by Hunter Shea
He felt something brush past his shoulder and turned to see Anita had brought her rifle up. She squeezed off a quick shot, sending a tranquilizing dart into the animal’s hindquarter.
It didn’t even flinch. Dalton held his breath as it turned to look at the feathered dart protruding from its mottled hide. It then swiveled back to them with eyes that flashed red.
“I think that only pissed it off,” Anita said.
“Yeah, it’s not happy.”
Dalton steadied his gun hand. The barrel shook imperceptibly, but he could feel his nerves twitch.
Just shoot the damn thing! his mind screamed. He couldn’t pull the trigger. What are you waiting for? Everything he’d learned and trained for was failing him. Suddenly he was a child again, waiting for his dad to go downstairs and check on the strange noise coming from the front door in the dead of night.
“Anita, please, get in the car. I’ll take care of this,” he hissed. A bead of salty sweat curled into his eye, stinging him. She touched his shoulder. “I’ll go slowly, so it doesn’t overreact. Just take it down. You’re all clear now.”
Her hand slipped away as she took a step back.
The creature snapped its jaws, barking like an asthmatic tiger. It sprang forward with alarming speed.
Dalton was pushed aside by the leaping beast before he could react. He slammed into the side of the house and tumbled onto the ground. His gun fell from his hand.
Anita screamed.
The creature bit into her arm and dragged her down the alley. There was a sickening pop as her shoulder was pulled from its socket. Still on the ground, Dalton reached for his Taser. He unclipped it from his belt, firing into the rear of the retreating monster. The two electrodes hit the mark, causing the animal to jump. It let go of Anita’s arm. What it didn’t do was stop moving. Instead, it continued to the front of the house, pulling the Taser gun from his hands. It clattered along the pavement as the beast escaped into the street.
Dalton ran to Anita. She was pushing herself up so she could lean against the house. Her arm was a bloody mess.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, though her eyes told him different. “Go after it.”
There was no way he’d be able to catch it on foot, even with a tranquilizer and being tased. Right now, Anita was his primary concern.
“I’m getting you to the hospital. Come on.”
He lifted her up, careful not to touch her wounded arm and cause her more pain. As they emerged into the front yard, the dog’s owner burst from the front door. “You didn’t get it,” she accused him.
When she saw Anita, she pulled up short.
“I’m going to call for another officer to come here. Right now I have to get to a hospital. Did you see which way the animal went?”
She pointed north, down the intersecting street. His biggest hope was that everything would hit the beast at once and drop it somewhere they could find the body and cart it away before it did any more harm.
Something like that couldn’t be allowed to run free.
He’d had his chance to stop it, and failed.
Anita took off her button-down shirt and wrapped it around her arm. “Christ, it burns,” she said.
He helped her into the car and called the situation in.
First Henderson, now this.
Dalton pushed his troubled thoughts away, concentrating on getting Anita to the hospital as quickly as possible. His siren blared as he sped down the Montauk Highway, just one of many screaming police cars in the night.
Kelly James convulsed so hard, the stretcher’s rubber wheels lifted off the carpet. Jack tightened the strap around her waist while Jerry did his best to hold her head in place. She slammed it onto the padded gurney over and over again. A crimson lather bubbled from her mouth. Her mother screamed, throwing her body over her daughter.
Richard James gripped Kelly’s hand, his expression one of mute, frozen fear.
“She’s so hot, Rich,” Mary said, her voice trembling, tears pouring into the side of her mouth.
Jerry attempted to move Mary James to the side. Winn may have imagined it, but he was pretty sure she snarled at the paramedic.
Everyone paused at the sound of a wet pop.
“What was that?” Jack asked.
The girl’s seizure subsided.
“Mrs. James, I really need you to let the paramedics get your daughter to the hospital. They can’t move with you like that. I promise, you can ride in the ambulance with her. You won’t leave her side.”
Mary James turned to him and her eyes, glazed over with grief, cleared. She shook her head and eased herself off her daughter’s chest.
When she pulled herself away from her daughter’s body, they all saw where the popping sound had come from.
Kelly’s stomach had literally exploded. Her mother’s shirt was covered in blood and bits of entrails. Somehow, the girl was still breathing. Even Jerry and Jack took a step back, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened and what needed to be done next.
“Mary,” Richard James croaked, pointing at her shirt. When she looked down, all hell broke loose.
She wailed, staring down at her shirt, then the inside of her daughter’s stomach. Winn had never heard a sound like that come out of a human being. It was punctuated with “Oh my God, it’s burning me!” Mary frantically pulled her shirt over her head, tossing it away. The pale, soft flesh of her torso was stained red.
Richard ran into the bathroom and came back with a wet towel.
Kelly moaned, catching everyone’s attention. Her eyelids fluttered. As her head lolled to the side, her gaze landed on Winn.
She was already gone. He’d been around his share of dying people, and he knew that look. Whatever spirit her body possessed had taken flight from the pain and despair. The whites of her eyes had begun to yellow beneath a thick sheen of mucous. Her mouth opened and her teal-tinted tongue distended. Kelly’s chest heaved, drawing her last breath.
No one was prepared for what happened when she exhaled.
The open wound in her abdomen exploded, sending up a two-foot-high fountain of blood and gore. No one in the room was spared. Everyone shouted as if they had been set upon with a flamethrower.
Jerry was quick to regain his senses. He saw Winn make a move to help them and blocked the doorway with his heavily built body.
“Don’t come in here! There must be some kind of contagion. Do you have any on you?”
Winn’s pulse hammered. Contagion?
He looked down at his uniform and saw it was unblemished.
“I have to find a mirror,” he said and darted down the hall. The sound of Mary’s and Richard’s crying, both in sadness and agony, trailed after him. He found a bathroom, decorated in pink, every surface covered in lotions and liquid soaps. Staring at his haunted face in the medicine cabinet mirror, he looked over every pore to make sure it was clear.
Whatever had come out of Kelly James had, thank you, God, missed him.
Winn ran back to the bedroom. “I’m fine, I think.”
“Call the hospital, tell them what happened and to send a hazmat team over as fast as fucking possible,” Jerry said, wincing.
“It hurts that bad?”
“More than you can imagine. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear we’d had some kind of acid thrown on us.”
Winn unclipped the walkie from his shoulder and put the call in. He was told units would be on their way ASAP.
Jack stood away from the body on the stretcher, silent. If he was in any pain, it didn’t show for now. Richard held Mary up, both of them in obvious agony, weeping over their daughter’s cooling body.
Jerry said, “Jake, I don’t think you should be around this. No telling if it’s airborne. Wait downstairs and make sure no one comes up here without protective gear.”
He slammed the door in Winn’s face, muffling the Jameses’ cries.
Winn went down the stairs with leaden legs.
What had he just witness
ed? What did it mean for Jack and Jerry and Mary and Richard?
What did it mean for him?
Worst of all, what did it mean for the entire town?
CHAPTER 15
The moment Dalton entered the ER he could sense something was wrong. At this time of the morning, it should have been quiet as a church. In bigger cities and towns, the emergency room got more hectic as the night bled into early morning. Alcohol and drugs led people to do damn stupid things, especially after two a.m. But here in East Hampton, the ER was typically a place to get a good night’s rest, undisturbed by knife wounds or drunk driving accidents.
This morning, there was a buzzing undercurrent that could be felt more than heard. The triage nurse looked harried and a good number of doctors and other personnel flashed back and forth with a sense of urgency.
The overhead speaker blurted, “Dr. Wallace to telemetry, Dr. Wallace to telemetry.”
He’d grabbed a wheelchair for Anita before getting her out of the car. Her wound was hidden beneath her bloody shirt, but the pain was written all over her face. On the way to the hospital, she moaned about a creeping heat that swallowed her arm whole. He got to the hospital in record time, damning himself every inch of the way for not shooting the monstrosity when he had the chance.
“She’s in good hands,” the triage nurse said with a faltering smile. A pressure cuff was around Anita’s good arm and a digital thermometer was under her tongue. When it was removed, the nurse said, “Just a little over a hundred. I’ll get you in to see a doctor in just a minute.” The nurse left the little triage room and walked down the hall.
“I’m so sorry,” Dalton said.
Gritting her teeth through the pain, Anita reached out to hold his hand. “You have nothing to apologize for. I shouldn’t have shot it. Maybe it would have eventually run off.”
He knew there was no way that thing would have left without taking its pound of flesh. He’d never seen something so menacing, so fixed on annihilation.
“You have to find it,” she said. “Mother Nature didn’t create that thing. There’s no need to stay with me. I’ll be fine. Just need to get my shoulder put back in and I’m sure I’ll be flooded with antibiotics. Rabies shots, too. Needles don’t bother me.”
“Is there anyone you want me to call, have them come down to the hospital?”
Anita shook her head. “I have a brother in Massachusetts. No sense getting him out of bed for this. I’ll call him later.” She pulled Dalton down to eye level. “Gray, you’re a good kid. I need you to get that animal. When I get out of here, I hope I can get my hands on it. This may sound funny, but I want to know what it is and where it came from more than getting my arm fixed up.”
Dalton smiled. “It doesn’t sound funny. A little crazy, maybe. You just relax. I’ll get it. I promise.” As he turned to leave triage, he said, “Hey, maybe it’ll make you famous. You could be the woman who uncovers the secret behind a monster.”
“I hadn’t even thought of that.” She gave him a smile that looked more like a wince.
“You take care of yourself. I’ll be back later to check on you.”
It hurt like hell to leave her, but she had a point. While that creature was out roaming around, no one was safe. He’d go back to the house where Anita had been bitten and try to track it down.
Before he left the hospital, he went over to admitting and asked the woman behind the Plexiglas if she knew how Margie Salvatore was doing.
“Are you a relative, Officer?” she asked. The woman was young, not much older than him, though she had considerable bags under her eyes. She must not be used to the graveyard shift yet, Dalton thought. He remembered the luggage he carried on his face for the first few months while he adjusted to living like a vampire.
“No. I responded to the call. She was bitten by a stray dog. It got her pretty bad. I just want to make sure she’s all right.”
“Let me check.” She typed away on her computer. Dalton heard a door slam down the hall and the squeak of rubber soles. The woman stopped typing, narrowing her eyes at the screen. Her lips pressed tight. “I’m sorry to say this, but she passed away a few hours ago.”
Dalton rocked back on his heels. “She died? But it was only a bite on her leg. Do you know why she died?”
“I can’t say. You’d have to ask the attending physician, and he’d only be able to tell you if her next of kin gave him permission or if it was part of an investigation.”
He took a deep breath and looked over at the now empty triage room.
Margie Salvatore was bitten, in all high probability, by one of those things. Now she was dead.
What would happen to Anita?
He thanked the admitting clerk and ran to his car. More than ever, he had to find that animal. By doing so, he might find out what it was and in the end, save Anita’s life.
As the sun came up a searing tangerine in the western sky, Summer Olchak took a shower, got dressed for work and grabbed a bottle of iced coffee from her refrigerator. She wasn’t due in the office until eight thirty, but she wanted to stop at Benny’s house to check up on him. The last time they’d spoken, he’d told her he had some kind of stomach flu or food poisoning. It wasn’t lost on her that he blamed her if he had the latter.
Unlike every other man she’d dated, Benny wasn’t a big baby in search of a younger mommy. He took care of himself. When he was sick, he was more like a bear than a toddler, going off to his cave to will himself better. It was one of the many qualities that made her overlook his checkered past. He’d done those things when he was young and stupid. He’d assured her those days were over and he’d been nothing but a good man ever since they’d met at a Rocky Horror Picture Show marathon at the Kent Theater three years ago.
She’d tried calling and texting him all day yesterday but he wasn’t replying. It was agony not to go to his house last night but she had a full plate of work to do and she had to take her grandmother to the senior center. By the time she got back, it was too late. If he was sick, the last thing he needed was her waking him up in the middle of the night.
When she turned her car on, the radio blared, “in a series of animal—” She turned the radio off and plugged her iPod in, searching for her Pink playlist.
She was tempted to stop at the pancake house and pick him up something for breakfast, but odds are, he wouldn’t be in the mood. Best to get some water and plain toast in his system until he fully recovered.
As she walked up to his front door, she could hear the TV on inside. It sounded like he was watching some kind of action movie. There were lots of explosions and yelling. Summer knelt by the small garden to the right of the door and found the hide-a-key that looked like a rock. She’d once asked him why he didn’t give her a key to his place. His answer was typical Benny. “Honey, you know where I keep my spare. It’s one less thing to keep on your keychain.”
The moment she opened the door she was hit by a stench so foul, she had to back out into the fresh air.
“Benny?” she called into the house, her stomach refusing to let her go back inside. What the hell was that smell? It reeked. When was the last time he’d taken out the garbage? She’d once visited a landfill in Staten Island during a school trip when she was in eighth grade—some lesson about pollution and man’s propensity to make waste. This smelled kind of like that, but worse.
“Benny, are you all right?”
The hard staccato of heavy gunfire blared from the TV speakers. Looking in her purse, Summer found a packet of tissues. She pulled them out and covered her nose and mouth with the entire pack.
Stepping over the threshold, her stomach heaved. Nothing could dampen the foul odor.
As she turned to look into the living room, the tissues fell from her mouth.
Summer shrieked.
Benny’s purpled corpse lay on the couch, the remote still in his hand. Dark rivers of dried blood streaked from his eyes, nose and mouth. His body was half its normal size, as if he were a beach ball
that had been partially deflated. A grayish fluid pooled around his feet and the couch cushions.
Summer ran from the house screaming at the top of her lungs for someone to call 911. As neighboring doors opened, she fell to her knees in the street, painting the blacktop with bile.
On the way back to the house where Anita had been bitten, Dalton spotted the first dead animal. It was a raccoon, fat from summer pickings. It wasn’t on the side of the road, a victim of poor street-crossing judgment.
He knew he was supposed to go back to the Sullivans’ house but he couldn’t ignore this.
The raccoon, its body torn to shreds like a gruesome piñata, lay under an elm tree in the front yard of a tidy Cape home. A tire swing dangled over the raccoon’s remains.
One of the creatures had been here.
Dalton pulled over and rang the doorbell. A tired-looking man with two days’ worth of stubble answered.
“Sir, did you hear or see anything out of the ordinary last night, like animals fighting?”
The man rubbed the back of his neck. “What?”
Dalton pointed at the dead raccoon. “That raccoon was attacked last night. I need you and everyone in your family to keep away from it. We’ll have someone come by and pick up its remains.”
“So now they have you on dead-raccoon duty?” he said, grinning. “How did they get that past the union?”
Dalton fixed him with a “don’t mess with me” glare. “Do you have kids?”
The man nodded, no longer so flippant.
“Keep them inside the house. If I find out they were anywhere near that raccoon, you and I will meet again under much different circumstances. Am I clear?”
“Y-yes.”
“Good. It’s probably best you keep them away from the swing entirely for a few days.”
Before the man could question him further, Dalton turned back to his car. When he got in touch with dispatch, he was told his was not the first call for carcass removal, preferably with a hazmat team.