Succulent Prey (29 page)

Joseph punched Damon hard in the gut,

driving the oxygen from his lungs and

turning his complexion red and purple.

Damon's eyes went wide and his tongue

shot out of his mouth. Joseph waited

until Damon stopped coughing and

caught his breath before leaning in and clamping a hand over his mouth.

"If you scream again the next punch wil break your sternum and puncture your

lungs. You'l die slowly as your lungs

col apse and fil up with blood, drowning you. Do you understand?"

Damon nodded. Joe withdrew a scalpel

he'd stolen from the maintenance closet and placed it to the fat man's chest. Then he began to cut.

"Please. Please don't kil me. I didn't mean to hurt you.

"I don't care anymore. I only care about getting the cure."

"Kil ing me won't cure you."

"It's worth a try."

He sliced a long line down the unctuous pervert's chest, cutting so deep that he could feel the blade bounce over the fat man's rib cage. Damon's pal id flesh

opened up, revealing thick yel ow globs of adipose tissue smothering the ruby

red muscle fibers surrounding his ribs. Damon cried out despite the warning.

"Arrrrgh! Stop! Stop!!! Hel l !" Joe smashed an elbow down into

Damon's solar plexus, shattering his

xiphoid process and rupturing his lungs. Damon wheezed and choked, gagging

as the blood fil ing his thoracic cavity and crushed his lungs. Blood bubbled up

from between the pervert's lips as he

struggled to breathe.

"This won't cure you. I didn't make you what you are," Damon wheezed in an exhausted whisper.

"I would have been normal, just like any other person, if you hadn't passed this disease on to me!" Joe struggled to keep his voice down as his entire body

vibrated with rage. His cold blue eyes

were livid with half a lifetime of shame and anger.

Damon began to laugh. A hideous

gurgling sound issued from his lungs and blood sprayed from his lips as he

wheezed and cackled.

"You were made long before I came

along. Why do you think I picked you as my first? You were made by the same

person who made me years before. The

disease was already in your blood. Just like the legends say, you have to kil the original vampire, and I wasn't the first one. I was just a victim, like you. I was made into a monster."

"By who?"

Damon's voice was growing fainter as

he continued to try to breathe through his col apsing lungs.

"Haven't you guessed it already? There is no curse. It's al in the genes."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"You figure it out. You know. Deep down, you know. You've known al along." Joe leapt onto the mattress, straddling the child kil er's bloated stomach, and plunged the scalpel deep into the wound he'd made in Damon's chest. In a near

frenzy, Joe began ripping the obese

pederast apart. He cut chunks of flesh

out of the man's torso, slicing deep into his fat and muscle and then digging his fingers down into the meat and jerking it free with both hands. Pul ing off his

pectoral muscles with a wet sticky riiiiiip!

He stripped the meat from the man's

arms and legs, wrenching loose his

flabby biceps and triceps from his

humerus and tossing them to the floor,

tearing his huge fat enclustered vastus muscles and hamstrings from his femur

as Damon tried to force a scream up

through his blood-clogged larynx.

Damon passed out from the pain, blood

loss, and shock of seeing his body so

recklessly unmade, yet Joe continued to rip into him with the scalpel and his own bare hands until large hunks of warm wet meat lay al over the floor around the

bed.

The room was now a gruesome abattoir.

The sterile white wal s and ceiling ran red with Damon's depleted life. The

mattress upon which his savaged

carcass lay was a blood-drenched

sponge that squished beneath their

weight, leaking more blood down onto

the tiled floor. Joe's anger began to ebb. He stared down at the ruin he'd made of the corpulent pederast and felt muscles uncontracting and relaxing for the first time al over his body, as if he'd been flexing for years and hadn't been aware of it. Joe let out a long sigh and it felt as if he'd been holding his breath for a

decade. He stabbed the scalpel down

through the pederast's rib cage,

impaling his heart, and then climbed off the bed, continuing to stare at the corpse as it voided its body fluids.

The floor was littered with flesh. Blood poured from the mattress in long sheets, covering the linoleum in a shimmering

blanket of burgundy-wine red. Joe had

never seen so much blood come from a

single person. It was as if al the blood the child kil er had sucked from his

victims' wounds had stil been in him and had only now been freed. He imagined

the souls of al the children Damon had consumed pouring out of his bloated

corpse on that endless river of dark

plasma.

Joe stared intently at Damon's face as

the pederast's life fled his mutilated

carcass, hoping to see some sign that

the curse was over. He half expected the man's body to col apse into ash like the vampires in the movies, but instead the fat freak simply expired. Joe studied the man's features for a while longer,

recal ing the long hours he'd spent

cringing in a damp basement as that

pudgy face leered at him from behind a

mask of Joe's own blood. He didn't

know for sure if the curse had left him, but he had no desire at al to feast on Damon Trent's fat vulgar corpse. He

walked out of the room, quietly shutting the door behind him.

Part III

Forty-one

Joseph was drenched head to toe in

Damon's blood. The lab coat he'd

appropriated now looked like a butcher's smock. It was plastered to his skin, the blood already beginning to coagulate.

Joe had to peel himself out of it, as if he were removing the skin from a

particularly wet and juicy piece of

tropical fruit. Blood-soaked meat always reminded Joe of mangoes and ripe

peaches, when you opened it up and it

flooded your mouth with its sweet nectar. Joe thought once more about Alicia as

he dropped the lab coat to the floor. She had been the sweetest fruit of al . He had to find a way in to see her. But they

wouldn't let him anywhere near her

saturated in blood, especial y once the two corpses were located.

The polo shirt Joe had been wearing

underneath the lab coat had already

been red, but now the darker, truer red from Damon's arteries stood out clearly against it and even more so against his blue jeans. Somehow he had to get a

fresh lab jacket or something to cover

his clothing.

Joe walked into the bathroom and

stared into the mirror. Even though he

had not fed, his face was covered in

blood from where Damon's severed

veins and arteries had sprayed him as

he worked the meat free from his bones. The eyes that stared out at him from that grisly crimson mask were feral, the eyes of some ravenous beast. Joe ran water

into his cupped palms and splashed it

over his face again and again. He

lathered his arms, face, and hair with

liquid hand soap and washed it away

until his handsome Clark Kent face

reemerged from that gory fright mask.

He took a deep breath and watched as

al his features settled down, the beast within him slipping away, leaving him

alone in the bathroom of a hospital room with a child murderer's eviscerated

corpse bleeding out on the mattress and his own clothes stil dripping with blood.

"I've got to get the hel out of here." He slipped out of the bathroom and out

of Damon's room, casting one last look

at his mutilated corpse before shutting the door behind him.

"Rot in hel , you son of a bitch." Before anyone could notice his grisly

hulking form tracking blood across the

immaculate hal way, Joe slipped into

another room directly across from where Damon's corpse lay bleeding out onto

the floor in great bucket-loads. He was lucky to find an obese elderly woman

lying catatonic in her hospital bed. With considerable effort, straining beneath the weight of rol s of bil owy fat, Joe rol ed her over so that he could remove her

hospital-issue dressing gown.

Suppurating bedsores had leaked their

pus onto the mattress, forming a gooey

adhesive that stuck her loose, moldy

flesh to the even moldier bed. There was a wet, sticky, ripping sound when Joe

peeled her off the bedspread, leaving

bits of her flesh stil clinging to it. The back of the dressing gown was

caked with pus and gore and stained

with urine and feces. Joe peeled it off of her. In this filthy gown he would fit right in. Joe faked a lumbering stagger as he

made his way down the hal . There was

an emaciated teenager with tufts of hair missing and black scabs al over his

scalp where the hair had been yanked

out by the roots. He staggered down the hal in a similar fashion just ahead, and Joe caught up to the disoriented youth

and linked arms with him. Together they made their way up the hal toward the

reception desk.

The kid smel ed as bad as the dressing

gown Joe was wearing and his eyes

were dul and flat as if his mind had long ago fled and his body was merely

fol owing a preprogrammed ritual back

and forth through the antiseptic hal ways. The only indication that he was at al

aware of Joe's presence at his side

were the occasional giggles, his left

hand firmly planted on Joe's rock-hard

buttocks, and the erection growing

beneath his gown.

The guard was no longer in front of the elevator. The nurse was not at her station either. Joe heard a radio squawk and an excited voice shouting breathlessly.

"We've got a 187 on the third floor!

Officer needs assistance!"

Joe stumbled down the hal and looked

down the adjoining hal way where he had left the janitor's body. He could see that the blood had seeped out into the

hal way, which had no doubt alerted

someone that there might be something

amiss in the closet. The door was open

and two corrections officers were

kneeling in the blood, leaning over the body as if there were anything they could do for him now. Three nurses, including the one from the front desk, stood

around gasping in horror and chatting in excited whispers as they peered in at

the janitor's corpse, unable to resist their own morbid curiosity.

The guard was looking up and down the

hal , searching for something out of the ordinary. A suspect. Joe clutched the

haggard teen tighter as they continued

past. The guard had luckily looked right past him, assuming he was just another

patient. As soon as they reached the

other side of the hal and were out of

sight of the guards and nurses, Joe let go of his teenaged camouflage and

sprinted for the elevator. He pressed the down button and the door opened right

away. The hal way was stil empty when

Joe slipped quickly inside the elevator. The mauled and murdered janitor was

apparently too fascinating for the guards to tear themselves away.

Joe tried to catch his breath as he rode the elevator back down to the first floor. Adrenaline dumped into his

bloodstream, lighting his nerves on fire. His muscles were bulging through his

clothes as if he were about to burst out of them like the Incredible Hulk. He

looked completely insane. If the doors

opened right now, anyone with half a

brain would know he was a kil er. He had to calm down.

The elevator descended to the first floor and Joe closed his eyes and took a

deep breath. He let it out slow and wil ed his muscles to relax. He let the

satisfaction of final y avenging the loss of his childhood seep into his body.

When the doors opened he was the

picture of serenity.

Hospital guards and policemen were

running everywhere. Joe slipped

unnoticed from the elevator. By taking

Damon's advice and waiting until half the hospital staff was on lunch break, the big musclebound predator had found just the right amount of wiggle room to get in

and out of the hospital's detention wing unnoticed. Now he had to do something

even harder. He had to get out of there with Alicia.

Alicia was stil in Emergency fol owing her surgery. Her chart showed her listed in critical condition. Joe slipped into her room and knelt down beside her bed.

Her chest was covered in bandages.

There was a morphine drip feeding into

a pulsating vein behind the elbow on her left arm.

"My God. What have I done to you?" There was no way he could take her out

of the hospital in this condition without causing her further pain or death. He

would have to leave her.

"I'l be back for you. Don't worry. I won't leave you like this."

Joe thought he saw a smile creep

across her face at the sound of his

voice.

He removed his bloody smock and

walked out the front door of the hospital as police officers began to swarm the

place. He stalked across the parking lot and slipped behind the wheel of his van. Minutes later he was back at the motel

listening to the prostitute next door get her head banged against the wal by her latest trick.

Forty-two