He set the glasses down on the table, and pulled the cork from the hooch, pouring them all a shot. McDonough picked his up first, raising it to chin level and waiting for the others to do the same.
“A mutual understanding,” Decante said, aping Zenna’s earlier words, and raised his glass in a toast.
“A mutual understanding,” they all repeated, bringing the drinks to their lips in unison.
There was a tapping at the window.
They slugged back their shots and turned toward the sound.
“What, is it rainin’?” Zenna asked, setting his empty glass down upon the meeting table. He gestured for one of his men to part the long velvet curtain that obscured the window.
Without any hesitation, he went to look, sidestepping McDonough’s goons, who had set up camp to the right of the window.
Zenna’s man casually reached for the heavy curtain, giving it a good yank, just as the window shattered inward with an explosion of glass.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as Decante watched first in shock, and then in escalating horror, as he began to understand what was happening.
They were under attack, but by what, he had no idea.
It looked like a man, but only at first glance.
Zenna’s goon was screaming as the monster crouched over him, biting and tearing away at his flesh.
Nobody moved, every single one of them frozen by the nightmarish scene playing out before them. And then more of the things came in, crawling up over the ledge of the broken window.
Decante realized that his hand had gone to his rosary beads, taking them from the watch pocket of his vest, as he backed up toward the door.
The monsters were attacking. It did not matter whose gang the men belonged to; one after another they were pounced upon, many before their guns could even be drawn. It was a bloodbath. Their cries were nearly deafening, before being silenced by the advent of death.
Even more of the horrible things were spilling into the room. There had to have been at least a dozen.
Are these the things responsible for taking out Red O’Neill and his boys? Decante’s fevered brain wondered as he scrambled to open the doors to escape.
Gunshots finally rang out along with the screams of those still alive.
His fists closed around the knobs, but as he started to turn them, a hand clamped down upon his shoulder, spinning him around and slamming him against the wall.
Decante screamed, bringing his rosary up in an attempt to ward off the evil attacking him.
But he found himself looking into the face of an equally riled Dominic Zenna.
“What are they?” Zenna screamed, and Decante saw madness in the eyes of his former adversary and newly toasted ally.
Gunshots boomed, and they both turned to see McDonough, a gun in each hand, attacking the monsters that had made short work of their men.
McDonough was screaming at the top of his lungs. The bullets struck the creatures, but many of them got up again and attacked, bleeding from many wounds. It wasn’t long before they were upon him en masse, ripping him apart, tearing him limb from limb, spraying the walls of the room with the dying Irishman’s blood.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” Zenna hissed, slamming Decante back against the wall, pushing him to the floor.
“You son of a bitch!” Decante screamed, struggling to all fours as he watched his rival take hold of the knobs, flinging the doors open to escape.
Instead, Zenna cried out, and stumbled back into the room.
Decante stared at what had been standing behind the closed doors and he couldn’t decide which was worse—the blood-covered monsters that were coming for them now, or the image of the Lobster standing in the doorway, cobalt-blue Colt .45 clutched in a leather-gloved hand.
—
The Lobster hadn’t been far when the call had come in.
He’d known that there’d be trouble when Lester made mention of the truck pulling up next to the hotel.
Harry had driven him as close as he could, and the Lobster had run the rest of the way on foot, taking the stairs up to the conference-room floor two at a time.
He was just about to kick open the door when it had been opened from the inside.
The Lobster’s finger twitched upon the trigger of his gun as he looked down into the faces of two of the city’s worst. How easy it would be to wipe them from the world, to eliminate the crime bosses with two pulls of the trigger.
So simple.
But not the time.
“Get down!” he yelled at them, aiming the Colt in their direction. Decante and Zenna screamed like frightened children, dropped to the floor, and covered their heads.
The monsters were directly behind them, reaching out to drag them back into the room, as the Lobster opened fire. The blasting from his gun drove them back, but it did not take them down.
Too damn evil to die properly, he thought, stepping between the cowering crime figures on his way into the room.
“Get the hell out of here,” the Lobster ordered the bosses in between gunshots. He was driving the beasts back into the conference-room-turned-slaughterhouse. Bodies were strewn about; the floors and walls were stained with gore.
The Lobster studied the misbegotten beasts, their skin like reptile hide, clothes hanging from their malformed bodies in tatters. It took multiple shots to finally bring them down, but there were too many.
A quick glance down at the blood-drenched floor located another pistol, and he snatched it up. Now, with two guns in hand, he went to town, firing at the screeching beasts.
They came at him together. The monsters that fell as he fired were trampled beneath those that followed.
The Lobster quickly backed up, firing at the wall of beasts until both weapons clicked upon empty chambers.
He reached down to his belt, unhooking one of the grenades he carried. In one fluid motion, he pulled the pin and tossed it beneath the monsters’ feet. He dove under the heavy conference table and flipped it onto its side as the grenade exploded with a roar.
The Lobster rose up from behind his makeshift barricade, ejecting the empty ammunition clip from the Colt and sliding in another. The room was filled with smoke as he searched for signs of his monstrous foes. The ground at his feet was burned and charred black; unidentifiable body pieces were strewn about the floor. He’d taken out some, but he seriously doubted he’d gotten them all.
There was movement in the smoke, a flurry of activity near the open window.
The Lobster advanced, peering out through the broken glass. The surviving beasts made their escape, crawling down the side of the building, insect-like, to the waiting truck below.
“Boss!” called a voice through the smoke. “Boss, are you all right?”
Harry and Bill came through the smoke coughing wildly. They were carrying heavy artillery in the form of Thompson machine guns.
“Over here!” the Lobster called, watching the last of the beasts spring from the wall of the hotel, down onto the canvas roof of the waiting truck. He judged the distance to be at least fifteen feet to the truck parked at the front of the hotel below.
“Throw me your gun,” he ordered, and Bill tossed him his machine gun. “Get downstairs at once. You’re to stop that truck at any cost.”
He could see Harry about to ask him more, but there wasn’t any time.
The Lobster climbed over the windowsill, letting himself drop down to the truck below.
He hit the canvas hard, bouncing off the roof of the vehicle to land on his back in the street. The air was punched from his lungs and he lay there, gasping for breath.
Rolling onto his stomach, he crawled to his feet, picking up the Thompson where it had fallen from his grasp. The truck engine roared to life. He could hear the surviving monsters beneath the canvas canopy at the back of the vehicle, chattering in their bestial tongue as the truck began its getaway.
The Lobster opened fire with the machine gun, strafing the vehicle as it began to pull
away.
The passenger door came open; a cruel man with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth emerged, hanging upon the side door, firing away with his pistol.
The Lobster dodged his shots, most of them ricocheting off the street, all the while running to catch up to the truck. He fired another volley of shots. One of the truck’s back tires exploded, causing the truck to screech out of control as it sped around the corner, wiping out a light pole and a mailbox in the process.
Continuing to fire, the Lobster watched as the escape vehicle careened over the curb, heading for a gas station on the corner. The truck hit two of the gasoline pumps and flipped over onto its side.
Watching from a safe distance with the sound of approaching fire engines wailing in the background, the Lobster saw the monsters begin to emerge, tearing through the thick canvas with razor-sharp claws.
Even though he wasn’t sure how much ammunition was left in the machine gun’s drum, he planted his feet and waited for whatever was to come.
Two of the creatures were almost fully emerged. Behind them, others were clambering to rip free of their containment, when the damaged gas pumps and the truck exploded in a ball of fire.
The Lobster stumbled back, the blast of searing air stinging his lungs. He moved closer to the scene, where puddles of gasoline were causing the truck and its occupants to burn with a thick, black smoke and deep-orange flame.
One of the creatures, its body burned nearly to a crisp, lay smoldering in the street, where it had been tossed like a toy by the force of the blast.
The Lobster stood above the horrible corpse, marveling at its inhumanity.
The screeching of brakes caused him to turn.
Harry pulled up in the Ford sedan, rolling down the window to speak.
“Quick, get in,” he said. “The fire department and police will be here any second.”
He could hear the mournful wails coming closer as he dropped the machine gun, bending down to haul the monster’s charred corpse up from the street.
“Help me get this into the trunk,” he commanded.
—
Dr. Jonas Chapel stood in the shadows across the street watching the transport vehicle burn with unblinking eyes.
Their eyes.
It was the strangest thing: the more of these twisted beasts he created, the more in tune—connected—to them he became. He felt their deaths, each and every one of his monstrous creations, the painful sensation of fire-ravaged flesh still causing his limbs to tremble.
“Hey, Doc, c’mon before somebody sees you,” his driver called from the car parked in the alleyway behind him.
But he could not take his eyes from the scene.
He’d watched the man clad in dark leather wield a machine gun, firing at the truck as it attempted to escape, and the resulting conflagration.
The man in the goggles—he had seen this mysterious man before, not through his own eyes, but through the eyes of his creations that had been sent to retrieve the corpse of one of its brethren.
Through demons’ eyes.
Who is this man? Chapel wondered. And why did he get the sense that he was a serious threat to their plans? His skin itched, and he raked his nails across the tops of his hands, peeling away a thick layer to reveal something new beneath.
Chapel gazed down at the dry, mottled flesh and began to understand.
A rough hand grabbed his elbow and squeezed.
“The boss’ll kill me if we get caught,” Fazzina’s goon said, trying to pull him back to the car.
“Take your hand off me,” Chapel hissed, watching a look of fear form upon the driver’s face as he released him. The man could see that he was becoming something else.
Sloughing off the old to become something new.
Something dangerous.
“Take me to your boss,” Chapel commanded, returning to the car of his own accord. It was all becoming clear to him.
“Bring me to Fazzina.”
CHAPTER NINE
—
Hurley watched Bob from the corner of his eye.
He had returned to the Lobster’s lair with the information about Red O’Neill, but had found that the Lobster and the rest of the team were still in the field, leaving only the group’s scientist present.
Bob was staring into a microscope making soft grunting sounds, and Hurley had to wonder what he was seeing. The scientist then slipped from his stool, leaving the room at a brisk pace.
Hurley craned his neck to see where the scientist had gone, but Bob quickly returned, carrying a small metal cage, and inside it a rat. He brought it to his worktable, set it down, and returned to his microscope.
Hurley couldn’t resist, his curiosity getting the better of him.
“Are you going to do something with that rat?” he asked.
Bob jumped, as if he wasn’t aware that there had been anybody in the room with him.
“Oh . . . what?” he asked, a confused look upon his face as he turned from the microscope to look at Hurley.
“The rat,” Hurley said, pointing to the cage.
“I’m going to use him in an experiment,” Bob said. The scientist removed a large glass needle from inside a drawer, sucking whatever was on the microscope slide up into the syringe. “I’ve isolated some of the unusual blood cells.”
He carefully set the hypodermic down, picked up a pair of heavy gloves from atop the clutter on his table, and slipped them on.
“I want to see how these cells react with other normal cells when they’re introduced,” he explained.
Bob reached into the cage and grabbed the rat. The animal screeched, trying to escape the scientist’s clutches. The scientist held the squirming animal upside down, exposing the hairy flesh of its belly. Hurley watched with a sense of disquiet as Bob picked up the syringe with his other hand, slowly bringing the tip of the needle toward the rat.
Just as the tip was to pierce the rodent’s flesh, there was a sudden banging sound, and Hurley nearly jumped out of his skin.
Bob, however, remained unfazed, injecting the animal with the contents of the syringe and placing it back inside the cage.
“The others must be back,” Bob said, removing the heavy gloves.
The scientist was right, as Harry and Bill came shuffling down the corridor from the lair’s other entrance, the basement of an office building somewhere on the street above.
The two men lugged something wrapped in an oily tarp into the center of the room and laid it down. A foul-smelling steam rose up from within the tarp as it settled on the floor.
The Lobster entered behind the men, coming to stand before their prize.
“O’Neill?” the Lobster said to Hurley, as he knelt at the tarp, preparing to unwrap the contents.
“Like I thought,” Hurley said. “He’s alive.”
“Where is he now?” the Lobster asked, turning his red, unblinking gaze upon him.
“Not sure,” Hurley answered. “I found him at his family’s old funeral parlor. From there he got in a car and drove away.”
“Hmmm,” the Lobster said, pulling back the tarp to reveal what was wrapped within.
The stench became worse as the contents were revealed.
“Who . . . what is that?” Hurley asked, his hand going to his mouth and nose.
“This is what attacked O’Neill’s warehouse, and what laid siege to the crime bosses’ meeting at the Delacorte this evening,” the Lobster said.
The lair became disturbingly quiet as they looked upon the burned and still-smoldering corpse. Hurley had never seen anything like it, and was again reminded of the bizarre turn his life had taken.
He was looking at a monster; that was the only way to describe it. Studying the thing, his eyes saw something of interest, and he moved closer, slowly lowering himself to his knees beside his mysterious benefactor.
Reaching out, he started to move a section of tarp aside, when an ear-piercing shriek filled the lair.
Hurley reacted a
s the others did, all turning toward the source of the terrible sound. It was coming from Bob’s workstation. The cage—the cage that contained the test rat—was being torn apart from the inside. Something had happened to the rat, turning it into something else.
Monster.
The rat was larger, stronger, peeling back the metal mesh of the cage with its paws and enlarged jaws and teeth. Bob stumbled back, away from the escaping rodent, as it squirmed from the hole it had ripped in the cage. It let loose with another horrific wail, its dark eyes glistening with malice as it sprang at him.
Hurley jumped back, the heel of his shoe catching the tarp, and he fell as a single gunshot boomed. Sprawled across the burned body, he climbed quickly to his feet to see the Lobster standing with his gun in hand, smoke snaking from the barrel.
The transformed rat’s body lay in gory pieces on the floor.
“What did this?” the Lobster asked, holstering his weapon.
“The blood,” Bob explained, obviously startled by the results of his experiment. “I injected the blood into the rat and it transformed it into . . .”
Hurley returned his attention to the body within the bag, to what had caught his eye.
“It’s not only the rat,” he said, capturing their attention.
Hurley reached into the bag, gripping the creature’s arm. Part of the upper arm hadn’t been blackened by fire, the leathery skin still intact. There was a tattoo of a scantily clad woman, sitting upon an anchor, a brightly colored parrot on her shoulder.
“I know this tattoo,” Hurley said, looking away from the skin art to all those who were now listening to him. “I know this man from Central Park . . . Hooverville. His name is Smitty . . . Smitty Johanson, and he supposedly found a job somewhere, along with some others.”
“Then my suspicions are correct,” the Lobster said.
“So those things were actually . . . people?” Harry asked, his eyes riveted to the monstrous corpse lying on the floor before them.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Bill muttered, rubbing a large hand over his unshaven jaw.
“Just when you think you’ve seen everything,” Lester added.
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