Grim Tidings

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “How about you give me the short version?” Jacob said, turning the man’s head from side to side and shining a small light into his eyes. The soldier flinched, and Jacob squeezed harder until he stopped struggling. “I have been here for two years and never seen an American who wasn’t a prisoner at death’s door, and now that you are here, everything is going to Hell.”

  “There are no scalpels in this place?” I demanded, deciding to ignore his comment. I tossed the instrument tray to the floor. It clanged, and the soldier whimpered. “Not even a damn pair of scissors?”

  “They lock up the instruments so we don’t steal them,” Jacob said mildly. “Who are you, really? Why are you here?”

  He reached for gauze and a needle and thread, gesturing at the soldier’s arm. “Roll up your sleeve.”

  The soldier shook his head violently. “Nr. Ich werde nicht von einem Tier genäht werden . . .”

  “Hey!” I drew back my foot. “You want one that actually hurts? Shut your Nazi trap and let the good doctor work.”

  Jacob’s mouth twisted into an almost smile as he poured disinfectant on the soldier’s wound, wringing another shriek out of his thin, bloodless mouth. “You are a liar, but I confess I like you. What is your name?”

  “Ava,” I said. “Like Gardner, not Braun.”

  “One of those dying prisoners was the first,” he said. “An American. Many of them arrive sick, and Kubler uses most as fodder for the anatomy lab, or for his hypothermia tests. But this man was different. He was . . .” Jacob trailed off, his eyes narrowing as the dimensions of the soldier’s wound became clear.

  “Now, I’m not a doctor like you,” I said as the twin half-moons of purple, bloody squares dribbled a little fresh blood, “but that’s a human bite mark.”

  Jacob hissed something under his breath, jumping back from the soldier as the man bared his own teeth in a stiff, bloody grin. His gums were bleeding, his nose, even his eyes were pooling with runny red tears. He let out a long croak, unfolding from the floor like he was spring-loaded.

  Jacob wasn’t fast enough. Nobody who was only human would have been. The soldier grabbed him by the throat and they both crashed into the exam table, Jacob ramming the thick roll of gauze into the soldier’s snapping jaws before they could close on his neck or his face.

  “They change!” he shouted as the soldier let out an anguished roar, a welt of thick, black blood oozing from his mouth as he vomited. “The doctors that the GI attacked, and now—”

  He trailed off as I landed on the soldier from behind, wrapping one arm around his neck. I couldn’t use the knife, even now. It held Kubler’s soul, and if I didn’t come back with that, I might as well just leave myself for whatever was outside the doors.

  The soldier jolted upright, swinging around and trying to shake me off, but I pressed down with all my strength, using my forearm like a bar to press down on his windpipe and the fat veins of his neck that got blood to the brain.

  He sank his teeth into the meaty part of my forearm, but I held on. Even when he ripped and pulled at the flesh, I held on. If only one of us was walking out of here, it was going to be me. I’d be damned if some Nazi grunt got me to buy the farm after I’d survived this war, five years of blood, mud, shit, and more dumb warlocks than any one person should have to encounter in their life.

  After a good thirty seconds, he finally started to slump, and I used the tiny slackening of his fury to shift one hand to his forehead, bringing his neck around with a crisp snap that filled up the tiny exam room.

  Jacob let out a slow, shaky breath as the soldier’s body toppled, and me with it. I was pumping blood like a fresh oil strike, rich and red as the armband on the asshole I’d just dropped. “I’m so sorry,” he said, backing away from me, fingers already scrabbling through the door. “You saved my life. I’m so sorry to leave you to this fate.”

  “Jacob,” I said. “Jacob!” louder when he was still trying to fight his way out of the room in a panic.

  “You’ll change,” he said, almost apologetically. “And then you’ll be one of them.”

  “Jacob.” I gritted. “I would really like to not bleed to death, so could you at least toss me that gauze?”

  He tilted his head to one side, watching me. I glared at him as we just stood there, the adrenaline screaming through me like a hot shot, his heart throbbing in his neck so hard I could see it jumping under his yellowed collar.

  “What is happening?” he said after what felt like a century.

  I stood up and ripped the gauze from his hand. Vertigo slammed down on top of my head, and I stumbled against the table, wrapping up my arm tight as I could. The bleeding had mostly stopped, but I was missing a chunk of skin and muscle. It’d be a couple of days before I was right and even longer before I could turn into the hound without being lame. “Son of a bitch,” I muttered as I tore off the end of the gauze with my teeth.

  Jacob muttered something that sounded like a prayer and I threw the gauze back to him. “Yeah, all right, I’m not human,” I said. “But on the bright side, I’m not trying to empty you out like a canteen, so I suggest we both find the silver lining and get the fuck out of here.”

  After a long second he nodded, and I unsnapped the soldier’s holster, pulling out his pistol. Only four bullets sat in the clip. “Perfect,” I muttered as we gingerly opened the door.

  “Are you a good shot?” Jacob asked, sticking so close to me he might as well have been growing out of my shoulder. “Americans are crack shots, yes?”

  “You’ve been watching too many cowboy pictures,” I whispered, pausing in the lobby where the nurse had attacked me.

  The hallway was still deserted, but there was a sound coming from outside now, a rising and falling drone of screams and cries. “It’s spreading,” Jacob whispered. “There are thousands of people out there. Innocent people . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” I said as I peered through the frost-covered window to the outside. “But there’s nothing we can do.”

  Jacob squeezed his eyes shut, sliding a hand over his face. “I can’t do this. I was meant to die here. I just . . . I don’t want to die like this.”

  “Jacob.” I grabbed his sleeve as he started to back away. “Don’t you quit on me now,” I said.

  He slumped. “Why do you care? You are not one of us. Those people, the sick ones—they are not either, not anymore. And they will take the lives of all the people trapped here with no more thought than you killed that man in the exam room.”

  “I died,” I said. It just came out, as the shapes moving beyond the door lurched and groaned, one pressing bloody hands against the glass. We pulled back, pressing ourselves against the wall. The grip of the gun was sweaty in my hand. “I died,” I said again. “And they haven’t managed to keep me down yet.”

  I reached down with my free hand and squeezed his. “I’m not going to die here, and I’ll try my best to make sure you don’t either.”

  Jacob stared at the bloody hand prints on the window, but his fingers squeezed mine in return. “They’re strong,” he said. “Fast. Anything they haven’t bitten, they’ll chase down like a pack of wolves.” He met my eyes. “Do you know what they are?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. Better than admitting I had no fucking idea what was happening. Hellspawn didn’t do this—Gary would have a conniption if he got a spot on his tie, never mind bathe in blood. Demons didn’t have the need to cause mass chaos when they had the Hellspawn to do it for them. Vampires turned victims with venom, more like a venereal disease than whatever this was. That left deadheads, corpses raised by a necromancer, but Kubler was dead. All of his walking corpses should have dropped with him.

  We stepped outside, and I almost fell over Kubler’s body. What was left of it, anyway. The crowded yard behind the barbed wire was swarming with the same languorous, bloody monsters I’d seen inside. Jacob flinched as a few turned their eyes on us. The eyes were pure black—or so clouded with blood from ruptured vessels the
y looked black. I crouched slowly, not breaking off eye contact.

  “Get as much blood as you can,” I said, gesturing at the pile of ground meat and entrails that used to be Kubler. “Cover yourself.”

  Jacob did as I said, retching as we both smeared the sticky, cooling blood over our faces and hands, down our fronts. While I was at it I ripped off the red armband. It fluttered into a pile of bloody snow and got trampled underfoot.

  Beyond the fence surrounding the hospital, I could see more shadows in the gray half-light. Some were shuffling as if they still had control over their limbs; some were lying on the ground, quivering as the people still upright walked past without even looking at them.

  “Where will we go?” Jacob whispered. “The guards . . .”

  Sirens began to wail from outside the fence and a Klieg light snapped on, sweeping the yard and lighting it up brighter than the sun. Snowflakes twirled in the cone of light, turning red where they touched the bloody ground.

  “The guards have bigger problems than us,” I said. Like the universe wanted to back me up, a burst of automatic gunfire clattered through the freezing air from far off in the camp.

  Sticking to the rough hospital walls, Jacob and I eased past the mob of creatures. I didn’t want to think about what could be going on here. Deadheads were fast and hungry like these, but if they bit you all you were going to do was bleed, not turn into a pissy cannibal yourself. No vamp I’d ever met could rip a person limb from limb, even on their best day. I was still left with a big fucking I DON’T KNOW blinking over these things’ heads, and I didn’t like it.

  By the time we’d made it to the fence, we were both almost weak from the tension of moving slowly, freezing every time one of the things turned our way and sniffed the air. Jacob grimaced at the sight of the wire. “You can fit. I am not so small.”

  I shrugged out of the thick linen shirt I’d stolen. It was ruined anyway, so I wrapped it around my fists, trying not to wince as the barbs bit through the layers into my palm. I used my foot to push down the bottom strand and jerked my chin at Jacob. “Go.”

  Jacob bent down, trying to fold himself in half and sliding under the top wire. He looked back at me. “What about you?”

  “I’m right behind you,” I said. It wasn’t a lie until I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder hard enough to pull my collarbone back. “Jacob, run!” I screamed, as I landed in the freezing mud.

  He ran. To his eternal credit, he ran and didn’t look back. He didn’t freeze, or try to be a hero. I would have grinned if I wasn’t spending all my effort on breathing after getting slammed to the ground. I’d been right. Jacob wasn’t going to die here. He was a survivor. Like recognizes like.

  A foot tucked under my shoulder and rolled me over. The spotlight lit up a man’s face, hard-carved with sharp cheeks and chin, like someone had hacked him out of wood. He looked at me, steam rising from his mouth as he breathed hard in the snowy air. “And who might you be?”

  I lashed out with my foot. He was a big bastard, at least six and a half feet, so I didn’t bother aiming for the groin. Kneecap is much more accessible when you’re on the ground, and he let out a startled grunt when I made contact.

  I managed to get up, but he grabbed me again, slamming me into the fence. The sensation of a hundred hot pins digging into my back and thighs as the barbs bit my skin forced me to make a sound, and he smiled.

  “You’re not one of them,” he said, looking at me with his head cocked, like I was some kind of rare creature he’d caught in a trap. I wondered if I was about to lose my skin.

  “No,” I whimpered. “I’m not a Nazi.”

  He pressed me harder against the wire, and I hate that tears were leaking out of my eyes. Men like him wanted me to flinch, wanted me to cry and beg. Usually that was the quickest way out of whatever mess I’d found myself in, but this time the man’s eyes were dead. Nothing was going to get me out of this. I knew that kind of man by sight too.

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” he sighed, almost in my ear. His breath was hot and he smelled—not like offal and blood, but something strong and herbal, which chilled my nose and all the way down the back of my throat. “You’re so small,” he said. “Like a bird. I see birds caught on this fence. Their feathers get so heavy with blood they can’t fly away.” He pushed again, and I felt one barb dig into the back of my head, all the way through the scalp. The man moaned into my hair.

  “You’re a lucky bird,” he said in my ear. “You’re not the species I like to catch and eat.” Faster than my heart was beating, he wrapped one massive scarred hand around my throat. “But I’ll pull your wings off just the same.”

  I clawed at his hand, but I might as well have been trying to tear apart a chunk of cement. My nails tore at the tattered sleeve of his uniform shirt and I saw through the black borders closing in that it wasn’t tan, like all the good little Aryans in the place—it was dark green, stained and faded.

  One of those dying prisoners. An American. Many are sick when they come here but he was different . . .

  At the realization spreading across my face, he grinned wider. “That’s right,” he said. “Nobody here but you and me and the monsters.”

  I kicked at him, feeling the wire tear chunks out all up and down my thighs, but he slammed his knee into mine. The wire shook under me. “Stop struggling,” he snapped. “Only the foolish ones struggle.”

  A shape moved up on my left, and I thought it was just a blood vessel rupturing in my field of vision until a hand reached across the wire and pressed into the man’s ruddy forehead.

  Jacob squeezed his eyes shut as he murmured, the man’s skin under his hand turning a molten color like it was metal in a forge. The man cried out, letting go of me and swatting at Jacob’s face as he swung wildly, catching him on the side of the temple. When the connection broke, Jacob fell onto his ass in the mud and the man lunged for me again.

  I emptied all four shots from the Luger into him, three in his chest and one thunking into his scalp. He staggered, like he was drunk, his head dipping to his chest. Nothing came from the wounds. The bullet just left a small black dot on his forehead from the powder burn.

  “Come on!” Jacob shouted in my ear, grabbing the barbed wire and pulling it up as much as he could. I squeezed underneath, not caring that I was raising a fresh crop of welts across my buttocks and back. Jacob yanked me up and we ran, up a rise and into the thick woods that surrounded the camp, snow up to my knees, then past it. We ran until Jacob stumbled over a downed tree trunk and fell headlong into the snow. He floundered up, coughing.

  “We have to keep going,” I wheezed, even though I’d fallen against a tree myself, heart thudding. We were so far away we could no longer see the lights from the camp except for faint bars of the spots painted on the clouds above us. Above the shouts, I could hear the howling of dogs and the frantic yelling of soldiers behind us.

  “Guess we’re not the only ones who got out,” Jacob said, clambering to his feet. He tried to put weight on his ankle and whimpered. “Dammit.”

  He sank back and sighed. “You better run. I’m not going to make it far on this, in the middle of the night, in the snow.”

  I shook my head, reaching down and stripping off my bloody stockings. Jacob’s eyes widened slightly. “What are you doing?”

  “Calm down,” I said, thrusting the stockings at him. “You’re a doctor, right? Make yourself a splint.”

  I broke off a branch from the fallen tree as Jacob did the same, aligning the two pieces of wood on either side of his ankle. “Not that this’ll do any good,” Jacob said. “I still can’t outrun a pack of dogs.”

  “Let me worry about that,” I said, turning the sharp end of the stick toward my thigh. I drove it into the puncture wound left by the barbs, widening it and causing fresh red blood to spurt, landing in fat, steaming droplets on the snow.

  “Stop that!” Jacob cried, lunging for the stick, but I was already done. I tossed it to the side,
letting the wound bleed freely, putting my scent in the air for the dogs.

  “Do me a favor,” I said to Jacob, wincing as the deep wound stung in the cold air. “Don’t ever tell anyone about this. Especially about me.”

  “Who would I tell?” Jacob spread his hands. “Even my teacher at the temple who showed me that trick would find this hard to swallow.”

  “Good trick,” I said. Jacob shrugged.

  “It’s just an all-purpose way to banish a dubbyuk. An evil spirit who looks like a man.” His head snapped up again as the dogs howled again, closer. “Are you one of them? Is that why you weren’t infected when you were bitten?”

  “An evil spirit?” I said. “No, I’m flesh and blood. More or less.”

  Jacob grabbed me suddenly, pulling me into a hard embrace, and then let me go. “Look after yourself.”

  “I always do,” I said. “This is both of our lucky days, Jacob. And I mean it—don’t tell anyone about me, or this night, and especially not about the thing that looked like a man back there.”

  He nodded at me, then turned and limped into the forest. I ran, leaving a trail of fresh blood for the dogs, hoping for different reasons that I’d never see Jacob or the man at the fence again.

  CHAPTER

  6

  OUTSIDE MINNEAPOLIS

  NOW

  The sedan bottomed out in a rut, undercarriage scraping icy dirt. The jolt brought me back to reality, and I saw a lone farmhouse rising out of the icy, stubble-ridden field beside the road. The windows were lit up, the only light as far as I could see. When the car rolled to a stop and I got out the freezing wind pulled all the breath out of me.

  The driver jerked her head, wrapping her arms around herself as another gust almost pulled me off my feet. “Inside,” she said. “Where it’s safe.”

  “Sure,” Leo muttered to me as we followed the girl through the furrow cut in the thigh-high snow leading to the front door. “Because when I think safe house, I think Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”