Savage Hunger (Project Nemesis) (7 page)

Indecision rooted her to the spot for a brief second.  Perhaps it was the sight of the guns that momentarily stunned her.  Whatever the case, when they began grinning and running towards her, it was all the impetus she needed to make a break for it.

Erupting into action, she spun around, heading up the inclining beach for the jungle.  She leaned down and grabbed two handfuls of sand, scanning the area for anything else she could use as a weapon, but the beach was devoid of anything useful.

Behind her, she heard them yell and charge after her.

Her legs, already tired from the swim and jog down the beach, felt like two dead logs.  Her muscles screamed from abuse, burning with lactic acid as she strove to keep a distance between her and her pursuers.

They were rested and in far better shape than she was in.  Before she could reach the safety of jungle cover, they’d caught her.

Someone snatched the back of her shirt, jerking her to a halt.  She heard fabric rip, felt the bite of cloth around her collarbone, and sudden air lifting her back.  She hit the sand and started kicking.

A face loomed over her and she threw sand at him, blinding him with grit.  He screamed and kicked her in the stomach, knocking all the breath from her lungs.

Choking and coughing, she rolled to her belly, rising on her knees to scramble away from him, but he recovered quicker than she’d thought, or maybe it was another soldier who’d caught up with her.

She didn’t dare look back.  She kicked with all her might, landing a nut shot as she’d been taught in self-defense school when she’d been a teenager.

The man screamed in agony and growled, grabbing her foot and dragging her back.  He yanked on her legs, trying to keep her from kicking him.  Behind him stood one of the soldiers from the boat, grinning and scanning the jungle, looking for signs of the other men.

Sand scraped her cheeks, getting in her eyes.  She screamed and tore at the ground, trying to escape but knowing deep down that she was badly outgunned and outnumbered.  She had no hope of getting away from them, and the fury she felt directed around her did not bode well for her safety.

With fear, she realized she might be killed on the spot, and there was no one around who could help her.

***

Zach, Dante, and Lucas were quiet as they moved into the dense jungle.  They’d been keeping to the edges of the jungle to make sure Jasmine reached safety.  It was the best that they could do for her.  As much as they might want to, she could never go with them.  Not and be safe.

The few supplies they had would run out, and they would have to live off the land.  It was too much to ask anyone to do that didn’t have to.

Zach was still trying to convince himself he’d made the right decision when a blood-curdling scream erupted through the air.

His blood turned to ice.  When he realized at once something had gone wrong with their plan to let her go to a local fishing village, but he had no idea how or why.

Instant rage transformed the ice into a white hot blaze of fury.  The change came over all of them before they were aware of it even happening.

They ran as one, their human bodies melding into wolf.  The pain was hardly recognized as the sounds of her struggles reached their ears.  They tore through the jungle, landing on all fours as their bodies were taken over by the beast barely held in check at all times.

They welcomed the change, the speed and strength it gave them.  Racing faster, tearing through the overgrowth unimpeded, time seemed to slow to a crawl.

He could smell the scent of her fear, and recognized the smell of gun oil and gunpowder.  The project guards had found her somehow and were intent on taking her with them and using her to find out where they were.  His worst fear had been realized.

A howl spilled from his throat, answered by Dante and Lucas.  The eerie call was enough to send anyone other than a simple mind into sheer panic.

They burst through the line of jungle, onto the beach, fangs dripping with saliva, fury rolling inside.

The men holding her down looked up, screamed in terror, raised rifles to defend themselves.

The bullets could barely slow their beasts down.  Zach launched into the man pinning Jasmine to the sand, ripping into his throat and killing him instantly.

As the blood tinged the air, their minds were taken over by the kill, the urge to taste blood and destroy everything in their path.

The soldiers never stood a chance.

Around him, screams of pain broke the dawn air.

Seeing her caught and held against her will by the bastards who’d been tormenting him for months filled him with inhuman fury.  Barely pausing to make sure she was alive, he returned to battle, biting and clawing, killing everyone in his path.  Dimly, he recognized Dante’s and Lucas’ howls and growling as they left no one alive and allowed no one to escape.

Slowly, with their enemies conquered, the change reversed as their human minds took back control.  Sometimes, it seemed easier than others to regain control.  Perhaps it was the stage of the moon that allowed them an easier time of it.  Perhaps it was because they were settling into their new role in life.

Zach didn’t pause to think long over it, only feeling relief when his hands were his hands, though blood covered every inch of him.

He moved to where Jasmine had been laying in the sand, but she was no longer there.

For a brief moment, panic seized him, and then he saw her heading back into the jungle.  “Jasmine!” he yelled.

She stopped and spun around, running back to him.  She’d managed to pull her torn shirt back on.

“Thank god it’s you!” she yelled, colliding with him and holding him tight.  “Those men, they were going to take me back to your prison!  They kept asking me where you were, but I didn’t know!  I tried to fight them off, but there were too many of them.  And then these fucking wolves came out of nowhere and killed everyone.  I didn’t know what else to do but run!  We’ve got to go before those animals come back and eat us alive!  There are dead bodies everywhere!”

Zach held her tight.  “Nothing is going to get us, Jasmine.”

She tightened her arms, looking wildly around.  “How the hell would you know?  You didn’t see it happen.  It was insane.”

Behind him, he recognized the silent approach of Dante and Lucas.  They were breathing heavily from the fight still surging their blood.  He knew he might as well divulge the truth to her now, rather than try to hide anything from her.  “We were the monsters.  The wolves.”

She pulled back, looking up at him, confusion etched across her face.  “What do you mean?  You can’t mean…not those things.  That’s not possible.”

“It is, Jasmine,” Lucas said from behind.  “It’s why we tried to leave you alone, to protect you from the truth.  We’ve been…changed.  Infected.”

They could see that she didn’t believe them.  Who would?

Zach gave her a shake, knocking the misty look off her face.  She focused on him, light dawning in her eyes.

“How?  How can you be animals?”

Zach sighed.  “We caught a virus in the jungle of Cuba picking up a drone.  We don’t know if it was intentional or not.  It was fast acting, whatever it was.  Before we could reach pickup, the change was on us, and we had no control over what happened after that.  We changed others along with us.  They managed to subdue us with enough bullets to take us prisoner and we’ve been held in a prison facility ever since while they experimented on us, seeing what it takes to wound and kill us.”

Jasmine pulled away from him, covering her chest with her arms, shuddering.  “I don’t know what to believe.”

“Believe it,” Dante said.  “It’s not exactly something a person would lie about.  Any normal person would think we’re crazy.  Where do you think all this blood came from all over us?”

She noticed them for the first time, from their naked bodies, to the blood covering nearly inch of them.  She looked down at herself and saw blood smeared across her chest and arms.  Numbly, she began wiping it off herself.

Zach recognized the look on her face as shock.  Her big brown eyes looked close to tears.  Every instinct told him to leave her alone, that she’d be better off without them.  But would she?

She took a step back.  “What am I supposed to do now?  Can I go with you?  I can’t stay here by myself!  What if more soldiers come?”

“For God’s sake, Jasmine!  We can’t take you with us.  What if we change and hurt you?  We don’t have as much control over it as we’d like.  And danger only makes it worse.  We don’t know what’s going to happen with the next full moon.  We could turn and infect you.  Do you want to live the rest of your life like us?  Monsters?” Zach said on a growl, frustration making him tense and pace.

“But you kissed me.  You all did!  What if you infected me?”

He ran a hand through his black hair.  “You feel any different?  You’d be feeling the change right now if it was going to infect you.”

“N-no.  Nothing except scared and relieved all at the same time.”

“It must pass through the blood then,” Dante said.

Zach nodded, feeling a measure of relief himself.  “You can’t trust us, Jasmine.  We’re monsters now.  Monsters, werewolves, whatever the hell you want to call it.  I can’t guarantee that at some point, it won’t be us fucking your brains out all over the place.  There’s only so much we can resist, baby.”

His words sent a shudder through her.  “But you didn’t hurt me.  You had some control over it.  I trust you.  And…you wouldn’t have to force me to do anything with you.”

“Jesus H. Christ.  Don’t say shit like that to us.  I might take up the invitation.”  Zach growled in frustration.  “We don’t want to risk hurting you!”

She just looked at them with those sad eyes, hope draining from her face.  “I…I don’t think I have any choice but to trust you.  I don’t think I’m going to make it to the embassy on my own.  As much as I hate to admit needing someone…I need you.  All of you.  I’m willing to risk it if you’ll let me go with you.”

Zach kicked the sand, turning his back on her to go wash off in the surf.  Dante and Lucas followed suit, hoping the salt water would erase what they’d done from their minds.  It took away the immediate bloodlust, but that was all.  So much had happened to them, they might never be whole again.

Dante looked at his brethren and at Jasmine, who stood apart, looking lost and alone.  She washed her arms off then tied together the torn pieces of her shirt.  If anything, it only made her look that much more appealing to them seeing the flash of her sexy stomach.

“Fuck,” Dante said, scrubbing his face and hands.  “She’s enough to tempt a saint.”

“I know what you mean,” Lucas agreed, reading his mind.  “We have to take her with us.  We don’t have any choice, Zach.  We dragged her into this.  It’s up to us to make sure she gets home safely.  Especially now since we’ve killed some of the guards looking for us.  This’ll be like a beacon pointing straight at us.”

“I know.  It still makes me feel like shit that we have to do it,” Zach said, straightening up.  “We need to go before more come.  I don’t relish another fight and my balls are cold now.”

Dante and Lucas chuckled, agreeing.

“Come on, Jasmine.  We agreed.  You’ve got to come with us, like it or not.  It’s the only reasonable choice for now.”

Afraid as she was, she looked almost relieved.  Apparently, she’d rather go with them, monsters she was a little familiar with, than face down monsters she didn’t know.

He supposed he couldn’t blame her.

Chapter Five

“They’ve had two incidences off the coast of South America.  There’s been casualties,” Freda said to Dr. Wagner, getting off the phone.

“Us or them?” he asked, looking up from the computer on his desk.

“Us,” she said.

Dr. Wagner sighed in disgust and closed his laptop.  “Imbeciles.  Did they bring the tipped bullets like they were supposed to?”

“Everyone’s using them.  They aren’t working anymore.  They’re healing too fast for them to be effective.  The silver tipping only slows them down.”

“Dammit.  I didn’t foresee this happening.  I thought we had the method of execution right.  They need to come back and get the tranquilizers.  It worked on the cats, it should work on them.  Tranquilize the subjects, shoot them in the head, and burn the bodies to get rid of the evidence.  It’s the only way to kill them.  Have any locals been infected?”

“Not that we know of, but it’s too early to tell yet,” Freda said.

“Get in contact with the Captain.  Make sure the locals think it’s chupacabra and not something else.  They must be heading down the coast and moving faster than we anticipated.”

“Agreed.  I’ll call the captain and get them to return for tranquilizers.”

***

“Come on.  We’ve got to rescue the bags and get some clothes on.  We can’t stay here like this.  It’s too dangerous to be seen,” Zach said, leading them back into the jungle.  “Try and keep up.”

When she saw how close they’d been to where they rescued her, she looked at them with surprise on her face.  “Were you guys following me?”

Zach shrugged.  “We wanted to make sure you got home okay and didn’t get hurt by anyone.  I guess it’s a good thing we did or things would be different right now.”

It didn’t take long for them to recover the bags and get dressed.  As bright as dawn had made the beach, inside the jungle it was a completely different story.

Spattering light made it difficult to see anything clearly.  The scrape and jab of bushes tore at her already ragged clothing and snatched at her bare arms and face.

She resisted the urge to complain, knowing they’d only reluctantly agreed to take her with them.  She wasn’t going to give them an excuse to regret their decision.

Still, she couldn’t help but react to every insect biting and sucking her blood.  Every vine looked like a snake.  Every broken limb or floating leaf she was sure was something horrible out to get her.  She knew enough from school and television to know that the jungle was not a place she wanted to be.  They had every sort of deadly spider, frog, snake, and scorpion imaginable plus then some.