“This shit is gonna go down now!” Kevin rallied.
Chapter 17
Eugene scanned the room. A twin-sized bed adorned with a frilly, lilac covering sat flanked by twin cherry wood night tables with small amethyst-shaded lamps atop them occupied the middle of the room. A matching cherry wood dresser lined the wall opposite the bed. In the far corner a full-length mirror resided in a matching finish. Directly ahead, double-hung windows curtained by lengths of lavender material offered adequate natural light. Positioned below them was a small, wooden desk of shoddy construction with a varnish similar to the other furniture. A simple, wheeled desk chair was tucked beneath the small table and a laptop computer rested atop it.
Melissa was not home but had left her room lit by an overhead fixture. An alarm clock radio blasted noise from its small speakers filling the house with a discordant form of ambient melodies. Wasteful humans he thought as he traversed her room.
He picked up several pieces of clothing that littered the floor and sniffed them. All were suitable. All provided a scent that could be tracked. But a pink camisole tossed haphazardly over her desk chair offered a particularly potent scent. The garment bore a sweet mixture of vanilla, caramel and coconut mixed with natural secretions unique to Melissa’s body chemistry. Closing his eyes, Eugene pressed it to his face and inhaled deeply.
Sweat, oils and pheromones, and the perfumed substance on Melissa’s clothes, frenzied him. His mouth watered. A strong urge overtook Eugene.
He did not merely want to kill Melissa, he hungered to; he needed to.
Eugene shuddered as he inhaled the pink material a final time before replacing it on the chair.
He struggled to compose himself, to control his bloodlust. He began opening the drawers of Melissa’s bureau. He found nothing of interest. He searched her walk-in closet and nightstand. Still, no useful items were unearthed.
He did not want to waste time performing fruitless inspections. He decided it was time to leave.
Before he left, he surveyed the room a final time.
A piece caught his attention. A small, leather-bound book peeked out from beneath lavender ruffled bedding. Intrigued, he reentered her bedroom and moved toward the bed.
He picked up the book and immediately sensed he had found an article of great importance.
He opened it and began reading. His superior vision and comprehension skills enabled him to speed-read Melissa’s diary.
In doing so, Eugene became privy to Melissa’s innermost thoughts, her most personal moments. He was introduced to the people closest to her. More specifically, he was familiarized with Daniella Colucci and Alexandra Georgopoulos. Evidence contained in the pages suggested that the likelihood of locating Melissa Martin with either of the girls was great.
Melissa’s diary also brought to Eugene’s attention the intimate nature of her relationship with Gabriel James. He found himself laughing aloud for the first time in his life, a vicious, demonic cackle, when he read that Gabriel, Terzini’s perfect specimen designed to remain devoid of human emotions, proclaimed his deepest affection for Melissa. Moreover, Melissa claimed to love Gabriel in return.
These developments provided Eugene with an advantage greater than physical dominance. By torturing and killing Melissa, Eugene would be tormenting Gabriel as well. He had longed to torture Gabriel since his creation.
Invigorated, Eugene tossed the journal back on the bed and reached across to grab the pink camisole. Stuffing it in the pocket of his parka, Eugene left the Martin home.
He moved swiftly and stealthily down Blackstone Drive. He stopped briefly at a cluster of communal mailboxes. Under the postal boxes were bagged telephone directories for the community’s residents.
Errant droplets of rain began to fall as Eugene grabbed a phone book before continuing down the street and climbing into his Hummer to continue his hunt for Melissa Martin.
Alexandra Georgopoulos, Daniella Colucci, the names of Melissa Martin’s closest friends were branded in Eugene’s mind. He was sure he would find Melissa with one of these girls.
He quickly consulted the directory to locate either girl.
One Georgopoulos was listed in Harbingers Falls.
Confident that listing was the one he sought, he set his GPS navigation system with the address registered and found that her home was just under a mile away.
The dark sky opened with a ceremonious rumble of thunder before large drops of rain began showering down from angry heavens.
Chapter 18
Alexandra Georgopoulos was sitting on her bed painting her toenails when the ringing of her telephone interrupted her pedicure. Careful not to smudge the freshly applied lacquer, she tottered on her heels from to her dresser where her cordless phone rested in its charging cradle. Grabbing the handset, she immediately recognized Melissa Martin’s number on the phone’s caller identification feature. After the third ring, she answered.
“Hey bitch,” Alexandra greeted.
“Alexandra! Thank God you’re home! Listen to me. You need to get out of the house, now!” Melissa ordered.
“Are you high or something?” Alexandra asked snippily as thunder rumbled, shaking the house briefly.
“No I am not high!” Melissa retorted, her voice shrill with panic. “Gabriel called me and told me that we’re in danger, and none of us–me, you, and Daniella–should be home. Daniella is going to the mall. She said she can pick you up after she drops me off at the school.”
“You guys are fucking with me. Don’t think I’m going to fall for it this time,” Alexandra chided. “Besides, my brothers will be home in, like, an hour. If what you’re saying is true, which I don’t think it is, I would feel bad for anyone who came here trying to hurt me.”
“Alex, this is not a joke! Get out of the damn house!” Melissa screamed.
“Yeah, sure. Whatever,” Alexandra antagonized. “By the way Melissa, your acting has gotten much better since last time. Bravo.”
With that, Alexandra ended the phone call.
“Idiots,” she muttered to herself smiling.
Her best friends, particularly Melissa, often attempted playing practical jokes on her throughout their many years of friendship. She had yet to fall for any of them and was not about to start now. Though she had to admit, Melissa had upped the ante with this most recent phone call. Her frantic and pressured speech pattern was convincing; almost. She was impressed with her friend’s acting skills. She briefly envisioned Melissa moving out West and pursuing an acting career, then laughed aloud at the absurdity of her wild imaginings. Still smiling to herself, she crossed her room and placed the phone in the charger on her dresser.
She paused and looked out her window and saw a chaotic display. Winds whipped through trees littering the ground below with splashes of vibrantly hued leaves. Rain poured in sheets, limited her visibility to her property.
As she continued watch nature’s elaborate show, she was startled by a loud noise from downstairs. A thunderous sound crashed inside her home. The crackle of wood shattering and splintering sounded as though the backdoor leading from the yard into the kitchen had imploded.
Frantically, Alexandra raced out of her bedroom to the hallway. Peering over the balustrade offered her a partial view of the kitchen.
Fragments of wood were strewn across the floor. The doorframe laid in shards and slivers on the ceramic tiles.
Gripped by panic, Alexandra returned to her room, shutting her door behind her as silently as possible. Surveying the area hurriedly, she searched for a quick exit from her second-story bedroom. She immediately realized there was none. She was trapped.
Her heart pounded frenziedly in her chest as the staircase groaned and creaked, divulging stealthy footsteps on it. Then, almost as suddenly as they began, the groaning stopped. The footfalls ceased. Whoever had broken into her home had halted outside the threshold of her bedroom.
With nowhere else to go, Alexandra scanned her bedroom, her pulse thundering, before find
ing refuge in her closet.
Through slatted louvers, she peered out and saw the door to her room opening slowly.
A hulking figure stalked through her room, picking up and sniffing strewn clothes that cluttered his path. Taller and broader than any man she had ever seen, the colossal being filled the room.
Alexandra involuntarily whimpered then covered her mouth to suppress a scream as he trained his gaze in her direction. His eyes were an unnatural yellow hue and were spaced widely from each other, his nose wide and flat, sloped to a thin line where lips should have sat, but didn’t. His face was hideous, inhuman.
He sensed her presence, looked directly at her.
Her pulse rate quickened, resounded in her ears. Her breaths became short and shallow, threatened hyperventilation. Rivulets of perspiration trickled down between her shoulder blades, beads of sweat stippled her forehead. She crouched, alone and defenseless in her closet as the gruesome beast swung the wooden closet doors open violently. He stood before her, glowering down at her huddled and trembling form.
Every nuance of his demeanor suggested an inherent need to tear her limb from limb. Alexandra was confronted with her impending demise. She turned her head to one side and squeezed her eyes shut. Tears escaped her closed eyes as visions of her life flashed before her.
The behemoth creature advanced.
Though she refused to look at him, she felt the heat of his body as he loomed over her, his ragged inhalations and exhalations upon her. Her mind raced faster than ever. Her thoughts made little sense; except one. She was going to die. It was a certainty. She would never see her family again. She would not graduate or go to college. She would never marry nor have children. Instead, she would be murdered in her closet.
Her heart rate accelerated dangerously. She prayed a heart attack would claim her before the killer did.
Suddenly, the house phone began ringing. It alarmed her further, though she could not imagine how that was remotely possible. It rang loudly until the fourth sound chimed and a recorded message indicated the Georgopoulos family was not available but would return any incoming calls at their soonest convenience.
Daniella’s voice echoed from the machine.
“Hey, Alexandra. Listen, Gabriel is having me drop Melissa at school by the entrance of the woods. Something is going on. She wasn’t kidding around. I’m glad you left. I hope you’re meeting me at the mall. I should be there in a few minutes. I’ll try you on your cell. Bye.”
The answering machine beeped to signal that the message had ended.
Though the fiend was briefly distracted, Alexandra did not dare open her eyes; terror did not permit her to do so. They remained tightly shut as she silently implored God for a miracle.
Seconds passed. The monster did not strike.
Alexandra cautiously opened one eye, then the other. To her surprise, no one stood before her. The beast was gone. Her prayers had been answered.
Chapter 19
Melissa was deafened by the sound of rain hammering against Daniella’s car and the endless stream of questions her friend asked as they drove from the diner to meet Gabriel. Frustrated that she could answer so few of Daniella’s inquiries, Melissa was relieved when they finally arrived at Harbingers High School. They proceeded along the length of the winding driveway to the rear of the school where she immediately spotted Gabriel’s hunter-green Ford Explorer. They pulled up beside him and Melissa thanked Daniella profusely before climbing out of the car and into the storm.
In the short time they traveled from the diner to the school, the winds picked up. Strong gusts sent rain cascading to the ground at a slant. Large droplets pelted her face as she turned to watch Daniella’s Toyota Prius power out of sight. She then ran to Gabriel’s SUV. He started to get out and open her door for her but she called out for him not to bother. After all, it was pointless for both of them to be soaking wet.
As she climbed in, she was instantly greeted by his worried, tortured expression. The beauty of Gabriel’s features was veiled by anxiousness, by fear. He looked at her briefly and did not speak. Instead, he shifted gears and began driving.
She sat, a sickened entanglement of nerves, and waited as he drove along a service road used primarily by the maintenance department of the school district. The dirt road traversed the woods, paralleled the clearing where keg parties ensued and where Gabriel rescued Melissa from Kevin, and ended finally at a squat building that housed various landscaping apparatus.
Stopping in front of the stout construct, Melissa could not endure the silence and spoke first.
“Gabriel, what the hell is going on?” she demanded. “Why are we parked here?”
“I need to keep my car out of sight. The person who’s hunting you, I mean us, knows my car.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Why would someone be hunting us?” Melissa exclaimed.
“Melissa, Terzini knows I showed you the lab. He had everything wired, the house and the laboratory, with cameras and mikes, I had no idea. He’s insane, and now he wants us dead.”
“Oh my God!” Melissa whispered, confused considerations eddying about her head. The moment felt surreal, nightmarish. All of it was more than her mind could process–a rogue geneticist wanting to create an improved human species, a half-formed being in a tank, and now, someone was pursuing them. She felt like she was rapidly approaching a breaking point from which there was no turning back.
“What I told you, the things you saw, no one else knows about. The kind of research Terzini is doing is not allowed. If the Russian mob found out he was alive, they’d kill him. If the government found out he was alive, he’d be arrested. Either way, he can’t risk what he does getting out.”
Gabriel paused and put his head in his hands.
“Melissa, I’m so sorry I ever got you involved in this. I shouldn’t have had you over the house or showed you the lab. I shouldn’t have even gotten involved with you. I was selfish. My feelings for you, I let them cloud my judgment. You don’t deserve any of this.”
Gabriel took a moment before continuing. “The man that’s after us, his name is Eugene. He was created by Terzini for situations like this, to tie-up loose ends.”
“We’re loose ends?” Melissa cried in disbelief.
Before Gabriel could respond, a familiar black car pulled up behind his Ford Explorer ensnaring the SUV in its position.
She turned in her seat to look out the back window and was shocked by what she saw.
From the driver’s side door of his car, Kevin stepped out, heavy showers plastering his highly stylized hair to his skull. She watched as he stood straight, a smug smile spreading across his lips as he moved toward them leaving the engine running. She squinted, perplexed to see that he brandished a silver aluminum baseball bat.
Without warning, the remaining three doors of his sports car opened. John DeNardi, Eric Sala and Chris Mace climbed out wielding similar weapons.
“Oh my God,” was all she could manage.
“What the hell is going on here?” Gabriel muttered.
“This can’t be happening!” Melissa exclaimed.
Melisa jumped as loud thumps pounded against the body of Gabriel’s SUV. Her heart raced as she saw Kevin and his crew rounding from the rear; the source of the pounding became clear. Wind-driven precipitation lashed as they shouted for both Gabriel and Melissa to get out of the vehicle.
“Get the fuck out of the car!” Kevin ordered.
Afraid, Melissa watched as Gabriel put his hand on the door handle and pulled. He leaned across the console and kissed Melissa.
“I got us into this. Let me deal with them and see if I can get us out of it. I’m so sorry, Melissa.”
Frantically, she pleaded with him to stay in the car.
“Gabriel, don’t go! They’ll kill you!” she screamed.
Melissa looked imploringly at Gabriel as she tugged on his arm, pulling him closer to her.
“There’s nothing you can say to him that will make h
im back off,” she argued in a more controlled voice.
Taking her face in his hands, Gabriel kissed Melissa once more and said, “They won’t kill me. And I have to try to stop this somehow.”
“Please,” she began and clutched his arm, but offered nothing more. The resolute look on his face warned her off. She withdrew her hands that attempted to restrain him and Gabriel pulled the lever the remainder of the distance. She could do nothing more than sit idly by as Gabriel opened the door.
Despite the closed windows of the Explorer and the pounding, windswept rain, Melissa was still able to hear Gabriel’s muffled voice as he made an effort to reason with Kevin and his followers.
“Guys, come on, move your car so we can get out of here, all right?” she heard Gabriel say levelly.
She then heard Kevin raising his voice. He shouted, “Not a chance, asshole. We’re settling this right here, right now.”
She immediately recognized that Kevin was mimicking Gabriel’s words from their parking lot skirmish days earlier.
Gabriel’s posture seemed unperturbed. She heard him say, “Settle this?” as rain poured on him, obscuring his serene features. “You call four guys with bats against one unarmed guy a fair way to settle things?”
Another voice chimed in. Eric shouted, “We don’t give a shit about fair asshole!”
“Yeah. We just wanna kick your ass!” John added, yelling.
“Did you think we were gonna let you get away with that shit you pulled the other day?” Kevin rallied sarcastically. “This is our school! You came here and tried to fuck with that!”
She watched as Kevin stepped toward Gabriel as he spoke. Then without warning, he swung his bat high and Gabriel’s head became the intended target. Gabriel ducked and dodged the swipe before Eric, John and Chris descended on him.
With aluminum bats attacking him from every angle, even someone as strong as Gabriel could not fend off the strikes. Melissa screamed from inside the car and slid to the driver’s side as she reached for her cellular phone. She immediately dialed 9-1-1, desperate to contact the police, but her location and the inclement weather conspired against her; call service was unavailable.
Planet Urth Boxed Set Page 94
