Escape (54 page)

Kieran shook his head, dimly aware that his thoughts had taken a strange turn. Hoping Jilly and Ferrel hadn't been paying attention to this thoughts, he said, “I smell blood.”

“Me too,” Jilly said, sounding confused.

Kieran started forward. “Let's investigate.”

“I don't know if that's such a good idea
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” Ferrel called after him.

Jilly followed, leaving Ferrel all alone in the corridor junction. He frowned and cast a quick glance over his shoulder before starting after them. They hadn't made it a dozen steps before they began to hear wet smacking sounds drifting down the corridor to meet them. A low growl issued, and then the smacking sounds continued. Kieran hesitated, and the others stopped beside him. Up ahead they could see an open door. The doors opened inward rather than out into the corridor, which explained why they hadn't been able to see it from a distance.

The sounds were coming from that open door and whatever lay beyond, and they were growing louder. The smell of blood was much stronger now. Ferrel shook his head, thinking,
Let's go back. Let's just go back.

Kieran was tempted to agree. He had a very bad feeling about what they'd see on the other side of that door.

We've come this far,
Jilly thought back at them.
We need to know what's going on here.
And with that, she stepped in front of the open doorway.

She gasped and took an involuntary step back the way she'd come. She backed right into Kieran, who gripped her shoulders and turned her to face him. She flinched at his touch. Her red eyes were wide, her jaw slack.

“What is it? What did you see?” Kieran asked.

She shook her head mutely, and the only sound that escaped her lips was a soft whimper.

Kieran frowned and tried to read her mind, to catch a glimpse of the scene from her thoughts. There was nothing there to read but a blank, unreasoning terror.

He had to see for himself. He stepped past her, and she didn't even try to stop him. Kieran stood in the open doorway, his mouth agape. The room was almost a mirror image of the one they'd woken in, with a bank of circular transpiranium portals in the far wall. All of them lay open, the chamber covers either torn off, or hanging open on bent and failing hinges. It was another stasis room, but for the dead rather than the living. In this case the stasis chambers would keep the bodies in metabolic suspension to prevent decay rather than death. But the chambers were empty. Apparently all the bodies had been moved. Upon closer inspection Kieran realized that the room was filthy. The floor was littered with rubble, and the tiles were slick with muck, even unto the spot where Kieran was standing. It was hard to imagine how the hospital staff could have left the morgue to fall into such disrepair. He began to wonder if they hadn't actually been in stasis for a very long time, but then why was the stasis room where they'd awoken in such good repair? Perhaps these stasis chambers were a lower priority, since their occupants were already dead.

Kieran
 
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please. We have to go!
He heard the whispers of Jilly's thoughts intrude upon his, and he turned to look. She was crying, sniffling audibly.

He shook his head, still uncomprehending. Then he caught a glimpse of the horror painted on Ferrel's face. He was standing behind, peering into the room over Kieran's shoulder. Kieran turned back to look, and this time he saw the room with new eyes.

The rubble-strewn, muck-slicked floor resolved into an entirely different scene. Arms, legs, torsos
 
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heads, scattered everywhere, and the floor wasn't slick with muck, it was slick with
 
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Blood,
Ferrel finished the thought for him.

“Kefick!” Kieran's explanation was whispered, but still too loud. They heard a sudden noise, like a beast snorting, and then a low, rising growl.

Instinctively they knew that whatever had desecrated the morgue was still there. And now it knew they were there, too. An ear-splitting screech rent the air, and Kieran turned from the door, his eyes wild.
Run!

They didn't need to be told twice. With their newfound strength they ran as fast as they could back the way they'd come. The dark corridor blurred and seemed to narrow around them as they sped back toward the corridor junction. Kieran heard a sound behind him over the noise of their footfalls slapping the tiles
—
like someone breathing down his neck with deep, rasping breaths. He cast a quick look over his shoulder, and caught a glimpse of it: glowing red eyes, set deep within a pale, wrinkly gray face. It was at least a foot taller than him, running on two legs, not four, and gaining fast, its darkly glistening teeth bared in a predatory gape. As Kieran reached the junction, he turned the corner, and his blood-slicked boots slipped on the tiles. He fell hard on his knees, his momentum pushing them up into his stomach and forcing the air from his lungs with a grunt. His momentum carried him in a tumbling roll.

Hearing him fall, Jilly whirled around, saw the beast, and screamed. Ferrel cast a quick look over his shoulder. His eyes widened in terror and he kept running.

Kieran fetched up against the far wall of the corridor and hit the back of his head,
hard
, against the unyielding castcrete. The sound of heavy breathing grew so loud it seemed to be echoing inside his head. He scrambled to his feet, determined to face whatever it was head-on. That was when he noticed that it was wearing a white coat. Like a doctor's lab coat. Except it was smeared with blood, making the creature look more like a terrifying butcher. Which is exactly what it was.

Kieran braced himself. The
thing
was racing toward him, not even slowing down for the kill. Kieran bent his knees ready to spring to either side. The creature kept coming. It threw its head back and let loose another inhuman screech. Kieran used the creature's distraction to his advantage and sprang left, delivering an elbow to its gut as he did so. He felt white hot lines shooting down his arm. The creature continued straight, and Kieran watched, hoping to see it collide with the castcrete wall and knock itself out. But then, as he was watching, it dissolved into a fuzzy cloud that quickly dissipated and ran along the face of the wall. In seconds it was gone.

“What the kefick?” Kieran asked.

Jilly was by his side and pointing to his arm. “Are you okay?”

There were five long, glistening furrows in his arm, and blood was falling from his arm to the tiles in a steady pitter patter.

Kieran shook his head. “We need to go, now. Something isn't right about this.”

They turned and ran. In seconds their breath was coming fast and ragged from the sudden exertion and panic. Kieran felt his heart thudding in his chest, and heard the blood roaring in his ears. He was beginning to feel the scratches along his arm. They were coming alive with a nauseating rush of pain. He saw a thousand tiny spots dance before his eyes, and his head swam. Kieran gritted his teeth and shook his head, forcing the dizzyness to pass. He was loosing too much blood, he knew that, but he couldn't stop to bind his wounds.

Then the dancing spots coalesced before him, and he realized what they were. The grinning visage of teeth and glowing red eyes reappeared directly in front of them, and they had no time to slow down. They were running directly toward
it
.

The creature threw its head back again, and Kieran expected to hear another screech. Instead he heard deep, rolling laughter, and then a wet growl of a voice:

“Finally! Some
fresh
meat.”

Chapter 34

J
illy watched, as if in slow-motion, their headlong rush toward a monster straight out of her worst nightmares. She was helpless to stop herself, or even measurably slow her momentum. She tried to angle her approach so that she would run past the creature, rather than straight into it, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Kieran doing the same, but then she watched, horror-stricken, as the creature reached out an arm to either side in a welcoming embrace.

Its fingers were tapered to long, sharp claws that were waiting to slice each of them to ribbons. The creature was grinning manically at them, its eyes glowing bright red.

Jilly gritted her teeth. Somehow she knew that as strong as they had become, the creature would be far stronger. The red eyes and doctor's lab coat gave it away. It was what they were destined to become, given enough time. It was the ultimate evolution of the virus and their biology. The perfect killing machine.

Jilly closed her eyes, and imagined herself back on her homeworld, a little girl again, the wind of her headlong sprint down the corridor became the breeze on Sylica, playing gently through her hair as she ran through a field of purple wildflowers. She wasn't rushing headlong toward a creature that would tear her head off as it had done to all the cadavers in the morgue; she was running toward her pet equilia, Casilla
—
Cassy.

A scream broke her reverie, and her eyes shot open involuntarily. But the creature hadn't screamed. This was an all-too-human scream. A battle cry. The creature turned to look, and the moment of inattention was all they needed.

Kieran grabbed the creature's arm as he rushed past, and sent Jilly a quick thought for her to do the same. She did, and their combined momentum bowled it over. Then they saw who had screamed.

Ferrel fell upon the creature, swinging a gleaming pole of some kind. He battered the creature's head over and over again, clubbing it viciously, while Kieran and Jilly pinned its arms down.

For a moment Jilly thought they were really hurting it. Then they heard it laugh again
—
a deep, rolling chuckle
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and suddenly the arms they were pinning to the floor lost all substance and they were grasping at air. Ferrel's club bounced off the tiled floor with a heavy
thunk
, and they clambered to their feet, looking everywhere for their opponent.

But the creature had vanished.

A voice tore into their heads:
You cannot hurt me. You cannot kill me. You will have to fill me!
A cackling laugh finished that thought, seeming audible despite the silence, and they whirled around, irrationally searching for the source of a sound that echoed only in their heads.

There was nothing but the fuzzy, monotone blackness of the corridor, the featureless castcrete walls, and the dull tiles of the floor. Kieran whirled around, his red eyes wide, bright, and glowing. His unspoken thought broke through their sudden confusion:
run!

So they ran, as fast as they could for the stairwell, not daring to look behind them, their attention wholly focused on the rectangular door that was their goal. Time seemed to slow down, but in a shard of a shattered moment they arrived, panting, hearts racing
—
Kieran's sweaty palm gripping the door handle and slipping on the polished alloy of the knob.

Jilly's and Ferrel's anxious thoughts pressed on him, urging him to hurry. He applied more force, translating to more friction, and pushed the door open, bending and nearly breaking the handle in the process. They piled into the stairwell, and Kieran slammed the door behind them. Jilly and Ferrel began sprinting up the flight of stairs, not even pausing for a break, while Kieran stopped long enough to lock the door, and then ran after them.

Four flights of stairs, and two more levels blurred by them. Kieran risked a glance over his shoulder, but there were no signs of pursuit. They flew up another 6 flights of stairs, and then stopped on the landing beside the door to yet another level. Their heads turned and they spent a moment with their eyes riveted back the way they'd come. The previous landing stood empty, and nothing but the sound of their panting lungs filled the silence.

“I think we lost it,” Jilly whispered.

Kieran's gaze lingered another moment, expecting to see a ghoulish, grinning gray monster swirl out of the darkness and fly up the stairs toward them. “I guess you're right,” he said, and turned away.

Ferrel wasn't convinced and kept watching their backs.

“What now?” Kieran asked.

“We look for a lab,” Jilly replied.

“What good will that be without power?”

Jilly sighed. “I don't know. Do you have a better idea?”

Kieran's reply was testy, but Ferrel tuned it out, as well as Jilly's equally testy rejoinder. He thought he'd just seen something moving on the landing. It was impossible to be sure, as sharp as his new eyes were, they still couldn't make out much detail in what was surely absolute darkness. He narrowed his eyes, squinting to see better, holding his makeshift club in readiness
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