"This is unacceptable. I will not stand for this." She was mumbling. Somewhere beneath the slurred words was her entitled authority.
"That won't hold. Not for long," Castle said.
Hank shook off the fog that polluted his brain. He felt it burn away under a simmering anger. "Alright, pal. I've put up with this stoic FBI bullshit for long enough. People are dead. My friend is dead. You're marching around here like you're Clint Fucking Eastwood and I'm done. I'm done with your shit. Okay? I'm done with your cryptic hints and your magic symbols and - well, every God damned thing. You have gotten us killed. You did this. You brought all of this to our front door. I want to know what it is. What's happening? Is he with them?" Hank pointed to Otero’s office door.
Castle shook his head. He began to shrink again, growing pale and weak. "No. He's much worse."
The voice - Varney's voice - came from the other side of the door. "You're an agent, aren't you, young man? You're one of Malcolm's."
Hank and Castle looked at the door. Hank half expected Varney to pass through it like a ghost.
"Yes. Yes, you are. And you've failed, haven't you? Oh, you have failed so. And now the sun is setting. The sun is setting and darkness is coming. They'll go through you to get to me, Agent. You know what tonight is." His voice lilted with a tease.
Hank looked to Castle. "What's tonight, Castle?"
Again, Hank felt the world slipping out from under him. These were things he had no way to process. It was something just removed from him, just arm's reach outside of understanding. He felt the trembling return. It came from his marrow and somehow he knew that this time, it would shake him apart. He wanted to give into it. He wanted to just fall down on his knees and close his eyes. Let these alien things whirl around him. Maybe he would die. Maybe he wouldn't. His mind drifted to the assortment of sedatives and narcotics in their pharmacy. It wasn't far. He had the keys. A healthy dose of morphine would either make this all go away or make him just not give a fuck.
Whitey yelled from across the room. "Doc! Doc!!"
The light from the bullet holes reached across the ER now, slanting sharply with a blazing, orange hue. The sun was indeed setting. Whitey stood at one of the bullet holes, peeking out. He turned to look at Hank. The blood drained from his face and left it as white as his beard. Hank began to run to him, but felt slowed, his legs robbed of strength that now fueled his pounding heart. He stopped next to Whitey and pressed his face to another hole in the metal shutter. "What is it?"
The gang outside was quiet again and his heart trilled at the flicker of the possibility that they had left. The motorcycle engines were stilled. The guns were silent. There were no screams. But they were not gone. At the edge of the parking lot, he saw them. All of them faced the horizon, looking east. Many of them stripped off their clothes if they weren't already naked. Men and women exposed flesh marred with old tattoos and older scars. Even Panzer, with her missing arm, now impossibly less torn and jagged, stood with her giant breasts hanging on her exposed belly. They dropped their guns onto the asphalt. They stared. They waited. Hank could feel the electricity of the Black Goats holding their collective breath.
The edge of the moon crested over the horizon. Hank could barely make it out, just a sliver of white. Somewhere in the crowd, one of them moaned. They began to stir. They writhed. Hank had seen it before. It was the squirming stretch of someone peaking in the throes of heroin. They ran their fingers through their hair and licked their lips. With every inch that the moon rose, their ecstasy became more feverish. Breaths hissed through teeth. Some of them embraced. Gideon mounted a young dreadlocked girl with rheumy eyes. His braided beard strafed up and down her back as he entered her with slow, forceful thrusts. An orgy of laughter and groaning erupted. In the haze of twilight, Hank couldn't be sure what he saw. Limbs seemed to distend. Backs hunched. Ears lengthened to points. It was a trick of the orange and purple Arizona sunset. Had to be.
Then Gideon, dominating the milky-eyed girl, threw his head high and howled. His mouth - lips and teeth - stretched upwards, away from his face. The rest of the Goats, knotted together in sweat and flesh and hair, met his howl with their own. It was deafening. It was only partially human.
They thrashed and tore at their own flesh as tufts of hair burst forth. Their eyes rolled back, replaced with new eyes of unnatural reds and golds. The mass yowled and cackled in ecstasy.
Hank backed away from the storm door. Reality was rushing away from him and he wanted to let it. Let whatever he'd seen just bleed out and he could forget it forever. Whitey was looking at him, saying something, but he couldn't make anything out. The roar he heard was inside his own head and he felt the room tilt and twist around him. They needed to run.
"We have to go," he said, just a dead mumble.
Clarity returned. They could escape. While the gang transformed-
Into werewolves. NO! Don't say it. Don't think it. That's what you saw, but don't think it.
- they could escape out the front. He turned to face everyone.
"Everybody up. We have to go. Now."
"Hell yeah, we do," Whitey said, and ran towards the lobby.
Hank walked to Bullet. She still sat on the edge of the bed. She hadn't moved. "Bullet? Jan?"
The dull vacancy was gone. She was there. She was centered. "I'm good."
"Okay. I need you. We have to leave right now." He grabbed her by the arm.
Bullet hopped off the bed. In the middle of the ER, Whitey stopped. He was looking around, but unsure of where to start. "Where's the kid?" He asked.
"Shit," Hank said.
Bullet sprang to life. "He's got to be in here somewhere."
She searched the dim ER, looking behind beds and behind the counter of the nurse's station. "Rudy! Rudy, come on out!"
Otero looked around, trying to understand what was happening. She hadn't bothered to pull her hair back into place and now it spread out around her head in a mad halo. Her face was slack and stupid. A small part of Hank sparked with glee at this. As he ran to help Bullet, Agent Castle stepped in front of him.
"We can't leave."
"Yeah, we can and we are. We're leaving right now. Help us find the boy and we'll get the hell out the front while . . . We're going," Hank said and tried to move past him.
"We won't make it far enough."
"We can all fit in my car. It's right outside. We can make it and haul ass out of here."
Hank could see the defeat in his eyes. "No. It's already too late."
Something inside Hank flipped. The numb fear caught fire. It was volcanic. He grabbed Castle by the throat. "What do you want me to do? Huh? I'm trying to do something here and all you can do is keep telling us how we're dead. Tell me. Tell me what to fucking do and I'll do it!"
He tossed Castle against the wall. Otero just stared at both of them, uncomprehending. Hank looked back at Whitey and Bullet. "Fuck it. We're leaving. Right now."
He walked to the front storm door in the lobby and disengaged the lock. In his coat pocket, he felt for his car keys, and went to raise the shutter.
The agent stood behind him, but didn’t try to get in his way. "Wait! Don't!" Castle yelled.
Hank didn't listen. He didn't care. He wrenched at the heavy, metal door and threw it upwards. It rolled up into the ceiling.
A dark shape whipped past him, a blur of teeth and hair. No one had time to scream. A gray and lean thing that shambled along on oddly bent canine legs, hit Castle. Bones snapped. It slammed him against the wall and buried its maw in his side. With a quick jerk, like a dog shaking a squirrel, it flung him across the room. Castle hit the other wall and before he could slide to the floor, it was on him again. He gurgled as the thing latched onto his neck. It shook him as his legs flailed. His entire body smashed limply against the wall, the chairs, the floor. Left and right. It bounced around with him in its jaws, growling and thrashing the life from him. Blood painted everything in dark smears.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
> 5:30 PM
From the fringe of her fog, she watched it happen. It was like a show. Blood spurted in dramatic arcs. No rhyme. No reason. Castle was a meaty rag doll in the thing's mouth. Puncture wounds. Crushed trachea. Severed jugular. Severed carotid. Fractured right ulna. Compound fracture on right humerus.
Dr. Hank stumbled back and fell into a chair. His eyes gleamed through the blood that coated his face. He froze.
God damn it, Jan. Control this.
Just like that, the fog was gone. The blazing pain in her arm receded. She moved on autopilot, running into the fight.
Save the ones that can be saved.
Grabbing Dr. Hank by the lapels, she lifted him to his feet and hurled him out of the lobby. He stumbled out of harm's way, barely staying upright. She turned to face the werewolf. It was enjoying this. If the agent wasn't dead, he would be in seconds. Still, it tossed him about. Its fangs were embedded in what tissue was still intact in his neck. Castle's fingers twitched.
There was a dark shape on the floor. Amid the blood and overturned furniture lay Castle's Glock 9mm. Bullet didn't think. She snatched it up, checked the safety, aimed, and squeezed. The shot hit home and left a clean hole above the agent's right ear.
The werewolf stopped. It rose up straight, standing like a man, and with a jerk of its neck, cast Castle's body loose. The agent's corpse sailed into the corner and landed behind a plastic fern. The wolf turned to face her and in the dying light, she could see its eyes glow. Bullet had ruined the fun. She bolted towards it and planted a kick into its torso. It yelped and fell back. It stumbled a few steps under the shutter door and into the indigo dusk. Bullet let another shot fly. It went wide, but bought her time. She moved to the lever that controlled the storm door and yanked it. The shutter plummeted and crashed back into place. As she reached to lock it, hairy, clawed fingers curled up beneath the lip of the door. The wolf snarled. Bullet closed the lock and stomped on the fingers, eliciting another yelp as the fingers pulled away.
She turned to see Dr. Hank, Whitey, and Otero all watching. They were stupefied. The doctor was covered in blood from his perfectly-gelled hair, across his once white coat, and down to his over-priced shoes.
"Is everyone okay?" Bullet asked.
No one spoke. She marched over to Dr. Hank and pointedly grabbed his arm. "Are you hurt?"
"No. No, I'm alright."
She felt the adrenaline drain out of her. Conscious thought started to creep back in, and with it, the fear. She pushed it aside. There was still work to be done. "Has anyone seen Rudy?"
***
Rudy made himself as small as possible. He hid inside the unused shower in what was essentially Whitey's office. The room was at the end of the West Wing. It was as far away as he could get from . . . what he saw . . . without rushing outside and getting shot. It smelled of cleaning products and mold. There was an old desk full of comic books, shelves of cleaning supplies and tools, and a storage-closet-cum-bathroom, where he now hid. Lights off, he crouched behind the mop bucket. His shaking made the wooden handles of mops and brooms rattle like old bones.
There in the dark, cool shadows, he pushed everything away. The roar of the bikers outside, the ones who had killed her. His mom. His mom was dead. The words didn't feel real. His. Mom. Was. Dead. And everyone just kept going like it was nothing. They petted him like he was a stupid dog and asked if he was okay, but then it was over. That was it. They forgot about it. About her. And now they probably didn't even know he was gone. Just assholes. They were assholes who were going to get everybody killed. They weren't even trying to escape whatever was happening.
It wasn't real. Everything was seeming less and less real and everything he experienced felt as though he were watching it on a tv screen rather than having it happen all around him. Still, it reached for him. It clawed at the fringes of his thoughts, trying to make him crazy. Whatever was happening in that room with Nurse Otero and the body tried to get at him. He could feel it, like long, thin fingers poking into his brain. It was the blow to his head when that man hit him. Maybe it wasn't just a concussion. Maybe it was brain damage. Part of him wanted to rush to Dr. Hank and demand they scan his head. Something was wrong. The biker had smacked him hard enough to make him see things, to make him crazy.
He started to cry. He hadn't cried all day, not really. There were tears, but now he really cried. It wasn't for his mother and it wasn't out of fear of getting shot. It was fear that he was now broken, that maybe he was really just half-conscious and the sounds around him were stirring up this awful nightmare. And maybe that's what life was now - just some fever dream he had to live in forever after getting hit hard enough to nearly splatter his brains. He thought of his brothers, of his mom trying to take care of him (But she was dead. His. Mom. Was. Dead.), but really resenting him, and of the special classes they'd have to put him in, the ones with the slow kids. And he cried some more until the snot dripped down over his lips.
He held his breath and peeked out into the room and listened. It was strangely quiet. There had been more noise from inside of course. More screams. More gunshots. This wasn't real. It couldn't be. Still, he had to man up. The oldest of three, with his dad away in Texas, he had to take care of things now. He had to check on his brothers and get to a phone. Maybe he could call his aunt. A cascade of new fears washed over him - Where would he stay now? Would he be homeless? Would he have to leave his school and his friends to go live with his dad?
He shoved those away, too. The adults couldn't help him. He was old enough. He was smart enough. He took a deep breath and stood. He waited. Nothing. There was a little noise outside that he now heard, but he was safe for the moment. Through blurry eyes, he looked out at his hand and flexed his fingers. They were real. The mildewed tile in this old shower, he could smell it. It was real, too. He could feel the cold tile. He bit the inside of his mouth and felt a sting of pain. That was real. He stepped out into Whitey's room. The lights weren't on, but dim fluorescence crept in under the door. The cracks around the shutter let in the last of the day's sunlight. He studied it all. He tried to feel the cool air on his skin, to take in the mustiness in the room and the odor of cleaning chemicals. He listened, separating and tagging all of the sounds. All of it was real. It had to be.
And he went queasy at the thought. If he wasn't crazy, then it was worse. It was more than bad. It was fucked. Murderers and a corpse in a box and maybe even . . . was it the devil? He hadn't given much thought to Satan. It was just some idea out there that he'd never have to deal with, like getting divorced or being president. And yet if he wasn't crazy, what had he seen in the room? Even his thoughts of it were murky, like someone had reached into his mind to find something and made him see it. The room with Otero and the body had swirled. It changed. Maybe the body was moving. Yes, he'd seen it move. Its lips parted. It smiled. It looked at him. The only answer he had was the devil and if the devil was in here . . .
He looked again at the shutter and ran over to it. Slowly, he pulled at the lock at the bottom. It was stuck, but eventually he was able to loosen it and raise the storm door up just a few inches. If the devil was here in the hospital, then he wanted to not be in the hospital. Outside, the moon rose over the horizon. The biker's motorcycles were quiet, even if they were screaming and had . . . dogs? Where had all the dogs come from? He slid as far as he could to the side and tried to see into the parking lot where all of the noise was coming from, but still couldn't make anything out. It sounded like when his mom had taken him to the animal shelter to pick out Ruby, their Pomeranian - just lots of yipping and growling and howling. It didn't make any sense. Were the police here now?
Partially obscuring his view was a row of unkempt holly that grew under the windows. If he could slip out without them seeing him, the bushes would provide cover. In fact, they ran around most of the hospital. At the edge of the lot he could see Whitey's wrecker. WHITEY'S TOWING SERVICE was painted in faded letters on the side. It was the only car in the back lot, a
side from the ambulance on the opposite end. And it had a CB radio in it. He'd seen Whitey on it before. Running adjacent to that end of the parking lot was a dry ditch. It was filled with dirt and trash and weeds, but it lead right up to the beat up tow truck. No one was around. All of the bad guys must be over by the doors to the ER.
Climb out the window. Crawl behind the holly. Get into the ditch. Crawl through that. Get to the wrecker. Radio for help.
Easy.
***
The darkness inside the emergency room settled like ash. The streams of sunlight that came in through bullet holes in the shutters were replaced with the yellow-orange of the sodium streetlights in the parking lot. No one spoke. Otero, a few feet away, stared at the floor. Hank suppressed a crazed smile. The bitch was broken. She was bruised and filthy, hair and clothes in complete disarray. Her mind was worse. Her eyes were dead. A thousand yard stare. She deserved it and he was right behind her. He deserved it, too. For all the times he'd called in sick when he was just hungover. For all of the times he'd drunkenly handled people's lives in the ER. For all of the barroom whores and booze and cocaine. Sure, he deserved this. He wasn't one to believe in karma or divine punishment. Shit wasn't like that. It just was. So he stopped short of saying this was cause and effect. But yeah, he deserved this. Otero was a ball-busting, fascist bitch, but Hank? Hank was a degenerate. It looked him in the face and he had to look right back. He was a degenerate and he was going to die that way. He looked down at his shaking hands. They were covered in blood. He didn't think any of it was his. He began to wipe at it, but just smeared it around. He wiped more fervently. It wouldn't come off. His coat was splattered with it. None of it would come off. It just fucking smeared. Everywhere.
"Hank?" Bullet said.
He froze and looked up. In her eyes was pity. Whitey's, too. Hank was then keenly aware of the terrified grin that he was wearing. It hurt his cheeks. His teeth ached from grinding them. He forced himself to relax, only to feel the trembling return. Bullet handed him a towel. He took it and started to scrub at his hands again.
The Black Goat Motorcycle Club Page 11
