Forever Hunger

by David Salkin

  was very human and pleasant.

  Thirty

  VWX

  Roy woke up after nine, very late for him. He was usually up at seven or so, did his thing for a few hours during the day, and was at work by one-thirty to work out and shower and change into his uniform for roll call at three. He had been up late the night before, having run to the hospital, and then having a crappy night’s sleep when he got home. He sat up and checked his cell phone. He had a voice mail. Damn. He must have slept through the ring after all. He called his voicemail and a nurse from the hospital left a message saying that Tim was out of surgery and would be recuperating from a triple bypass for a couple of days in ICU.

  He was relieved. At least his corpulent friend had survived the heart

  • 168 • attack. He called Captain Ammiano and got his voicemail, so he left a message about Tim. He would now have to do more of the legwork. Not that the LT or captain weren’t helping, but they had a bunch of other stuff to do as well, and other than FBI Agent Patmore, Roy would have to pick up Tim’s slack. He wondered if Tim would ever return to work. He called a florist and sent flowers to Tim’s room, along with a box of doughnuts he knew Tim wouldn’t be allowed to eat, but would at least give him a chuckle.

  Roy called Patmore’s number that he had stored in his cell phone. Doug saw Roy’s name pop up and answered with a “Good morning, Roy.”

  “Hey, Doug. Just thought I’d give you some bad news. Tim…” “Yeah, I heard. He’s going to be fine. Triple bypass went well. He’s in a great hospital. Although I think his days as a cop are over.”

  “How did you find out so fast?”

  “Um, hello? We’re the FBI, Roy…I’m kidding. One of the guys in his precinct called me this morning right before you did.”

  “Anything new?”

  “There’s always something new. What time are you going in? I thought you worked three to eleven?”

  “Yeah, well, I used to. With Tim out of commission and something eating people in Midtown, I thought I might go in early.”

  “Get dressed and I’ll pick you up in thirty minutes downstairs.”

  “You know where I live?”

  “Roy…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I forgot... you’re the FBI.” He hung up and hit the shower. He dressed in plainclothes and eyed his spare bulletproof vest. He wore it on those rare occasions when working plainclothes, but didn’t think it would help against a man-eating monster and didn’t bother. By the time he got downstairs, Doug was parked by the fire hydrant. Roy hopped in and they sped off, heading uptown.

  “Where we going?” asked Roy.

  “I’m taking you to my office. I have almost two years worth of files on this thing. I can’t really bring the whole taskforce into my office, but I’ll see if I can catch you up a little better.”

  They drove to an underground garage and parked, then took an elevator up to the tenth floor of the building. They entered a sealed corridor, and Doug used a swipe card to unlock a series of doors.

  Roy was somewhat shocked. “This whole floor is FBI?” he asked.

  “Yeah, and keep that to yourself,” Doug said. “This is a New York special services sub-station. We don’t advertise this location, and we don’t take anyone from the public in here. We still have a couple of secrets, I guess.”

  Doug said a few hellos as they passed folks in the hallways, and then entered his office. It was tiny. His desk and computers looked brand new, and file cabinets, some with combination locks like vaults filled the walls. Other than the desk chair and two small chairs on the other side of the desk, no one else was fitting in the office.

  “You see why I can’t have the whole taskforce up here now?” asked Doug.

  “Or Tim,” said Roy, wondering how his buddy was feeling.

  Doug sat and dialed into his computer after inviting Roy to sit. “You’ll want to see this. I had the docs down at the lab work some of the bite wounds and teeth models. We have 3-D models of some of the wounds, even from old cases. I know your police crime lab has a bite model, and it’s pretty good, but our guys pulled some old files and built some models of the attack victims based on photos and measurements in the coroners’ reports. I’ll go steal us some bad coffee. Sit here and use the mouse to scroll around the models…these commands here will move it in 3D for you.” Doug left and Roy sat down and moved the model of some prehistoric jaws armed with horrific teeth. He was still lost in thought when Doug returned with two coffees and some sugar and creamer packs, which he put on his desk.

  “Nasty stuff, huh?” he asked Roy. Roy was still turning the pictures around in different views.

  “Unfuckingbelievable, man. How many DBs did you go through?” he asked.

  “Those models represent almost a hundred victims. The oldest dates back to the sixties. I have DNA matches to almost a dozen crime scenes, including the most recent one we’re working together. I also have fingerprints that go back to the forties. This thing, and I do say “thing”, not person in this little room of mine only, has been around for a long time, Roy. I can’t speak to a whole group the way I can talk to you about this, because everyone will think I’m nuts, but you and I are going to catch this fucking monster.”

  Roy grunted. He noticed that Doug, unlike his cop buddies, rarely cursed. This thing really pissed him off.

  “So you must have some theories. I mean, you’ve been doing this case fulltime for almost two years. You must have something you aren’t talking about. How does a guy do what this guy does and not get caught?”

  “That’s just it. For years, this guy left almost no trace. But I think he’s getting sloppy. I mean, sure, our techniques are a heck of a lot better now than they were a decade ago, but he’s also leaving a lot more evidence. I went through files some months back regarding bodies recovered from the water around the city. Lots of references to “damage from sea life”—like sharks had been eating the victims. You see any sharks in the Hudson River? I think this guy was eating his victims and dropping them into the water for years.”

  “Hard to tell on floaters…” said Roy, looking at a series of grisly pictures on Doug’s computer.

  “To a degree, yes. But there were teeth marks on some of the bones that I showed to an oceanographer. He said they weren’t from any fish. Same canine incisors and tooth structure as the others. He said they were mammal, most likely primate, feline or canine. In other words, he had no idea, but knew enough to say it wasn’t a fish. Fish have hundreds of teeth, and they don’t have fangs. And there’s more.”

  Doug closed and locked his door and sat in the guest chair with Roy still seated at his desk. “Listen Roy, I need someone to work with on this case that I can trust. And I don’t mean ‘trust’ like not talk about details to reporters; I mean trust, like, that you understand I am not insane. When we spoke about keeping an open mind at that first briefing—I really meant it. I am pretty sure your Heather Connell ‘gets it’, too. But you need to get it, Roy. I’m going to share some things with you that need to stay here for a while. A group of two can handle this info. A room full of cops? No way. They’ll get drunk and talk shit in public, and the public’s reaction will range from outrage at the waste of taxpayer money, to total panic, to long lines of whackos screaming ‘I told you so’…”

  Roy leaned back in Doug’s chair and folded his arms. “Okay, Agent Patmore. You have my undivided attention. Out with it.”

  Doug looked at him and rubbed his face, tried to pick a place to begin, and then said, “Here goes. The case you call Goth Girl. She had skin tissue under her fingernails. Your crime lab said it wasn’t viable tissue. I took it to my guy. I told him what he was looking for, sort of. Make a very long complicated story short—this tissue was from a corpse. Meaning, the tissue was dead when she got it under her fingernails.”

  “She was into some weird Goth shit. Was she having sex with corpses or something? Like necrophilia?” Roy’s face was contorted in disgust.

  “Let me finish. I
had the DNA run through a few high-end computers we have. Top of the line systems we have used for everything from identifying United States servicemen recovered in Vietnam sixty years after they were killed, to helping with 9-11 trace evidence. You follow me?”

  “Yeah. If there’s a trace of DNA, you’ll find it.”

  “Not just find it—positively identify it against a huge database of DNA samples that includes millions of people. It’s one thing to say, yes, it was human dead tissue. It’s another thing to say it was the dead tissue from dozens of people.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you?” asked Roy.

  “That’s okay, just listen. Yesterday, a sanitation worker found a DB in a dumpster uptown. Nice little residential park. The guy was a homeless man, and was somewhat known in the area. He’d been chased out plenty of times, but he liked the neighborhood. Not many gangbangers to kick his ass or rob him. Anyway, I saw the coroner’s report, and I am 100% sure he was eaten by our creature. Now pay attention. At the bite marks, there was some foreign tissue, as well as foreign tissue in the claw marks. Like…” Doug closed his eyes. “Let’s just say maybe the thing that was feeding on him hadn’t brushed his teeth or filed his nails or something from the last feeding…you with me?”

  Roy shook his head yes, a look of disgust still on his face.

  Doug continued. “So I had our best guys running DNA trace on the bits and pieces. Roy—this is so fucked up. I got hits on those four dead gang bangers uptown that were slashed and burned. Are you following me?”

  Roy sat back and connected the dots, and the logic was almost too disgusting to repeat aloud. He spoke slowly, choosing each word painfully. “So…you are saying, the lab results conclude that the victim of another one of these attacks was notattacked by the four gangbangers, but that whatever killed them, alsokilled this homeless man? This ‘thing’ had killed the four gangbangers, and had some leftover shit in his teeth or nails that he left in the recovered body you just found. ”

  “In a nutshell.”

  “That’s some fucked up shit, Doug.”

  “Yeah. Now, let’s go back to Goth Girl. The DNA under her fingernails was from several dead males. And unless she was in fact having sex with corpses, it becomes very difficult to explain. Especially when one of the corpses would have been dead twenty years and beyond having skin on it. Unless she kept it in a deep freeze somewhere, and we don’t have any evidence to suggest that.”

  They sat blankly staring at each other.

  “Do you want to try and explain what the fuck you just said to me?” asked Roy.

  “Nope. Because I might doubt my sanity. I would much rather have you explain it back to me based solely on the facts that I have presented to you.”

  Roy sat back in the chair and looked out the window overlooking the city. Somewhere out there, there was something beyond explanation that was feeding on human beings. Roy took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said very quietly. “Let’s forget what we think we know about human beings for a second and just go strictly by the evidence. I’m not even going to look at you when I am talking because this is completely absurd.”

  “Welcome to my world,” said Doug quietly as he picked up a black coffee.

  “We have a young woman, sexually assaulted and viciously murdered in her apartment. She has been bitten and drained of most of her blood. She apparently scratched her attacker. The skin under her nails turns out to be from several dead bodies. Am I following along so far?”

  “You must be doing great—it sounds insane.”

  “Okay, so more than one guy is under her nails, and you say one of the guys was dead twenty years ago. How do you know

  that ?”

  “Because we have a match to a 1991 unsolved murder case. It wasn’t here in the city. The FBI had a file open because the missing person was a woman who was living in Pennsylvania and the body was over the state line in upstate New York. Young woman named Darci West. She was a dancer at some hole in the wall bar in Philly and went missing. She had a couple of priors for solicitation, dope, and shoplifting. Nothing big. Anyway, she turns up at a cabin in upstate New York along with two other women’s bodies. The hunter that found them was a big strong guy, you know, an outdoorsman. He was practically out of his mind when he drove back down the mountain and called police. He ended up shooting himself in 1993. Most of his friends said he never got over what he saw. I saw the crime scene photos and I understand how he could snap after that.”

  “Our killer ate them, I presume?” asked Roy, feeling queasy.

  “Yes, partially. But he apparently tortured them first. It was a huge case at the time. We spent huge amounts of money and came up with nothing. State Police, FBI, local cops—no one could catch a break. Whoever did it, just disappeared. But evidence at the scene was processed and kept in the FBI central system. The victims had tissue under their nails, which didn’t make any sense at the time, but looking back now, I think I understand some of it.”

  “Such as?” asked Roy.

  One of the victims had tissue from the other two under her nails. It was assumed they had fought each other, or been made to fight each other, or tie each other up or something like that. Knowing what I know now…” he hesitated. “I think the killer ate the first two, ingested their DNA, and then ate the third woman later. She fought back as best she could and scratched him. She got skin under her nails from him, which now contained DNA from the two women he had consumed.” Doug sat back and folded his arms.

  Roy spoke quietly. “You see how I am staring out the window and not looking at you?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’m just gonna’ stare at your window for a little while.”

  “Yup.” Doug sipped his coffee.

  Thirty-One

  VWX

  Adam’s Lair

  Adam had returned home Sunday morning after enjoying “sins of the flesh” with Sara. “Sins of the flesh” she had called it, jokingly. He wondered about his sins with flesh. Sins? No, just food. If God had thought it was a sin, He would have protected Olmer that night in the woods. Adam was sulking a bit. He stripped and squatted in the corner, his arms wrapped around his legs with his chin on his knees. He could still smell Sara all over him, and it made him happy and angry at the same time. He remembered enough about being human to know that there was a connection between Sara and him. Something emotional, physical, human. His feelings were changing—becoming painful. He could feel anger creeping into his body again, his mouth filling with teeth. His face tightened as his fangs started to slide into the position

  • 177 •

  that meant horrific death to all that saw them. Adam forced the anger away, clenching and unclenching his hands, compelling himself to relax. He refocused on the dog he had killed, reanimated, and killed again. He had the power to kill, but he also had the power to create more beings like himself. It had never occurred to him prior to meeting Sara that he could make others into whatever he was, and he never really knew the answer to that question. What was he? In one hundred and fifty years of reading and watching bad Hollywood movies to try and better understand himself, he was no closer today than he was a hundred years ago. Certainly, he was no Hollywood vampire. He walked in the day without fear of sunlight, and churches did him no harm. He didn’t fear a cross, although it did anger him when he thought about how God had abandoned him. He had once thought about massacring a church full of priests to send a message to God, but was afraid of the publicity it might cause.

  Adam inhaled deeply. His body reeked of sex. Sara was such a pleasure as a physical companion. While she couldn’t compete with the feeling of feeding, her warm smile and laughter was so human and satisfying in its own way. He thought about the day when he saw her for the first time. He had only wanted the coat. He remembered the other girl and her cheap coat, and stood up. He walked to his closet and pulled it from a hanger. It still stunk of cigarettes and cheap perfume. He recalled the girl’s white skin and stunned face as she laid spread out
on her bed. He wished Sara could have seen that picture. She would have wanted to photograph it. Or would she? Perhaps she would be horrified? She was human. Kind. Loving. She could never understand his need to feed on humans. She would loath him and fear him and scream in terror the way they all did. Her body would make adrenaline and push extra oxygen into her bloodstream, and she would taste so alive. Her blood would be crisp and hot and full of life. Adam realized he was standing naked, rubbing the coat against his privates. He smiled at himself. Sara really was waking up another lust in him that had been quite dead since Renee.

  Adam threw the coat into the closet and showered off Sara’s scent. It would be too much for him all day. He couldn’t stand to smell her and begin to want her all day long. If that happened, he would call her and she would invite him over, and he would suck every delicious drop of blood out of her until she was dead. No. He needed to control himself. Maybe an extra large meal would calm him down.

  Adam stepped into the shower and let the warm water run over him. He used lots of soap that reminded him of the woods near Jena. The same Sandalwood smell as the Japanese restaurant where he had dined with Sara. It reminded him of happy days when he was alive. It reminded him of Sara. He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes under the water. Adam washed with soap thoroughly, thinking about his eating habits of late. He had been eating large meals more frequently. He needed to be more careful. Perhaps it was time for a trip. He had, during his “afterlife”, traveled all over the country. He had seen (and eaten) in most of the United States and Canada. The subtle differences in diet had made humans taste differently by region. It lent a whole new meaning to “going out for Chinese or Mexican”. Maybe it was time to get out of the city for a few days. But what about Sara?

  Adam turned off the water and stepped out, dripping wet. He looked in the mirror at his own naked image. He looked almost exactly as he did that day he died in Jena. He was strong, and as good looking as any other human he had seen. As long as he was well fed. After four or five days, he looked quite dead. His white skin began to look putrefied; his eyes shimmered silvery and devoid of life. His hair would get mangy and matted. And he would no longer be able to keep his teeth and fangs in place. When it was time to feed, to really feed out of total necessity, there was no keeping the animal under control. At those times, he would never be able to see himself in a mirror. It was too sad to see what he had become. Sara couldn’t ever see that. If she did, it would be the last thing she ever saw as a living human.