Bestial (33 page)

Abe swam through the fuzziness that filled his mind, through his blurry vision and the pain he felt, and took advantage of the weak moment. He swung his knee up with all his might and it slammed into the creature’s crotch.

As the creature grunted in pain, it let go of his wrist and swung its left arm back hard. Its hand collided with Claire and she yelped like a kicked puppy as the impact knocked her over.

It swung its left arm forward again and its claws ripped across Abe’s face, knocking him backward. He hit the floor hard and felt the warm blood on his cheek almost instantly, followed by the burn of broken flesh. But he was free of the thing’s clutches and he tore his focus from his own pain and put it on acting as quickly as he could.

The creature seemed to take a moment to get its bearings after the blow to the head. In that moment, Abe scrambled to his feet. The dining room tilted and spun around him for a couple of seconds—then he realized his right hand was empty.

He’d dropped his gun.

Abe unconsciously made a little whining sound as he looked around his feet for his weapon. He turned around and spotted the gun on the floor a few feet away. He reached out his hand and was about to step forward and bend down to get it when the creature behind him roared furiously. It slammed into the back of him and together they flew forward as it embraced Abe’s chest from behind, pinning his arms firmly to his sides, his roar so loud in Abe’s right ear that it made his head hurt.

Fangs sank into Abe’s shoulder and the creature’s jaws closed tightly. Agonizing pain radiated from each puncture point and Abe cried out as he struggled under the creature’s weight, lifting his head.

Through the red heat of his pain, Abe saw two feet in front of him. They wore stubby dark brown shoes and had thick, puffy ankles that grew into fat calves encased in flesh-colored support hose.

In her ragged old voice, Illy screamed something in Romanian, something that ended with the drawn out word, “
Moooorrrrooooiiii
!”

The creature’s growl shot up into a high squeal, a harsh, painful sound that dragged on as it began to writhe and jerk on top of Abe. A moment later, its hold on Abe’s upper body loosened and it fell to the right.

His teeth clenched against the pain, Abe dragged himself over the floor and away from the suddenly weak creature. He grabbed the edge of one of the dining chairs, pulled himself to his feet, and turned around. He looked down at the thing on the floor.

It lay on its side, arching its back as it convulsed, making wet, strangled sounds of distress. It rapidly changed again and again, its coating of hair coming and going, its snout melting away then reappearing. As it transformed back and forth, its flesh split open in places all over its face and neck and hands, and on the spaces visible through the tears in its clothes. Each splitting of the skin became an ugly, red, dribbling sore. As it screamed in anguish, it rolled over onto its stomach.

Abe saw the crucifix handle of Illy’s dagger sticking out between the creature’s shoulder blades. The entire eight-inch blade had been buried to the hilt in the thing’s back.

He turned to Illy and saw something in her face he had never seen before. Anger burned in her eyes and somehow it took ten years from her appearance. Her hands were curled into loose fists at her sides as she glared down at the creature that was suffering on the floor.

Fluids coming from the open sores began to gather on the floor around the thrashing, wailing creature. It kicked its legs, flailed its arms. Then, within seconds, its movements slowed. Its sounds became weaker but more desperate. Finally, the creature fell still.

“Get the dagger,” Illy said, a little winded, her voice hoarse.

Abe bent down and removed the dagger from the creature’s back. He held it before him and looked at the blade. Through the streaks of blood, the intricate silver inlay glimmered.

“I have always said it has great power,” Illy said. “It is—”

Claire’s scream rose shrilly in the living room. An instant later, it collapsed in a horrible wet bubbling sound, as if she were gargling with mouthwash.

Abe turned and ran into the living room. He could not believe what he was seeing. The deputy whose face and head had been shattered by a bullet was on its knees beside Claire, who was stretched out on the floor. The deputy’s face was pressed against her throat. Her legs kicked and her arms twitched as she continued to make a voiceless gurgling sound. Abe could see that the deputy’s hands were covered with dark hair.

He rushed forward, lifting the dagger high in both hands. He brought it down hard and sank the blade into the deputy’s back.

Almost instantly, the deputy rolled away from Claire with a high growl. His face was hairy, with a half-developed snout. When Abe had last seen the deputy only minutes ago, a large segment of the left side of his face and head had been gone, torn away by the bullet. It looked different now. It was still bloody, but much of the missing segment had returned.

With the knife in its back, the deputy-creature tried to get to its feet, but fell forward helplessly. It began to go through the same agonizing convulsions and to open up in the same ugly sores as the thing in the dining room.

Abe ignored the creature on the floor, as well as his own pain, and went to Claire’s side. Someone in the room was sobbing and babbling incoherently. As Abe scooped Claire up in his arms, he realized the sobbing and babbling was coming from his own mouth.

Claire’s throat was gone. It had been torn away, revealing the broken trachea and wire-like tendons beneath the skin. Blood puddled in the the cavity that had replaced her lovely throat, and sputtered up out of her mouth. Her body jerked repeatedly in his arms. Her wide eyes locked with Abe’s as her lips trembled and she tried to speak. All that came out was more gurgling, more blood. She lifted a hand to touch his face, but did not quite make it. The hand dropped away as her eyes seemed to look through Abe and beyond him.

Abe shouted her name again and again as he held her limp body to him tightly and rocked back and forth on his knees. He sobbed until his chest ached. The wound on his shoulder throbbed painfully. He hugged Claire to him as his sobs weakened.

“More may come,” Illy said, standing beside him. She placed a hand on his shoulder and he could feel it trembling. “We should not stay here.”

He forced himself to process her words, to think about them. He knew she was right. But he did not want to let go of Claire.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Convergence: Jail

Abe drove the Navigator with no destination in mind. He heard a low thrum in his ears, but it was not coming from an exterior source. It was the sound of his own pain and fear droning inside his head. Adrenaline coursed through his body, but at the same time, he felt drained of energy, so impossibly weak that it was difficult to keep his arms up and his hands on the wheel.

He could not take his mind off of Claire. He kept seeing the insides of her throat brutally exposed beneath torn flesh... hearing her last horrible sounds... watching the life evaporate from her lovely eyes. The pain created by these thoughts was not located in one particular part of his body—it radiated from his gut and spread from the soles of his feet to the crown of his skull.

Illy’s dagger with its crucifix handle lay in the center console, its silver-inlaid blade still glistening with wet blood.

He looked over at Illy and saw that she was hunched forward as far as her seatbelt would allow, as if in pain.

“You okay, Illy?” he said, his voice rough and dry.

She gave him a familiar gesture—a short, dismissive wave, as if to say,
Don’t mind me.

Abe headed south out of Big Rock. Just beyond the town’s border, he came to a road construction crew in orange smocks and hardhats. One diamond-shaped sign read SLOW, and another read PREPARE TO STOP. In spite of the trucks and the crew, he could see no actual road work being done.

“Oh, no,” he groaned as one of the men stepped into the road with a read stop sign and held up his hand, palm out. Abe slowed to a stop.

The man with the stop sign stared at the Navigator. It looked to Abe as if his eyes were on the license plate. Still holding up the stop sign, the man took a radio from his belt, held it in front of his mouth, and pushed the button on the side with his thumb.

Something about this disturbed Abe, but it wasn’t quite able to penetrate that low humming sound in his head.

“I hope this doesn’t take long,” Abe said. He turned to Illy. “It’s strange that on a Sunday there’s—Illy!”

She had removed her seatbelt and slumped forward, her head against the glove box. Abe unfastened his belt, leaned over, and eased her upright until she was resting against the back of the seat. Her knobby fingers clutched at her chest and her mouth hung open.

“No, Illy, no,” he said, surprised by the flat, lifeless sound of his voice, as if his pain and dread had sucked all the emotion from it.

Illy made a dry, raspy sound in her throat as she slumped further into the seat. Her hands dropped heavily from her chest and fell into her lap.

“No, not both of you, not both of you, please, God, not that,” Abe babbled as he quickly got out of the SUV. He ran around to the other side, opened the door, and pulled Illy out. He clumsily stretched her out on the pavement beside the Navigator and began to perform CPR. He did not hear his own voice uttering pleas to God as he worked on her.

The sun beat down on the hot pavement. There wasn’t even the hint of a breeze in the air. A set of footsteps crunched over the shoulder toward Abe, closely followed by another.

“She sick?” a man said.

As he pumped Illy’s sternum with both hands, Abe tossed a very brief glance up at the man in the orange smock. “Dying,” he said abruptly, then bent forward to perform mouth-to-mouth.

Abe was so desperate to revive his grandmother, so immersed in what he was doing, that he did not hear the man’s muttered comment about calling the police.

Karen and Gavin were led in handcuffs to their cell in the rear of the station. Inside the cell, Deputy Eckhart removed their cuffs, closed the door, and walked away without a word.

Karen turned to the right and looked at the man on the other side of the bars. He sat on the bench in his cell, leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs, joined hands hanging between his knees. She was badly frightened, but as usual, she pushed that deep down inside her and instead smiled at the other prisoner.

“So, what are you in for?” she said.

The man looked at her cautiously, uncertainly. He had a bloody scrape on his forehead. Finally, he smiled slightly and said, “I guess they don’t like me.” He stood and came to the bars. “George Purdy.”

Karen flinched and turned to Gavin, who quickly came to her side.

“Well, well,” Gavin said, reaching out and shaking George’s hand. He introduced himself and Karen. “We’ve been talking about you. Your name has come up more than once in the last several hours.”

“My name?” George said suspiciously. “Has come up?”

“We’re private investigators,” Gavin said. “We’ve come to Big Rock to... well, we, uh—”

”Among other things,” Karen said, “we’re here to look into the disappearance of Daniel Fargo.”

George’s eyes widened.

“You were a friend of Arlin Hurley’s, right?” Gavin said. “The former sheriff?”

A look of amazement followed by great relief passed over George’s face, relaxing his features. “My God, you knew Arlin?”

“No, we didn’t know him, but we know of him. And we know of
you
. We have a lot of questions to ask you.”

George’s shaggy beard opened in a broad smile. “And I’ve got a few things to tell you, too.”

When it became clear to Abe that Illy was irretrievably gone, he finally stopped working on her. On all fours beside Illy, his head sagging, sweat dribbled down the sides of his face. It occurred to him that fifty years ago, back when a doctor never went anywhere without his bag, he might have had something on hand that could have saved her. But doctors didn’t carry bags anymore.

Such is progress,
he thought.

He had no idea how long he’d worked on her. His sense of time had become warped. He suddenly realized he couldn’t remember what day of the week it was—he only knew it was the day he lost his family.

Footsteps crunched toward him again. He looked up, expecting to see one of the hardhatted men in orange. Instead, a deputy stood over him. Three of the road-workers stood behind him. It was one of the frustratingly casual deputies from last night’s bloodshed in the ER. Abe groped through the fog in his mind and found his name: Deputy Cross.

“Hello again, Dr. Dinescu,” the deputy said with a smile.

In too much emotional pain to feel anymore dread, Abe got to his feet, brushed grit from his pants, and faced the deputy.

“I suppose you want to see my license and registration,” Abe said, stepping over Illy and leaning into the open door of the SUV. He reached across the seat and wrapped his fingers around the handle of the dagger.