Bestial Read online

  Naked and barefoot, her husband, Karl, walked into the kitchen from the backyard. He closed the slashed screen door behind him, raising his eyes to hers. He appeared tired and wary of her, and she realized she was wielding the broomstick like a lance.

  “Cathy …,” he said, and he took a few steps into the kitchen, placing his hands on the back of a chair and inclining himself against it.

  “Karl, are you okay?”

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again.”

  As he sat down in the chair, she observed the specks of blood around his mouth and hands. A zigzag of crimson had dried across his chest during the night, a bizarre superhero emblem. She stepped to the sink and ran some cold water over a towel, thanking heaven that there was still running water, even if it wouldn’t get hot.

  “Here,” she said, handing him the towel. “You’ve got blood on your face and chest. Please, wipe it off before we start talking.” Her formality, her manners-before-all-else attitude was downright Noel Coward–ish.

  He clutched the towel in his hand as though he were uncomfortable with it, unaccustomed to the very notion of cleaning with a cloth. Slowly, he patted his face, looked down at his chest. Wiping with small, clumsy, circular motions, he eventually removed most of the blood, leaving red blotches where he had rubbed too hard. She took the filthy rag from him and tossed it into the garbage can.

  “Oh Christ, Cathy …”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “It was horrible. I … I did things … terrible things. …”

  Taking a seat across from him, still holding the broom in case he made any sudden moves, Cathy looked at him and tried to see her husband. She kept imagining animalistic traits in his motions, his little tics. It was hard to regard him as the man who had shared her bed for nineteen years.

  “What happened, Karl? Start from the beginning, and tell me everything you remember.”

  “You’ll hate me for it. I hate myself. I’m … sick from what I did.”

  From what you did this time? she thought, then chased away the seditious notions. She needed to concentrate on what had happened last night, not months ago.

  “Do you remember changing?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No. There was some itching. We were in bed together, and I started to feel this itch. Then there was pain and the smell of blood, all copper and sweet. That’s all I remember. Pain and blood … I think it was your blood, Cathy. But I was in a place where you didn’t matter, where nothing mattered but the smell, and the hunger, and the sheer sexuality of it.”

  “The sexuality? What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, Cathy, that’s what drove me. I wanted to insert my mouth into a body, to drink the blood, lap it up like a dog. It … compelled me to do it. I believe it was you I went after, but it could have been anyone. I wanted my face inside of you. . . . Can you understand that? Inside of you? I wanted the blood in my mouth, in my eyes, my face inside your rib cage, to be elbow-deep in the gore. I wanted to cover my body in it, then have it licked off by someone else—anyone else.”

  He was getting aroused just speaking about it. Embarrassed, Cathy hurried upstairs, telling him to wait a minute. She returned with his robe, which had miraculously survived the night in one piece. Karl had started a pot of coffee. He smiled at her and slipped on the thick cotton robe, tying it at his waist.

  “Thanks,” he said. “And I’m sorry.”

  “Do you know you tried to kill me last night?”

  “Yes. I suspected as much.”

  “You turned into … some sort of monster. Right in front of my eyes, you became some … I don’t know, werewolf or something.”

  “Apparently, there were a lot of us that changed. You should see the city. I woke up in a gutter near the Milford movie theater. Everything’s so fucked up.”

  “A lot of others were the same? Changed?”

  “Yeah. There are tons of dead, naked people out there, and a lot of live ones, all waking up at dawn. I think we all changed. I think people who didn’t, people like you, are really in the minority.”

  “Are you going to change again?” she asked. “I need to know, Karl. When and where … I can’t just wait around for you to grow fangs and kill me.”

  “I don’t know. I can still feel something … bristling inside me. Like hair that’s grown on the inside of my skin. So, yeah, I’ll probably do it again, because I can feel it just itching to release itself. I can’t tell you when or where. But I think it’s coming.”

  They sat across from each other, the man in his bathrobe, the woman in jeans and a white shirt, her legs tucked beneath her. They sipped their coffee as golden sunlight streamed through the kitchen windows. It all seemed so normal and prosaic.

  Just what she had always longed for.

  But his words disturbed the peaceful scene, his suggestion that he was hairy on the inside of his skin, his violent actions hidden from her.

  How much had he hidden in the previous months, when her world was imploding?

  Had he been a monster before this transformation?

  9

  SEPTEMBER 17, 9:16 A.M.

  Rick placed his arm around Chesya’s shoulder, feeling it necessary to steady himself against someone. Mistaking his gesture for one of solace, she leaned into the muscular arm, his biceps solid against her face. They stood at the entrance of the bank, framed by jagged pieces of glass in the doorway, staring out at the destruction that had overwhelmed them into silence.

  It was too much.

  “How do people go on?” Chesya asked, her eyes adjusting to the bright sunlight. “Something like this happens. . . . How do people just go on with their lives?”

  Rick shook his head. “I don’t know. But they do. Somehow.”

  “Like the people in New York City after nine eleven?”

  “Chesya, I think this is gonna be a lot worse than that.”

  Sixth Street of downtown Cincinnati lay in ruins. A gas main had burst, blowing a wide hole in the street and blasting chunks of blacktop everywhere, through the glass of various buildings, into cars. The explosion had shattered windows for a block in every direction, and the roads sparkled with bits of glass. Several automobiles had been driven into the gaping disaster, taillights still blinking. The road had cracked in several directions, occasionally dropping into darkness, revealing sinkholes. One of these holes had opened in a parking lot near Race Street, nipping at the corner of a rather large hotel, causing the thirty-six-story building to lean, wavering dangerously in the breeze. The explosion must have ruptured a water main, as most of the street was covered in a wet sheen, and water spumed from the cracked sidewalk like oil from deep inside the Earth.

  Near the end of the street, a city Metro bus had overturned, smashing the tops of several cars, creating a blockade. Blood caked the inside of the bus, blocking the view. In the distance, someone had piled hot dog carts into a huge pile and set them on fire. The flames had spread, burning several storefronts. Far away, sirens wailed, but Rick couldn’t discern whether they belonged to the fire or police departments.

  Not that it mattered. The streets were completely blocked by cars bumper-to-bumper, some crashed into each other, locked in a fatal embrace, and the overturned bus effectively closed off the end of the road. A Brink’s truck, probably headed toward the bank for a pickup, lay tumbled on its passenger side, smashed between two SUVs. Nothing was going to be going in or out of the city for quite some time. Not on these blocked streets. Not in this mess.

  Then there were the bodies. They were scattered, dotting the landscape like punctuation, commas of ruined flesh. Burnt bodies, still smoking, charred to little but blackened skin and bones. Bodies with their throats torn out, the blood pooled halo-like around their heads. Crushed bodies, smashed between vehicles or trapped within cars that had been battered by traffic or squashed beneath a rolling, burning bus. Some bodies consisted of little more than a few pieces, limbs scattered, torn from sock
ets and tossed to the wind. Bodies bitten and chewed, half-eaten. Women and men ravaged by some new bestial creature, most of them with their clothes ripped from their bodies. Hands reached up in futile gestures from beneath rubble; an ear rested on a bus stop bench; a woman lay on her stomach, her back ripped to shreds while she had attempted to crawl away from something, her dress pulled up to her waist, exposing bloody, rounded buttocks.

  The smell was overwhelming—burnt flesh, coppery blood, a faint stench of overcooked hot dogs. Chesya could smell gasoline and oil and grease, fire and sweat and something else, something raw and pungent.

  Like wet dog? thought Rick.

  Rick thought he heard a gunshot in the distance.

  “Jesus Christ …” he said, stepping outside, hearing the crunch of glass beneath his heels.

  “Please, don’t swear like that.”

  “I just said Jesus—”

  “I know what you said.” Chesya stepped away from him, and he could see the strength building in her eyes. He thought this was probably a good thing. “But please refrain from using the name of my Lord like that. It sickens me. You’ve been doing it all night, and I won’t stand for it anymore. My God’s important to me. He’s almost all I have right now.”

  “That’s not quite true.”

  She turned to him, and he tried to smile, witnessing the way her indignation rose. “Oh no?”

  “No. You got me.”

  She laughed once, putting her hands on her hips. “Huh. Hell of a lot of good that’ll do me.”

  “Well, I’m just saying it could be worse. Look out there. Look at those poor bastards.”

  Here and there, along the sidewalks, people were walking, stumbling like zombies in one of those cheap Italian movies Rick used to like so much. They looked dazed, insane, and they didn’t seem to move with any purpose. Rick expected them to head toward one another, to band together as survivors, but they stayed in the shadows as much as possible, avoiding contact with other people. Something about the way they moved reminded him of crabs or spiders.

  “I wonder what they saw last night,” Chesya said, squinting at them. “They sure don’t trust each other, do they?”

  “Doesn’t look like it. You think they had friends change in front of them? You think they saw the whole metamorphosis, or just what came after?”

  “Maybe they changed, themselves. You think they’ll remember anything that happened in the night? Anything they did while they were … animals? If they can remember it all, it would easily drive them crazy. I don’t know if I could handle it.”

  A gunshot rang out, followed by two more. This time, there was no mistaking the noise. Rick grabbed Chesya and shoved her to the rough sidewalk, covering her with his own body. She looked up at him as he scanned the streets, his five o’clock shadow sandy brown, like his hair.

  “You see anything?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No. It wasn’t very far away, though. Just a couple of blocks. I didn’t even think about all the wack jobs with guns who’ll be shooting at everything that moves. Probably forming posses right now.”

  “Maybe it was something that deserved to be shot at.”

  He got off of her and sat down beside her. With his weight suddenly gone, she felt cool air rush between them. She missed his weight over her, holding her. It was comforting somehow, a soft edge to a tough guy, the brush of human flesh against her skin. Moving back, she leaned against the brick wall of the bank, crossing her long legs in front of herself.

  Rick said, “I don’t know. You see any of those things out here?”

  “No. Looks like just a few people, lotta dead folks.”

  “Right. It looks like they’re sleeping in the daylight, hiding out somewhere.”

  “Rick, you’re creeping me out.”

  “Or maybe, holy shit, maybe they’re really like werewolves, and they only turn under the full moon. There was a full moon last night. I remember seeing it through the blinds just as we started robbing the bank. What if they really work that way?”

  “Werewolves? For real?”

  “You saw those things. They were all over the goddamn bank.”

  “What did I tell you about taking the name of the Lord in vain?”

  “You’re that religious? Damn, Chesya, I think that sometimes situations call for a little harsh fucking language, and this is one of those motherfucking, son-of-a-bitching, goddamn times.”

  She shook her head, and when she spoke, her voice was suffused with a growing sadness. “Yeah, Rick. I am that religious, and I’ve heard bad language before. Used it myself sometimes, but I firmly believe in my God. You want me by your side, and I don’t think we should separate right now, so you better put a halt to the profanity. I look around, and I see people hiding, afraid of their shadows. I don’t think you want to ally yourself with any of them. I’m a strong black woman who’s still got all her senses. I’d think you’d want someone like me around.”

  “I do.” He sounded chastened, but she didn’t believe it yet.

  “Then lose the profane use of my Lord’s name. I’ll stick by you if you do.”

  “You’re kidding me, right? You’d actually leave me if I use the name …”

  He could tell by her somber expression she wasn’t joking, so he sighed and stood up. Holding out his hand, he grasped her forearm and raised her to her feet. Her palms were sweating, and that delectable anger burned in her eyes again.

  “Out of all the women I could end up locked in a vault with … I had to find myself a righteous church lady.”

  “Damn skippy,” she said, brushing off her slacks.

  He sighed. “All right. I’ll try, but if something scares me or surprises me, something might just slip out. I don’t know if I can always control it. Never had to before now.”

  “I think in extreme situations, even God can forgive such a trespass.”

  “Well then,” he said, “let’s get moving. A couple of those weird people have been eyeballing us for a few minutes. I suggest we see if we can find anyone else who survived the night with their sanity intact.”

  “Which way do we go?”

  “Looks pretty bad in either direction, but that bus crash has nearly cut off the sidewalks on the east side, so … let’s head west.” He pointed toward the Marriott hotel, which seemed to teeter toward them. “I don’t like the looks of that building, either. The sooner we can get past it, the better, in my opinion. That thing looks like it could fall at any minute.”

  Chesya nodded, and they began walking up Sixth Street, heading west. The journey was slow going, as the obstacles seemed to accumulate the farther they traveled. Cars had been smashed into street lamps or driven onto sidewalks and parked there, the doors left open, as though people had fled from them. A few of the buildings were on fire, and they crossed the streets to avoid getting too close to them. Sometimes this entailed crawling over the hoods of abandoned cars.

  As they lifted themselves over the turtled Brink’s truck, Chesya peered inside but saw no bodies. Only a few specks of dried blood. She saw Rick unconsciously look for scattered cash in the back of the truck. When he realized he was caught, he shrugged and gave her one of his endearing grins.

  At one point, they heard a loud explosion from the river, followed by a loud splash. Immediately, a second blast echoed through the buildings, and Rick thought he could feel the ground trembling beneath his feet.

  Most of the wild-eyed people who wandered the streets avoided them, scuttling like beetles into dark places, but one man approached. Rick pushed Chesya behind him as the pitiful creature rushed forward. His eyes were red-rimmed, his motions birdlike and excited. He wore filthy rags and he smelled of BO.

  “Did you see them?” he asked. “Did you see them? They were beautiful … so very beautiful.”

  Rick didn’t want to encourage the man, but he was curious, so he asked, “What did you see? We didn’t see anything.”

  “The beasts … they were all over the streets. Big and
sleek and powerful. They ran the streets, biting and snapping at the ones who didn’t turn, people like me. There weren’t a lot of us, people who didn’t turn. They tried to take us all.”

  “How’d you get away?”

  “Jesus saved me,” the man said, and he reached out for Rick, clutching at his shirt. “Jesus is God, and He saved me. He saved me. He’s inside me now.”

  Chesya rolled her eyes and unhooked the vagrant’s butterfly hands from Rick. “Come on,” she said. “He’s crazy.”

  As they walked away from the man, he began shouting after them. “Jesus could save you too! You need to accept Him into your heart and pray you never suffer the mark of the Beast. That’s why they all turned. Because they had the mark on them. Just like Cain. Just like Judas. Just like Larry Talbot.”

  “I don’t think he was sane before last night,” Rick said. “Looked and smelled like a homeless person to me. Like he’d been on the streets a long time.” He glanced over at her. “I’m surprised, in a way, that you don’t agree with him.”

  “What? ’Cause I’m religious? That doesn’t make me a nutcase. I think something bad happened, but I’m not about to blame it on the Bible, so you can relax. This whole mess reeks of biological warfare, and that’s no part of my God.”

  “I was thinking about that too. Seems kinda weird that this disease—if it is a disease—just sprung up outta nowhere. I think it’s government—”

  “Oh my sweet Lord,” Chesya whispered, stopping near the interstate. She pointed, and Rick followed her finger.

  The road was covered in car wrecks and bodies, worse than the city streets because of the speed at which the vehicles had been traveling. A blackened swath of earth stretched back to the Greater Cincinnati Airport, the same airport that had greeted Rick when he had flown in from Florida a week earlier. The landscape around the airport was dotted with large dark forms, the wreckage of what appeared to be several planes that had crashed into the fields surrounding the runways. The bridge across the river was jammed with cars packed together so tightly nobody could walk between them.