The greasy, fatty, high-calorie fried meat tasted good. It was warm and soothing. The surge of calories quieted Lelani’s hunger. She stared at the face of the man who’d brought her the food and tried hard to remember who he was. She had known his name just a second ago and then the hunger had resurfaced and obliterated all recollection. He had interrupted her meal but had provided her with another. Now the hunger had been momentarily quelled. She was feeling sleepy again. She’d burned so many calories hunting down prey, and she’d consumed so many more from the people she’d killed. Her stomach felt bloated. She needed to rest, to recover.
The memory of murdering and eating her neighbors caused only the slightest pang of remorse. It had been necessary. They had the calories she needed to survive. Killing and eating them was no different than slaughtering a cow for beef or hunting deer for venison. It was a biological imperative. If she didn’t eat, she would die, and there were no cows in downtown Austin, but there were plenty of people, and human flesh contained enough calories to sustain her for hours.
“David. Dr. David Ebersol,” Lelani said between bites. She looked at David Ebersol and saw the succulent flesh, the smooth, supple skin, the jiggle of fat around his waist and neck. Her mouth began to water.
“Yes, Lelani. It’s me. I’m here to help you,” Ebersol said as he pounded on the elevator button, urgently pressing the one that took them to the basement.
“Help me?” Lelani asked, tilting her head slightly in a way that made her look even more animalistic, like a feral dog examining some strange prey it had never encountered before, trying to decide if it was dangerous or something else it could kill and eat. She knew Dr. Ebersol was here to help her. Somewhere deep in her unconscious mind she knew there was danger around. People were coming to hurt her. People were chasing them. Police. Police were coming to arrest her because she’d eaten people. She felt a brief moment of revulsion followed immediately by the most profound sensory recall. She remembered how delicious it had all tasted. How good it felt to feel their life forces fill her belly. The taste had been like warm sushi with a pulse. The fatty meat melted like butter on her tongue. She closed her eyes and shuddered at the memory.
“Yes. I’m going to get you out of here. Get you back to the clinic and get you back to normal.”
“I need food.”
“I know. There’s more food in the car. We just have to get you there. There’s police all over the building. We need to get past them to get to the food.”
Lelani bared her teeth and raised one of her taloned hands so Ebersol could see them. It was coated with gore and chicken grease.
“I’ll kill them!”
“No. We can’t kill anyone else, Lelani. They have guns. They’ll hurt you.”
As powerful as Lelani’s hunger was, her survival instinct was just as powerful. “Okay, David.”
“I’ll feed you. I’ll help you, but no more killing. Understand?”
“Okay, David,” Lelani replied, nodding as she crammed another chicken breast into her mouth and crunched it between her serrated teeth.
Lelani felt the sensation of falling and remembered she was in an elevator. There were people chasing them. People with guns. Lelani was barely conscious of the danger. The hunger made it so hard to concentrate on anything, but the chicken had helped. It had soothed the maddening ravenousness for a while.
David said the police would try to hurt her, lock her away, but he didn’t want her to kill them. She could do it easily. She could open up their fat bellies with one swipe of her claws, tear out their throats with her fangs. The thought was empowering. It was better than being onstage and hearing the crowd applaud as she pranced like a show pony in clothes designed to make women feel ugly without them and like royalty if they were one of the lucky few who could actually afford them. She had thought being desired by men and envied by women was power, but this was real power-the ability to take a life with ease, to inspire fear. She smiled as she chewed up another piece of fried chicken and reached into the bucket for more. She wasn’t hungry anymore, but the food was there, so she continued to eat. What she really needed was sleep, but they had to get away first.
The elevator doors opened, and they stepped out into the nearly empty parking garage. The concrete structure was well lit, and security cameras were affixed to the thick pillars that held up the ceilings. The parking garage itself was two stories, buried below street level beneath the building. A steel gate with a digital keypad protected the garage from unauthorized entry, and a guard was usually posted there as well. But Lelani had already murdered the guard when someone had called him to help after Lelani had broken into her neighbor’s apartment and torn him apart. She’d done the same to the armed guard, ripping his corpulent belly open and pulling out his steaming insides, stuffing his wet squishy organs into her mouth by the fistfuls before he could get his gun out of the holster. She ate his liver in front of him while he watched, dying. The liver was full of calories and nutrients, but she’d always hated liver before the treatment. Her mother used to make her eat liver and onions as a kid. She’d have to sit at the table, long after everyone else had finished and were in the kitchen watching television, until she finished her plate. But this time she had scarfed it down in a few quick bites and then yanked out his pancreas and ate that as well, followed by his heart. They were all delicious.
“This way,” Ebersol whispered, taking Lelani by the arm and leading her across the parking garage.
His car was still on the street, and getting to it would mean going through cops, if they were already circling around to the back of the building as he suspected. Still, getting out of the parking garage and on to the street was their only chance at escaping.
“We need to run. Maybe they haven’t gotten back here yet.”
They sprinted toward the exit, reaching it just as two police officers stepped through. Dr. Ebersol threw his hands up in surrender. Lelani slashed a claw across the face of the first officer through the exit door, cutting his cheek down to the bone, puncturing his left eye and gouging it from the socket. It drooled down his face, dangling from the ocular nerves like a dead jellyfish.
The officer, a kid no more than twenty-five, fell to the floor screaming.
“My eye! My fucking eye!”
The next officer almost got his gun out of the holster before she leaped into his arms and bit down on his nose, crunching through the cartilage like a dry chicken bone and tearing it off his face, leaving a ragged crater in the center of his face. He cried out for help as she slashed her claws across his face, silencing him as she rode the balding, fat, middle-aged police officer down to the concrete. She slashed and ripped at him, tearing open his chest and throat, rending his face to ribbons before Ebersol grabbed her and pulled her out the door.
The cop with the missing eye was still crying out, and he was going for his radio. Lelani dived on top of him and seized his throat between her jaws. With a single jerk of her head, she tore out his trachea. The arterial spray saturated her hair and clothes and misted the exit door behind her. She paused to grab the bucket of chicken before she followed Dr. Ebersol out into the night. The exertion had made her hungry again. She was still chewing on the flesh she’d torn from the young officer’s throat when she shoved another piece of chicken into her mouth.
“Come on! The other cops might have heard their screams. We need to get to my car!”
They jogged out into the night. Gardens surrounded the property, and beyond that, just over a low stone wall, was the jogging path that circled Town Lake.
“Go down to the lake. I’ll get my car and meet you at the dog park on Congress Avenue. Do you understand?”
Lelani nodded and picked up another piece of chicken and shoved it into her mouth.
Ebersol looked into the bucket and she did the same. Only two pieces left. She saw the worried expression on his face when he looked back up at her.
“I’ve got more in my car. Don’t hurt anyone else while you’re
waiting for me. I’ll be there right away, okay?”
“I’m so hungry, David. I’m so hungry,” Lelani said, shaking her head.
“Please, Lelani. I promise. I’ll help you, but you can’t keep killing people.”
The problem was, she was beginning to enjoy killing. Fried chicken didn’t fight back. It didn’t scream. It didn’t fear her. Fried chicken just wasn’t as much fun.
21
Police were everywhere. It took Dr. Ebersol nearly twenty minutes to get to his car and then to navigate through the throngs of gawkers and curiosity seekers onto Congress Avenue and down to the lake.
The dog park was a large open area beside the lake, just under the Congress Street bridge. There was little grass left that hadn’t been trampled and pissed on until it had shriveled up, leaving large brown patches and even larger areas where there was no grass at all. He found Lelani asleep in the dirt, alone, shivering like a dope fiend in detox. The empty paper bucket had been ripped to confetti and littered the ground around her. Her huge claws were caked with blood. Her mouth hung open, revealing blood-stained fangs. She was naked, and her body was little more than a collection of bones, like a feral dog someone had shaved bald.
Ebersol left the car running as he walked over and lifted Lelani into his arms. She weighed less than his ten-year-old niece, seventy or eighty pounds at most. It was like lifting a papier-mâché Halloween scarecrow. He was certain he could crush her waifish body with ease if it wasn’t for the fangs and claws. She stirred slightly but did not wake while he carried her back to his vehicle. Her skin was as hot as asphalt in August. Ebersol began to sweat as he carried her across the park to his waiting car. Her heartbeat thundered against his chest. It was well more than a hundred beats per minute. It was the pulse of someone running a sprint, not someone in a deep sleep.
Ebersol felt his testicles shrivel up against him when Lelani nuzzled her face in the crook of his neck, making a growling, purring sound. A chill shivered up his spine. If she woke up hungry while he was still carrying her, Ebersol knew he was completely fucked. They made it to the car without incident, and Ebersol drove her to the airport. Sarai had arranged for the clinic’s private jet to meet them.
22
Tammy was still hungry when her mother put her to bed. She wore her eye patch just as Dr. Savaresse had instructed her to do and crawled beneath the covers. Her mom and dad kissed her good night. Her mother had just gotten out of the shower, and the smell of her clean skin made Tammy’s mouth water. Her stomach growled. It felt like it was eating itself.
“Can I have a snack before bedtime?”
Her father shook his head. “You’ve been eating all day, sweetie. Enough’s enough. We’ll make you a nice breakfast in the morning. Okay?”
Tammy shook her head. “No! I need to eat now! I’m hungry now!”
Her head whipped sideways and her left cheek sang out in pain. Her father had slapped her across the face. The blow made her new eyes throb, and she hoped he hadn’t damaged them.
“You watch your damned mouth, young lady! You will eat when I say you can eat! Do you understand?”
Her father was a big, barrel-chested man. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with hands like catcher’s mitts. His red hair and beard made him look like a lumberjack in a business suit. Tammy thought he looked like the Greek god Zeus, only with red hair. His voice was deep but powerful. It boomed like thunder when he was agitated or excited.
Tammy began to cry. It wasn’t the pain of her father’s blow but the hunger clawing through her guts that hurt so much more. “I’m hungry, Daddy!”
“You’ll eat in the morning!” He stormed out of the room and slammed the door, dragging Tammy’s mother out with him.
Tammy could still hear them arguing about her in the hallway. It was nothing new. They argued every night, and if Tammy wasn’t the cause of the argument, her name was usually dragged into it at some point.
“Maybe there’s something wrong with her. It might have something to do with the medications she’s on for the pain and the anti-rejection medications. She has lost an awful lot of weight.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that damn kid. The doctor would have told us if there was something wrong. She’d just spoiled.”
“Not by you, she isn’t. You couldn’t even come to the hospital the day your daughter saw for the first time in four years!”
“I had to work! If I wasn’t out there busting my hump, you wouldn’t be able to stay home and spoil her rotten the way you do!”
“I’m going to look up the symptoms of those medications on the Internet. I’m telling you, something’s wrong with her.”
“So, no sex tonight again?”
“You’ve got a hand.”
Tammy tossed and turned, unable to sleep. She’d never been this hungry in her life. She moaned and whined, kicked her covers off, then pulled them back up and wrapped them around herself, and then kicked them off again. She was hot. It felt like she was burning up from the inside. Sweat bulleted down her face, soaking her pajamas and sheets.
Tammy called out to her parents. “Can I get some water?”
“No! You’ll wet the bed!”
Tammy was almost nine. She hadn’t wet the bed in months. She climbed out of bed and began to pace. She could still hear her parents arguing down the hall behind their bedroom door, but she could no longer make out what they were saying. All she had to do was wait until they fell asleep and she could raid the refrigerator. It wouldn’t be long now. They would get tired of hating each other soon.
It was after midnight when Tammy’s parents finally fell asleep. Tammy was starving by then. Her stomach was in knots. Her mouth hurt. Her teeth felt too big, and they kept cutting her lip. The blood tasted so good she started doing it on purpose, biting into her bottom lip just to taste something, anything. Her hands were different too. Her nails had grown. They were dark and ugly, like a witch’s. She was turning into a monster. Everything would be all right as soon as she got something to eat. She could feel it.
Tammy couldn’t wait any longer. She opened her door and crept down the hall on her tiptoes. She raised her eye patch but resisted the urge to turn on the lights. The night was crushing down on her from all sides. She felt like Pinocchio’s Papa Geppetto creeping through the belly of a whale-the way she’d felt when she’d first lost her eyesight. But she knew her way around the house. Four years of blindness had made her accustomed to the night.
Deftly, Tammy avoided the living room couch, the floor lamp, the coffee table, the bookcase with the leather-bound first editions that nobody read, and the china hutch filled with dishware they’d never used. She crept into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She was salivating profusely, and her stomach was in agony. There was no way to avoid the little light in the fridge. If her parents were really asleep it wouldn’t matter, and if they weren’t, they would hear her anyway.
Tammy groped around the refrigerator. Her eyesight was still fuzzy, and she was accustomed to relying more on her other senses. She grabbed a doggie bag her parents brought home from a restaurant they’d gone to while she was still in the hospital, and she sniffed it. There was a piece of lamb with mint jelly, wasabi mashed potatoes, and green beans and baby carrots. She tipped the bag up and dumped its contents into her mouth. She quickly chewed it up and reached back into the fridge, feeling around until her fingers landed on her mother’s Greek yogurt. She ripped off the lid and scooped it out with her fingers. She’d eaten half the cup when she heard the heavy footsteps behind her.
Someone grabbed her from behind and jerked her to the floor. “What the fuck are you doing out of bed?”
The cup of yogurt splattered across the floor. Tammy lifted her eye patch and stared down at the milky curds smeared across the tiles. Her stomach growled, and then she growled as well. Without thinking, she bit the hand that held her down, gouging her teeth deep into the skin and crunching down on her father’s thick phalanges. A finger came off in her mou
th and she chewed it absentmindedly as her father began to scream.
A blow struck the side of her head, and everything went fuzzy and dark and stayed that way. One of her new corneas had detached. It didn’t matter; she could hear her father’s cries, smell the sweaty, pissy stench of his fear. He was curled into a ball, moaning, whimpering, and crying out in pain. Tammy still had his finger in her mouth, crunching it up with jaws grown enormously powerful overnight. It didn’t taste bad. In fact, to her, it tasted as delicious as the lamb had moments ago.
Her father’s thrashing began to subside as the neurotoxin in Tammy’s saliva hit his nervous system, causing his muscles to seize. He grunted a few times, quivering and convulsing but unable to move. And Tammy was still hungry.
“Bill? Bill?”
Tammy’s mother ran down the hall in a cloud of perfume, panic, and hairspray. Tammy didn’t want to hurt her mother, but she didn’t want to relinquish her new meal either, and she’d defend it if she had to.
“Oh, my God! What are you doing?” Her mother ran over to her and tried to pry Tammy off her father’s chest. Tammy had eaten his trapezius muscle, chewed her way from the base of his neck down to his shoulder blade. The plate-shaped bone was clean of flesh. It glistened in the light of the open refrigerator door.
Tammy’s mother screamed and violently shook her. “What did you do? What did you do? Why?”
Her father trembled beneath her as he bled out from the ragged hole in his back and neck, going into shock.
Tammy shrugged. “I told you I was hungry, Mommy.” She continued her meal as her mother fainted, smacking her head on the granite countertop on the way to the floor. She would never awaken from the blow. In a few hours, Tammy would begin eating her mother as well. When they were both gone, the obese pederast next door was next. He’d touched her butt once and tried to shove her hand down his pants. Then he’d masturbated in front of her, thinking she wouldn’t know it was him because she couldn’t see. But she had known it was him, even though he didn’t say a word. She could smell his sweaty bacon and cheese scent and hear his labored, congested breathing, lungs suffocating beneath layers of blubbery fat. She licked her lips, thinking of all the delicious calories in that corpulent mountain of useless meat and tissue.
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