by Edward Lee
“What was that?”
“Hmm?” Donna replied, and that was about all she could say given her current activity.
The heavy erotic atmosphere was snapped when Rob got up from the orgiastic tangle. “I heard it too. Someone’s outside.”
Rob put on his jeans, then stepped off-screen, while Joyce and Donna got up and hurriedly pulled on their robes.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Donna fretted.
“I did,” Grace said. “Like a twig snapping.”
“Rob, where are you!” Donna asked a bit too excitedly.
“Calm down,” Grace told her. “He’s getting his gun.”
Now it was Donna who hurried off-screen, running after Rob. This left Grace by herself in the room, the urgency of the moment making her forget the video camera was still running. She picked up her own pistol off the nightstand, then left the room, calling out, “Where did you two go?”
Unfortunately, the camera angle only afforded a view of the bed, and didn’t go higher than waist-level. The only other thing she could see was the nightstand and the bottom third of the window.
Oh my God, Clare thought.
The window was opening.
Someone was sliding the window open from the outside, then climbing in.
Clare froze where she sat, eyes riveted to the TV. All she could see of the intruder were his boots stepping inside, and mangy denim overalls. In only a matter of seconds he was inside, and a second after that he was out of the frame. But in that last moment of movement, Clare was able to glimpse what he was carrying in with him:
A double-barreled shotgun.
Another few seconds ticked by with no movement on the screen at all, but then—
What’s he doing?
She could see the end of the shotgun barrel slowly inching back into the frame, pushing against the lamp on the nightstand. Eventually the lamp tipped over and crashed to the floor.
“What the fuck was that!” Rob shouted from the other room.
The worst realization was that this had all taken place in what was now Clare’s bedroom. She quickly recalled the room’s layout and realized at once what the intruder was doing. He’s hiding in the closet, and he just tipped the lamp over to draw the others back into the room—
“Rob! Wait!” Grace could be heard now. “Don’t go in there!”
All Clare saw was Rob from the waist down traversing the bedroom, when—
“Holy sh—”
BAM!
—and everything after that was madness. A gut-shot blew Rob backward, dropped him on the bed where he howled for a few moments, trying to put his innards back into his abdomen. The large white bed turned red almost instantly. Rob convulsed briefly, then fell still. Loud footsteps, breaking glass, and screams could be heard from the other room, but it all broke off very quickly.
Clare edged closer to the TV screen, terrified. The scene fell dead silent now. She frantically grabbed the remote, upped the volume.
Footsteps came back into the room. A brief shadow fell across Rob’s gut-shot body on the bed.
Next, a voice: “Cuh-cuh-camera…”
The frame began to wobble. Obviously, the intruder had noticed the camera and was picking it up.
He turned the camera around and was now looking right into the lens, and suddenly it was the intruder’s face that filled the television screen.
Clare’s heart nearly stopped.
It was Stuart Winster’s face.
The malformed face grinned, showing wet, drooly lips and crooked teeth. He was waving into the lens with his two-fingered hand.
««—»»
The shock of what she’d seen on the tape left her unable to move for several minutes. She was nearly hyperventilating, her heart skipping beats.
Stuart Winster.
Her rapist.
Was here.
The demented deformee was responsible for everything amiss on the site. All the disappearances were clearly his doing.
Clare had to sit still a while longer before she could come to grips with the revelation and think intelligibly. But this incontestable truth rammed two questions into her head.
Why and how?
Both seemed impossible to calculate with so little information. But one answer, at least, came to her after just one stray glance across the room. How could this criminal retardate possibly have anything to do with the clinic?
A small writing desk sat on the other side of the room, and above it, on the wall, several of Dellin’s framed medical degrees hung. One frame, though, wasn’t a degree. Clare got up and walked over.
It was a framed newspaper article.
Just a short one, from the St. Petersburg Times. The headline read: Air Force Retiree and N.I.H. Specialist to Head New Local Cancer Clinic.
A small photo accompanied the article: two men standing in front of the clinic, both in white lab coats, both smiling.
One was Dellin, the other was Colonel Harold Winster.
“Harry,” Clare croaked. “Is Harold Winster.”
Her former Air Force commander, and the father of her rapist.
It was more like a fugue state that took over from there, logic taking a back seat to the coldest emotions. Going straight to the police was the smart thing to do, but Clare already knew in her heart that she was not going to do that.
She was going to find the Winsters, and, perhaps, she would even kill them.
There was no mistake in her mind. Winster and his son were involved in some inexplicable conspiracy that was killing people. That was her rationale, and she felt quite satisfied with it. It also occurred to her—as she checked the cylinder of her revolver—that the harrowing revelations of the last few minutes might well have afflicted her with a solid dose of temporary insanity, but of that possibility she just thought:
I don’t care.
She was running back to the Blazer when she noticed the cottage on the other side—Mrs. Grable’s. The front door was wide open, which seemed odd.
Then she heard something crash.
Through the open door, she thought she could see something moving on the floor.
Clare re-drew her gun and went over.
She could tell that the living room was a shambles even before she got on the porch. Clare ducked inside, covered each corner as she checked the room. Then she just stared.
A middle-aged man lay on the floor. It was Mrs. Grable’s husband; Clare remembered seeing him in the window the other night. She leaned over, checked his pulse, and wasn’t surprised to find none. The ugly angle of his neck left no doubt—it was broken. And she knew in an instant that he was not the one responsible for the bruises she’d noticed on Mrs. Grable.
He wasn’t the one beating her, she realized.
The man had no arms.
The dismemberment wasn’t new; he’d obviously suffered some catastrophic accident years ago. If he wasn’t the one beating her, then who was? The answer hardly mattered, though. He’d been murdered.
And where was Mrs. Grable?
Another door stood open; she thought it must be another room until she saw the steps descending. This cottage had a basement.
Clare’s heart was racing. She began to go down the steps.
Downstairs she discovered a makeshift bedroom: a cot, a table, a small television, an old couch, but much of this room, too, was a shambles. Someone lives down here, and I think I know who… A single bare bulb overhead provided the only light—Clare could barely see.
She edged forward, her gun out.
“Get down!” someone bellowed. Hands grabbed her from behind, pulled her down just as—
BAM!
The room flashed for a split-second. The shotgun blast from behind the couch tore up the wall, the area of space of which Clare’s head occupied only a moment ago. She’d been yanked out of the kill-zone—
—by Adam.
“Keep low,” the ranger whispered. He’d dragged her aside, behind some storage crates. Clare could contemplate nothing of wh
at had just happened—except that Adam had saved her life.
“I heard the woman screaming,” he said. “So I came in. Found the husband dead upstairs.” His voice cracked, his thumb gesturing the other end of the room. “That thing did it.”
Thing, Clare thought. He means Stuart. But before she could try to figure out anything more—
She cringed when a scream tore through the room.
It was a woman’s scream, high and blood-curdling and insane.
Mrs. Grable’s back there. He’s got her behind the couch.
“Cover me,” she whispered to Adam. “He’s killing her.”
Adam gulped, nodding. He raised his own pistol. Clare was about to make a break to the corner but she never got the chance.
Another shotgun blast shook the room, severing Mrs. Grable’s scream. JESUS! Clare pulled herself back behind the crate.
“We’re pinned down,” Adam said. “One of us has gotta get out of here and get some backup.”
Easier said than done. Clare jerked her gaze over her shoulder. The only way out was back up the stairs, but that would bring her right into his firing lane. Suicide, she knew. “We’re going to have to take our chances and rush him.”
Adam’s strained face didn’t look very confident about the prospect.
But then—
What’s that?
Adam heard it too. Rapid footfalls, fading off.
“Sounds like he left,” Adam wheezed.
“But to where? The basement’s tiny. Is there a door back there?”
“Shit, I don’t know. But I guess we gotta do it? You ready?”
Clare nodded. “You take that side, I’ll take this one.”
Adam gulped again. Then he whispered, “Go!”
They both dashed up. Clare fired a covering shot over the couch as Adam dove over the cot.
“He’s gone,” Clare announced. “He got away—through that.”
“What the hell?” Adam’s gun hand was still shaking from the after-shock. He peered closer along with Clare. The wall at the end of the basement wasn’t really a wall—it was some sort of drainage conduit. And there was a hole in it.
Clare peeked in, gun in the lead. The foul-smelling passage was almost as high as she was tall. “He ran away, through here. It’s like a tunnel.”
Adam sat down on the edge of the bed as if exhausted. “It’s the old underground run-off system, they put it in in the forties, for storm surges.” He glanced down inadvertently, then groaned. “Aw, Jesus…”
His gaze fell on Mrs. Grable’s body. Clare winced. The woman was naked and had been bitten all over. The massive shotgun wound to the chest had finished her off.
Clare grabbed a sheet off the bed and covered the corpse.
Then she looked at Adam, and felt another shock of adrenalin. “You’ve been shot!” she exclaimed.
“Tell me about it.” He’d caught part of a shotgun blast in the shoulder. “It’s not that bad I don’t think,” he said, pulling out a small first-aid kit off his belt.
Clare helped him apply the gauze. “Do you think you can drive?”
“Huh?”
“The phones are all out—they’re all rooted through the clinic.” She was about to hand him her keys to the Blazer. “You need to get to the hospital, but you’re going to have to drive yourself.” Then she looked at the hole on the side of the conduit. “I’ve got to go after that guy, and I’m pretty damn sure that run-off pipe leads straight to the clinic—the B-Wing side.”
Adam still looked shaken. “You don’t understand. That was no guy that did this. It was something really fucked up. I saw its face, Clare—just for a second but that was enough, and then I saw its hand. All them stories are true.” His lower lip quivered. “It’s some kind of—”
“It’s not a monster, Adam,” she said stiffly. “It’s a man named Stuart Winster. He’s deformed and he’s ugly as hell, but I assure you, he’s a human being.”
“Stuart Win—”
“That’s right. Same last name as the clinic director. Stuart Winster is Harry’s son. He and I go back a ways, and it’s too involved to explain. I’ve got a big score to settle with those assholes, and I’m going to do it—now. Get yourself to the hospital.”
Adam took a long breath, then got up. He popped a wad of chewing tobacco into his mouth and lit a cigarette on top of it.
Clare frowned. “Do you have any idea how disgusting that is?”
Adam just shrugged. He spat in the corner. “Right now I’m more shit-scared than I ever been in my fucking life…but there ain’t no way I’m gonna let you go out there alone.”
“Forget it. You’re hurt.”
“Still got my gun hand,” he said, and waved his pistol. “Let’s go do this.”
“Thanks,” Clare said.
She grabbed a flashlight off the table, stepped into the pipe. There wasn’t much water in it but all manner of fungus grew up along the rounded sides. Their boots clicked through the muck.
“I really misjudged you, Adam,” Clare said next. But she did owe him an apology. “I’m sorry. It turns out that you were right all along about Dellin. I’m not sure exactly what they’re doing out here, but they’re in on it together.”
“In on what?”
“They’re using the clinic as a cover for some kind of experiment, something genetic, I think. They’re putting something in the lake that’s causing those mutations. Dellin’s medical background is in genetic engineering, and he worked for the Army’s Biological Weapons Section. And Harold Winster used to be the commander of the Air Force Clinical Research Corp. I was part of the security force there, and all we ever heard was that most of the research involved genetic science. Beyond that, I don’t know and I don’t care. But I’m shutting them down tonight. Anyway, I’m sorry for the way I treated you. I thought you were behind whatever’s going on out here.”
“Apology accepted,” Adam said. He shrugged again. “It’s somethin’, my fuckin’ karma, I guess. Just something about me that makes every fuckin’ woman I ever fuckin’ met think I’m snake shit.”
“You sure it’s your karma and not your language?”
“Fuck. Did it again. Pardon my French.”
The malodorous passageway continued. Foul condensation dripped down on them from the lichen and mold infestations overhead.
“Aw, shit!” Adam yelled.
Clare whirled, gun cocked. “What?”
Disgusted tweaked Adam’s face. A cockroach the size of a shoe was skittering up his pants. He flicked it off and stomped down hard. The insect made a crunching sound, almost like someone stepping on a soda can. It squealed, ejecting black liquid from its head.
“Oh, great. Those things are down here,” Clare said, just as disgusted. They better not try crawling on ME!
“Yeah,” Adam said. “And I wonder what else they got down here.”
Clare could not forget the preposterously enlarged frog they’d encountered. With fangs, she thought.
Next, they both froze where they stood.
A squeaking sound could be heard up ahead. It reminded her of a bad wheel bearing.
And it was getting closer very quickly, and soon another sound could be heard along with it: pattering.
“Oh, no,” she muttered.
“Only one thing I’d expect to find more of in a sewer than cockroaches,” Adam said.
Clare knew exactly what he was talking about, and the steady squeaking only made her more fearful.
She kept her light trained straight ahead and down, while both had their guns ready.
The squeaking stopped, as if whatever was coming down that pipe sensed their presence. After so much time passed, Clare stepped forward slightly. She and Adam squinted ahead but saw nothing.
“Where is it?” she said.
“If it turned around and ran away, we would’ve heard it.”
The comment made sense, but— Maybe not, she thought.
Then she flicked the flashlight upward, ta
king its beam off the bottom of the passage and flashed it to the top.
And screamed.
“Holy motherfucking shit you gotta be shitting me!” Adam yelled, and he and Clare both fell backward at the same time, splattering in the muck and firing their guns simultaneously upward.
The rat had been walking upside-down, on the ceiling of the pipe, and when they’d finally seen it, its face had only been inches from theirs.
The thing made a sound more like a dog barking when the volley of bullets knocked it down. It twitched wildly when it hit the cement bottom, blood more black than red jetting from the wounds. But it didn’t die. It started to get back up—
Clare and Adam emptied their cylinders into it, the concussion of the shots nearly deafening them. When the stinging smoke cleared, the thing indeed lay dead.
“Don’t get near it!” Adam yelled.
Clare had no intention of getting near it, but she did need a closer look. She reloaded, then knelt a few yards back, roving her light over it.
A wave of nausea rose up.
“Adam, this is not good! That thing is huge!” she complained.
“Yeah, and we’re in its home. There’s probably more of ’em, lots more.”
Clare couldn’t contemplate that. She couldn’t contemplate the thing itself but she had to try. It did possess overall features that were ratlike, only it was completely hairless, its foldy skin a whitish pink with dark veins vaguely visible beneath. But the skin’s texture was loose, more like fresh-plucked chicken skin.
And its size?
“That thing’s as big as a full-grown Husky,” Adam groaned. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”
“Join the club.”
But as repulsive as the creature was, Clare couldn’t take her eyes off it. The head was decidedly un-ratlike. It was not elongated and it didn’t have ears. A monkey’s head? A cat’s? she was trying to come up with a comparison. What chilled her most was the symmetry. “Look at how even the head is, Adam.”
“Huh?”
“The lines are all even, and the head doesn’t look like a rodent at all.”
“It’s a mutation!” he objected, still queasy. “It’s fucked up, deformed!”
“Yeah, sure, but usually genetic defects cause mutations that are asymmetrical because the growth genes run amok.”
