She drew a long, deep breath and pushed herself through the jangling door.
The stench was a straight-up obscenity, but one that she was becoming inured to. The convenience store stank of copper and feces, a thick musky stew of odors beneath that. The odor was a mélange of rotting fruit and rotting meat, and an old fish kind of smell. Wet, stinky fur, a smell she remembered from Buckley after he came inside out of the rain and it had been too long between baths.
The wet fur smell drew heavier as she crept further inside.
She spotted the first corpse at the end of the aisle, by refrigerators stocked with bottled water, and quarts and pints and gallons of milk. His face was slashed to ribbons, his neck torn to gristle and gnawed down to the bone.
Lauren moved as silently as she knew how, but worried that her breathing was too loud. The noise of each inhalation and exhalation was like a scream right in her ears, the rapid-fire thudding of her heart a shotgun blast behind her ribcage. Slowly, she put one foot in the front of the other.
Then she heard it.
A wet, meaty smacking noise. Teeth and fluids and tongue slapping against lips and gums. A moist, throaty gurgle, or maybe a drowned growl. Meat being stripped from the bone.
And then a sloppy plopping noise, followed by cautious, padded footsteps.
From around an end cap thick with travel toiletries, a small, furry face poked out. The huskie pup’s white muzzle led the way, and the small dog stopped, dead center in the middle of the aisle, directly in front of Lauren.
For a brief moment, the huskie hesitated. His tail gave a small, seemingly confused wag and then stilled as it bared its teeth and a tiny warning came from deep in his chest.
When the huskie barked, it was shrill and small, almost comical. She looked down at the dog, amused. The pup was clearly acting tougher than it really was, and she seriously doubted it had killed the man in the refrigerator aisle, or whatever it was eating down this other aisle.
No, this tiny thing was nothing more than a scavenger. Feasting on something else’s kill.
Emboldened by the puppy’s immaturity, she took a large step forward, but he stood his ground. The fur all along his back stood, inflating his size but to little effect.
She swung the bat, the flat end of the plank slamming right into the side of the huskie’s face. A tooth knocked loose and tittered across the tile floor, pinging against the metal base of an end cap.
The dog was knocked off-balance and tried to regain its footing, but Lauren was on him fast, bringing the bat down in a tight overhanded arc. The flat edge of the wood caromed off the top of the huskie’s skull, and she heard an audible crack, accompanied by a thudding bass as the underside of the dog’s jaw pounded off the floor, its four legs splaying out beneath him. Clearly dazed, he tried to stand, nearly lost his balance, one eye loose and rolling in his skull.
She swung hard, her aim on the back of the store, as if she were hitting a homer right out of the field.
The pup toppled over, the side of its face crushed and bloodied, scrabbling away from her. His nails fought for purchase on the flat tiles. He couldn’t even stand, and she felt disgusted.
Another fucking weakling not fit for this world.
“Fuck you,” she said, delivering a swift kick to the dog’s side. He snapped at her, but too slow, her leg already retreating.
The huskie shoved itself forward, but there was nowhere for him to go. He was growling now, his barking turning into wheezing, pink, bubbly drool leaking from his jowls.
She fell to her knees beside the puppy and grabbed fistfuls of fur in both hands, twisting savagely as she picked him up. She moved one hand to wrap her fingers around his snapping muzzle, pinning his mouth shut and arcing his head up and away from her. Exposing his neck, pulling the fur away to show his skin.
He squirmed and writhed, his frightened howl a furious cacophony as she bit down, her teeth rending flesh, her mouth filling with hair and the hot, coppery spill of blood. She bit through a thick, ropy vein, the animal’s blood ejecting into her mouth and she sucked it down greedily, and what she couldn’t swallow poured down her chin, staining her tank top and pasting it to her skin like a thick red blanket, painting her bare legs red. She chewed her way deeper, pulling on the dog’s muzzle, opening the wound further, pulling and chewing, pulling and chewing.
The dog fell silent, his body going still.
She ate with a sudden gusto, unaware until this moment that she was badly starved, the taste of pennies a new and constant craving that grew stronger with each new drop of blood she tasted. And the meat! Motherfucker, the meat! Raw and pure, she devoured it, nearly choking in her gusto to consume.
She dropped the dog long enough to let out a deep, throaty burp.
Using her forearm, she wiped at the mess all across her face. The arm slid across her soaked lips, fur caked to her limb and face.
She sat back on her heels, struggling to catch her breath. She had never eaten so much so fast before, and it was a workout in its own right. It felt both heavenly and hellish, and she wanted more. Much, much more.
And then she remembered Scott. That was why she was here, in this 7-11. She was supposed to be looking for gauze for him, not tearing into this savory meal.
Another metallic belch worked its way loose, and she stood with a pang of regret. She needed more, and her stomach felt bottomless and empty. She had to force herself away, and she recovered the cricket bat as she turned down the aisle, scanning the signs for first aid supplies.
Propped up against the wall, half-slumped off his bicycle, Scott listened to the noises of carnage emanating from the other side of the window. His vision was beginning to blur, the corners darkening, but even this close he could make out the beer posters with their scantily clad bikini beach babes and shirtless, muscled men chasing after them with a six-pack of fresh, relaxing golden lager in hand. Their smiling faces and carefree eyes met his, even as he listened to the growls and the noise of rending meat, and the smack of thick wood against hard bone.
Every time he blinked, the world faded a little bit more, darkened a little further until the world became a grayish vignette.
His shoulder was on fire, the entire length of his arm tacky, his uniform blouse glued to his chest.
He was tired.
He was dying.
That dog had torn up his shoulder something good, worse than he had been willing to let on around Lauren. Those teeth had sank deep, and in the process had nicked something vital, a vein or an artery, and the wound would not congeal and close on its own. The blood wept out of him, slowly but consistently, which made him think that whatever had been cut open was a shallow wound but still deep enough to end him given enough time.
Or he could end it now, and be done with it.
Over the years, he had grown used to the weight of his sidearm, resting there at his hip. There was plenty of ammunition left over to settle his and Lauren’s accounts.
She was changing, that much was obvious. He was certain he was changing, too. Maybe even had already changed. Not significantly enough, and not as rapidly as his daughter, but he still possessed enough self-reflection to recognize the sudden outbursts of anger and the flaring, insatiable hunger, and the way the coppery stink boiling off his wounds made his mouth water.
He laughed quietly at the lies he told himself. He knew damn well he would never be able to pull the trigger on his daughter. Would never be able to put the barrel of his gun against her head and murder her. Not even for the best of reasons, not to save her or spare her, and certainly not to save himself.
When Lauren had been born, he had been holding Melissa’s hand, and she had been so intent on pushing that she hardly realized their baby had come sliding out and into the doctor’s waiting palms. He had turned to look, already nervous, anxious, and worried, and saw his lifeless child, covered in gore, her skin a deep and pure purple, the umbilical cord wrapped around her small body and twisted tightly against her neck. The nurses were fighting to get thei
r fingers in between the skin and the cord.
Scott had lost it then, his knees buckling. Two miscarriages and nine months of anxious excitement to get to this moment, and it was all for naught. Melissa had delivered a corpse. He pulled his hand free from hers and turned, vomiting over the side of a chair, tears stabbing at his eyes, heart stuttering in that moment of pure fear.
And then a choked and foreign cry escaped from Lauren’s little mouth. He turned in time to see his baby girl held up as the nurse turned to place her in Mommy’s arms.
Lauren was alive, and all that grief flooded straight out of him, replaced with immense joy and a mountain of pride over the pure beauty of his child. She was perfect, all her fingers and toes accounted for, her tiny lower lip trembling as the handful of nurses poked and prodded at her. She was alive, and she was glorious.
So, no, Scott knew, he could never harm her, not even to save her from this world or from herself. He loved her far too much to carry that burden across his soul, even for the short period needed to turn the gun on himself.
He closed his eyes and waited, and the noises inside the store grew softer.
“Dad?”
He slowly stirred, his eyelids heavy. Lauren stood beside him, gore plastered across her whole body. She peered closely at him, and Scott could make out dots of blood in her hair, along with dark tufts of hair fringing her mouth.
He swallowed back the rising gorge and tried to sit up properly on the bike. “I’m here, honey.”
She waved a green and white box in front of him, the words printed across it a blur. “I found it,” she said. “Now let’s get you inside.”
“Are you hurt?” he mumbled.
“No,” she said. “I’m good. Honest.”
Her words sounded hollow in his ears, but he didn’t have the energy or desire to argue. Whatever had happened to her, she was still his daughter. He still saw traces of the real her peeking through, and he latched onto the hope that provided.
She helped him get upright, and then helped him get off the bike. Her arms wrapped around him, she led him inside the store.
“The floor’s slippery,” she cautioned. “But there’s a stool behind the counter. Or a chair in the manager’s office, if you think you can make it there. It’s not far.”
“The chair sounds good,” he said.
Each blink grew longer, and the convenience store came to him only in brief snatches. He didn’t even remember falling into the chair and realized dimly that Lauren must have dragged him there. She was sitting on the desk beside him, opening the box of gauze.
“We need to get this shirt off you,” she said.
He grunted a negative and shook his head slightly for added measure. “No, it’s okay, honey.”
“Dad, c’mon.”
“That’s not going to help, Lauren. It’s bad, I think. I’ve lost a lot of blood. I think…I think I need more than a little bit of gauze.”
He tried to sit up straighter, but habit made him use his bad arm and he could not get a grip on the armrest with his blood-slick hand. Fuck it, he decided.
“Now look,” he said finally, fighting to free the gun from his holster. “There’s maybe ten rounds left in here. You need this.”
Jesus, when did this gun get so heavy? he wondered. His hand trembled as he held it out to her.
“You just point and shoot,” he said.
He didn’t need to tell her much else, really. He’d taught her about guns, had taken her shooting at the police officers’ range, made sure she knew about the power of the weapon and respected it. She was not a proficient marksman, but she wasn’t too bad. She could handle a gun well enough, and he had little doubt that she would need it.
“Don’t do this, Daddy,” she said.
“I’m not going to make it.” He screwed his eyes shut until the tears receded and his throat stopped burning. “You might be able to, though, if you’re careful.”
He tried to focus on her face one last time, but all he saw was the dried swatch of red circling her mouth and reaching down her neck, staining her shirt.
Scott pushed the gun toward her, the firearm so damn heavy he had to use every last ounce of strength in him to just hold it. She reached forward and took his hand—and the gun—in hers, her skin warm against his.
“Try to find Shay,” he said. “She can help you, maybe.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “I’ll do that.”
He tried to smile, but could not tell if the muscles were working or not.
“Go to sleep, Dad. Get some rest.”
She squeezed his hand, a small measure of comfort that he desperately needed.
Finally, he closed his eyes.
Lauren slept on the floor, the door to the manager’s office closed, locked, and the desk shoved up against it. She had kept the pistol nearby, and her hand found it easily when she woke.
Her father’s ragged breathing and moist gurgling noises had kept her awake for a while, until exhaustion demanded her own body to succumb as she curled up on the tiles and passed out.
Eyes open, she continued to lie still, listening for her father’s noises.
The room was silent.
When she rose and turned to face Scott, he was slumped over in the chair. His eyes were open but blank. His mouth hung open and when she held her palm over his lips, she felt no passage of air, saw no rising and falling of his chest. His skin was gray, his body stiff.
She bent over to kiss his cold forehead and said quietly, “I love you, Daddy.”
She worked his Sam Browne belt loose and pulled it as tight as it could go across her waist. It hung loosely on her hips, but she considered it good enough. She holstered the gun while she shoved the desk away from the door, then held it tightly while she listened for any signs of trouble outside the office.
Light was creeping in from beneath the door, and the morning light flooding in through the casement windows near the ceiling lighted the room well enough. At least, she thought it was morning.
Unlocking and easing the door open, she peered through the narrow crack. Nobody was out there, so she slowly opened the door further, pausing before stepping out into the store.
The stench of the husky’s carcass both repulsed and excited her in equal measure, flies buzzing in and around the matted fur and over the opened cavities she had made with her teeth the previous night. She blanched at the thought, but her salivary glands tingled as her mouth grew moist.
She took a last look at her father, dead in some anonymous 7-11 manager’s office, and closed the door. That should be enough to keep his remains safe, she thought.
She spent a long few moments watching the street through the clear glass automatic doors, but even the outside was lifeless and still.
That would not last, she knew, straddling her confiscated bicycle and holstering the gun once more.
She put the newly risen sun at her back and pedaled toward City Hall and, she hoped, Shay Hendrix.
16
SHAY AWOKE IN A congealed mess of viscera and entrails, one eye half-stuck together and her hair matted to the side of her head. She had to palm away the gelatinous tar gluing her eye shut, then worked on pulling herself up and out of the tacky mess.
The mayor’s remains were nearby, gutted and stinking. Her fingernails had made long tracks across his forearm and chest, from where she had clawed away his fat to expose the meat, tearing away strips of tough, raw protein for fuel. A twisted chimera of reactions pulsed through her, fighting for Alpha position: satisfaction, revulsion, and a craving for more.
She swallowed back a sticky lump, hating herself and the cannibalistic urges that arose deep within her, unbidden and demanding, and consistently unsatisfied regardless of how much she ate. Most of the night had been spent alternating between periods of feeding and sleeping. A long section of one of the mayor’s leg, just below the knee, was gnawed down to the bone. Seeing his foot, the skeletal toes jutting up, she remembered growing hysterical over a joke she h
ad told to herself about eating pigs’ feet.
Her uniform was sodden, plastered to her skin, and she felt sticky all over. Her self-disgust grew, but as her eyes lingered on the corpse beside her, so too did the hunger.
She had to tightly clamp down the urge to eat yet again, otherwise she might never leave City Hall. Instead, she would gorge herself to death on this fat bastard in this dark auditorium. That was simply not an option.
Her arm burned, but not with only pain. The wound was feverishly hot, and a sweat broke out across her forehead as soon as she began moving again. Regardless, there was a sense of relief at the arrow’s absence, even as the channel it had gouged through her ached and throbbed.
The arrowhead, and the finger-length bit of shaft that she had broken loose the previous day, was nearby. She snatched it, her one good hand holding it tight.
Every movement felt leaden, weighted down by the heavy and restrictive uniform. The discomfort ate at her and she weighed her options. She felt sluggish as she moved into the corridor and turned toward the women’s restroom.
Sunlight streamed in from the atrium, warm and inviting. Forgetting about the power loss, she flicked the bathroom light switch up and down, irritated. Then the pieces fell back into place and she used a nearby garbage can to prop open the door so she could see what she was doing.
Much of the region used well water, including city services, which she found herself suddenly grateful for. With the water softener out of commission, though, the water gave out a thick rotten-egg smell. Beggars can’t be choosers, she reminded herself, her father’s voice practically singing the words in her head.
She let the water run, studying herself in the mirror. The sunlight trickling in through the open door gave her enough gray light to see by, and she spent a moment trying to believe her own reflection. Her hair was pasted to her scalp by thick globs of gore, her face practically coated in red. She heaved into the sink, long strings of loose meat freeing themselves from her belly and splashing into the porcelain. Blood laced with yellow strings of mucus followed and she spent a good, long while coughing and spitting, her arms shaking as she held herself up.
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