She picked up his service revolver, looked at the damage she had done and put the muzzle in her mouth. With tears flowing freely down her face to mix with the cop's blood, she pulled the trigger.
Within spitting distance of Robin's dead body, the cop rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself up onto his remaining foot.
Chapter Fifteen
Audrey tore into the woman in the back seat of the Camaro as if she hadn't eaten in days. Even though her belly was still swollen with human flesh from her previous meals, she gorged herself on blood-shiny flesh as if she might never be satisfied again.
More.
More.
More.
She was as frenzied as school of piranha with the good fortune to come across a cow that had stumbled stupidly into the river. Her teeth and nails, as blunt as they were, still sufficed to shred flesh from bone. She was ravenous as she consumed the hot, wet mouthfuls with reckless abandon.
Hunger.
Hunger.
Hunger.
When she couldn't bear the thought of eating another bite of the woman who had stopped breathing in her final resting place slumped over in the back seat of a priest's Camaro, Audrey sniffed the air. She smelled food.
Food.
Food.
Food.
She looked around, searching for the source of the scent. It didn't take her long to figure it out. The car that had struck the priest's car had spun around once before coming to a stop against a telephone pole, and there was someone trapped inside, and she was screaming.
Audrey walked over to the driver's side window. She peered inside. She licked her lips. Always room for dessert.
"Help me," the trapped woman said. "The door is stuck. I can't get out."
Audrey could hardly hear her through the closed window. She leaned in closer to read the woman's lips.
"I've been in an accident," the woman said. "I can't open the door, and I can't- I can't move my legs. I think something is broken." She flinched at Audrey's bloodstained appearance. "Are you okay?"
Audrey nodded at her, hoping the woman would find it reassuring. She looked into the back of the car. There was a sleeping baby in a car seat, looking for all the world like nothing was wrong and civilization wasn't coming to an end.
She grinned, baring her bloody teeth; she licked her lips.
"My baby," the woman in the front seat said, "Please. You have to help my baby. Is she okay?" The woman struggled to turn around and look over her shoulder, but her movement was limited. "Why can't I move my legs? Please. Please check my baby."
Audrey nodded and licked her lips again.
She didn't turn around when she heard the ambulance pull up behind her, and she didn't turn around when she heard the sirens. She raised one hand and balled it into a fist before punching out the back window and reaching into the backseat toward the sleeping child.
Father Matthew jumped out of the driver's seat of the ambulance and grabbed her from behind just as her fingertips touched the baby, wincing at the pain in his ribs. "Audrey," he said. "Don't."
She turned around and tilted her head, looking up into his cornflower blue eyes. They were so blue; they reminded her of blue skies on a sunny day. They reminded her of the moment she first saw him at the church. They reminded her of when she was normal. They reminded her of a time when she wasn't so damned hungry.
Hungry.
Hungry.
Hungry.
"Get in the ambulance," he said. "We have to go." He used his hands on her waist to turn her around, knowing in his heart that she could overpower him if she so chose.
With a gentle push, he prompted her in the direction of the waiting vehicle and sighed with relief when she didn't resist.
Audrey obediently walked around to the passenger side of the ambulance, opened the door and climbed onto the seat. She didn't take her eyes off her priest as he spoke with the woman in the car; she was on high alert.
He belongs to me.
Father Matthew looked inside the car that had trashed his Camaro. "Are you okay?" the priest asked.
The woman shook her head. "I can't move my legs. I can't check my baby. Please. You've got to help me."
He unlocked the back door through the window that Audrey had broken and reached for the car seat. "Your baby is fine," he said. "Don't worry. I'm on my way to the hospital. I can have the doctors look after her." He unfastened the straps that held the car seat secure.
"No, don't take my baby. You're a paramedic. Right? There must be medical supplies in your ambulance. Can't you just check her out here? What's wrong with my legs? Why can't I move? Do something. Help me. Don't take my baby." Her words flowed like a river. She began to hyperventilate.
"I'm not a paramedic. I'm a priest. The ambulance is just borrowed," he said. He removed the car seat from the back of the vehicle. "Here," he said. "Your baby is fine. Take a look." He tried the front door, but it didn't open.
The crash had deformed the metal, and no amount of pulling would help. The door was stuck shut.
He held the baby up to the driver's side window instead. "She's fine. I promise. I'll bring her to the hospital, and I'll send for someone to help you. I'll tell them what happened here."
He thought it would take the jaws of life to extricate her from that twisted mass of metal and plastic, but he didn’t tell her that. She was panicked enough already.
Father Matthew pressed the baby in her car seat as close to the driver's side woman as possible to give the worried mother a good look at her child. He hoped it might reassure her in her time of need.
The woman screamed, and it took Father Matthew a minute to figure out what was wrong. He looked into the car seat and saw that the baby was awake. Her unseeing eyes were wide open. Only the whites were visible. She was foaming at the mouth. The foam was black.
The priest made the sign of the cross with his free hand, blessing himself while saying a silent prayer. He pushed the car seat and its unholy cargo back through the broken window, baby and all. "I'll send for help," he said. "Hold on tight."
"I can't move my legs," the woman said.
"I know," he replied. "I know." He swallowed hard against the bile that rose in his throat.
"My baby."
"I know. Everything is going to be okay. Your baby- your baby is going to be fine. I'll send someone back to help you. Just stay calm and hold tight. What's your name?"
"My name is Rebecca," the woman said.
"Rebecca," the priest repeated. "Rebecca, while you're waiting, say a prayer or two. It couldn't hurt." With some regret, he turned his back on the demolished car and its doomed passengers and walked back to the ambulance.
When he climbed inside, Audrey was already wearing her seatbelt. She was staring out the window at the woman's car.
"There's nothing I can do for them, Audrey," he said. "I don't know what to do." He put his hands over his eyes and sobbed. "I don't recognize this world anymore. This can't be real life." He wiped the tears from his face and looked at his companion.
Her skin was taking on an ashen shade of grey.
"Never mind," he said. "We have to keep pushing forward." He put on his seatbelt and put the ambulance into drive.
Slowly and carefully he pulled away from the curb and drove to the hospital. Along the way, he turned off the sirens. They were giving him a headache and given the surprising lack of traffic on the road, the sirens seemed unnecessary.
The hospital parking lot seemed very much the way that they had last seen it. He couldn't be certain as he hadn't memorized every car on the lot, but to his eye it looked like there had been neither new arrivals nor departures since they'd left.
The van that had contained an unsuspecting woman and her equally unsuspecting children sat silent in the lot, parked neatly between the lines.
Father Matthew pulled up in front of the hospital in the fire lane. He didn't care if he wasn't supposed to park there. It didn't seem important. He shut the ignition and dropped t
he keys back into his pocket. "Come on, Audrey," he said. "We're here."
Audrey nodded. She unfastened her seatbelt, but she couldn't even feel her fingertips. They were numb. She pressed them to her face and neck. Numb and cold. She licked her lips. Dry and cold.
She knew bad things were happening to her body. She knew she was becoming something that she didn't want to become. She knew she was hungry. She knew she had a constant need to feed.
Feed.
Feed.
Feed.
She looked at Father Matthew with his kind face and his cornflower blue eyes, and she knew that she loved him.
She loved him.
Loved him.
Loved him.
Loved.
Him.
And she couldn't even remember what love was.
Father Matthew led the way to the hospital emergency room entrance and waited until Audrey was by his side before he opened the door. He gasped. There wasn't a living person in sight.
Blood was everywhere. Cooling, coagulated, crimson blood that pooled and puddled on the tiled floor and the waiting room furniture. There were streaks on the walks, smears on the windows, smudges on the dog-eared magazines that stood in stacks on the bloodstained end tables.
Chairs had been knocked over. Gurneys had been knocked over. Piles of paperwork lay discarded and sloppy on the floor, soaking up the spilled blood like sponges. Lumps of bleeding flesh lay in circles of ashy residue, and the bile rose in his throat again when he realized these were the remains of people who had befallen some horrific fate.
Audrey walked straight ahead, never looking to the left or the right, her feet inside their oversize shoes making squelching sounds as she marched through rivers of blood.
"Audrey, wait," the priest said.
She stopped, turned around and shook her head. Then she turned back and continued her forward march.
Father Matthew blessed himself before following her.
Audrey led the way as if she knew the hospital like the back of her hand, leading the priest to wonder whether she was following something only she could hear or smell.
She stepped easily over fallen and discarded debris without looking down at her feet, but her gait seemed awkward and stiff.
Father Matthew couldn't help but wonder what would happen when rigor mortis set in. Then again, he was no doctor. For all he knew, she could already be experiencing it. For all he knew, it didn't apply in these cases. For all he knew, she wasn't really dead.
He took a deep breath. It was the first time that he had actually allowed himself to acknowledge that his unusual companion was dead, not living, not breathing, not capable of speech, not in possession of a beating heart. Yet he continued to follow her without question.
She wouldn't have been able to answer his questions anyhow.
They trudged down hallways and around corners, down stairwells and over piles of human remains, tangled bed sheets and hospital towels. Finally they came to their destination.
Audrey pointed at a sign mounted on the wall in the basement hallway.
MORGUE
"Why did you bring me to the morgue, Audrey?" Father Matthew asked. "What are we doing here?"
She lifted one finger to her lips, without making a sound. There wasn't enough breath in her lungs to say, "Shush."
Father Matthew knew what she meant. He fell silent.
Audrey put her hand on the door handle and turned it. There was a clicking sound, and the door opened inward smoothly.
The room was brightly lit. Light reflected from the stainless steel tables, stainless steel trays, stainless steel equipment and stainless steel doors set in two adjacent walls.
Audrey walked inside without hesitation.
Although he hesitated inwardly, the priest followed her without delay.
Once he was inside the room, he could hear sounds coming from behind the stainless steel doors. It sounded like someone was trying to get out.
Audrey grasped the handle of one of those softly glinting doors. She began to pull.
"No," the priest said. "Don't." He put a hand on her arm, and she brushed him away as easily as if she were brushing away a housefly.
She shook her head at him and held out one hand, flattened palm facing him. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.
He stopped in his tracks; he put his hands by his sides and waited. His heart pounding in his chest reassured him that he was still among the living and not the dead. There was no mistaking it. The nightmare hadn't claimed him yet, at least not in that way.
Audrey swung the door open and slid the metal tray within toward herself six inches, then twelve.
A snarling face emerged from the darkness. The owner of that face was obviously dead. Skin was covered in something like black mold. Cracked black lips. Protruding black tongue.
The thing gnashed its teeth, driving canines and molars through tongue in the process. Darkness oozed from its injured tongue and blackened its teeth.
"I get it, Audrey," the priest said. "Please. Shut the door."
Audrey slid the tray and its undead burden back into its secure compartment and shut the door behind it. She pointed at the door, and then she pointed at herself.
Father Matthew just stared at her.
Audrey did it again. Her finger touched the door in the wall, and then it touched her chest right above where her non-beating heart lay silent and still.
She formed the first two fingers of her right hand into a gun and pressed her fingertips to her temple. With her other hand, she tapped his chest.
"You want me to kill you?" Father asked.
She nodded her head.
"I don't have a gun," he said. "This is crazy. I can't- I can't kill you. We made a promise to each other."
Audrey lowered her hands. She looked around the room. There was a dry erase board covered with words and numbers that meant nothing to her. Using the palm of her hand, she wiped a swath of the board clean.
She picked up a marker and scrawled across the board.
NOT NOW
She moved her hand lower. Beneath those two words, she wrote five more.
WHEN THE TIME IS RIGHT
Chapter Sixteen
The remains of Officer Fitzpatrick balanced precariously on one foot in the middle of the dirty operating suite. When the dead cop tried to take a step forward, he collapsed back onto the floor.
Once again, he pulled himself up to a standing position, stood on his one foot, swung the other leg forward and tried to transfer his weight onto a foot that was no longer connected to his body.
His mind was mud. He couldn't figure out how he got where he was. He couldn't figure out where he was. He didn't know where he was going. He didn't know how he was going to get there. He didn't know his name. He only knew that he was hungry, confused and hungry, angry and hungry and hungry and hungry. It was misery.
He pitched forward again, landed prone in a pool of his own blood and lay there, confused. Everything was pain, fire, confusion, heat and hunger. Everything was black. Everything was red. Everything was wrong.
Something deep inside him compelled him to move even though his body felt better lying on the floor, as motionless as death. His hunger wouldn't let him lie.
Both hands palms down on red-slick floor, toes of one foot pressed onto blood-slippery tiles, one push up into downward facing dog. Foot slides forward. Balance. Hands come up.
Officer Fitzpatrick was back on the move. He swung his decimated leg forward and tried to put his weight on it. When he lost his balance, he broke his fall with his palms against the floor. He grunted. His chest vibrated. No air exited his lungs.
He moved his hands forward, and then he slid his foot forward an equal distance. Hands. Foot. Hands. Foot. Hands. Foot.
Hands.
Foot.
Inch by inch. Foot by foot. Yard by Yard. Closer and closer and closer he crept to the door. Blood and brains from Robin's ruined skull caught between his fingers as he passed her on his journey.
Something about the smell of her made him hungry. Something about the smell of her made him sick. It was both. It was neither. He was hungry.
He wanted a taste of her, not her, but something like her. Not her, but someone like her. He made it to the door, still wanting a taste of something. Something with a beating heart.
He dropped to his knees. He still had two of those. It made crawling easier. It made crawling easy. Hands. Knees. Hands. Knees. Hands. Knees.
Hands.
Knees.
He bumped into the door with his head, and the door moved. He pushed harder. The door opened. He crawled his way through it. His stump leaked a cross between blackness and blood, but the pain in his leg was nothing compared to the pain of hunger in his belly.
The hunger lit up his senses like a fireworks display. The hunger traveled his arteries upward and outward in all directions. It pumped through his veins like the blood that used to run through them.
The hunger made him angry. The hunger made him thirsty. The hunger made him hungry.
He sniffed the air and crawled in the direction of the emergency room entrance.
Chapter Seventeen
Marcy Landry ushered her five children through the quiet parking lot to the emergency room entrance. The youngest was in her arms, burning with fever.
The middle child was chattering away merrily about monkeys and bananas and cotton candy and her new doll's new clothes and the clowns she'd seen at the fair.
The two teens were busy arguing about who got to ride in the front seat on the way home. Marcy had a headache.
She wished that someone had warned her not to have so many children.
Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw the lights flicker inside the hospital just before she reached the automatic doors. When she and her brood came within several feet of the entrance, the glass and metal slid aside to admit them.
With a frustrated sigh, she crossed the threshold. Her children followed in a semicircle behind her. It took her a good twenty steps into the emergency room before she realized that everything about the picture was wrong.
"What the hell?"
"Mommy," her middle child said, "you said a bad word. Mommy, why is everything so dirty? Mommy, why did you say a bad word? Mommy, the monkey was funny with the banana. Why is everything so dirty?"
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