Bestial (18 page)

C
hristian leaned back in the office chair, watching as Andrei Sokosovich transformed into one of the beast-men. The process seemed painful, and there was no shortage of screaming mixed in with the growls and the snapping of his bones as they converted. While the boy watched, the Russian sprouted hair all over his body, the tendrils twisting out of his pores like some bizarre Kirlian photography. The beast-man scratched himself, as though the growing hair made him itch. When the cracking of his joints grew more insistent, Andrei fell on his back, writhing on the floor of the cell in what could only be agony.

While he observed the transformation, Christian noted with some surprise that he was detached from the cries of the Russian. It was almost like he was watching a movie through a Plexiglas viewscreen. Somehow, he didn’t think this was a commendable attribute, this indifference. He knew he should feel pity for this man, this human being going through such a painful and tumultuous metamorphosis, but he found himself fascinated by the intricacies of the change, the raw physicality of it.

He stood, walked right next to the Plexiglas barrier so he could witness the event as closely as possible. It was probably what the scientists of Bio-Gen had done—take notes and watch Andrei. Christian’s eyes grew wide with astonishment.

When Andrei’s hands mutated, the fingers fused together, stretching out longer and developing an extra joint near the wrist. Three pads seemed to pop out of the skin of his palm, as blisters raised by heat would appear, and his fingernails were shoved from their moorings by long black talons. His ears elongated, extending toward the
ceiling, then folding in upon themselves as though the cartilage were alive beneath the skin. The folding created a triangular point at the top of the ear, and delicate fur tufted from it.

The entire transmutation took less than three minutes. When it was over, Christian was face-to-muzzle with one of the beast-men, and he got his first good look at one of them.

It wasn’t pretty.

The thing in the cell began to rage, throwing itself against the walls, pushing at the Plexiglas with its shoulder until the boy was certain the shield would give beneath the pressure. It clamored at the barrier, attempting to scratch its way out of the see-through jail, spittle flooding from its hideous face. It tried to bite the Plexiglas, its jaws opening wider than seemed possible, dragging its black tongue across the barrier, its teeth making a squeaking noise. No matter how hard it pounded and ripped and tore at the barrier, it made no progress toward escape. The beast-man began to pace back and forth in its cell, its short tail tucked between its legs. It cast a wicked glance at Christian every once in a while, but it seemed intent in its pacing. Eventually, it grew tired of this, and it lay on the floor, curled into a ball like an exhausted, monstrous dog. When it fell asleep, it almost seemed benign.

Christian moved away from the barrier to search the room.

In the three desks at the other end, he found more computer printouts than he thought could ever be necessary. Some of them involved charts and diagrams, but the words were written in a scientific jargon that might as well have been Greek.

Then he remembered the book he had seen near Jean’s corpse. It had to be some sort of journal. He couldn’t recall any writing on the cover. He had been too preoccupied with the body lying over it.

Checking that he still had Jean’s pistol, he took a final look at the beast-man in the cell. The creature was still sleeping, giving nary a thought to the boy. Cautiously, Christian walked to the door, unlocked the numerous locks and bolts, and stepped into the hallway. He moved back to Jean’s office, where he had seen the Frenchman’s dead body, practically tiptoeing into the room. He attempted to shut the door behind himself, feeling around in the darkness, but he remembered the door had been ripped from its hinges.

In the bright moonlight that flooded the office, Jean still leaned into his desk, his face ignominiously resting in a puddle of gore. The blood appeared darker in the blue light, and it had become tackier, forming a sticky, jelly-like halo around his skull. On the table, there was a white, empty spot in the shape of the gun he had removed from Jean’s grip, a photoflash image of the weapon in reverse.

The book remained on the floor, its corner stuck in a pool of gummy blood. It was leather-bound, approximately two hundred pages in length. There was no writing on the covers.

Christian picked it up and moved out into the hallway, away from Jean’s body. The smell of urine and blood, of meat left outside too long, overwhelmed him. This was someone he had known, and it physically hurt him to see Jean reduced to a corpse.

Walking down the hallway, he riffled through the pages. Only the first half of the journal had been filled with writing. The second half remained blank. He leaned against a wall for a better look at the journal.

Was the answer in these bloodstained pages? Christian wondered if he would even be able to comprehend Jean’s words. His scientific research had to be connected to the insanity that had overrun the world.

Flipping through the journal, he saw several words and phrases that he could identify, so he thought he might be smart enough to read the book. It was worth a shot.

Christian also knew he was growing very tired. Even though it was still early in the evening, he had not slept long enough the previous night. He decided to try to read some of the journal and then attempt to sleep afterward.

From three floors below him came the angry, hateful growls of the people who had changed in the streets. He could hear some of them engaged in terrible battles, full of the sound of biting, tearing, howling. As he walked back to the room where the Andrei-creature was incarcerated, he heard the sound of metal scraping against metal, and he wondered what the beasts on the street were doing.

The beast-man in the cell narrowed his eyes as the boy entered the laboratory. Christian looked down at the corpse at his feet.
Wrinkling his nose, he set the book on a desk and grasped the body by its ankles. He pulled it out of sight, so that it now rested in the hallway. The room still smelled of copper and bile, but he found some Lysol and sprayed large circles of the aerosol around his body. The smell dissipated under the disinfectant. After locking and barring the door, Christian took a seat in front of Andrei’s cell.

The beast knew if it was patient enough, if it waited long enough, someone was going to open the door and set it free.

And the young boy reading the leather-bound book smelled so succulent that it had to use its dark tongue to lick up its increasing saliva.

SEPTEMBER 17, 9:00 P.M.

R
ick had removed his jacket, fluffing it into the semblance of a pillow, and he’d rested Chesya’s head on it. When the Brink’s truck had shifted, she’d slammed her skull into one of the shelves in the back, landing on Rick with a thud. Once the vehicle had settled on the ground, he had tried not to move her, fearful of hidden injuries. Now that almost an hour had passed, he thought she would be all right. Her breathing was regular, and the only outward sign of trauma was a large, purple bruise that had formed on the right side of her forehead. A knot was solidifying beneath the discoloration.

And she still slept. He had tried calling out her name and gently shaking her arm, but she didn’t respond. Rick wasn’t sure what this meant, but it couldn’t be good. He needed to get her to a doctor or an emergency room.

From the sounds that reached him from outside the truck, he knew he wasn’t going anywhere with her for a while, no matter how serious her injuries. Those monsters were everywhere, running through the streets, hurling themselves at anything that moved. They’d clawed fruitlessly at the truck for a good fifteen minutes, but had finally given up to hunt elsewhere. He could hear them now, growling and screeching, their voices rising as high as a hyena’s maniacal giggling, then dropping into low, bearlike huffs. Sometimes he heard fights breaking out among them, the growls and snarls just outside his shelter.

He stroked Chesya’s hair. It was soft now that her hair spray had worn off.

Checking his Glock, he saw he had used every bullet in the clip. He cursed himself for his carelessness. He knew of several gun shops,
places where he could reload the weapon, but they were all far out in the suburbs. With the way the roads were clogged, he didn’t have a chance in hell of reaching one of them. The gun was essentially useless now. He tossed it across the back of the Brink’s truck.

Sometimes, one or more of the beasts discovered the back windows of the vehicle and peered in, eyes shining in the moonlight. Rick kept still, and he thought the shadows in the truck must have hidden them from the animals’ curious eyes. Maybe the doors had sealed off their scent. The beasts sniffed around the handle, probably smelling where Rick had pulled on the back doors to open the truck. Following the scent, they moved their muzzles around the cracks of the door, grunting with dissatisfaction.

Rick could swear he heard more gunfire in the distance.

It seemed as though they were safe for the moment, and Rick allowed himself to breathe easier every time one of their furry, massive heads swung away from the back of the truck.

It was quite dark inside the armored vehicle, but Rick’s eyes had become accustomed to the gloom. Bags of cash and coins had spilled across the side of the van that now served as the floor. It was more money than he had ever hoped to grab during a bank heist, more money than he’d ever seen in one place in his entire life. Just twenty-four hours ago, he would have been on his hands and knees, stuffing his pockets with as much cash as possible. Now it seemed like mere paper. Useless fossils of another age.

That didn’t mean he wouldn’t snatch up some of it while Chesya slept. He was no dummy. He’d make sure he got enough in his pockets to provide for himself when things started rolling again. He was confident the world would eventually adapt to this new horror, just as it had always adapted and evolved. When the world was back on its feet, he would be sure to have enough money stashed away to take care of himself.

And, perhaps, to take care of Chesya.

Looking down at her face, he could make out the slope of her rounded jawline in the darkness. He traced the curve with his thumb, feeling the flesh, soft and pillow-like. Her nose turned up slightly, small in the middle of her broad face, and her eyes seemed to have
been swallowed up by shadows, although he knew they were brown under the lids. If he had passed her on the street, he wouldn’t have sneaked a second look.

Rick’s type of woman usually consisted of large breasts, small waist, surgically spherical ass. He tended to like the strippers he saw at Harry’s Gentlemen’s Club. (Gentlemen—ha!) Chesya’s body was nothing like a stripper’s.

Still, she moved him somehow, especially now, when she was lying quietly beneath his stroking fingers. She was a few pounds overweight, but the extra bulk wasn’t unattractive. It rounded her figure and face into the effigy of an Earth mother. There was a fire within her, an energy that was the result of a tough childhood in a tougher part of the city. Most women he knew, especially the strippers, would have lost it entirely when their friends started turning into creatures, would have freaked out, done something stupid, and would have probably died. Not Chesya. She seemed to grow ever stronger, adapting to the problems, trying to puzzle out the best ways to stay alive.

It was her innate strength. He was becoming attracted to this part of her, and it scared him. This was not the time to be falling in love with someone, not a good time to begin any kind of relationship.

But as he watched her breathing, unconscious in his big, clumsy hands, he knew a part of him was taking a spill over this woman, that he was head over heels, so to speak. He couldn’t help it. Whether it was real emotion or whether he was reaching out for something sturdy while the world tilted, he just couldn’t say.

He only knew he cared for her, that the feeling was growing as time slowly ticked by. Forcing himself to accept the fact, he bent his head a little, giving her the softest of kisses. When his lips brushed hers, something stirred within him.

He realized he would protect her no matter what came their way.

And for the first time in years, he prayed. It was easy to accept that there was a higher power when the world was going crazy all around you, when you discovered that you actually did possess a soft side. God seemed to be a simpler concept when you loved someone.

“If you’re there, God,” he whispered, still stroking
Chesya’s soft hair, “don’t let her die. I think I need her, and … maybe she needs me. Don’t take her away just yet.”

Something scratched along the side of the Brink’s van, long nails on metal, and Rick continued his prayer in silence. The thing had heard him whisper. They must have incredible powers of hearing. It reached the back of the truck, grazing its claws along the vehicle, and raised its face to the glass. Its eyes gleamed golden as it squinted into the darkness, trying to make out what had made the noise inside the van.

Rick didn’t move, and he held his breath for a full minute as the thing glared at him. When he had to exhale, he did it slowly, easily, so the beast couldn’t hear the sound. As long as he remained still and quiet in the dark, things would be all right. They wouldn’t know he was there.

He felt a flutter beneath his fingertips and looked down. Chesya was blinking. She was waking up.

Oh, shit, no!
he thought.

She adjusted her leg, raising it to be more comfortable. With her right hand, she brushed away Rick’s caressing fingers, slapping at him as though at a bothersome insect.

The beast-man at the back of the truck immediately sensed the motion, and its lips pulled back into a toothy snarl.

“What the … what are you doing? What happened?” she asked, her words seeming thunderous in the quiet.

Rick shushed her.

“Why am I … oh …”

She got it. Too late.

The creature pummeled the doors with its fists, scratched at the bulletproof glass. Opening its mouth wider than Rick thought was possible, it began biting at the chicken wire that covered the panes, leaving saliva trails on the windows.