”

“They were private investigators?”

“Yes, they wanted to talk about... oh, nevermind. Have they come back?”

“Not yet. They ran after that thing.” As she dressed his wound, her eyes kept glancing at Abe’s face. Her expression was tense, lips parted. Finally, she said, “Dr. Dinescu, what... what
was
that thing. I mean, I-I-I know what it
seemed
to be. A buh-baby. That girl’s baby. I mean—” A small, nervous laugh erupted from her. “—I helped deliver it, I saw it come out of her. But it wasn’t. A baby, I mean. That thing wasn’t really a
baby
... was it?”

Abe sighed. “Irene, if I told you I had any inkling of what just happened here, I’d be lying. I think the best thing to do is to take care of everyone’s injuries first. Finish with that dressing and I’ll look in on Penny and her mother.” He looked up at her. “Has anyone called... anyone?”

“Winona said she was going to call the police. What are you going to tell them when they get here?”

“We will all tell them exactly what happened. That’s the only thing we
can
do.” With his right hand, he removed his cell phone from his pocket and called home. When Claire answered, he said, “Honey, I’m going to be late. Something, uh... something has come up.”

“What is it?” Claire said. “You sound upset. What’s wrong?”

Karen and Gavin came in suddenly, both out of breath and looking stressed.

“Look, honey, I’ll explain when I get home,” Abe said. “Don’t worry, everything’s fine. I’ll see you later. Love you.” As he closed the phone and put it in his pocket, Irene finished his dressing. He stood and approached the investigators. He did not know what to say, so he waited for them to speak.

“This hospital has to be locked down,” Gavin said. “Now. If that thing gets out, we’ll
never
find it.”

“What thing?” Hugo said as he came out from behind the booth’s curtain. As he approached them, he asked Abe firmly, “What
happened
in here? Who are these people? What’s going on?”

Abe introduced Karen and Gavin, then gave Hugo a brief but accurate description of what had just happened in the room. As Abe spoke, a frown gradually deepened on Hugo’s forehead. When Abe was done, Hugo stared at him for a long time, examining his face, then he slowly turned to Karen and Gavin.

Gavin nodded and said, “That’s what happened. Karen and I chased that thing out of here, through the waiting room, and into the hospital. It went upstairs and we lost it. Like I said, this hospital needs to be locked down immediately so that whatever that thing was, it won’t be able to—”

”Hospitals aren’t
locked down
,” Hugo said, his eyes darting back and forth between the investigators and Abe. “They remain open. And even if that weren’t the case, no one in this room has the authority to close this one. Now—” He chuckled coldly, with no smile, and took one step back away from them. “—I don’t know what the hell you people have been up to in here, but the idea that an infant, a
newborn
infant, popped out of the womb and went on some kind rampage is absolutely—”

Gavin moved forward, grabbed Hugo’s lapel with his left hand, clenched his right into a fist and pulled it back as if to strike. “So help me God,” he said quietly, “if you tell me this didn’t happen, I will knock your teeth right down your fucking throat. Look around. You see all this blood? You think
we
did this? You think somebody in this room did all this and then we sat around and came up with a story about a killer baby to cover it up? Huh? Is that what you think? Tell me. Go ahead,
tell
me that’s what you think, and you’ll be laid out on this floor faster than cat-hair on velvet.” He released Hugo’s shirt, pushed him away, and relaxed his fist. “We don’t have time to stand here and argue with you, or convince you, or
deal
with you. Either help, or get out of the fucking way.”

Hugo’s eyes were enormous and his face trembled with rage, but he said nothing. He turned to Abe as if to see how he was reacting to Gavin’s outburst.

Abe said, “He’s right, Hugo.”

Karen stepped toward Abe and said, “Who do we talk to about locking this place up. We have to do it
now
.”

“Maybe we should wait till the police get here,” Abe said.

As their faces fell, Karen and Gavin turned to each other.

Abe frowned. “Is something wrong?”

“Just a second,” Gavin said, taking Karen’s elbow and steering her away from them.

Hugo moved close to Abe until their noses almost touched. “Ted’s going to need surgery. How are we going to explain his injuries?”

Abe pointed at Hannah’s booth and said, “The same way we’re going to explain the eviscerated dead woman behind that curtain.”

Hugo’s jaw dropped again. “There’s a—”

”I don’t pretend to know what that thing was, Hugo, but it definitely was
not
in anyone’s imagination. You weren’t here, you didn’t see it. It’s loose in this hospital right now, somewhere, and it’s dangerous.” He lifted his left hand and put a rigid forefinger in Hugo’s face. “If you get in the way of handling this problem, Hugo, I swear I will devote my
life
to getting your ass kicked out of this hospital.”

Abe turned away and headed for Penny’s booth. He could hear both her and her mother crying quietly behind the curtain. Before going into the booth, he looked over his shoulder. Hugo had his cell phone to his ear, his head bent forward. He began to talk quietly into the phone while his eyes darted around the room, as if with caution.

Hugo pulled the curtain aside and went into the booth.

As everyone in the Emergency Room tried to recover from what had just happened, George drove his pickup into the ER parking lot.

He was a nervous wreck. Since he’d left his cabin, he had been vacillating between his fear of being pulled over for speeding and his eagerness to see what was happening at the hospital. Whatever was going on, he would help if he could—but he was afraid.

Fear was not new to George Purdy, of course. He’d been living in fear ever since he’d fled Big Rock and moved into his cabin. But that was the fear that accompanied an escape from danger. In this case, he was walking right back into it, and that amped up his fear so much that his stomach had ached with anxiety as he’d driven through town. Now it felt as if his insides were on fire as he drove into the ER parking lot.

He slammed his foot onto the break pedal and brought the pickup to a jerking halt as the headlights splashed onto a man who was stretched out on the pavement. The man was slowly lifting himself up on hands and knees and looking around as if confused. He turned to George, squinting in the headlights.

George backed up a little, pulled into a parking slot, and killed the engine. He got out and went to the man, who was up on his knees, now.

“Are you okay?” George asked. He reached out and helped the man to his feet.

“Uh, yeah, I... I think so,” the man said, his voice weak. He looked pale and frightened and quite unwell. He looked around as he took a deep breath. “I think I, uh... I think I fainted on the way to my car.”

“You gonna be all right?” George said.

“I... think so. I’m... well, I’m not exactly sure.”

“Well, I don’t think you should be driving. I’m going inside. Why don’t you come with me?”

The man looked back at the ER entrance and a wave of fear passed over his pale face. “Uh... I don’t know if I want to, um... I don’t know if... “ His voice weakened as he spoke until it fell silent, even though his lips kept moving for a moment, as if he thought he was still talking.

George tried to take his mind off of whatever was disturbing him by introducing himself. “I’m George Purdy, by the way.”

The man looked at him and his mouth twitched into a weary approximation of a smile. “Bob Berens,” he said with a nod.

“I used to work in this hospital. I was the Deputy Coroner. What happened in there, anyway?”

Bob turned his head back and forth slowly and said, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

Karen and Gavin walked away from Dr. Dinescu, huddled close at the other end of the room, and whispered so they would not be overheard.

“Big Rock doesn’t have a police department,” Gavin said. “Just the county Sheriff’s Department.”

“Where Irving Taggart is boss,” Karen said.

“That’s right. A man who came out of nowhere and suddenly replaced the dead sheriff. Now,
somebody
knows we’re in town and they don’t like it.”

Karen nodded. “And if that somebody is connected to Taggart, we could be... a late-night snack.”