Helix: Plague of Ghouls (50 page)

She pointed at Ishmael’s bowed head.

“We need his virus,
inside
us.”

“And you think he’s got enough to feed all of you?” Two-Trees asked.

“You’ve seen what happens when the cravings get out of control! They hunt. They stalk. They kill. They eat wherever the body lands! But when they eat flesh like
his
,” she said, giving Ishmael a kick, “the real thing . . . then they get stronger. They gain control over their powers.
I
. . . gain control.” She grinned, showing him all her many shark teeth. “You stood in my office and you never knew! How many idiots have been in and out of my office in the last four years, never knowing that I spent my nights here, feasting on fattened werewolves? That I keep my cattle chained under twenty feet of concrete in the middle of town?” Her laughter sounded like gusts of winter wind. “And I knew you from the moment you walked into that hotel. We all did.” She grinned. “Jay said we should expect you.”

Ishmael locked eyes with Two-Trees, pulling against his chains until his body quivered. He paused, nodded ever so subtly to Two-Trees, and took a breath before resuming the strain.

“Yeah, but something went wrong,” Two-Trees said. Ishmael needed more time to weaken his bonds. “You must have done something to her.”

“No!” Maurelli shouted. “Jay . . . Jay found her. Jay was supposed to take her to quarantine. Jay took her and locked her up here, so he could experiment on her, until he could get her virus stabilized, until he could release her back into the wild among my students. It was her virus he experimented on, and it was her modified virus he injected into my son four years ago, and into me, and into all those other idiotic children who fell for his line!”

Ishmael’s strength gave out, and he shook his head.

“And then he started trying new ‘treatments’,” Maurelli continued, “injecting Sydney with more and more viral material. And now?
She’ll be our juggernaut
, he says,
the great tank in our army of bonewalkers, our heavy artillery, our shock troop!
And then what does he do? He sees what he’s made of her, and he
runs away
, leaving us—leaving
me
to clean up the mess. And now you’re here. Who’s next? The press. The army.”

“Then we have to keep this a secret,” Two-Trees said. “We can help you. We can find a way to
fix
this.” He pointed weakly at Ishmael’s shoulder. “Let us go, let us help you. But for God’s sake, we need to keep this quiet a little while longer. Don’t go to the press with this, or they
will
go to the army, and your children will become hostage guinea pigs,
just like Sydney!
”

“No . . .” Maurelli shook her naked head. “No, I don’t give a damn. Screw Wyrd. Screw all of you. This disease, this was
your
fault. I don’t give a damn about secrets anymore. I’m done playing dumb when cops walk in asking if I’ve seen this missing boy or another—kids I know who can’t even walk above ground in daylight anymore. I give a damn that I can’t help my own son. I give a damn that all hell’s about to break loose, and these kids are gonna go crazy like Sydney, and bust out of here—and me with them—and by
God
, we’ll tear this town apart.”

Ishmael was smiling. He pushed himself to his feet again, grinning, breathing so hard that spit came from his mouth. Every time he exhaled, his whole body shivered, making his head shake spasmodically.

More kids came in, all changing one after the other. Ishmael’s skin was rippling, as if there was a sea of black and brown under the surface and the tide was coming in.

“In a couple of days, it’s gonna be all over the media,” Maurelli promised. “They’re going to know you exist, and they’re going to know about what you did to us.”

Ishmael opened his eyes and breathed hot spit. The camera was inches from his face. Metal groaned. Ishmael stood, curling his fists toward his chest.

Maurelli smiled back at him. They must have been in frame—likely what Maurelli was going for. She wanted her cursed face on film as much as she wanted to capture Ishmael’s.

“So no, I don’t give a damn about your secrecy,” she said to him.

Ishmael’s voice was manic. “You know what?” He laughed from the bowels up. “Me neither.”

From his neck, up his face, and down his spine, black fur oozed from every follicle. Thick brown stripes radiated out from his solar plexus around his ribs, under his armpits and over his shoulders, up the sides of his throat and over his cracking, lengthening, terribly feline muzzle, and finally, up his flattening forehead like lightning bolts. With his legs shortening but thickening, with jean seams snapping open, Ishmael leaned against the chains, pushing his arms toward Maurelli’s face, claws emerging a hair’s breadth from her widening eyes.

The floor cracked, sending shockwaves through the water. Concrete broke, and Ishmael’s submerged chains snapped forward like the strings of a slingshot. He caught Maurelli by the waist and brought her down, her legs sliding under him. Muscles quivered and flexed along Ishmael’s torso when he drew in breath, and he roared in her skeletal face. He picked her up and slammed her into the water and concrete below. He then lifted her up, and slammed her into the water again. He dragged her out and flung her toward a wall, knocking over six bonewalkers in the process.

He slid his stretched feet out of the shackles designed for human ankles.

“Finish it,” Two-Trees said.

Ishmael turned toward Two-Trees, snarling, elbows lifting with every loud breath, whiskered lips twitching in a snarl. He tucked his chin down, aiming his big, brow-shaded, honeydew eyes at Two-Trees.

Shit
.

“Shit . . .” the boy with the camera said.

Ishmael snorted and pivoted.

“Oh,” the camera boy said.

Ishmael slashed the punk across the chest, grating claws against bone armour. The camera splashed into the water and bobbed on the surface. Ishmael returned his attention to Two-Trees.

Two-Trees was eleven years old again.

Red Cloud was thrown into his toppled La-Z-Boy. There was even blood on the ceiling.

The big grey werewolf was turning one foot pad at a time toward Two-Trees, tail lashing behind his legs, gobs of blood splashed from his nostrils to his eyes, making him squint and shake his head, spraying beads of water and saliva and blood all over the log cabin.

If he was going to die at eleven years old, then he’d die like his grandfather.

Two-Trees matched Ishmael’s stare.

Knives or no knives, gun or no gun, Two-Trees would kill with his bare hands.

Ishmael sprang from coiled legs to crash against Two-Trees’ body. Bonewalkers followed him, screaming, each armed with daggers for fingers and teeth. Ishmael grabbed hold of one of Two-Trees’ manacles and jerked it free of the chain, breaking it at the weakest link, near the cuff. Eight hands dug into the meat of Ishmael’s neck, yanking him away from Two-Trees. They collided onto the floor, driving a tidal wave of floodwater across the room.

There was a bare patch in the hollow of Ishmael’s throat. Fur was coming out in clumps across his left collar bone.

“Bring him down!” Maurelli screamed from the corner. Her skull had been broken open but the brain was intact. “Down-cycle, now!”

Ishmael’s big green eyes grew wider. He reached over his shoulder and pulled one of the bonewalkers into a forward flip, pinning him upside down against the wall, then drove his full weight into the boy and fell down with him, crushing the boy’s head sideways and snapping his neck.

But these are just kids!

Three more stuck to Ishmael like burrs, dragging him away. Two more came in.

The boy with the broken neck fell over, twitched, then began dragging himself to his feet, jerking his head and snapping his neck into alignment.

Never mind
.

Two-Trees reached over to the other manacle to see if he could twist free or find a spring mechanism. While he picked at the bracelet, bonewalkers dragged Ishmael into the circle of light, where twelve adult-sized children fell on him with splashing punches and kicks. Two-Trees pulled and pulled, but his fat hand wouldn’t fold. He tried breaking his thumb, but he didn’t have the leverage. He licked his hand. Over his shoulder, he saw Maurelli stand, her skin growing over her cheeks and the crack in her skull stitching closed.

She was coming for Two-Trees.

“Two-Trees!” Ishmael shouted, from the bottom of the body pile. “Get out!”

Not for a lack of trying
, Two-Trees thought, though fear had shut up and dried out his mouth. His ears were full of the sound of smacking teeth and tearing flesh. Ishmael was being consumed alive by human piranhas.

“Hungry,” Maurelli seethed. “Hun
greeeeeee
—”

Two-Trees back-kicked her in the chest, and he pulled and twisted his hand until the skin bled.

She rammed his forehead against the wall.

For a while, Two-Trees dangled from his arm, listening to the sound of static and rushing water. Sparkles twinkled in the dark.
Painted fish
.

“Hector!” Ishmael screamed. He was scared shitless. “Get up. Get up!
Get up!
”

Where’s Bridget?

“Hector!”

Two-Trees dragged himself off the floor, oozing up the wall that was covered with his nose blood. He pressed his back to the wall.
I could go for a donut.
His thoughts were sluggish, like the narration on a vinyl record played too slowly.

The door was open.

Why am I still alive? Where’s Maurelli?

The creature coming through the door was too tall for the paper mill’s basement. It had legs like driftwood, a lion’s mane of stiff white hair, curving yellow horns, sagging flaps where breasts should have been, and hands like rakes. Cream-white eyes jutted out from big black caverns of folded skin, staring blindly along a rotting dog’s muzzle. It squeezed through the door frame and knocked kerosene lamps down from their hooks. Fire sizzled and went out.

A man’s bloody fist broke through the gap between the shoulders of bloodthirsty children, only to be reincorporated into the mix of elbows and claws.

The wendigo unfolded a six-foot-long arm and caught one of the bonewalkers around the middle, lifted it to her maw, and chewed off the legs to the waist. The bonewalker tried to scream but the bottom of her lungs were gone. The wendigo chewed lazily. Before it had finished swallowing, it dislocated its jaw and shoved the child headfirst into its mouth.

In the midst of the writhing, biting, slashing mass of white flesh, Ishmael elbowed his way up for air, and he saw the wendigo.

Then he spied Two-Trees.

The wendigo turned. Pieces of teenager were stuck between her teeth. A bone poked out through a hole in her cheek. She stepped in pieces of teenager. Adolescence oozed out between her spindly fingers. The wendigo’s eyes hovered around Two-Trees’ body, as if not quite sure where he was, but following his scent and tuning ragged, deer-like ears in his direction.

We did this
.
A man made this virus.

The wendigo opened its mouth, and pieces of teenager fell out. “Kill,” it hissed. Dull, dead eyes blinked. “Me.”

“Hector, move!” Ishmael screamed. “Help me!”

A tsunami of bonewalkers crashed over Ishmael. A second later, a black and brown paw shot to the surface, curled over, latched onto a spine and pulled a body away. The wendigo reached in and picked another tender vittle off the maggot pile and began to eat.

The more it eats, the hungrier it gets
.

Two-Trees’ hand wouldn’t budge. It wouldn’t fold. There was too much flesh. It was bloated from tapping all those innocents on the shoulder, or shoving them into vans, or helping them up into military transport vehicles. It was engorged with all the blood of lycanthropes and humans he’d killed.

He folded his thumb toward his pinkie finger.

The wendigo lifted its mouth and wheezed a wintery scream. He heard bones break and organs rupture. Blood splattered into the water.

Two-Trees slammed his upper body against his hand. He tried again. Nothing but pain, no dislocation. He tried again to hit his thumb to break it, using his chest, his shoulder, his head, anything.

The wendigo’s voice was like nails on a blackboard. She reached down and picked Ishmael off the floor and threw him aside. Two-Trees cringed as the man’s body hurtled toward him. They slammed against the wall, with Two-Trees’ hand pinned between stone and their combined weight. Ishmael righted himself—half in and half out of fur, one leg longer than the other, one arm at a bizarre and unnatural angle to the rest of his body—and Two-Trees pulled on his hand. His thumb stretched upward, separating from the rest of his hand. It was Two-Trees’ turn to scream.

Skin rolled up, bleeding. He could see the layers of subcutaneous fat and the tendons underneath. The manacle passed over his widest knuckles. He was free.