Bestial Page 16

  Two more feet, and the ladder led to a hole in a fire escape landing. Pulling himself onto the platform, Christian allowed himself a glance down at the window of the lab. The creatures glared up at him, the moonlight reflected in their eyes, saliva bubbling over their blackened gums. One of them reached for the ladder, but then it was knocked aside as another shouldered its way through the broken window and scowled up at him, bellowing with rage and hunger.

  Christian allowed himself a few minutes to get his breathing back to normal and let his heart stop pounding so furiously. He took the journal from his mouth and started climbing the stairs to the roof.

  Below, one of the werewolves grabbed the ladder and shook it. Christian clutched the handrail, dropping the leather journal.

  It bounced off a few rusty rungs before landing in the alley amidst a congregation of beast-men.

  “Oh, damn it,” Christian muttered.

  At least fifteen creatures waited in the alley for him to fall. Any hope the journal might have offered, any wisdom it could have imparted, would now have to wait until morning. If it was still there. Saying a silent prayer to whatever god might be listening, Christian ascended the fire escape to the roof. By the time he got there, he could hear the beast-men in the lab, but they had left the window. They seemed to have lost interest.

  Unless they were trying a new and different way to get at him.

  Looking around the rooftop, he saw only one other entrance, a door that was padlocked. He figured it led to the stairwell. Although it was locked, he wasn’t sure how long it would hold up to the beast-men’s attacks. He would do well to keep an eye on it.

  All around him, he saw other empty rooftops, some a few stories higher, most at the same level or lower. Some of the buildings were separated by alleys, and some by wide city streets. Some had signs or smokeless chimneys. The city looked dead from this angle, quiet and almost peaceful. As though everything was still normal.

  But in the streets, lycanthropes ran through the maze of stalled cars and trucks, several fighting minor wars, biting and lashing out. Pairs of them fornicated, the male mounting the female from behind, sinking its teeth into the nape of her neck. The creatures were fucking each other, plain and simple. This was no lovemaking; this was down and dirty instinct.

  Christian focused on a particular cluster of monsters. Three or four dozen fought and gnashed their teeth, attempting to get into a big truck turned on its side.

  “Oh wow,” he whispered, almost admiring the way so many of them went after the truck, scratching at its metal walls, knocking each other aside to have a chance at it.

  Christian hoped that whoever was in the truck—and he harbored no doubts that somebody was locked inside of it—remained safe until morning, when the things would revert back to their harmless, human forms.

  Looking around at the city, he feared that cleaning up this mess could take months, maybe even years. Small fires burned in various spots, and in the distance toward the Western Hills area, he could see a huge blaze, so big he wondered if it was a forest fire. It lit up the west like the dawn making a morning mistake.

  The cars in the streets below him had been overturned, shuffled during the night. One fire hydrant had been demolished, and water spurted, dark and oily, through the streets. Two of the creatures lapped at it, an urban watering hole. In the middle of the destruction, he saw one hotel, at least thirty stories high, that seemed to wave in the wind. An explosion had removed a good portion of its cornerstone, and it looked as though it could topple at any minute.

  It all became too much for him.

  Keeping his face to the padlocked door, he waited for the dawn, scanning the rooftops for various exits in case the creatures discovered his hiding place. His hands shook with the rush of adrenaline, and tears fell from his eyes, a mixture of terror and relief.

  24

  SEPTEMBER 17, 11:45 P.M.

  The Brink’s truck rocked under the attack of dozens of the creatures, but it seemed to be holding up against the assailment. No matter how much the beast-men tore and slashed at it, they couldn’t create any access to the interior, where Rick held Chesya in his arms. Claws snapped off from the beasts’ fingers as they ripped at the metal flanks of the truck; teeth shattered when they tried to bite their way in. The noise was deafening, full of snarling, growling, and scratching. In their frustration, many of them pounded relentlessly against the sides of the truck. Some of them tried to gain entrance through the bottom, tearing off the pipes and carburetor from the exposed belly of the vehicle.

  Tucked in a corner, Rick could feel Chesya shaking as he held her in his arms. She had held up so valiantly for such a long time, it was difficult to see her so terrified. He moved aside a strand of hair that covered her eye, and he tried to calm her, drawing her closer and whispering things he hoped would console her.

  They both kept their eyes on the two windows, which she assured him were made of bulletproof glass. Neither of them could see much, as the windows seemed to be full of rotating variations on a theme—one monster after another peering into the back of the truck, sizing them up, rubbing its snout on the glass, and licking it. They gnashed their teeth, tried to bite their way through the windows.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the beasts went in search of new, less-restricted prey. Still, they were around the truck, going about their business. Rick and Chesya kept their voices in low, quiet whispers.

  “‘We have met the enemy, and it is us.’ I remember reading that in a comic strip when I was a kid. You ever read Pogo?” she asked.

  “I was more of a Hagar the Horrible type of guy.”

  “The most horrible monstrosity we could think up, and it was dormant inside of us all this time. It’s like looking at the world’s soul,” she whispered. He felt her breath on his shoulder when she continued. “And it ain’t a pretty sight.”

  “You think that’s what the world’s soul looks like?” He motioned toward the unseen monsters outside the truck.

  “Pretty much. Watch them. They’re all looking out for number one, which is probably a good thing. If they started cooperating, learning to work together, we’d be screwed. But that’s pretty much the way I see the world—everyone looking out for themselves, stepping on as many people as they can. You get in my way, I’m going to knock you aside.”

  “It’s a pretty bleak outlook, if you ask me.”

  “Well, it’s a pretty bleak world. People fly airplanes into skyscrapers to prove absurd religious points. Politicians lie and cheat, helping all their fat-cat friends in order to get money for re-election time. ‘You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.’ You always hear that. You never hear someone say they’ll just scratch your back. No reciprocation required. Everybody needs something in return. I think these monsters are a lot like that. They have their needs, and their instincts are all about filling those needs. They get hungry, they eat someone. They feel sexy, they screw someone. All about taking care of themselves.”

  He glanced down at the top of her head. “Does this have something to do with your family? Your brothers?”

  “Maybe. I watched them both die, watched the way people looked at their deaths. Just another couple of dead niggers from the hood. Most of them didn’t say it, but you could see it in their eyes. Broke my mama’s heart. That woman worked her fingers to the bone to provide for us, to help us find a way out of the ghetto trap. And for what? It tore her apart, and she died that way, thinking that it all amounted to nothing in the end.”

  “Not everyone’s like that.”

  “Maybe not, but enough are that it starts making its way into your brain. I fought it and fought it and fought it, till I was tired of fighting.”

  “You told me yourself that you were a strong black woman.”

  She looked at him, as if trying to read his face in the darkness, but it was cast in shadows. “Why didn’t I just call myself a strong woman? Because it’s ingrained in me. It shouldn’t be important, but somehow it is.”r />
  “It’s a part of who you are. Me, I’m a mutt from all over Europe. Got some Irish, some Italian, some Spanish blood in there.”

  “You got Spanish in you?”

  “Yeah, I—”

  He was interrupted by a grinding noise as several of the lycanthropes pushed the front of the truck. It careened on its side, sparks igniting off the pavement beneath it. The sudden movement knocked Chesya from his arms. She fell back against the ceiling of the van, and Rick fell off-balance. It took him a moment to regain it, to find his way back to her side.

  “Rick!”

  “I know, I’m here,” he said, holding her close to his chest. She could hear the pounding of his heart, loud and swift against her ear.

  The truck rocked. He figured one or more of them were shaking the van, jumping on top of it.

  “God,” Chesya moaned. “I’m going to be seasick.”

  In the distance, they heard a long groaning sound. It was intense, all-pervasive, covering the terrible noise of the creatures outside. It didn’t sound organic.

  “What is that?” Chesya asked.

  “I don’t know. Sounds like metal.”

  The noise came again, a deep rumbling of steel grinding against steel, the sound of iron twisting against its will.

  “You ever see that movie Titanic?” Chesya asked.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “Who the hell didn’t?”

  “That’s the noise that ship made just before it broke in two—metal tearing or stretching.”

  “It sounds like it’s groaning.”

  When the noise stopped, they noticed that the monsters had ceased attacking the vehicle. In fact, the beast-men had grown eerily quiet, and this sent a chill through Rick.

  He edged toward the windows, moving slowly so as not to incite the monsters into another round of “let’s bash the truck.” When he reached the glass, he peered out into the night. The streets were dark without the normal illumination of streetlamps, the tall buildings of downtown Cincinnati casting long shadows that hid so much from his view.

  “What is it? What do you see?” Chesya asked.

  “They’ve stopped moving,” he said. “They’re all looking around, and their ears are all pricked up. They don’t know what that sound is anymore than we do. I don’t think they like it, either.”

  Some of the beasts whined softly, keening to themselves, the sound of dozens of terrified dogs. When the metallic noise came again, the grinding sounded deeper than before, more insistent. Many of the beast-men scattered.

  “What is it, Rick?”

  “They’re running away.”

  “What?”

  “They’re scared of something.”

  “I don’t like it,” she said. “What’s so frightening that it scares them?”

  When the moaning metal sound erupted again, it was earsplitting. Chesya put her head in her lap and covered her ears.

  “Make it stop!”

  Rick shouted over the din, “I don’t know what the hell it is!”

  “Make it stop! Make it stop!”

  He looked from side to side out the windows at the rapidly vacating streets. The creatures slunk between cars or leaped over the hoods, stamping paw prints into the metal. He wondered if the sound hurt their ears, their supersensitive hearing.

  “Oh, please, Rick, make it stop!”

  He raised his eyes, listening carefully to the terrible babble, the sound of iron and steel twisting and screaming.

  And he knew what was making the sound.

  “Oh, shit,” he said.

  “What? What is it?”

  He rushed to her side, grabbing her. “Chesya, stay away from the windows!”

  “Why? What’s happening?” She was so frightened that tears were streaming down her plump face.

  The noise grew louder, calling out for supplication.

  “Stay away from the windows!”

  “Why?”

  “You remember that hotel, the one that had one of its corners blasted away by that car wreck?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, sensing where this was going.

  “That huge building, that hotel—”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  He swallowed, took a breath, and shouted over the increasing reverberation. The air was practically vibrating with the grinding, creaking, moaning, shifting. …

  “That huge building is about to fall over.”

  “Oh my God,” she gasped. “How far away are we from it?”

  “You said this bastard was made of reinforced steel?” he asked, knocking on the side of the Brink’s truck.

  “It’s that close, huh?”

  “Maybe a half a block away.”

  The sound became so loud they could no longer hear each other. They could feel vibrations from the collapse of the hotel, the street trembling beneath the armored car.

  “Hold on,” he screamed, bracing himself for the impact.

  25

  SEPTEMBER 17, 11:55 P.M.

  Christian felt the sound before he heard it, low and metallic, steel twisting in the breeze. It set his teeth on edge, and he could feel his fillings rattling within his mouth. In the street below, the creatures rushed into nearby alleys, fleeing the open spaces on all fours. They abandoned the Brink’s truck, leaving the steel gouged and scarred, the lettering scratched, a terrible testimony to their perseverance. He shivered in the cool breeze, wrapped his arms around himself. They were stronger than he had suspected.

  The strange sound came again, creaking and grating. Christian located the direction from which the terrible screeching originated, and he drew in his breath.

  The air reeked of animal piss and danger. He could taste it in his mouth, detect it deep in his nasal passages.

  The rumbling came from the thirty-six-story hotel half a block down the street, the Marriott. An explosion had taken out the cornerstone of the building, leaving a wide, fire-blackened hole at least fifteen feet high and thirty feet wide.

  Christian watched in horror as the building leaned toward the street, toward the Brink’s truck, toward where he was standing at this very moment. The sound of metal twisting and tearing seemed even louder as he watched the hotel. Like it or not, the thing was going to fall over.

  Quickly, he tried to do the math … thirty-six stories, twelve feet or so a level … how far away was he from the top of the hotel if it tumbled in his direction, as it seemed destined to do? He’d always detested fucking word problems! It was going to be close … too close for him to remain where he stood.

  Earlier, he had determined the distance between this building and the next one down the block; it was about twelve feet away. Now, moving to the side, he looked down the six stories at the alley below him. Several of the creatures blinked up at him, their eyes suddenly filled with hunger and desire. At least ten of them were in the darkness of the alley, screwing against the garbage Dumpsters, reaching toward him with their long talons. If he leaped and fell, those things would feast on his wrecked body.

  The hotel groaned again. It seemed to loom over him, a tidal wave of glass and steel that could be hurtling toward him at any moment. Suddenly, he felt extremely vulnerable and small.

  Those twelve feet of air between the buildings suddenly didn’t seem so impossible. The next building was even a little shorter than the Bio-Gen offices. If he could get a good running start …

  … he could drop into the alley, into the rendering claws of the beast-men below, be torn limb from limb, eaten, his bones gnawed …

  The listing hotel gave a deep sigh and resigned itself to inertia.

  Looking down at the Brink’s truck, he saw movement in the back windows, and he realized he had been right. There were people trapped inside, protected from the monsters by the truck’s steel exterior. But could the vehicle withstand an entire building falling on it? Would it crumple beneath the weight of all that pressure?

  From the rooftop, he shouted into the street, “Hey! Hey, you in the truck! You need to get
out and run. The Marriott’s falling.”

  He waited a moment, until the hotel moaned louder, and he knew it was starting to tear loose from its mooring. They were probably safer inside the truck now than running unprotected down the street. Christian wished them luck, then turned to the space between this building and the next.

  He tried to convince himself that twelve feet wasn’t that much. He could jump it, if he could get enough speed.

  “I can do this,” he said aloud, over the horribly escalating noise of the hotel crumbling behind him. “I can do it. I can do it.”

  Behind him, the middle floors of the hotel buckled beneath the pressure, and the behemoth plummeted toward the street, toward the Bio-Gen building. Plaster and furniture tumbled from holes that were rupturing in the concrete. Steel beams had snapped, bursting from inside of the hotel like broken bones erupting through someone’s skin.

  Christian still wasn’t sure if the thing was going to reach the roof he stood upon. It might not be tall enough.

  Then again, it might be.

  He only had a few seconds. It was now or never.

  Pumping his arms, he started to run with all the strength his skinny legs could muster. The wind was cool, roaring in his ears beneath the horrible, overwhelming sound of the disaster behind him. With each step he took, each time his sneakers slammed against the roof, the area between the two buildings grew closer …

  … and grew larger. It seemed too big to jump over, even with the burst of speed he put on at the end.

  “Fuck!” he screamed, looking at the gaping hole in front of him, hearing the whines of the lycanthropes beneath him. “No way!”

  Spinning at the last minute, he turned where the rooftop ended, running alongside the edge of the Bio-Gen offices. He slowed himself down, turned toward the Marriott.

  It toppled, taking large chunks of another hotel and an office building down with it, landing no more than ten feet from the Bio-Gen headquarters. Toward the end of its fall, it disintegrated, the bricks separating from its mortar, steel beams spinning wildly through the air. He heard the whumph of an explosion, and fireballs erupted from several windows, spewing glass and metal over the city. Dust mushroomed from where it dropped, rising in the air and clouding Christian’s sight.