Bestial (22 page)

The silence was shattered by Ted’s scream. At first, it was an inarticulate, ululating wail that collapsed into a gurgle, followed by a ragged, screamed plea.

“
Get it off me get it off me Jesus Christ get it off me
!”

Standing beside her obese daughter lying on a table, the blonde woman in the grey T-shirt screamed, “Jesus, help him!
Help him
!”

Then others began to scream—the girl who had just given birth and two female nurses.

“What’s going on out there?” Hannah shouted in her curtained-off booth, her voice shaky and tense with fear.

Dr. Dinescu and Gavin moved at the same time. Both lunged toward Ted and reached for the small, bloody figure between his legs. Dr. Dinescu’s right foot slid in a slick puddle of blood and it took him a moment of flailing to keep from falling. Meanwhile, Gavin grabbed hold of the infant’s squirming torso with both hands and struggled to pull it away. Ted only screamed louder, writhing on the floor, legs kicking, arms flapping. The creature would not release its hold on Ted’s crotch, and when Gavin tried to pull it away, he only made the man’s pain worse. The creature was firmly fastened to Ted. Gavin was shocked by the strength of the monstrous infant’s slippery little body. Dr. Dinescu bent down to help.

The creature released Ted, jerked its head around sharply with a small, pinched growl, and closed its fanged snout on Dr. Dinescu’s left wrist. The doctor screamed in pain and tried to pull away, but the creature only buried its fangs deeper in his flesh.

Gavin’s mouth dropped open and his heart skipped a beat when he saw the flash of fangs in the infant’s snout. They were like curved, glistening needles surrounded by thin, black lips.

The instant Ted was released, he kicked his legs and crawled backward away from the creature as fast as he could, still screaming in pain.

The women continued to scream as she stared in horror at the thing that was now clamped to Dr. Dinescu’s wrist, embracing her daughter as if for life. The blonde woman threw both arms around her daughter and pulled her close. Her daughter returned the embrace and screamed shrilly, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”

One of the two female nurses ran screaming from the room, her body swaying, arms outstretched before her.

Bob gawked at the scene with an expression of breathless shock, and a few feet away from him, Karen did the same.

Dr. Dinescu fell backward with the creature still clamped onto his wrist. He swung his arm through the air, trying to dislodge it.

“What’s happening?” Hannah cried behind the curtain. “What is it? What’s going on?”

Gavin reached under his sport coat and removed his Glock from its shoulder holster, swung it around and held it with both hands. He tried to get a bead on the creature, but Dr. Dinescu staggered and flailed and made it impossible.

As if suddenly remembering she was armed, Karen drew her 9mm. and, like Gavin, tried to take aim at the thing on the doctor’s wrist. She could not.

There were too many people gathered around for wild shots to be safe—neither of them wanted to hit an onlooker. The creature never stopped moving. Its body continued to thrash as it made muffled growling sounds.

When Hannah shouted again, her voice was wet with tears: “Somebody tell me what’s goin’ on, pleee-heeeze! I’m
scared
!”

Crying out in pain and fear, Dr. Dinescu flew backward and fell onto a small table set up just outside one of the curtained booths. Objects flew in all directions in a clatter as the metal table crashed to the floor, spilling its contents. The creature made a vicious gurgling sound as it clung to the doctor’s wrist.

“Slam it against the floor!” Gavin shouted.

Lying on his back, Dr. Dinescu raised his left arm high, then brought it down as hard as he could. The creature was bashed against the floor with a wet smacking sound, and spatters of its viscous, bloody coating splashed out over the floor on contact. It did not let go and continued to squirm and jerk. The doctor repeated the action again, and again, and a third time.

On the last swing, the creature’s head struck the floor with a loud crack. It dropped from the doctor’s wrist and rolled over the blood-spattered floor, landing on its back, its snout open wide to reveal its fangs, a pink tongue wriggling inside the mouth as it rolled. It finally came to rest on its back.

Karen and Gavin both moved forward, aiming their weapons carefully, ready to fire.

It was still for less than the length of a heartbeat. It flipped over onto its stomach as Gavin fired. The gunshot exploded inside the room, but missed its intended target—the bullet pierced the tile where the thing had been only an instant before. The creature crawled at a shocking speed over the floor, heading directly for Karen and Gavin. It growled as it raced between them, then disappeared under a bed in one of the open booths.

The Emergency Room resembled a small battlefield. Ted, who had crawled backward until he was against a wall, had managed to lift himself into a half-sitting position, legs still spread. He had left a trail of blood smeared over the floor. He sobbed and groaned in pain, his face as white as chalk as he gawked down at the torn crotch of his blood-soaked pants, arms and legs quaking.

“Tell me!” Hannah screamed. “What’s
haaappeniiing
?”

Dr. Dinescu struggled to his feet, blood dripping from his torn wrist. Eyes squinting and lips pulled back over his teeth in a mask of pain, his attention was focused on Ted.

“He’s in shock,” the doctor said, nodding at Ted. “Irene, he needs help. We’ve got to—”

”Everyone out of this room,” Gavin said firmly as eyed the bed under which the creature had crawled, his gun aimed in that direction. Karen stood beside him, her gun pointing in the same direction.

Dr. Dinescu turned to him. “Ted needs—”

”Get him out of here and
then
help him,” Gavin said. He turned to Dr. Dinescu, then looked at the others, who stood with slack jaws and bulging eyes, staring beyond him at the space into which the creature had disappeared. “I’m serious, get out of here!
All
of you!”

Bob started to move stiffly toward the door.

The thing shot out from under the bed. It growled as it moved across the floor and left a bloody trail. It went straight for Bob’s left leg and closed its jaws. Its fangs pierced the leg of Bob’s pants and barely missed his calf. With a shrill, terrified scream, Bob began to hop around on his right foot while kicking his left leg, his arms straight and spinning circles in the air in an effort to maintain his balance.

“
Oh Jesus Christ God it’s got me help somebody help Jesus oh Lord help me—”
Bob screamed, the words tumbling from his mouth in one long, rapid stream that finally crumbled into terrified babbling.

Karen and Gavin tried to hold their guns on the creature, but Bob kept kicking his leg. They both knew that if they fired, they had a better chance of hitting Bob than the thing attached to his pants. Karen stepped toward him and kicked the creature hard with her right foot. When her foot connected, the thing yelped as it tumbled through the air with a torn bit of Bob’s pant leg in its mouth.

With the little monster off of his leg, Bob fell forward and landed face-down on the floor.

The creature arced through the air, hit the floor with a
splat
, and rolled and slid under the curtain that surrounded Hannah’s booth.

“Oh, no!” Karen cried.

The creature made an ugly growling noise as sounds of movement came from the other side of the curtain.

Karen and Gavin started toward the booth, but before they could reach it, Hannah’s throaty, jagged scream of pain and fear tore through the room. At the same time, the sound of tearing cloth ripped through the air. With chittering clicking sounds, a few buttons scattered over the tile from under the curtain.

The two investigators struggled with the curtain, trying to pull it aside and get into the booth. Like a comedy team in a silent-era slapstick comedy, they fumbled and fought with the curtain as Hannah’s screams went on and on. Other sounds came from inside the booth, as well—wet smacking sounds and small, breathy grunts. Frustrated, Gavin finally grabbed the curtain and pulled with all his strength as Hannah’s screams ended with a harsh retching. The hooks that held the curtain in the track on the ceiling pinged and snapped as the curtain partially fell away—just enough to reveal Hannah on the table in the booth.

Hannah still lay on her back, but now the small creature hunkered on her chest like some kind of demon. Its little hands clutched her filthy, blood-stained shirt, the sharp claws at the tip of each chubby finger piercing the material. The shirt had been torn open over her abdomen. The creature had ripped her open with its teeth. There was blood on Hannah, the table, and on the small thing on top of her. When the curtain fell aside, it lifted its head and glared at Karen and Gavin with shiny silver eyes, its snout chewing hungrily on the rope of intestine it had pulled from Hannah’s open abdomen.

Karen made a sickened sound in her throat as she and Gavin leveled their weapons at the creature.

Its bloody mouth opened wide and it growled at them, then sprang from Hannah’s chest. The creature became a blur as it lunged through the air, directly for Karen and Gavin, its little arms outstretched, sharp claws ready to tear, wet meat-flecked fangs ready to bite.

With guns raised, Karen and Gavin each fired once as they instinctively stepped apart to avoid letting the creature slam into them. It sailed past them and smacked to the floor.

Karen spun around first, just in time to see the monstrous infant, on all fours, scuttle through the same door through which she had come and into the short hall. Karen’s mind jumped ahead and imagined the creature getting into the waiting room, and then either into the rest of the hospital, or outside the hospital where it could go
anywhere
.

“Stop it, quick, before it gets out!” she shouted as Gavin turned and ran after the creature. Karen followed him through the short hall.

It’s body jerking back and forth, it crawled past the closed door that led into the waiting room and passed into the small office behind the reception window. The office was empty—apparently Winona had fled.

The window,
Karen thought.
It’s open.

As the creature climbed up on Winona’s empty chair, on which lay the abandoned telephone receiver, Gavin fired his weapon again. In such small quarters, the gunshot seemed even louder than before. Gavin missed his target.

The creature hopped from the chair to the desk and moved toward the window.

Karen frantically shouted, “Don’t let it get out that—”

It went through the window.

A woman screamed in the waiting room, “It’s in here! Somebody! Oh, God! It’s in here, in here!”

They quickly backtracked to the door and went into the waiting room. Winona stood in a far corner, her palms pressed to her cheeks below terrified eyes. She pointed a finger at the open door that led to the corridor outside. As she pointed, her mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out.

A bloody trail led through that door and into the corridor.

Gavin went out the door first, followed by Karen. Their jogging footsteps slapped the tiles as they followed the trail to the left. Up ahead, the trail rounded a corner to the right and disappeared down another corridor.

From beyond that corner, a woman screamed. Half a heartbeat later, a man shouted, “What the
fuck
?”

They rounded the corner and saw that the red trail was fading as the creature moved along. Up ahead and on the left, a woman stood against the wall, clutching her purse to her chest, her face registering shock and fear. Across the corridor from her, a man stood just inside a doorway, his back pressed hard against the open door as he gawked at something on the other side.

Karen and Gavin approached the open door and looked through it. It led to the stairwell, and the man was staring slack-jawed at the stairs.

“Shit,” Gavin muttered.

The man’s eyes widened when he saw their guns. He looked from one gun to the other, then at Gavin, and said, “Whuh-what
was
that?”

They ignored his question and hurried up the stairs.

Bob staggered into the waiting room and headed for the glass door that led outside. He had no particular destination in mind—he wasn’t even thinking specifically of going to his car out in the parking lot. All he knew was that
had
to get out of the Emergency Room, out of the hospital, outside where there was plenty of air to breathe and space in which to move.

The floor seemed to tilt beneath his feet, first in one direction, then in the other. He couldn’t quite walk in a straight line, and he kept swaying from side to side and moving his arms to keep his balance. He reached out to push the door open, then fell against it heavily.

He could still hear Ted crying out in pain and the women sobbing loudly in the back. As he went out the door, the sounds faded.

The night had cooled somewhat since he’d been outside last, and it felt good against his skin. He felt clammy as he made his way from the ER door to the parking lot, still walking unsteadily.

On his way out, Bob passed a brown-skinned, black-haired man going in. The man looked deep in thought and walked with confidence and authority as he went into the ER.