Bestial (42 page)

“Get out of here!” he shouted at Bob. “
Now
! There’s a way out over there behind those plants.
Go
!”

Gavin pushed him hard, then moved past him.

Suddenly, Bob became fully aware of the fact that he was naked and standing in a dangerous nightmare. The hairy creatures in the sanctuary that weren’t dropping to the floor after being shot were fighting to get to the exits. The smoke rising from the pews was thickening rapidly.

He thought of Royce and a pain stabbed through his chest. Bob knew Royce would not want him to suffer the same fate.

He turned and dodged around the scattering, growling werewolves toward the planter.

As Bob hurried away, Gavin watched Taggart go down the steps to Ella. He hunkered down beside her as she tried to get up, grabbed the hair on the sides of her head, and pulled her up to face him. Blood glistened on her neck and shoulder. Taggart’s snout slowly widened as he pulled Ella closer.

Gavin was less than ten feet away from Taggart, and he covered that distance quickly. He saw Ella’s eyes flick toward him, register his presence, then turn back to Taggart. The sheriff had not noticed Gavin at all.

With a convulsive jerk of her head, Ella spat in Taggart’s face.

Gavin put the barrel of his gun to the right side of Taggart’s head and fired.

The left side of Taggart’s head opened up in a spray of brain matter and bits of bone. He released Ella and fell to the floor, turning as he dropped so he landed on his back. His silver eyes became wide with fear and confusion as his snout opened and closed like the mouth of a fish out of water.

Gavin quickly lifted Ella to her feet. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” Supporting her as she limped along beside him, they hurried for the side door that led out into the corridor.

Lloyd hoped the other guys were having as much fun as he. It was deeply satisfying to squeeze the trigger and watch the slobbering, growling monsters go down.

A fire was growing among the pews, sending black smoke up toward the high ceiling. The air was bad enough with the reek of the hairy beasts that filled the sanctuary, but soon the smoke would make it unbreathable and deadly.

Then, in an instant, something changed in them. The sound level in the sanctuary suddenly dropped for a moment and their eyes widened. The werewolves seemed to forget Lloyd was there as they looked around at each other, up at the high ceiling, down at the floor. Then, as if they’d been set afire, they went crazy.

They no longer seemed to care about his gun. They flailed and thrashed and even began to attack each other wildly, viciously.

Lloyd backed away from them. He coughed as the biting smell of smoke filled his nostrils. He spotted P.J. and Cyrus heading for the open double doors through which they’d come in, and Lloyd decided to do the same. He darted around the manic creatures, stopping a couple of times to fire a few spurts into them, then went to the open doorway. He turned to face the sanctuary again, put the whistle to his mouth, and blew as hard as he could.

The sharp, piercing sound cut through the racket. Lloyd saw the other three guys running toward him. He glanced down at his vest. It seemed a waste to have all the grenades Mr. Burgess had provided and not use them. He took one from his vest.

As the other guys ran past him into the foyer, Lloyd jerked the pin out with his teeth and threw the grenade into the crowd of werewolves that were still standing.

He ran through the foyer shouting, “Let’s get the fuck outta here!”

Karen felt a rush of relief when she saw Gavin and Ella come out of the sanctuary.

“We’ve got to get out,” Gavin said. “There’s a fire in there.”

“You’re hurt,” Karen said as she put an arm around Ella’s shoulders. After nearly being killed by the creatures in the sanctuary, it no longer made her cringe inside to look at Ella in her hairy, fanged state.

“Bob!” Gavin shouted.

Karen followed Gavin’s gaze down the corridor and saw Bob peering around a corner.

“Come on, let’s go!” Gavin called to him with a beckoning wave.

Bob rushed naked along the corridor toward them.

“Where’s the other one?” Karen said to Ella, referring to Cynthia.

“We don’t have time to find her,” Gavin said.

Abe said, “What about George?”

A look of pained sadness passed over Gavin’s face. “We just don’t have time.”

“And Burgess’s guys?” Karen said.

“I think they can take care of themselves,” Gavin said. “Let’s go.
Now
.”

The six men in the multi-purpose room stood open-mouthed and watched as one of the two werewolves they’d just shot quaked and squirmed on the floor. Both were female, but the one that convulsed was blond and held a silver table knife in her hand. She made awful strangling sounds and a thin white foam gathered at the corners of her mouth as her snout wrinkled and trembled. The other one lay near her, perfectly still and apparently dead.

“Jesus H. fuckin’ Christ!” Paulie Timpone said. He was a big, beefy Italian originally from New Jersey who had narrow, cruel eyes that looked incapable of expressing fear. But they expressed it now. “I-I-I thought he was fuckin’
jokin’
when he said
werewolves
.”

“That look like a joke to you, Paulie,” Max said. At sixty, Max Faraday was the oldest of their entire group, with long silver hair and a bushy silver beard. He looked like he should be mounted on a big, noisy Harley. “That’s some fucked up shit. But we got ‘em. I just wanna make sure there’s no more in this room.”

Max and Paulie walked over to the window that looked in on the kitchen. They leaned through it and looked behind the counter and over the floor to make sure the kitchen was empty.

Jules Carpenter, a short guy built like a fire hydrant, saw the still creature on the floor move first. He blurted, “Oh, shit!”

She moved fast. Too fast.

Max and Paulie started to turn.

“Look out!” Jules shouted. “She’s—”

She was on them before they’d turned all the way around. She slapped her hands over their faces and pushed them back hard.

Brett Chaney lifted his Uzi to shoot at her, but Jules grabbed his arm and pushed the gun aside.

“No, you dumbfuck!” Jules shouted. “You’ll shoot
them
if you do that!”

His last few words were swallowed up by the loud throaty grumble from the werewolf that was on Max and Paulie. She pushed them back hard until they were lying on the narrow counter along the bottom of the rectangular window.

From somewhere in the church, they heard the muffled
whump!
of a grenade going off.

Both of Max’s arms were stretched up over his head. As the creature pushed his head farther back, he fired his Uzi wildly and the bullets sprayed all over the kitchen.

Jules and Brett stood with two other men—Ollie Tucker, another large black man, and Buddy Haye, whom everyone called Haye Buddy, whose pale muscles were covered with bad prison tattoos. They didn’t move at first, riveted by what they were seeing.

“We
shot
her!” Haye Buddy said. “I thought Lloyd said the fuckin’ silver bullets would
work
!”

Max’s gun continued to fire in spastic spurts, shattering glass in the kitchen. He and Paulie released keening, strangled wails as they kicked and flailed. The creature pushed their heads back hard, farther and farther over the edge of the counter, bending their necks sharply.

“We should help them!” Brett shouted.

“
You
fuckin’ help ‘em!” P.J. said. “I ain’t goin
near
that motherfuckin’ thing!”

“Oh, shit,” Haye Buddy said as he tilted his head back and sniffed the air. “You smell gas?”

There was a thick, wet
crack!
and Paulie’s body fell limp, neck broken. Max kept shooting and kicking as the creature put both hands on his face and pushed harder.

One second after Max’s neck snapped, the gas stove in the kitchen exploded.

After a loud explosive sound that lasted only an instant, Lupa felt unimaginable heat. It washed over her while she was blown forcefully through the air. The sound was replaced by a throbbing, rushing hiss in her ears. Her body hit something as she flew threw the air—hit it, then broke through it and kept flying.

The world blinked out like a light for a moment.

When she awoke, she was lying on the ground, and she was on fire.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Outside

Corky Lerner and John Teague were stoned and they were on their way to a party to join other stoned people in a communal effort to get more stoned. They laughed together as Corky drove the black Volkswagen Beetle along Crozier. They’d been laughing for awhile, and neither could remember why, but they kept laughing, tears rolling down their cheeks. Corky drove slower than usual because he was afraid of attracting the attention of a cop. The Seventh-day Adventist church was coming up on the right, and cops often lurked in the two narrow side streets that flanked the church, watching for speeders. The church’s lights were on and the parking lot was full.

“Okay, okay, that’s enough!” Corky said as he fought to stop laughing. “I gotta drive, here, dude, stop it.”

“Stop what?” John said as his laughter calmed.

“Whatever you was doin’ that was so fuckin’ funny.”

“Was
I
being funny? I thought
you
were being funny.”

“I don’t care who was—”

A sudden flash of light from the side of the church startled Corky. A gout of flames vomited from the building and Corky cried, “Shit!” as he slammed his foot onto the brake pedal. The Volkswagen jerked to an abrupt stop in the road.

Corky and John gawked at the fire that had appeared from nowhere. The brief explosion of flames retreated, but the side of the building continued to burn. A segment of the fire remained on the parking lot pavement outside the church. It lay there motionless for a bit. Then it began to move back and forth, rolling over the blacktop. It shot to its feet suddenly and flailed its arms as it staggered.

“Fuck, man, that’s a
person
!” John shouted.

“Oh, Jesus, somebody’s on fire!” Corky said.

The burning figure dropped to the ground again and rolled frantically. The flames shrank, dimmed, and went out. The figure lay there for a moment, then struggled up onto hands and knees.

“Shuh-should we d-do something?” John said, his voice weak.

“I don’t know, maybe we should—wait a second.”

The figure stayed on all fours as it moved slowly away from the church. In the orange glow of the fire, Corky and John saw something extend from the back end of the figure. A tail.

“Hey,” John said. “That... that’s a dog. It’s a fuckin’
dog
!”

“But it-it-it... it was a
person
,” Corky said, confused.

“Well, it’s a dog
now
.”

The four-legged animal disappeared among the parked cars, then came out the other side. It left the parking lot and limped across the side street, leaving the flickering orange of the fire and the yellowish glow of the parking lot’s lights. It disappeared into the darkness.

John said, “Dude... we are so fuckin’
wasted
.”

“Shit, there’s gonna be cops comin’,” Corky said.

“Then what’re you waitin’ for? Get the hell
outta
here!”

Corky faced front and was about to step on the gas when he saw a scattered group of people hurrying across Crozier. One of them wore what appeared to be some kind of hairy costume, like an ape suit. They crossed the street to the parking lot of the strip mall.

Corky hit the gas and hoped they were a good distance away before any police showed up.

They stood in the parking lot for awhile, watching the church burn.

Lloyd gathered his men and they counted heads—they were missing four, and from the looks of the church, those four would not be joining them.

Abe tried to examine Ella’s neck wound in the dark as she leaned against one of the SUVs. Her naked body was hairless now. Blood from the bite ran down over her right arm and breast.

Bob stood alone, his own nakedness forgotten, and watched as the growing flames engulfed the church.

A few feet away from Bob, Karen and Gavin leaned against the other SUV. They looked at each other for a long time, weary and splattered with the blood of the werewolves they’d killed. They looked into each other’s eyes without speaking. Finally, they turned and watched the fire.

“Hey,” Karen said softly with a shrug of one shoulder, “at least I wasn’t raped and tortured this time.”

Gavin nodded once. “It’s important to see the glass as half full.”

She sighed and said, “I need a cigarette.”

Abe stepped in front of them. “She needs help,” he said, nodding toward Ella. “She’s losing a lot of blood and that wound needs to be treated.”