Bestial (37 page)

The barges quickly approached the point where the beasts could leap onto them again.

The fire was gaining strength, and the group began to make their way back to the second barge which held only dead creatures. They dragged Andrei, and the man groaned with every movement.

The flames spread across the deck like tributaries from some hellish lake. One small section of the deck had burned through, and the heavy coal above it slid through the hole, spilling into the river.

“I don’t like the looks of that fire,” Captain Burns said. “Can we speed up the winch?”

Private Truitt looked back at him and shook her head. “The barge they’re on is too heavy.”

“There isn’t going to be much left to haul to shore if we wait too long.”

Granger said, “It’s only another two hundred yards or so, sir.”

Truitt watched through her scope for any creatures that might try to get on the barge. Her fellow soldiers had killed hundreds, and the bodies piled up on the bridge as hundreds more of the lycanthropes clawed and tore their way over the corpses.

They wouldn’t stop. Not until every one of them was dead. The soldiers’ flesh was too alluring. Even with the end of the bridge blasted away, they leaped like fiends, their broken bodies landing in the water. A few dragged themselves to shore only to meet their
doom. Yet they kept charging into the line of fire, and they kept falling, dead, torn apart by the barrage.

“Look,” Burns said. “It’s pulling them in faster.”

“The coal, sir. It’s falling through the bottom as it burns. It’s making them lighter.”

As the barge entered the shadow of the bridge, the rain stopped. Burns had not even noticed that the lightning and thunder had finished minutes ago, that the storm clouds were trailing off in the distance. The moon began to emerge.

Its light revealed the barge moving beneath the bridge, and several of the creatures saw it at the same time. They leaped from the line of danger, into the water, several at a time.

“Shit,” Truitt said, snapping another magazine into her rifle. “I’m gonna need some help with this!”

“We didn’t see this coming?” Burns asked. “We’re hauling them right back into the path of those things.”

Granger said, “That pillar’s the only thing sturdy enough to ground the grapnel winch, okay? Give me a break.”

Burns fired his gun at the beasts as they landed on the barge. Granger, alongside the others, took careful aim, and killed one of the lycanthropes as it fell to the barge.

“Hidden talents, Granger?” Burns smirked.

“Andrei, man, wake the hell up. You need to get back to your wife, right? Think of her.” Rick was more upset by Andrei’s condition than he thought he could be. He barely knew the man.

“I think he’s gone,” Cathy said. “We shouldn’t have moved him.”

Chesya said, “Not like we had a choice.”

Andrei’s eyes suddenly popped open, startling everyone. The whites were red, a sign of internal bleeding. He gasped, coughed a stream of blood and bile.

Rick grinned. “Good to have you back with us, buddy.”

Christian noticed the first lycanthropes dropping onto the barge from the bridge. He said, “Oh no …” Then the sound of gunfire broke through the air, and the creatures collapsed as soon as they hit
the deck, some of them dead already. The soldiers on shore would take care of the beasts for them.

Andrei spoke through bubbles of blood. He said, “My family … you … you will tell them of me … of what I did.”

Chesya was crying. “Tell us where they are, Andrei, and we’ll find them.”

He choked, and the blood poured from his mouth and streamed from the corners of his eyes.

The moon emerged completely from behind the dissipating clouds, and the river was flooded in pale, blue light.

“That look like a full moon to you?” Christian asked.

Rick glanced up along with the rest of them, and the moon did, indeed, look as though a sliver had been taken from one side.

“It’s … it’s …,” Andrei said between gasps.

“What is it, Andrei?” Chesya gripped his hand as tightly as she could.

“It’s … over,” he said.

His hand went limp. It slipped from hers and hit the deck.

Cathy said, “Fifty feet from shore.”

“Aw … aw shit,” Rick said, looking down at Andrei. The Siberian’s head slumped to one side. His blood-filled open eyes stared at them accusingly.

“For God’s sake, close them,” Christian said.

Rick pressed his fingers against Andrei’s eyelids and pulled them closed. Chesya was praying softly next to them.

With a wet, shattered sound, a naked male body dropped to the barge. Its neck snapped, but the bullet in his forehead had killed the man. A female corpse dropped next, hitting the railing of the first barge and pinwheeling into the water.

They were thirty feet from the shore, where three figures in orange biohazard suits waited for them. They had stopped firing at the creatures, and they held their guns close to their chests. The roaring and crashing noises on the bridge ceased.

Chesya could see the piles of corpses above them, the blood dripping like rain from the supports of the bridge. There were no longer monsters to trample the bodies, only confused, terrified people.

The soldiers stopped firing, and the survivors turned away, ashamed in their nakedness, hurrying back home. Andrei had been right. He had sensed the cycle of the moon was over, and he’d told them so. He’d realized it just before he died.

Cathy ran into Christian’s arms, sobbing into his shoulder with a mixture of relief and exaltation. The boy stroked his mother’s hair, trying to comfort her, feeling much, much older than his seventeen years.

As the bottom of the barge scraped against gravel and land, Chesya turned to Rick. He looked small somehow, and he was still shaking, upset over Andrei’s death. She took his filthy hand in hers and wondered if she looked as bad. Then she placed a hand against his cheek.

“We made it,” she said.

“Didn’t I tell you we would?” he replied, and he tried to grin. It came out wrong, a sad, disfiguring grimace. Then they were hugging each other.

The barge stopped a few feet from shore, and the big man waded out into the water until he was at the railing. “I’m Captain Taylor Burns,” he said. “United States Army. You folks okay?”

“What do you say, Chesya?” Rick asked. “Are we okay?”

His grin seemed real this time, exhaustion and calmness appearing to overtake him. Chesya gave him another hug.

“Fuckin’ A!” she said. “Yeah, we’re just fine!”

OCTOBER 3, 1:45 P.M.

A
s the bus bounced along the pockmarked excuse of a road, Cathy watched her son take photographs of the barren landscapes that flew by them. He was fascinated by this other world, so far from everything he’d ever seen, and she was glad that he still possessed something of a childlike wonder. She kneaded his shoulder through the flannel shirt. He was still too thin, in her opinion. The months he had spent on the street had taken a toll that wouldn’t be refunded so quickly.

Sometimes at night, she could hear him crying out from his room. They were renting an apartment in Atlanta, because she had wanted to move him far away from the horror of those three days, and far away from the more mundane, although still potent, terrors of her husband’s abuse. Fleeing to another city had done some good, she was certain, but it couldn’t wipe away the nightmares that woke him nearly every night. He was still running from demons.

Leaning back, watching the snowy trees out her window, she knew she was faring better than her son. When she’d burned down that house in Indian Hill, something steely had hardened within her, a resolve that life would be different now. She’d easily found a job with a publishing house, and though she wasn’t living the life she’d been accustomed to, she was getting by just fine. She’d already made several friends in Atlanta, and she had discovered, almost by accident, how much Christian meant to her. She didn’t want to let him leave her, but after he finished his last year in high school, he would go to college; he was a bright kid. She just
hoped they could remain close, but there were no guarantees. There never were.

In the seat in front of his mother, Christian pondered the sheer amount of snow that lined the roads. Ohio received varying degrees of snowfall over the years, but this amazed him. It had to be four feet, higher in some of the drifts. It was a beautiful sight to him—pure, white, virginal, as though the countryside were erasing its mistakes, washing them away in a tide of purity. Eventually, the snow would melt, revealing what hid beneath the surface, but that was probably months away. Maybe, from the look of things, it could be years in the future.

School was proving difficult for him. He loved the classes he was taking, especially science and math, but his interest waned during the day. He found himself remembering so much—Jean, Andrei, and most of all his father, the things he had done to survive. . . . Still, he was in a secure place now, with his mother doting on him like a hen. The walls of their new home made him feel safe and cozy, as though nothing could ever hurt him again.

The nightmares, however, always refuted this sense of well-being. They came and went, with decreasing regularity, but they were intense and all too real. There were things that could hurt you out there in the world. Monsters did exist, no matter what the adults told you. In fact, many of those adults were the beasts that haunted his dreams.

Across the aisle of the bus, Rick held his arm around Chesya. She felt good leaning into him, her cheek against his neck. He wasn’t sure if this romance would last, but he’d give it a shot. After the government had disinfected, debriefed, and questioned them, after they had run genetic tests on their blood and released them, Rick and Chesya had indulged in that bubble bath she’d invited him to share. Their lovemaking had been slow and serious, but oddly lacking in passion. For all they’d been through, there was no heat between them. Chesya said it meant they weren’t supposed to be together. He said
it meant he needed to try harder. The second time was better. Much, much better.

Deep inside, he doubted he could ever settle down forever with one woman, have kids, all that bull crap. Still, if anyone could drag him into the
Leave It to Beaver
lifestyle, it was this strong-willed woman beside him.

Although they’d discussed it, neither of them understood why they were immune to the disease. The Feds remained tight-lipped, so they’d chalked it up to sheer luck of the genetic draw.

The bus struck a pothole, and Chesya was jarred awake. Rick gave her a little peck on the cheek. Smiling sleepily, she asked, “Are we there yet?”

“Almost,” he said.

She pulled away from him, from his familiar scent, and stretched her arms so that her back cracked. Behind the bus driver sat Mikael, the interpreter they had found. On the seat next to her was the urn.

With Rick’s help, Chesya had moved to Louisville, Kentucky. The bank had found her another job in another branch, but they’d offered her a promotion to manager, probably because she’d informed the FBI that Rick had stashed money in his coat. She’d accepted, and she and Rick had set up house in a friendly suburban neighborhood. It still seemed vaguely wrong for her to live in that area, but she loved her job. And she thought she might love Rick. Their time together seemed enchanted somehow, but she wasn’t letting the sudden conformity to bourgeois America fool her. Rick had been a thief, and she would never forget that. He’d done terrible things, even if he was atoning for those sins. He even went to church with her. Maybe they could make a go of it. Maybe not. She figured the Lord would steer them in the direction He wanted them to go, so she left it in His hands.

“This place really lives up to its reputation,” Christian said. “I keep expecting to see a gulag out there.”

“Look,” Rick said, pointing to a sign. “What’s that say?”

The interpreter answered, “Kirskania, three kilometers.”

“Almost there,” Chesya said, looking down at the urn, patting it gently. “Almost home, Andrei.”

The bus stopped near a small house. The roof was thatched, but holes were visible, and the well outside the house obviously provided all the water. Two skinny cows were tied to the dilapidated fence in the back, and they lowed mournfully as the group exited the bus. Chesya carried the urn, wrapping her arms tightly around it.

“Doesn’t look like Bio-Gen sent any money here,” Christian said. “The bastards lied to him.”

Rick replied, “Typical big corporation.”

When the door opened, a woman looked out at them; light from a kerosene lantern faintly illuminated her face. She appeared to be about fifty, but Chesya was certain she was younger. A child in a long shirt peeked from behind the woman’s patched skirts.

The woman asked, “
Shto sluchilos’? Shto sluchilos’ s moim Andre’em?
”

The interpreter told her that these people had traveled all the way from America to see her, to tell her about her husband.

“What’s happened? What’s happened to my Andrei?” the translator repeated after the woman had spoken in Russian.

The woman looked as though she were about to cry, but she remained stiff-lipped and dignified.

Chesya said, “Tell her that her husband, Andrei, was a hero, a good man.”

The interpreter translated her words as she spoke. The woman at the door had the saddest eyes Chesya had ever seen.

“Tell her that he died saving our lives, fighting against the monsters that were like him. Tell her how much we all appreciate and honor him, how many lives he saved. Tell her … he’s dead.”

When the interpreter told her these things, the woman dropped to her knees and wailed, pounding her fists into the snow. Chesya approached as the child scampered away. She placed the urn at the woman’s side, watching as Andrei’s wife removed the lid from it and sniffed at the ashes, hoping to find some familiar vestige of her husband.

Chesya had attempted this already; she’d detected nothing of Andrei’s earthy scent in the remains.

“Tell her that what he did was so brave and so important, the
people at the United States government gave him a lot of money, and that we came to give her this money.”