Succulent Prey by Wrath James White

by Wrath James White

  "I don't care anymore. I only care about getting the cure."

  "Kil ing me won't cure you."

  "It's worth a try."

  He sliced a long line down the unctuous pervert's chest, cutting so deep that he could feel the blade bounce over the fat man's rib cage. Damon's pal id flesh

  opened up, revealing thick yel ow globs of adipose tissue smothering the ruby

  red muscle fibers surrounding his ribs. Damon cried out despite the warning.

  "Arrrrgh! Stop! Stop!!! Hel l !" Joe smashed an elbow down into

  Damon's solar plexus, shattering his

  xiphoid process and rupturing his lungs. Damon wheezed and choked, gagging

  as the blood fil ing his thoracic cavity and crushed his lungs. Blood bubbled up

  from between the pervert's lips as he

  struggled to breathe.

  "This won't cure you. I didn't make you what you are," Damon wheezed in an exhausted whisper.

  "I would have been normal, just like any other person, if you hadn't passed this disease on to me!" Joe struggled to keep his voice down as his entire body

  vibrated with rage. His cold blue eyes

  were livid with half a lifetime of shame and anger.

  Damon began to laugh. A hideous

  gurgling sound issued from his lungs and blood sprayed from his lips as he

  wheezed and cackled.

  "You were made long before I came

  along. Why do you think I picked you as my first? You were made by the same

  person who made me years before. The

  disease was already in your blood. Just like the legends say, you have to kil the original vampire, and I wasn't the first one. I was just a victim, like you. I was made into a monster."

  "By who?"

  Damon's voice was growing fainter as

  he continued to try to breathe through his col apsing lungs.

  "Haven't you guessed it already? There is no curse. It's al in the genes."

  "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

  "You figure it out. You know. Deep down, you know. You've known al along." Joe leapt onto the mattress, straddling the child kil er's bloated stomach, and plunged the scalpel deep into the wound he'd made in Damon's chest. In a near

  frenzy, Joe began ripping the obese

  pederast apart. He cut chunks of flesh

  out of the man's torso, slicing deep into his fat and muscle and then digging his fingers down into the meat and jerking it free with both hands. Pul ing off his

  pectoral muscles with a wet sticky riiiiiip!

  He stripped the meat from the man's

  arms and legs, wrenching loose his

  flabby biceps and triceps from his

  humerus and tossing them to the floor,

  tearing his huge fat enclustered vastus muscles and hamstrings from his femur

  as Damon tried to force a scream up

  through his blood-clogged larynx.

  Damon passed out from the pain, blood

  loss, and shock of seeing his body so

  recklessly unmade, yet Joe continued to rip into him with the scalpel and his own bare hands until large hunks of warm wet meat lay al over the floor around the

  bed.

  The room was now a gruesome abattoir.

  The sterile white wal s and ceiling ran red with Damon's depleted life. The

  mattress upon which his savaged

  carcass lay was a blood-drenched

  sponge that squished beneath their

  weight, leaking more blood down onto

  the tiled floor. Joe's anger began to ebb. He stared down at the ruin he'd made of the corpulent pederast and felt muscles uncontracting and relaxing for the first time al over his body, as if he'd been flexing for years and hadn't been aware of it. Joe let out a long sigh and it felt as if he'd been holding his breath for a

  decade. He stabbed the scalpel down

  through the pederast's rib cage,

  impaling his heart, and then climbed off the bed, continuing to stare at the corpse as it voided its body fluids.

  The floor was littered with flesh. Blood poured from the mattress in long sheets, covering the linoleum in a shimmering

  blanket of burgundy-wine red. Joe had

  never seen so much blood come from a

  single person. It was as if al the blood the child kil er had sucked from his

  victims' wounds had stil been in him and had only now been freed. He imagined

  the souls of al the children Damon had consumed pouring out of his bloated

  corpse on that endless river of dark

  plasma.

  Joe stared intently at Damon's face as

  the pederast's life fled his mutilated

  carcass, hoping to see some sign that

  the curse was over. He half expected the man's body to col apse into ash like the vampires in the movies, but instead the fat freak simply expired. Joe studied the man's features for a while longer,

  recal ing the long hours he'd spent

  cringing in a damp basement as that

  pudgy face leered at him from behind a

  mask of Joe's own blood. He didn't

  know for sure if the curse had left him, but he had no desire at al to feast on Damon Trent's fat vulgar corpse. He

  walked out of the room, quietly shutting the door behind him.

  Part III

  Forty-one

  Joseph was drenched head to toe in

  Damon's blood. The lab coat he'd

  appropriated now looked like a butcher's smock. It was plastered to his skin, the blood already beginning to coagulate.

  Joe had to peel himself out of it, as if he were removing the skin from a

  particularly wet and juicy piece of

  tropical fruit. Blood-soaked meat always reminded Joe of mangoes and ripe

  peaches, when you opened it up and it

  flooded your mouth with its sweet nectar. Joe thought once more about Alicia as

  he dropped the lab coat to the floor. She had been the sweetest fruit of al . He had to find a way in to see her. But they

  wouldn't let him anywhere near her

  saturated in blood, especial y once the two corpses were located.

  The polo shirt Joe had been wearing

  underneath the lab coat had already

  been red, but now the darker, truer red from Damon's arteries stood out clearly against it and even more so against his blue jeans. Somehow he had to get a

  fresh lab jacket or something to cover

  his clothing.

  Joe walked into the bathroom and

  stared into the mirror. Even though he

  had not fed, his face was covered in

  blood from where Damon's severed

  veins and arteries had sprayed him as

  he worked the meat free from his bones. The eyes that stared out at him from that grisly crimson mask were feral, the eyes of some ravenous beast. Joe ran water

  into his cupped palms and splashed it

  over his face again and again. He

  lathered his arms, face, and hair with

  liquid hand soap and washed it away

  until his handsome Clark Kent face

  reemerged from that gory fright mask.

  He took a deep breath and watched as

  al his features settled down, the beast within him slipping away, leaving him

  alone in the bathroom of a hospital room with a child murderer's eviscerated

  corpse bleeding out on the mattress and his own clothes stil dripping with blood.

  "I've got to get the hel out of here." He slipped out of the bathroom and out

  of Damon's room, casting one last look

  at his mutilated corpse before shutting the door behind him.

  "Rot in hel , you son of a bitch." Before anyone could notice his grisly

  hulking form tracking blood across the

  immaculate hal way, Joe slipped into
<
br />   another room directly across from where Damon's corpse lay bleeding out onto

  the floor in great bucket-loads. He was lucky to find an obese elderly woman

  lying catatonic in her hospital bed. With considerable effort, straining beneath the weight of rol s of bil owy fat, Joe rol ed her over so that he could remove her

  hospital-issue dressing gown.

  Suppurating bedsores had leaked their

  pus onto the mattress, forming a gooey

  adhesive that stuck her loose, moldy

  flesh to the even moldier bed. There was a wet, sticky, ripping sound when Joe

  peeled her off the bedspread, leaving

  bits of her flesh stil clinging to it. The back of the dressing gown was

  caked with pus and gore and stained

  with urine and feces. Joe peeled it off of her. In this filthy gown he would fit right in. Joe faked a lumbering stagger as he

  made his way down the hal . There was

  an emaciated teenager with tufts of hair missing and black scabs al over his

  scalp where the hair had been yanked

  out by the roots. He staggered down the hal in a similar fashion just ahead, and Joe caught up to the disoriented youth

  and linked arms with him. Together they made their way up the hal toward the

  reception desk.

  The kid smel ed as bad as the dressing

  gown Joe was wearing and his eyes

  were dul and flat as if his mind had long ago fled and his body was merely

  fol owing a preprogrammed ritual back

  and forth through the antiseptic hal ways. The only indication that he was at al

  aware of Joe's presence at his side

  were the occasional giggles, his left

  hand firmly planted on Joe's rock-hard

  buttocks, and the erection growing

  beneath his gown.

  The guard was no longer in front of the elevator. The nurse was not at her station either. Joe heard a radio squawk and an excited voice shouting breathlessly.

  "We've got a 187 on the third floor!

  Officer needs assistance!"

  Joe stumbled down the hal and looked

  down the adjoining hal way where he had left the janitor's body. He could see that the blood had seeped out into the

  hal way, which had no doubt alerted

  someone that there might be something

  amiss in the closet. The door was open

  and two corrections officers were

  kneeling in the blood, leaning over the body as if there were anything they could do for him now. Three nurses, including the one from the front desk, stood

  around gasping in horror and chatting in excited whispers as they peered in at

  the janitor's corpse, unable to resist their own morbid curiosity.

  The guard was looking up and down the

  hal , searching for something out of the ordinary. A suspect. Joe clutched the

  haggard teen tighter as they continued

  past. The guard had luckily looked right past him, assuming he was just another

  patient. As soon as they reached the

  other side of the hal and were out of

  sight of the guards and nurses, Joe let go of his teenaged camouflage and

  sprinted for the elevator. He pressed the down button and the door opened right

  away. The hal way was stil empty when

  Joe slipped quickly inside the elevator. The mauled and murdered janitor was

  apparently too fascinating for the guards to tear themselves away.

  Joe tried to catch his breath as he rode the elevator back down to the first floor. Adrenaline dumped into his

  bloodstream, lighting his nerves on fire. His muscles were bulging through his

  clothes as if he were about to burst out of them like the Incredible Hulk. He

  looked completely insane. If the doors

  opened right now, anyone with half a

  brain would know he was a kil er. He had to calm down.

  The elevator descended to the first floor and Joe closed his eyes and took a

  deep breath. He let it out slow and wil ed his muscles to relax. He let the

  satisfaction of final y avenging the loss of his childhood seep into his body.

  When the doors opened he was the

  picture of serenity.

  Hospital guards and policemen were

  running everywhere. Joe slipped

  unnoticed from the elevator. By taking

  Damon's advice and waiting until half the hospital staff was on lunch break, the big musclebound predator had found just the right amount of wiggle room to get in

  and out of the hospital's detention wing unnoticed. Now he had to do something

  even harder. He had to get out of there with Alicia.

  Alicia was stil in Emergency fol owing her surgery. Her chart showed her listed in critical condition. Joe slipped into her room and knelt down beside her bed.

  Her chest was covered in bandages.

  There was a morphine drip feeding into

  a pulsating vein behind the elbow on her left arm.

  "My God. What have I done to you?" There was no way he could take her out

  of the hospital in this condition without causing her further pain or death. He

  would have to leave her.

  "I'l be back for you. Don't worry. I won't leave you like this."

  Joe thought he saw a smile creep

  across her face at the sound of his

  voice.

  He removed his bloody smock and

  walked out the front door of the hospital as police officers began to swarm the

  place. He stalked across the parking lot and slipped behind the wheel of his van. Minutes later he was back at the motel

  listening to the prostitute next door get her head banged against the wal by her latest trick.

  Forty-two

  After driving for hours without stopping, Professors Locke and Douglas pul ed

  up outside the state hospital only to find it swarming with police and news media. They were too late.

  They parked the car in a parking lot

  across the street from the hospital and walked across the four lanes of slowmoving traffic, making their way through the crowds of onlookers and

  newshounds to get to the police officers. Professor Locke ran up to the yel ow

  crime scene tape, ducked under it, and

  seized the nearest officer. Professor

  Douglas was right behind him.

  Douglas was right behind him.

  "You there! Officer! What happened here?"

  "Who the hel are you? Get back behind that barricade! "

  "I'm Professor John Locke and this is Dr. Martin Douglas. We're here looking for a murderer."

  "Wel , take your pick. There's about a hundred of them locked up in that

  hospital. Now please step back."

  "What's going on here?"

  "Nothing that concerns you. Now get the hel back behind that tape!" The

  exasperated officer be gan forcibly

  pushing the two professors back into the crowd.

  "I need to know what happened. Has there been a murder? Has someone

  been arrested?"

  "If you don't step back, your ass is going to get arrested!"

  "But we may know something that could help you," Professor Douglas spoke up.

  "I'm real y not interested in what you know."

  "Oh, but I am." Detective Montgomery stepped forward, flashing his gold

  shield. The faces of the two professors fel in defeat.

  "Is your captain around?" he asked the flabbergasted patrolman.

  "Uh, yeah. Who are you again?"

  "My name is Detective Montgomery of San Francisco Homicide. I'm here

  investigating a series of murders that I believe may involve your fair city. I also believe these professors may be

/>   material witnesses. Now, would you

  please do me a favor and arrest these

  two gentleman for withholding evidence

  and interfering with the course of an

  investigation and whatever else you can think up, then take me to see whoever's running this show?"

  "I'd be happy to," the officer said, glaring at the two professors with an everwidening grin.

  "We haven't done a thing wrong! You can't detain us!"

  "Yeah? Wel , we'l see about that. I want them to be available for questioning.

  There's a kil er on the loose and I think they know where he is."

  Another officer took Montgomery to

  meet the captain in charge of the

  investigation. He was a stocky, middleaged man of medium height, with thick, weathered skin from too much time in

  the sun. His eyes were hard but jovial. He looked like an old cowboy or

  farmhand, like he would have been just

  as at home on a horse as in a squad car.

  "Captain Marshal . This is Detective Montgomery of San Francisco

  Homicide."

  They shook hands and leaned back

  against the captain's vehicle.

  "So what brings you al the way up from San Francisco?"

  "I'm looking for a man named Joseph Miles. He's kil ed two people that we

  know of and he's going to kil a lot more if we don't stop him. I have reason to

  believe that he might be here in your

  town and that he might be responsible

  for whatever happened here tonight. Uh

  ... what exactly did happen?"

  "A janitor was kil ed. He had his throat ripped out. The ME says it looks like his larynx was bitten through and the bite

  marks look human. We've also got a

  dead inmate. He was carved up,

  vivisected. There's pieces of him al over his room."

  "Are there any pieces ... uh ... missing? I mean ... is there any evidence of

  cannibalism?"

  "Not as far as we can tel ." The captain's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Maybe you'd better tel me what you know about al this."

  "Unfortunately, I don't know a hel of a lot, but the two professors that I fol owed up here might. They're with a couple of your officers right now awaiting questioning. I have a feeling they know a lot more than they're tel ing. One of them used to be a profiler with the FBI. At the very least he may have a theory."

  "I think we'd better go talk to them then. Oh, and there's something else. You said your boy was a cannibal?"