Bestial (14 page)

As if in answer, he heard a voice, heavily accented, crying out down the hall. “Help me! Is somebody there? For God’s sake, help me!”

SEPTEMBER 17, 6:15 P.M.

C
hesya eyed the descending sun with a feeling of dread; then she looked over at Rick, who was smoking a cigarette. He’d smashed into the machine and nabbed several packs, two of which he had tossed into their “survival bag.” They had found a large shopping bag in the back of the diner and had packed it with cans of peaches and potted meat, along with a can opener and a loaf of bread. A six-pack of bottled water was the heaviest item, but they also scrounged several large knives, some tuna, toilet paper, matches, toothpaste, and razors from the dead couple’s medicine cabinet, a pack of aspirin, bandages, and the keys to the diner. Rick had checked the gun the couple had used to commit suicide, but the chamber was empty, so he left it behind. They each already had a gun, so one more wouldn’t help, especially if it was out of bullets. The bag was heavy, but not drastically so. It wouldn’t get in their way.

“It’s starting to get dark out there,” Chesya warned.

Looking up at the front door, Rick said, “We’d better get moving.”

“I keep thinking we’ve forgotten something.”

“Well, if we did, it can’t be too important. Let’s go.”

They stepped out into the evening, and the cool air hit Chesya in the face, a breeze blowing on a balmy September day. She inhaled deeply, tired of the stale air of the diner, which smelled depressingly of eggs and bacon and grease. The fresh air invigorated her.

When Rick was finished locking the door, he said, “We found this place. I don’t want to lose it if we don’t have to.”

Chesya nodded. “It’s not too far from the bank, but I’ll feel a lot safer when we get there.”

“I know what you mean.”

All around them, hundreds of people milled through the stalled
cars, leaning against buildings, lying supine on the hoods of vehicles. Some of them conversed intently with others, but most of them watched Rick and Chesya as they passed, their eyes asking unanswerable questions, curiosity piqued. Shadow-hiders skirted around the periphery of the scene.

Through the maze of stalled cars, a heavyset man in a crewneck sweater chased a screaming woman. They disappeared into an alley, and a low, gurgling scream issued from the darkness. As Rick and Chesya passed, the young woman emerged, her mouth and throat streaked with fresh blood. She giggled, moving toward them.

“Rick,” Chesya warned, and he flashed his gun.

The woman, apparently not too regressed to understand how the pistol worked, laughed as she retreated into the alleyway.

“You think all these people changed last night?” Chesya asked, breathing a sigh of relief.

“I dunno. Probably most of them. Outta the whole bank staff and my crew, only you and I didn’t become creatures. Oh, and the dude I knocked out. I don’t like the odds with this many out in the open. Didn’t anyone listen to the news? They should be at home.”

“Well, you know how people are. Most of them don’t have a lick of sense. Probably blame a liberal media bias,” she said. “What do you think will happen when it gets dark? When the moon rises again?”

“I don’t even want to think about it,” he said. “I just wanna hole up in that vault, where it’s nice and safe, and wait for morning.”

They passed a car that contained a family of four, windows rolled up, doors locked, radio blaring. Rick caught some of the broadcast.

“. . . stay in your homes. If the metamorphosis happens again, you must take cover immediately. It’s not known if the process will occur again this evening, but authorities say that if you … became altered last night, if you became a … beast, then you should try to lock yourself in a room in your house. If you did not change last night, it’s suggested that you find a safe place to hide, somewhere secure. Forget about your cars until morning. …”

Chesya heard it, too, and she looked back at Rick. “I don’t think anyone’s paying attention to any authority,” she said.

Some of the families, especially those with small children, began
to disperse, weaving their way between cars. Most of the people on the street avoided eye contact with one another. Rick wondered if they were ashamed of the animal state they had embodied. Or were they simply embarrassed because of what they had done while they were in animal form?

Does a beast feel shame?

“How many more blocks?” Rick asked.

“Two. We better step it up,” Chesya said. “It’s getting darker.”

“It’s just the tall buildings. They block the sun. Maybe they’ll block the moonlight, too.”

“You are really starting to think that these are werewolves, aren’t you?”

He nodded, climbing over the hood of a car. A man shouted, “Hey! You can’t do that!” Rick ignored him, helping Chesya over the hood. The man shook his fist at them, swearing, but he did nothing to stop their progress.

“Well, if it looks like a werewolf and acts like a werewolf …”

“I know,” she said. “It just seems weird saying it. It’s like we suddenly found out that all those terrible things we thought were lurking under the bed were real all along. Mom lied to us. There really is a bogeyman.”

“Yeah,” Rick said. “And the bogeyman’s been inside of us all along.”

“I wonder how long it’s been there, waiting to be released?”

He shrugged, shoving his way through a crowd of teenagers who were drinking beers. They looked to be about fifteen or sixteen. A few of them shouted at Rick and Chesya, but most just laughed, drunk, happy to be together. One fell on his ass, and the group roared its approval. One of the teens leaped off the car and started kicking his fallen comrade as the others cheered.

Lighting a cigarette, Rick said, “These people …”

“Just about a block left to go,” Chesya said.

“Don’t they see the danger? Don’t they wonder if it’s all gonna start again when it gets dark?”

“Maybe they don’t care. There’s bound to be a percentage of the population that actually likes reverting to their animal instincts. A lot of them would probably embrace it. There are all kinds of wackos
out there, serial killers and such. They’re gonna love the change.”

“That’s so fuckin’ … I mean, that’s so sick.”

She grinned at him. “Thanks for censoring yourself. Even if it was too late.”

“Yeah, well …” Taking a last drag, he flicked the cigarette into an alley.

“Hey, look. There’s the bank.”

As they approached the building, edging around the Brink’s truck that lay on its side like some saurian turtle, Rick saw that looters had infiltrated the broken windows of the building. Even more glass had been busted out from the window frames, and the bags of money they had left behind were missing. The vault door was gaping wide, and all the safety-deposit boxes had been ripped open, probably with a crowbar. Documents and inferior jewelry littered the floor of the vault.

“All the money’s gone,” Chesya said. She looked at Rick, waiting for a reaction—disappointment, anger, anything.

He sighed. “Doesn’t seem so important all of a sudden.”

She nodded. “It’s getting pretty dark out there. What time is it?”

Glancing at the watch he’d stripped from the dead diner owner’s hand, he answered, “Almost seven o’clock.”

“Then we’d better set up house for the night.”

He dropped the bag of necessities from his shoulder, letting it fall to the floor of the bank vault. He thought,
It’s kind of dark in here.

“Oh, no,” Chesya moaned.

“What?”

“No lights,” she said, flipping the switch several times, willing it to turn on the fluorescent bulbs. “The electricity’s out. The battery must have died. Maybe from having the vault door open all day. I don’t get it. The manager always said—”

“Does this mean what I think it means?” Rick asked.

Something outside the bank howled, low and mournful. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, one by one.

“It means we can’t stay in the vault. The air won’t circulate; the lights won’t come on. The timer on the lock is out for some reason. Maybe sabotage.”

A second howl, this one lower, growling, joined the first.

“It means,” she said, “we don’t have any safe place to stay tonight.”

SEPTEMBER 17, 6:50 P.M.

C
athy Wright placed a bag of groceries on the floor of the shed in her backyard, just a few things she had thrown together from the kitchen. She caught sight of her bicycle, neglected in a corner of the structure. Years ago, she had made a point to ride it every day, even entering in some races, but as years of marriage and luxury sped by, she had forgotten the bike. Her muscles, once so hard and strong, had become flabby. She thought she might start riding again, after everything had settled back to normal.

If anything was ever normal again.

Looking down at the bag of food, she sighed. She hadn’t trusted the freshness of the meat in her refrigerator. The electricity had remained disconnected. The bread was still good, and she had made Karl peanut butter sandwiches with juice to drink. There were also some oranges, a pear, and a couple of granola bars.

It didn’t seem right, somehow, providing her husband with such a pathetic meal. Over the years, as their lifestyle had become more grandiose, they had eaten out more than they had cooked, and there was a woman who came in to make their dinner and clean the kitchen every evening. Cathy had grown accustomed to this little bustling woman. She wondered if the woman—what was her name again?—was still alive.

Running a hand through her hair and heading back toward the house, she realized she had grown accustomed to a great many things. Karl was so successful they rarely did without. If she saw a dress or a hat that she desired, she simply charged it. When she asked for a new car because the last one was two years old, Karl bought her a lovely BMW. A gardener took care of the lawn and landscaping,
a maid cleaned the house, and the cook worked her magic in the kitchen, a room that pretty much stupefied Cathy.

Trying to remember a time when she had been forced to take care of everything herself, Cathy discovered she really couldn’t recall such a period. Her parents had been well-to-do. They had paid for her college and her room and board so that she did not have to work while studying French literature at an Ivy League school. She had met Karl at a dance thrown by her sorority, and they’d gotten married six weeks after graduation.

A weed poked through the stone sidewalk, and she leaned down, pinched it off, and tossed it into the yard. Now the sidewalk was perfect, beautiful in its sloping curve of white stone. Smiling, she brushed her hands on her jeans.

Opening the back door into the kitchen, she realized things would never be quite the same. Even if this bizarre metamorphosis had been a one-night event, people were going to be different. She wondered again why she was immune to the symptoms that had claimed her husband and neighbors and, according to the battery-operated radio in the kitchen, most everyone in the tristate area. It seemed odd that, out of so many people, she had been the one graced with an exemption.

Washing her hands in the sink (which sparkled from her earlier cleaning), she called out to her husband. “Karl, I have the shed ready for you. I put a six-pack of bottled water out there for you, too.”

He stepped into the room. He had showered and shaved and had put on khaki slacks and an Arrow button-down shirt. He looked almost normal, except for the bruises on his arms and the cut below his right eye.

He had claimed he still felt hairy on the inside, she reminded herself.

“Is that what you’re wearing?” she asked, joking.

“If you have any suggestions, I’d be willing to hear them.” He leaned against the center island in the kitchen. “Seriously, I’m comfortable in these clothes.”

“I’d think jeans or sweats would be more comfortable.”

He shrugged. “You work enough hours in a certain kind of outfit,
you get used to it. Also, and I know this sounds stupid, but I feel more … well, human in these clothes. More respectable. Less savage.”

“Are you ready?”

“I don’t know. It’s going to be cramped and wet and—”

“You can take a bit of discomfort, Karl. This is to protect you from doing something you’ll regret tomorrow, and to protect me from having to defend myself against you.”

“I know, honey,” he said, whining. “I know. It’s just … degrading.”

“You want to know what’s degrading? Having to sit across a table from you, listening to you talk about drinking blood and chasing prey through the streets, and acting as though it were the normal thing to do nowadays. I had to be a good wife. I couldn’t turn away from you in revulsion, because a good wife doesn’t do that. She supports her husband. I’ve supported you before, if you remember. But this good wife wants to be here in the morning.”

“I’m a jackass.” He looked sheepish, younger than his years.

“Yes, you are,” she said, kissing him on the forehead. “Now, let’s get you locked up safe and sound.”

They held hands as they walked down the garden path. The shed seemed rather small to Cathy now. Cramped and frail. The wood didn’t appear nearly as sturdy as it had in the noontime sun. The shadows of dusk seemed to eat away the soundness of the little structure, like some fungus that deteriorated the boards.

Karl gave her a peck on the cheek, fleeting and insubstantial. She had been ready to kiss him on the lips, but he turned his head, saying, “I love you, Cathy. Know that. After everything …”

She touched her cheek, the residue of the kiss still evaporating. “I do know that, Karl. And I love you, too.” Her words seemed hollow.

From within the darkness of the shed, his face glowed. It reminded her of Marlon Brando in that Vietnam movie she hated so much and that Karl adored. He nodded to her once.

“Do it,” he said.

And then his face melted back into the shadows.

Fumbling a bit, Cathy closed the shed’s door and used a key to clinch it. She latched it with two padlocks, one which Karl had
installed earlier that day. As her husband had instructed, she also overturned the wheelbarrow in front of the door, digging it into the ground, just one more safety precaution.