Creature

by John Saul

  “Get the goddamn water on,” he heard the attendant shout. As the hose bulged with the pressurized water of the fire system, Mark hurled himself against the gate.

  The mesh bulged out, but held.

  Then water spewed from the nozzle, and as the attendant struggled to control it, Mark grasped the wire mesh with both arms and began to shake it, hurling his full weight back and forth. He felt the mesh give slightly, and redoubled his efforts. Finally, as the full force of the jet of water struck him, the mesh gave way, the entire panel covering the cage door coming loose from its frame. Bellowing with rage, Mark threw the mesh aside and plunged through the opening, his hands reaching out to grasp at the nearest attendant. The man screamed as Mark picked him up, his scream cut short as Mark smashed him to the floor. The attendant’s head struck the concrete with a crunching noise and immediately a pool of blood began to form around his skull.

  The stream of water hit Mark full on the chest then, and he staggered back, his balance momentarily lost. Then, as if spurred on by Mark’s own action, Jeff LaConner hurled himself against the door of his cage, too, the force of his greater weight enough to burst the mesh from its stays. The attendant with the hose tried to scream a warning, and for a moment the jet of water strayed from Mark. Instantly, Mark threw himself on the man, his right arm snaking around the attendant’s neck, then jerking backward. There was a sharp popping sound from the man’s spine and he went limp in Mark’s grasp. The third attendant froze, stunned into total inaction by what had happened. An instant later, as he realized his danger and tried to slam the door of the room, Jeff LaConner leaped past Mark, his fingers closing around the man’s throat. While Mark watched, Jeff lifted the man off the floor, shaking him like a rag doll, then spun around, slamming the attendant against the hard tiles of the wall. Dropping the man to the floor, Jeff disappeared out of the door to the cage room.

  Mark paused for a moment. All his instincts told him to follow Jeff, to escape while he could! But then his eyes caught a glimpse of Randy Stevens and his mind suddenly cleared. He reached down and ripped the key ring loose from the belt on the body at his feet. Working quickly, he shoved one key after another into the last of the locked cages, until one turned and the door swung open. Leaving the keys where they were, Mark scuttled after Jeff LaConner.

  In the cage, Randy Stevens gazed blankly at the open door for a few moments, then his eyes focused slightly and he shuffled forward, slowly stepping across the threshold. He paused by the body of the dead attendant for a moment, poking experimentally at the flaccid corpse, then moved on to the man Jeff LaConner had slammed against the wall.

  That man lay on the floor, his spine shattered, unable to move anything below his waist. He was moaning softly and his fingers were working spasmodically at the floor as he tried to drag himself toward the door.

  Randy studied him curiously for a moment, then reached out and jabbed at the man with one finger.

  The man screamed in agony, his face turning pale as the blood drained out of it.

  Chuckling insanely, Randy repeated the jab, then repeated it once more. As each jab produced its scream, Randy’s giggling increased, as did the pace of his mindless game of torture.

  It wasn’t until the man fell silent—overcome by his pain to the point where he passed out—that Randy at last lost interest in the hideous sport.

  Getting unsteadily to his feet, he shuffled slowly out the door.

  His head weaved from side to side as he looked first in one direction, then in the other. Finally, mindlessly, he drifted away down the hall, snuffling softly as he tried to follow the scents of Jeff LaConner and Mark Tanner.

  But of course, it had been months since Randy had been capable of putting names to anything, human or otherwise.

  For Randy, the transformation from human to beast had long since been completed.

  Now, in the manner of the creature he had become, it was time for him to expand his territory.

  25

  Marty Ames was staring at the split screen of a high-resolution monitor, comparing the genetic structure of a sample of Charlotte LaConner’s pituitary gland with that of her son’s. Somewhere, he was certain, there was a minute difference, and if he could find that difference, buried somewhere with the DNA of the cells, he might find a clue to the mystery of Jeff’s uncontrollable growth. He glanced up irritably when the alarm bell disturbed his concentration. No tests of the security system had been scheduled for that morning, and the sudden interruption of his work was an annoyance he needn’t tolerate. He was just reaching for the phone to demand an explanation when one of the monitors on the wall caught his eye.

  It displayed an image of the cage room. Ames’s eyes widened in shock as he stared at it. The door of one of the cages stood open, and two others were ripped away entirely, their heavy wire mesh tossed aside like so much tissue paper.

  One of the attendants was sprawled on his back, his head in the center of a pool of blood, and another lay limply a few feet away. The third, his fingers still clawing spasmodically on the floor, was staring up toward the camera, his expression an agonized grimace of pure pain. Of the occupants of the cages, there was no sign at all.

  Swearing out loud, Ames punched at the buttons on the telephone and a moment later heard Marge Jackson, her voice strained, come onto the line. “They’re loose, Dr. Ames.”

  “I know that, damn it,” Ames rasped. “Don’t you think I can see? Where are they?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Marge stammered. “I think they’re still downstairs, but I can’t find them on the monitors.”

  Ames cursed once more. He should have had the cameras mounted everywhere, leaving not so much as a square foot of the building unmonitored. But the cages were supposed to be escape-proof—strong enough to contain practically anything.

  “I’ll be right there,” he said. “Get Harris on the phone and tell him what’s happened. We’re going to need help!”

  He slammed the phone down and moved quickly to the laboratory door. It was on the main floor, and there were two locked doors sealing off the stairwell that led to the security area in the basement. With any luck, the creatures were contained in the bowels of the building. Still, he listened at the door to the lab for a moment, then opened the door a crack and listened again. But the racket of the alarm bells effectively drowned out anything else he might have heard, and finally he pulled the door wide and darted out into the corridor. He glanced both ways, then hurried down the hall toward his office. A moment later he found Marjorie Jackson, her face pale, standing behind his desk, speaking frantically into the phone. As Ames came in, closing and locking the door behind him, she finished her call, her hands trembling so badly that the receiver dropped to the desk when she tried to hang up.

  “Mr. Harris says there are people on the way right now,” she told him. “They were bringing Mr. Tanner over and—”

  Ames cut her off. “What happened?” he demanded. “How did they get loose?”

  Marge Jackson shook her head helplessly. “I—I don’t know. I was just coming back to the office when I heard a scream, and when I looked at the monitor, they were already gone.” Almost against her will, her eyes drifted to the TV screen, where the grim image of the cage room was still displayed, and she gasped as the attendant whose spine was crushed made another feeble attempt to drag himself toward the door. “My God,” she breathed. “George is still alive. We’ve got to help him!” She started toward the door, but Marty Ames’s hand closed on her arm like a vise.

  “Are you out of your mind?” he asked. “They’re still down there!”

  Marge’s eyes widened. “But we’ve got to do something.”

  Ames’s expression set grimly as he watched the screen for a few seconds, then flipped the switch to the other cameras scattered through the building. “There’s nothing we can do for anyone until we get some help.”

  Suddenly there was a movement on the screen, and then they could see Jeff LaConner, his eyes darting
furtively as he moved slowly along the corridor toward the stairs.

  “That door better be locked,” Ames breathed as Jeff’s enormous form filled the screen. He reached out and touched another control, and the camera swiveled around to track Jeff’s progress as he moved closer to the stairwell door. As if sensing the eye of the camera watching him, Jeff turned back and for an instant looked directly into the lens.

  For a split-second nothing happened, then Jeff’s lips curled back, and though neither Ames nor Marjorie Jackson could possibly hear it, both of them shivered involuntarily at the snarl they could see escaping the twisted maw of the creature that Jeff had become. At last Jeff’s enormous hand came up, and the camera was blocked by its mass.

  The screen went blank, and Ames and his assistant knew Jeff had torn the camera from its bracket.

  Jeff stared mutely at the camera in his hands for a moment, crushed it between his palms and dropped its twisted wreckage to the floor. Then he turned to face the closed door a few feet away. He reached out almost tentatively and grasped the knob with his gnarled fingers. He twisted it, and when he found it was locked, a snarl of anger bubbled in his throat. Then he grasped the knob more tightly and jerked hard. Like the camera that had been suspended in a metal bracket only moments before, the knob resisted slightly, then came loose. Hurling it at the wall, Jeff began poking at the mechanism of the door’s latch, and after a few seconds it dropped away on the other side.

  The latch slid free.

  He pulled the door open, swinging it hard. The crash of the metal door against the tile wall of the corridor echoed loudly for a moment, then died away. Jeff, breathing hard, gazed at the stairs for a few seconds, then started up. He came to the top and pushed his way into the carpeted hallway that led past the various offices and on to the dining room.

  Rage built inside him as he stared at the open door halfway down the corridor that led to the suite of offices he still remembered as belonging to Dr. Ames.

  He could remember Dr. Ames very well.

  Other things might have fogged in his mind as his brain had begun to crush itself within the confines of his skull, but an image of Ames still burned brightly.

  It was Ames who had done this to him.

  Ames, who had pretended to be his friend, pretended to like him.

  Ames, who had turned him into the pain-ridden creature he had now become.

  It was all Ames’s fault, and as he began shuffling along the hall toward the suite of offices, he could smell the man, feel the man’s scent filling his nostrils, fueling the fury inside him.

  He lurched through the door into the outer office. Grunting, his breath coming in short, heavy rasps, he felt the anger within him building to the breaking point.

  Grabbing Marjorie Jackson’s desk, he upended it, lifted it off the floor, and flung it against the wall. The plaster shattered under the impact of the heavy, walnut desk, and behind the plaster there was a snapping sound as the laths themselves broke under the force of the blow.

  Then, his eyes glowing beneath the deep ridge of his brows, he moved toward the closed door to the inner office.

  “Get back,” Marty Ames told Marjorie Jackson. Her face had paled as the crash in the outer office confirmed that the beasts were no longer confined to the basement. She was huddling close to the wall now, and as Ames » spoke, she moved around behind the desk itself.

  Marty Ames opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out the .38-caliber pistol he’d started keeping there when he first realized that some of the boys might become dangerous. But since he’d bought the gun, there hadn’t been a single instance in which he felt he might have to use it, and after the first year he’d even given up the target practice he began the day he made the purchase. Now, as he fumbled with the safety and checked to see if there were bullets in the gun’s cylinder, he prayed it was still in working order and that his aim would still be good enough to kill.

  He had just slapped the cylinder back into the gun when there was a splintering sound. Then the door of his office, a single slab of solid walnut, was ripped off its hinges, falling across the floor in two immense pieces.

  In the doorway, his deformed body hunched over so that his fingertips nearly touched the ground, his heavy jaw hanging slack as saliva dripped from his lower lip, was Jeff LaConner.

  Marjorie Jackson screamed out loud as she stared at the inhuman form, but her scream was quickly drowned out by Jeff’s own rising bellow of pure fury.

  He lunged into the room, his long arms reaching out toward Marty Ames, his fingers already starting to close as he strained to reach his victim’s neck.

  Ames, his heart pounding, raised the gun and squeezed the trigger, firing point-blank into Jeff’s chest.

  Jeff staggered, looking down in surprise as a spurt of blood poured forth from the hole in his chest. Then, his eyes flicking once more to Ames, he bellowed and hurled himself forward.

  Ames fired the gun again, then again, but on the next shot the weapon jammed. He hurled it aside and ducked the other way as Jeff pitched forward and crashed to the floor.

  For an instant Ames was certain Jeff would heave himself to his feet and renew his attack, but when Jeff didn’t move, Ames finally reached out with his foot and carefully rolled the body over.

  One of Jeff’s eyes was gone, and blood was slowly oozing from the pulpy mass of the empty socket. Ames stared at the body for a moment, then grabbed Marge Jackson by the hand and started dragging her from the room.

  Outside, one of the TarrenTech station wagons was approaching, speeding up the road toward the main gates.

  Randy Stevens shambled slowly through the maze of corridors. His brain had long since ceased to function with any sort of reason, and now he was moving aimlessly, his nostrils catching first one scent, then another. He turned a corner and saw an open door ahead of him. He passed through the door and began climbing the stairs, clumsily heaving his weight upward by grasping at the metal railing with his deformed fingers. He reached the top at last and stumbled out into the hall. He hesitated, his head swinging back and forth as he sniffed at the air. Then he caught a scent that stirred dim memories deep within his brain.

  Vague images floated into his consciousness, images of trees and bushes, the river, and the sky above.

  His nostrils sucking thirstily at the odors of fresh air, he turned toward the door to the right, where a bright line of sunlight shone beneath a crack. He fumbled with the door, then threw his weight against it. It burst outward.

  He stood still, blinking in the glare of the sun as he breathed deeply, his lungs filling up with the first fresh air they’d tasted in more than a year.

  In the distance he could make out the shapes of the mountains rising upward toward the sky, and some deep-seated instinct told him that there, in the mountains, he might find safety. He started toward them, his body lumbering on twisted legs, his knuckles dragging along the ground, half supporting him in the strange, loping stride of a great ape.

  Then a movement caught his attention. He paused to swing around and stare dumbly at the car coming around the corner of the building.

  Blake Tanner sat between two guards in the backseat of the station wagon. In the front, next to the driver, a third guard was twisted half around, his back to the door as he kept his eyes on Blake. For the first few minutes, after the guards had stopped him at the door to Jerry Harris’s office, Blake’s mind had gone blank with fear. But as the guards had marched him into the garage at the back of the TarrenTech building and hustled him into the station wagon, he had begun thinking again. He’d slumped in his seat, his eyes half closed, trying to give the guards the impression he’d gone into shock. But as the car left the TarrenTech grounds and moved along the highway toward town—never varying from the posted speed limit—then took the road up the valley toward the sports center, Blake began to understand the hopelessness of his situation.

  This wasn’t like one of the Robert Ludlum books he’d always enjoyed so much, in wh
ich a mild-mannered English professor always managed to overcome five highly trained master spies in a dark alley at midnight, emerging unscathed from a cross fire of bullets, with maybe a knife or two thrown in for good measure.

  This was reality. And while Blake was in good condition, and felt sure that he could have taken any one of the guards in a one-on-one fight, he was acutely aware that he wouldn’t last a minute against all three of them. Nor did he kid himself that they would delay shooting him if he pressed them. There would be none of the convenient delays James Bond always experienced while the villain toyed with him just long enough to give Bond an opportunity, which he always managed to seize.

  No, these men intended to kill him, and while they would just as soon wait until they got him to the privacy of Ames’s fenced-off compound, he was certain that if he made so much as a single false move, the guard in the front seat would squeeze the trigger of the .45-caliber pistol in his hand.

  It wouldn’t come from either of the guards at his side—too much risk of the bullet penetrating him and slicing on into the guard on the other side. But if they lost the rear window of the wagon, who would ever care?

  The wagon had slowed as it approached the gates, but the driver pressed a button on a control attached to the visor of the car and the gates swung wide, then immediately began closing again as they passed through. The car sped up, veering to the left to head around to the back of the building.

  If he was going to have a chance at all, it would be when the car came to a stop and one of the guards at his sides got out. Unless there was a garage inside the building here, as there was at TarrenTech.

  “Jesus!” The word exploded from the mouth of the guard behind the wheel, and the man in the passenger seat jumped with surprise, then glared at the driver.

  “Goddamn it,” he began, but the driver ignored him, slamming on the brakes, and pointing ahead.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he asked. “What the hell is that?”