Breeds 2 (12 page)

“Sir?” Deb asked softly.

The head lifted, awakening. It glanced to the ceiling before homing in on the voice. The head looked up, reacting further to light and sound.

Deb’s voice failed her, horror paralyzing her whole.

Black, red-rimmed eyes regarded her with angry curiosity. The man’s shoulders heaved with a great, frustrated intake of breath, but what truly rooted Debra Cohn to the steel floor were the revenant’s features. The nose was a grotesque squish of colorful jelly and white cartilage. The forehead was split open to the bone like a series of fat, bleeding gills.

Beating his face
, she realized in horror.
He’d been beating his face and head against the wall
.

The man’s mashed lips twisted into a snarl, flashing shards of ruined teeth.

Deb remembered her S&W.

The dead man’s hand flashed out and grabbed hers, crushing bones against gunmetal. Deb shrieked, jerked back, the force extracting the animated corpse free of its tomb like a newborn calf, except the blood-dappled figure sloughing onto the floor, still clutching a screaming Debra Cohn, snapped and writhed with hellish life.

And if one stood at the far end of the L-shaped corridor and watched, one would hear and see this: A fluorescent light shatters and glass fragments salt the floor. An unhinged, half-lit tube swings across tiles and cinder blocks. Shadows flitter and merge, some angry, some terror-stricken. Shrieks erupt, sounding like trapped rabbits. Those same voices are twisted into wheezes and gurgles of shock and pain. A gun discharges, five times before a man squeals,
Oh God
. Bones break as if shattered over a knee. A man’s voice reaches a piercing high note before silenced.

Sounds of ripping. Of bones breaking and splintering. A rustle of metal and glass ends in a startling crunch.

In a very short time all becomes quiet, except for a guttural gasping, as if a person has grossly overexerted himself. A moaning breaks the silence, in torture somehow, and bones crack once again.

There’s a mighty grunt and a wet torso smacks against the far end of the corridor before crumbling to a heap at the base. Darkness oozes from the unmoving lump, creating a rich, ever-widening puddle. If there was anyone behind the front desk, all that person would need to do is lean over the countertop to behold that gruesome spectacle on the floor.

Footsteps. Bare soles smacking against cold tiles. The cadence is ungainly, clumsy. Perhaps drunken, even.

A shadow grows, staggering as it comes closer. It stops just behind a corner, but the shade looms over the body. A naked man steps into view. His chest heaves. Black sap oozes from holes in his half-lit torso.

He stops directly over the heap on the floor.

Takes a deep, shuddering breath.

Groaning in misery, his naked frame trembles. He reaches down and pulls up an arm still connected to the body at his feet.

A moment’s hesitation, as if studying the limb.

Then he bites.

And after a short time, he screams.

The pounding upon the door jerked Kirk from his dreamless sleep. He sat up in confusion, groggy and frowning at Morris, who had stretched out on his couch with boots elevated over one end. A blanket covered his head and shoulders. They’d both slept the day away, getting what rest they could. A second hard knock brought Kirk unsteadily to his feet, as if he’d downed much more than three beers.

“Get the fuckin’ door,” Morris muttered under the blanket.

“Where’re your manners?” Kirk mumbled right back, en route.

“
Please
get the fuckin’ door.”

That brought a scowl to Kirk’s features. Some people’s children. He got to the entryway and squinted into the peephole. A rush of relief replaced the sour note of Morris. Kirk flipped the locks and opened the door.

“Hey,” he greeted.

“You Doug Kirk?” asked a bald black man the size of a bear. He was tall and noble-looking in an intimidating way, wearing a winter trench coat that might’ve been bought at a secondhand shop. A square-cut beard hung from a head that might’ve been a medicine ball at one time. It was the only hair on the entire skull.

“Yeah. Who’re you?”

A low brow hooded a set of murderous eyes. “You gonna let me in?”

The question hung upon the air for a couple of seconds before Kirk stepped back and let the big man inside.

“I’m Baxter,” the new arrival said, inspecting the interior before settling on the living room. “From the next yard over.”

New Brunswick.

“I don’t know you.”

“I don’t know you either.”

“Fair enough.”

“Who is it?” Morris asked, uncovering himself and rubbing the fresh stubble on his head.

“First of the electric horsemen,” Baxter announced with an unimpressed air. “Hello, Moses.”

Much to Kirk’s surprise, Morris didn’t respond with an expletive-loaded remark or two. He sat up while Baxter approached him.

“Wait a second at the door,” Baxter charged Kirk with a stern finger. “My driver’s comin’.”

“Not fuckin’ Zeke,” Morris moaned as if he’d injected pure poison into his jugular.

Baxter leveled a stone-cold gaze upon him. “Surprised at you, Morris. And not just because you finally shaved your wild man ass. You wanna be respected but you sure as hell don’t mind putting down others behind their backs. And, by the way, I was wrong from before. About you shaving. You’re still fuckin’ ugly.”

Morris looked to the picture window’s drawn curtains.

“Got you nappin’, I see,” Baxter said, hands spreading his ankle-length coat and finding his hips. “I’ll give you a minute to get up to speed. Ezekiel here yet, Doug?”

“Uh,” Kirk massaged the back of his neck. “No.”

“He will be. Then we can all sit down for story time.”

Morris fumed but kept his mouth shut. Baxter walked to the picture window and peeked outside before placing his back against the curtains.

A second knocking at the door distracted Kirk. He opened the door and a second man, a few fingers shorter than Kirk, gave a
hey, howya doin’
nod and wink before walking into the apartment. Though only around five-nine or eight, he was at least that across the shoulders, and his pale head had been buzzed to the scalp.

Ezekiel Allen held out a dark suitcase to Kirk.

“What?”

“Where can I put this?” Ezekiel asked in a raspy voice.

Kirk considered the request. “Anywhere. As long it’s not underfoot.”

“I’m Ezekiel.”

“Kirk.”

The bulldoggish warden bared crooked teeth in what might have been a smile or a grimace, and chucked the bag right beside a coat closet, slamming the inside wall.

“Yeah…” Kirk muttered as the second visitor invaded his home.

“There’s others comin’,” Ezekiel said to him.

“Others?”

“We drove into Halifax together,” Baxter explained, his large arms folded as he nodded at Ezekiel. “People got moving as they got the call. Everyone meets here.”

“Yeah,” Ezekiel said and plopped into the sofa chair with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball. He lifted his hiker boots to the coffee table.

“How many is everyone?” Kirk asked, not appreciating the
were’s
quickness to get comfortable.

“Don’t know,” Baxter answered, “but we will before the night’s done. There are a few late-night landings in Halifax, though I’d say the others are driving or taking the bus. I’d say anyone who got a call will be here by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Do we have that long?” Morris asked from the couch.

Baxter didn’t look in the man’s direction. “Word is this Bailey character had his head shot off. That right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Well then, that’s a major wound. Major. And I’m understating that. A head shot is goddamn critical. Going to take time to replace an entire head. At least a week.”

Morris exchanged looks with Kirk.

“Something you want to share?” Baxter asked, picking up on the vibe.

From where he sat, the pug-like Ezekiel looked from one speaker to the other, his jolly snarl inquisitive.

“No,” Kirk said. “Nothing. I’m… I’m just a little on edge is all. We’ve all heard the stories.”

Ezekiel let out a smoky chuckle.

“Why’re you so goddamn happy?” Morris growled.

Ezekiel didn’t answer him. Instead, he fixed Morris with a marble-eyed gaze that seemed oddly crazy.

“Ezekiel is looking forward to this hunt,” Baxter spoke for him. “It’s not every day something of this…magnitude… comes along.”

“It’s history,” Ezekiel whispered through those crooked teeth.

An unimpressed Morris didn’t flinch from the stocky
were’s
bizarre stare down. “Just remember that. History. And what the last one did.”

“The last one,” Baxter began, “was killed by four
weres
. After the beast killed hundreds of human cattle—civilians and warriors. This is the new millennium. Doesn’t take weeks before we hear of the slaughter via the hearsay of some peasant traveler. We’ve got superior communication now. Airlines to get boots on the ground in record time. The downside is law and emergency response teams are just as fast and have protocols to follow. Now, Bailey had his head shot off. To the police, that’s probably a homicide. Homicide victims will be taken to the nearest medical examiner for an autopsy. That medical examiner is located in Halifax. Already got the address off the internet.”

“So what are you saying?” Kirk asked.

Baxter unsheathed his silver Bowie knife––the same weapon issued to all wardens––and grimaced at the gleam before putting the weapon away. “I’m thinking since it’s Sunday and after midnight, I propose we go straight to the medical examiner and politely ask the security team there to let us in. We kill them, disable any cameras, and then search the building—’specially the freezers. We find this snoring beauty and get medieval on the bastard. Rip out the throat. Stab that fucker through the heart. Cut it out, even. Hell, dismember and sprinkle the pieces around the far parts of the kingdom. We end this quick and get out of there before dawn.”

An overeager Ezekiel nodded in support of the plan.

“Well,” Morris said, “either I’m shitfaced or half-asleep, but that all sounds doable to me.”

“We shouldn’t kill those guards,” Kirk said.

That muted the enthusiasm in the room. Ezekiel’s smile faltered and Morris was clearly exasperated.

“You have a problem with that?” Baxter asked.

“Yeah, I do.”

“You a fuckin’ vegan or something?”

“Those people have families,” Kirk said.

A happy Ezekiel spread his hands in a gesture of,
So
?

“Isn’t that enough?”

“No,” Baxter said. “That isn’t enough. What’s a few rent-a-cops to a city populace? One or two or ten guards dying so we can save hundreds of lives? A city, even? Which may very well happen if this thing crosses over. That’s more than a fair price to pay.”

“All right, how about this?” Kirk pointed at the warden. “If we kill those guards, suddenly the whole province goes on high alert. Every cop will be hunting for us, and they’ll cross lines and borders to find us. Nothing will be spared. Even after the fact we’re long gone. And, truthfully, you two are the ones long gone. Morris and I are still here. Now, if we don’t kill the guards then it’s just a bunch of sick kids doing weird shit to dead people. A lot less attention and fewer motivated police.”

Ezekiel’s smile dimmed once more. Even Morris gave the matter greater thought, eventually nodding in favor of Kirk’s wisdom.

“Fuck it,” Baxter blurted. “Fine. They’ll wake up with headaches. I still say we go now. It only took four of our guys to put the first one down. And that was after it had already changed and was running about on some medieval hillside. This one’s already been bagged. We pack up and kill that sleeper while he’s still on a slab.”

Ezekiel leaped to his feet, keen to the suggestion. Morris wavered, but Kirk knew he’d go for it in the end.

“I’m in,” Ezekiel said.

“Never doubted you,” Baxter said. He looked to Morris.

“Yeah,” the Pictou warden said. “All right. Let’s do it.”

They looked to Kirk and he scowled, knowing they were going anyway, with or without him.

“What do you drive?” Baxter asked.

“A truck,” Kirk answered.

“Then you can sit in your truck. Keep it running while we take care of things.”

“Why don’t we take your car?”

“We drove my car all the way here in a very short time. We use your ride in town.”

“We should wait for the others.”

“This is how it is,” Baxter said evenly. “It’s the weekend. Any morgue will have its new occupants on a plate and stuck into a freezer until Monday morning. A steel freezer. Our buddy Bailey’s got nowhere to go, already in tight confinement and ready to be put down. All we got to do is yank open the door and stab it with our shiny knives. Repeatedly. With extreme prejudice. That’s all. We don’t need a team.”

“We’re
told
to wait for the others,” Kirk insisted, pointing a finger at the floor. “From the elders, remember?”

Ezekiel shook his head in sunny disbelief.

Morris didn’t appear too happy with the counterpoint either. “Fuck it. I think you’re right, Bax. If Bailey is in a freezer I’d say it’s only gonna take three of us. Probably not even that.”

A frustrated Kirk hung his head.

“Let’s go then,” Baxter announced and held out a hand to the Halifax warden. “Keys, please?”

“You overeager bastards,” the warden seethed as he regarded them all. “I’m driving.”

The truck pulled into the medical examiner’s parking lot and stopped parallel to the main doors. The vehicle’s reflection blazed in the lobby’s glass wall, so Kirk turned off his headlights. A thick fence of elm trees lay to the right of the three-level structure. The odd city light glittered peacefully through that wooded veil, and Kirk suddenly wished he could just vanish in that distant urban maze. With a sigh he regarded the building. The front lobby was dark, except for a weak glow from the front desk and a hallway beyond. Kirk scanned the area but couldn’t see any guards. His relief was brief, quickly replaced by concern.