Blood Born

by Matthew Warner

  Meanwhile, a government official in Annapolis, Maryland, thirty miles east of Washington, e-mailed several city departments and media outlets that an industrial accident had contaminated the state’s reservoirs. Males aged fifteen to thirty-three who drank from it experienced psychosis and “evolutionary regression.” As such, all Annapolis residents were advised to boil their drinking water until further notice.

  Luckily, the emergency bulletins closer to Washington were more sensible, even if they smacked a bit of political spin-doctoring. Stay inside, they said. Stay away from windows and public spaces. Report any suspicious activity. Don’t panic. The Department of Homeland Security, in cooperation with state and local authorities, had these “isolated incidents of civil disobedience” under control. The wild and unfounded rumors about feral man-cat creatures were nothing more than urban legends and hoaxes perpetrated by deranged and opportunistic individuals aided by advanced photo-editing software and overactive imaginations. In reality, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was investigating a series of black bear attacks throughout the region. These bears, suffering from a rare strain of rabies, were inclined to bite females aged twenty to thirty-five. As the virus could prove particularly harmful to pregnant women, all pregnancies should be immediately reported to medical authorities.

  Ridiculous, Randall thought. Why don’t they just tell the truth? Do they have something to hide?

  But as she considered it, she thought of a more likely reason for the whitewash. In their place, she realized her number-one objective in a disaster of unknown origin and scope would be to prevent panic and disorder. Nothing causes panic more than the unknown. A rabies cover story, even an unlikely one, was like a sedative. It was something the public understood, and therefore it promoted calm. The chances were that by the time people figured out it was bullshit, the government might have brought the situation under control. However, the request for pregnant women to be identified at least showed that the feds possessed some inkling of what was really happening. She supposed she should be upset at such underhandedness, but she knew such a story was more likely to elicit cooperation than the truth.

  Just as long as this doesn’t turn into a witch hunt.

  But that was only the lighthearted side of the news.

  Including the Inova Women’s Center in Fairfax, four hospitals so far had been raided by the so-called rabid bears, who carried off pregnant women and left scores of mauled bystanders in their wakes. Depending on what network you watched, somewhere between eight to eleven nests like the one recently discovered on the C&O Canal had been found in abandoned buildings, storm sewers, and in out-of-the-way houses whose owners had been killed so the monsters could move in.

  The estimated toll so far: one hundred five people dead, eighty-two of them in the past day and the rest of them found in the nests; eleven pregnant rape victims abducted from hospitals; and approximately one hundred forty reported injuries directly related to the attacks. As for the attackers, there was a single unconfirmed report of an animal capture at the Inova Women’s Center.

  The feds got one of their wishes, though. Dozens of previously unreported rapes, pregnancies, and missing persons—most from within the past week—were being called in. The victims consisted of a large number of low-income women from southeast DC, visiting foreigners, and illegal immigrants who either had been too ashamed or too afraid to report being raped, or whose disappearances hadn’t been discovered until now because they lived alone or were homeless. Of course, all the women who survived their rapes and who’d come forward were now pregnant.

  Randall started to shake. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked away from the TV.

  In contrast to the flamboyancy of the creatures Randall had encountered in Fairfax County, most of the monsters apparently moved stealthily—traveling at night, favoring natural wooded areas and drainage ditches, selecting their victims carefully and, most terrifyingly of all, with forethought. They favored loaners or isolated pairs of women whose disappearances wouldn’t be immediately noticed or questioned, such as runaways sleeping outside or drunken tourists at four a.m. walking back to their hotels after a night on the town.

  But those days of concealment were over. War was now waged openly. In houses, streets, parks, and hospitals, the minions of hell walked upon the earth, displacing the fathers of mankind with their own dark seed.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Randall unsnapped the top of her hip holster before emerging from her building’s stairwell onto the street. Once outside, she stared and listened in amazement.

  Wilson Boulevard was one of Arlington’s most heavily traveled arteries. Going one-way in the direction of Falls Church, it normally bustled with street and foot traffic. Its numerous restaurants and stores in low- and high-rise buildings—everything from the college bar Whitlow’s On Wilson across the street to the Fannie & Mae’s Thrift Shop on this side—remained constantly filled with people, even on a Sunday afternoon like today.

  Except that today, this high-density semi-city on the fringes of the nation’s capital, lines wavering in the midafternoon heat, echoed with the silence Randall associated with the middle of the night—say, three a.m. This was three p.m. In her experience, her street’s only respite from the continual swish swish swish of passing cars came in the early hours sometime after two, when the bars closed and she was counting down to the end of her shift.

  There were still some signs of life—a car alarm blaring in the distance, another vehicle accelerating along a side street, a curtain ruffling as someone spied on her—but overall the town was disturbingly sedate. People were locked down tight, afraid to go outside. She wouldn’t be surprised if someone told her half the population of Northern Virginia had barricaded itself in basements to await the all-clear.

  Randall stood in the protection of the doorway and rested her hand on the butt of Officer Heager’s Sig Sauer. She held her breath and listened for screams or gunshots. When none came, she edged down the wall and peeked through the windows of JF Carry-Out Pizza. The fluorescent menu sign over the cash register was off, the ovens dark, the place deserted. No sign of her friend Jill.

  There was a time a few years ago, before she got to know Jill, that she would have prayed for such a sight. It would’ve meant they’d gone out of business, which raised the hope of finally qualifying for renter’s insurance. All the major carriers had steadfastly refused to insure her on account of the fire hazard posed by the pizzeria’s ovens. Such concerns now seemed trivial.

  Maybe I will go stay with Mom until this is over.

  She grimaced as she realized she’d forgotten to return her mother’s phone message. She would tell Mom she wouldn’t leave, not so long as she could make a difference here. Daniella Connolly and all those other kidnapped girls couldn’t leave—they still hadn’t been located when she went off-duty—so she wouldn’t bail out, either.

  Yet it would have been so nice to acknowledge this disaster was over her head and to leave it in the feds’ hands, to retreat to someplace safe where she wouldn’t be alone and where she could rest at last. . . .

  Broken glass glittered on the sidewalk down the block. A lot of it.

  She wanted nothing more than to just duck into the alley, get into her car, and drive off, but she reminded herself she still had a duty to investigate suspicious activity. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself and began walking toward the glass. She scanned in all directions for danger.

  The glass fragments were the remains of the Asian Grocery-Mart’s window. The Korean letters imprinted on the window had probably contained a more colorful name, but she only knew the place by the bland English name. The bullet holes in the portion of window still hanging in the frame—and the dead grocer lying just inside and still clutching his gun—told what had happened. Randall stood to the side, her own gun in hand by now, other hand over her mouth to contain her shock. She read the tale from the evidence.

  It must have happened early in the morning, before the gr
ocer turned on his store’s lights for the day, probably within a few minutes after he entered. She assumed this because the store’s lights were off although the area still had electrical power. The grocer also wore a light jacket, which wasn’t necessary this time of year except during the dawn hours. The fact that he still lay here, undiscovered over eight hours later, meant he would’ve had an extremely slow day even if he had successfully opened for business.

  The grocer saw a bigfoot standing outside, so he shot at it through the window. Maybe it had been menacing him, a rapist man-cat’s version of Nanny Nanny Boo Boo. The blood splatters among the glass shards—so reminiscent of the scene in the Women’s Center’s lobby—said he connected at least a few of those shots. But then the creature jumped in through the opening, breaking off some more glass. The bigfoot splattered the grocer’s throat across a rack of karaoke DVDs.

  Should I call for back up? No, I’m sure everyone’s tied up. I’m not even wearing a radio. Idiot.

  Trying not to tremble, she crossed the threshold of the window and crouched low. She knew the crouching was stupid—it wasn’t as if the animals were firing guns—but it made her feel better. She held her breath and aimed down the alleys of the three grocery aisles until her eyes adjusted to the dark.

  When she could see clearly, she slowly stood up. Her voice broke as she called, “H-hello? Anyone here?”

  Nothing. Still, she kept her gun—Heager’s gun—drawn as she searched the aisles, storage rooms, and back office. Strangely, it made her feel better to hold Heager’s gun instead of her own, which remained in her shoulder holster. She told herself it was because Heager carried a larger model, but she knew deep down that wasn’t the reason why.

  When she was satisfied all was safe, she returned to the back office. She avoided looking at the family pictures on the man’s desk as she used his phone to report the homicide.

  “Oh yeah, someone called that in this morning. We’ve been too busy to come by,” the dispatcher said. There was a pause as he conferred with someone. “Sergeant Lively says to just secure the scene the best you can, and get back to the station ASAP, okay?”

  Randall couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What? Let me speak to him.”

  Another pause. “Ma’am, he says just to follow orders, please.”

  After they hung up, Randall sighed deeply and threaded her way back to the front of the darkened store.

  During her initial sweep, she’d noticed a produce display was overturned into the aisle. It didn’t constitute a threat, so she’d moved on. Now she detoured there for a second look.

  Strange.

  A shelf ran along the side, showing off trays of asparagus, squash, lettuce, and tomatoes. She thought these seemed less like traditional Korean foods than they did regular old American foods. Gotta make a buck somehow, she supposed. The shelf contained its own lights to show its wares. She found a switch along its mirrored wall and turned them on, then blinked in the sudden glare.

  What she saw still didn’t make sense.

  At first, it looked like the monster had simply chosen a rack of bell peppers and spinach and commenced to have a meal. The produce lay in flattened lumps of green mash, much of it on the floor.

  Interesting. They like spinach? I thought they ate flesh. Or maybe they’re omnivores, like us.

  She leaned closer, careful not to touch anything.

  No. These weren’t food scraps—no teeth marks, no signs they’ve been chewed. Had it been digging for something? There was nothing but a rubber mat beneath the vegetables. And if the monster had just tried to dig down, she didn’t think it would’ve squashed things like it did. It would’ve thrown them aside. No, it had definitely been interested in the bell peppers and spinach. But if it wasn’t hungry, then what was it after?

  Randall stared at the mess for a long time. She was reluctant to leave, knowing this was important, but there wasn’t much she could accomplish with the naked eye.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Ten minutes after she left the grocery store, Randall returned to it in her car. Arlington’s unnerving quiet and near-absence of traffic hadn’t changed. The place seemed like a bombed-out city under curfew. She felt horribly exposed as she dug through her trunk for a roll of police tape and then strung it across the Grocery-Mart’s broken window. Doing so felt illicit somehow, as if National Guardsmen at any second would scream at her through a megaphone to step away.

  It felt even more wrong afterward just to abandon the crime scene and drive away, leaving a homicide victim lying in his own congealed blood. But orders were orders.

  Back in the car, she headed for Interstate 66 and the station. All the streets were the same as Wilson Boulevard: quiet, orderly. Dead. Traffic lights blinked through their cycles for invisible cars. She saw no direct signs of the bigfoots.

  To control her rising unease, she used Officer Heager’s cell phone—which she now thought of as her own—to call ahead to the station. An automated operator asked her to enter an extension, so she dialed Sergeant Weston Lively’s and got his voicemail.

  “Weston? This is Randall.” She hesitated, realizing for the first time she’d neglected to address him by his rank. “I just left the Asian grocery. Tell the evidence techs they should pay attention to the produce display. They’ll see which one. I think the creature was after something—and not just a bite to eat. Actually, just have the officer-in-charge on scene call me. I have a theory that—whoa—”

  She slammed on her brakes to avoid rear-ending the solid column of cars inching its way down the interstate. Then she flipped the cell phone closed and just stared.

  Inching was an exaggeration. Interstate 66 West was a parking lot. She gaped at the most unbelievable traffic jam she’d ever seen. More cars pulled up behind her.

  Well, now I know where everyone went. They’re all trying to leave town.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  WTOP Radio clarified the jam wasn’t just caused by a rush of people getting out of Dodge. Most of the region’s major highways were simply snarled this afternoon. As was prone to happen, each stoppage had rippled onto adjacent highways. This explained how, for instance, an everyday wreck on I-95 could freeze up I-495.

  A regular old chain-reaction accident had blocked all lanes of 66—both sides of it—and emergency crews already overtaxed with bigfoot incidents were slow in clearing it. Plus, accidents at three separate points along the Capital Beltway had virtually shut that highway down. In one instance, a driver lost control after intentionally hitting a deer he mistook for a bigfoot, triggering collisions with additional cars. In another, a driver claimed a whitehaired sasquatch jumped onto his car, which caused him to sideswipe another vehicle. The news program noted that police had found drugs and firearms in both cars involved in the second accident, and that they were both driven by Hispanic youths of approximately the same age.

  Randall stayed in her traffic jam long enough to leave her mother a message that she was all right—and no thank you, not coming to New Jersey quite yet, but make up the guest room just in case. Then she reached under her seat and pulled out the rotating emergency light she kept in her civvie car for times like this, and put it on top of her dashboard. She was rolling down the righthand shoulder a moment later.

  As she drove, WTOP fed her more bad news.

  The feds had transformed the area’s twenty hospitals into virtual military bunkers. In less than a day after the first raid, they’d concluded that the attackers’ objective was to disrupt regional medical access.

  Randall shook her head. “Sounds awfully calculated for rabid bears.”

  Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security was ramping up local “threat readiness conditions.” The Virginia and Maryland governors were fielding questions about whether they would declare states of emergency.

  All federal employees designated as “non-essential personnel” were ordered not to report to work tomorrow. In fact, the U.S. Congress would announce this afternoon whether it would go into
temporary recess.

  All DC-area military installations—including Forts Myer, Belvoir, Meade, and Detrick, plus Andrews and Bolling Air Force Bases, the National Naval Medical Center, and Quantico Marine Corps Base—were on maximum alert and under strict security lock-down.

  Dozens of “mobile strike units” comprised of local and federal law enforcement agents were now searching the region for missing persons and for the entities responsible for the multiple atrocities.

  Residents were advised to stay at home, not to panic, and to above all else stay off the highways.

  “Yeah, right,” Randall snorted as she took her exit ramp.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Despite Sergeant Lively’s relayed order to get to the station “ASAP,” Randall made a stop along the way. She was still a detective, goddammit, and her duty was to investigate crime in the most legally efficient manner possible. That’s why she detoured to a particular office building in Tyson’s Corner, near the intersection of Leesburg Pike and International Drive.

  The glass tower in question housed the CalPark Fertility Clinic on its upper levels. It was the workplace of one Nick Schaefer, an individual who listed his profession as “scientist.” He was one of the last people to speak to Frederica Wolford of Montgomery County, Maryland, before her partially eaten body—post-pregnancy—was found in a Pimmit Hills Dumpster. Randall looked forward to interrogating him about the exact nature of his research.

  The lobby doors were locked.

  Well, what did you expect? she asked herself. It’s Sunday.

  She pressed her face against the glass and cupped her hands around her eyes. The dark interior revealed little more than a security desk imprinted with a Veritas Security logo—nobody sitting at it—and a bank of elevators. Nothing moved. She sagged.

  Nick Schaefer’s not really that important, is he? Not anymore. So he works in a fertility clinic, and the monsters cause pregnancy. Those could be unrelated facts. What if Frederica Wolford was simply caught unawares like the dozens of other women who’ve been raped? It could just be a coincidence.