Bestial (25 page)

But she had allowed the abuse to continue. She had ignored the signs.

She was his mother, and there was a special bond between a boy and his mother, no matter what form her inactions took. She was a human being, and, as such, was fallible. People made mistakes.

And they often paid dearly for them.

He wondered if Cathy had paid for her neglect, or if she had continued to play the part of the loving wife, social butterfly, and charity-event organizer.

“Morning.”

Startled, Christian glanced over at the couple across the truck. Chesya was peering at him, squinting in the feeble morning light. As she spoke, Rick swiftly removed his arm from her side, acting like a boy caught with a girlfriend on the family sofa. He tried to cover up his move by yawning and stretching his arms as far as he could. Then he scratched his head and leaned away from the woman. Chesya, seeming more relaxed than Rick, lay on her side, cupping the plump curve of her face in her open palm. She watched Christian with wide, slightly yellow eyes.

“Hey,” Christian said, his eyes flicking back to the window.

“Any action out there?” Rick asked, edging closer to the glass.

“No, seems pretty quiet. I can just about see the dawn starting.”

“You have an important meeting to go to?” Rick asked. “You’ve been watching for the sunlight for a long time now. I saw you.”

“I want to get that journal and get back to the Bio-Gen building. I’m positive there are more answers in Jean’s writings.”

“You know where it is, right?” Chesya asked.

He shrugged. “Pretty much. I just hope it’s still there. I was just getting to the part where he was studying werewolves in Siberia.”

“See, Chesya,” Rick said with a grin. “Told you they were werewolves. The old Rickster comes through again.”

“Look!” Christian shouted, pointing toward a small group of beast-men.

They fell to the ground, writhing in pain, transforming back into humans. Their bodies convulsed, jerked as if in a movie that had been sped up. The hair covering their bodies pulled back into their skin, and they scratched at themselves.

“No better time to go get that book,” Rick said. “They’re powerless, can’t attack us. Let’s go see if it’s still where you lost it.”

Chesya nodded, and Rick unlocked the truck door, pushed his way out of the vehicle.

“I hope we’re doing the right thing,” she said, stepping into the dim light of the dawn.

“This way,” Christian declared. They rushed through the street, stepping around the prone, quivering bodies of the beasts, whose
mouths opened and closed, exposing various versions of teeth, human and werewolf momentarily coexisting. They didn’t bother the three humans hurrying through their midst. They were far too busy becoming people again.

The monsters shook like a woman Chesya had often seen in church, as if they were possessed by the Holy Spirit. But these poor sufferers weren’t infused with anything holy. Their minds were probably a thick mélange of human despair and confusion and beastly blood lust.

It was Chesya’s and Rick’s first good look at the streets since the Marriott had collapsed, and it made her want to stand in awe and take in the utter destruction. She grasped Rick’s hand in hers, and he squeezed it once. She felt the calluses on his fingers.

“I turned here,” Christian said.

As they progressed through the rubble, the monsters, nearly human, began to stand on awkward legs, balancing themselves against cars or piles of concrete. A fang would sometimes emerge from a lip, or a set of eyes would shine, flecked with gold. Many of them sniffed the air, as though still graced with a wolf’s superior sense of smell.

“This is the alley where I dropped it,” Christian said, identifying the dark passageway between buildings. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure.”

“It’s pretty dark in there still,” Chesya noted. “Maybe we should wait for the sun to get higher.”

“Hell with that,” Christian said. “I’m not waiting to see just how crazy these bastards get today. You see them yesterday? Some of them actually looked like they could attack me.”

“I think it’s hard for a lot of people to stay sane after what they’ve done,” Chesya explained. “They chose the path of least resistance.”

“The path of crazy,” Christian said, entering the mouth of the alley. Chesya and Rick, still holding hands, followed him. Rick turned every few steps to check their backs.

Even though the surrounding establishments were still intact, the alley was a mess. Shadows obscured half of everything. Huge Dumpsters had been overturned and rooted through, and garbage was
strewn all over the place. Dead men and women lay on the ground, naked, their newly human bodies torn and twisted. Blood pooled around the corpses.

“You sure this is the right place?” Rick asked. “I don’t see a journal anywhere.”

“I’m sure. God, I hope it’s still here,” Christian said, wandering a little farther into the gloom.

Something moved from a pile of garbage, and the three of them turned; a rat wriggled from a hole in a plastic bag. They sighed, glad it wasn’t something bigger, something dangerous.

In the brief silence, they heard other sounds, little, soft noises like something—or some things—trying not to be overheard. Chesya edged closer to Rick. The three of them stopped breathing as one, scanning the murky alley.

“There’s the book!” Christian cried, rushing forward.

The corner of the leather binding peeked out from beneath the leg of a woman in her mid-fifties. She was naked and her throat had been torn out, exposing glistening cartilage and severed tubes. Other bites had been taken from various places on her body, but the blood had seeped in the opposite direction of the journal.

“Be careful, Christian,” Chesya warned. “Those sounds …”

He grasped the leather and pulled it from beneath the corpse. Thankfully, the book hadn’t been ripped to shreds or stained by the woman’s bodily fluids. Christian held it up so Rick and Chesya could see it, could verify it was real.

A hand lashed out from a pile of black garbage bags, grabbing Christian’s ankle and yanking him off balance. He fell forward, scratching his palms on the blacktop as he hit. Jean’s journal fell to his left.

“What have we here?” came a rasping voice from the piles of rotten food and paper. “Breakfast for Mommy?”

As the detritus fell away, a pale, obese woman stood nude from her hiding place. Her dimpled body was covered in old grease and coffee grounds, and her lips were stained with blood. From her eyes, still dappled with the golden eyeshine, insanity leaked out like tears.

She pulled Christian closer to her, and he struggled, kicking up
at her face; she was stronger than he suspected. In a moment, she had the screaming boy in her arms, enveloping him in her folds.

Rick raised his gun, but Chesya pushed it away, glaring at him.

“Save the bullets for the creatures,” she said, stepping forward and picking up a brick. Realizing she was right, Rick grabbed a long metal pipe.

The woman licked Christian’s cheek and smeared him with the filth on her skin. He got an arm free and struck her in the face.

“Breakfast needs to be still,” she said, and she squeezed him in her surprisingly muscular arms. The breath left his lungs in a whoosh.

Chesya threw the brick, and it glanced off the woman’s temple, opening a small gash that erupted in blood. The crazy howled, but she maintained her grip on Christian, squeezing even tighter, constricting his chest like a python.

She bit his shoulder and shook her head like a dog, trying to tear through the jacket and the shirt to get at the soft skin.

Christian attempted to shriek, but it came out as little more than a whistle.

Rick struck the woman across the back of the head with his pipe. There was a loud crunching noise, and the woman finally let go of Christian. The boy fell to the ground, breathing heavily. Chesya retrieved her brick.

Farther back in the alley, something groaned and hissed, shuffling through the trash.

The fat woman fell to her knees, and Rick hit her again in the same spot. Her skull caved in, spilling brains and gore across her shoulders and her lanky, brown hair. She collapsed in a heap close to Christian, who shuffled backward, crab-style, to the other end of the alley.

“They’re getting crazier,” Chesya said. “Two nights of changing has made them even worse.”

“Worse?” Rick asked.

“They saw a lot more last night,” Chesya said. “More than people should see. I think a lot of people would go crazy if they didn’t have anyone to talk to, anyone to lean on in the night. They just … attack and kill.”

“I bet a lot of them murdered their own families … their friends,” Christian whispered.

The silence was broken by a maniacal giggle that was too close for comfort.

Something in the dark end of the alley grabbed one of the corpses and dragged it into the shadows.

“What the hell was that?” Rick asked.

Moist tearing sounds emerged from the darkness where the body had disappeared.

“There’s more of them,” Chesya answered. “I thought I heard something back there, but …”

“Let’s get someplace safe,” Rick said. “Now.”

Christian nodded and scooped up the journal. He clutched it to his chest and motioned with his head. “This is the Bio-Gen building,” he said. “The Siberian guy … the one I told you about … he’s upstairs.”

“Is it safe in there?”

“Safe as anyplace, probably.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

They exited the alley and Christian led them to the front door; on the wall next to the entrance hung a little brass plaque engraved with the company’s name.

“This is it?” Rick asked, looking up at the building. “Somehow, I thought it’d be bigger.”

Chesya nodded. “Yeah. Something that causes this much heartache, hurts this many people … you’d think it would come from some huge corporation, some international conglomerate.”

Inside, the front foyer was in even worse shape than when Christian had entered it yesterday. Claw marks gouged the walls, and several pieces of furniture and vases were scattered across the parquet floor. Decorative plants had been pulled up by their roots and tossed around the room.

They spent some time blocking the front door before taking seats in the lobby.

“I want to finish reading this thing,” Christian said, holding up the journal. “I’m sure there are clues in it, and I don’t
want to face Andrei again before I actually know what’s happening. I think he knows, but I don’t trust him.”

“Read it aloud,” Chesya said.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I think we should all know.”

Christian turned to the words on the page, the neat scrawl of the old man, and he began to read.

SEPTEMBER 18, 6:30 A.M.

J
ean Cowell had traveled to Kirskania, a remote village in Siberia, from which the multigenerational rumors of a shape-shifter had emerged. His initial goal had been to interview the inhabitants of the village. If he could find a person who had lived in the vicinity for the right amount of years, he would have his lycanthrope.

While he traveled across the destitute farms and down dirt roads, the swirling snow seemed to cloud his thoughts. He debated whether he was actually on the right track, whether he could truly segregate the two halves of man—the bestial and the human. His mission, his
obsession
, was to repress the animalistic side, to prevent another Holocaust. But hadn’t similar experiments caused the noble Dr. Jekyll to morph into the evil Mr. Hyde? Could one immunize a person against evil?

Every time he grew doubtful, he glanced at the numbers tattooed upon his right hand, and his resolution grew stauncher.

At the outskirts of Kirskania, Jean’s sledge driver abruptly stopped. He would go no farther, and as soon as Jean stepped out, the driver turned his team of horses away from the small thatched buildings and lashed out at them. The horses galloped away in a burst of fear and pain.

Kirskania had no inn, but Jean found a bar with an extra room upstairs. After agreeing on a fair sum with the owner, he began his research by haunting the pub, eating all his meals there, warming himself by the fire.

To his great surprise, the villagers had no qualms about discussing what they called the area’s “beastie.” It had been in the village for so long, they had become accustomed to its presence. One old woman,
straight out of a Gogol short story, had advised him to remain inside when the moon was full; she told him that if he kept himself hidden during those three nights, he would be safe. Allegedly, the beastie rarely harmed human beings, preferring to devour a stray goat or dog. There had been incidents when a man or child had been attacked, but accounts of deaths were infrequent.

Jean had asked the old woman, “These people who were injured—did they also become shape-shifters during the next full moon, as described in the fairy stories?”

The woman had laughed, exposing black, rotten teeth and mottled gums. She drew her black veil around her head, so that only her wise brown eyes showed, and she said, “Of course not, sir. Those are tales for children. What we have in the village is a beastie. A shape-shifter. Nothing more to it than that.”

Eventually, Jean found a man who had seemed afraid of the questions. Sidestepping many of the most important inquiries, he had uttered, “I dare not say more.”

With this as encouragement, Jean asked, “What more is there to tell?”

The man left the pub, and Jean followed him, continuing his barrage of questions.

In frustration, the villager spun to face Jean, and the scientist could see the man’s naked terror. “If you need to know so much,” the man shouted, “then stay outside tomorrow. It’s a full moon, you know. Then you’ll see. Oh, yes, then you’ll see.”

The next evening, as the moon rose, it covered the snowy plains in pale, indigo light, glistening off the ends of icicles and along snowdrifts. Jean bundled himself up in his heaviest coat and gloves, covering his head with a furred cap that had earflaps. Through his interviews, he’d discerned that the monster preferred to prowl the outskirts of the village. He bought a lamb from one of the local farmers, paying far too much, and he pulled the wailing animal to the end of the main road, where the plains began. After he’d slit the poor creature’s throat, he placed the bleeding lamb on top of a small mound of dirt. He took his position behind a tree a few yards away, video camera in one hand, notebook in the other.