“Why?” Jay demanded.
The guards exchanged furtive glances. Eric reached around and struck one guard in the face with his fist. Then he jerked his head up by the hair and shoved him back in the seat. “Answer the question!” he snarled. “Why not get out here?”
Moaning in pain, involuntary tears in his eyes from his smashed nose, the man said, “The creatures that prowl the darkness. That’s why there ain’t no more guards than us. Nobody . . . nobody walks out in the dark areas.”
“What creatures, you fool!” Eric shouted.
“Easy, Eric.” Jay twisted in his seat. “I saw some sort of creature out on the blacktop several nights ago. It was hideous. Tiny head, huge shoulders, long arms.”
“One of the breeders,” the guard with his nose still intact said.
“Breeders?” Eric’s question had disgust and contempt in the one word. “You breed them with what?”
“Mister.” The guard’s voice was trembling. “I don’t breed nothing with nobody. I’m just a guard. I check people in, I check people out. Then I go home. Kill me if you want to. Anything would be better than the life we have here.”
“You mean you just take orders?” Eric asked, scorn in his voice.
“Yes sir.”
“Y’all just don’t understand,” broken-nose snuffled.
A loud thump on the hood jerked the men’s eyes to the front. A creature, vaguely resembling a human being, squatted on the hood, its face pressed against the windshield.
“Oh, man!” a guard said. “Don’t open the door. Please don’t open that door! They’re trained to kill. They’ll tear you to pieces. I’ve seen what they can do.”
Eric peered at the creature. “Some similarities to myxedema and cretinism. But that is where it ends. Its skin is neither fat nor soft, and its muscles are definitely not flabby. Ummm,” he purred, staring at the creature.
“Eric!” Jay whispered, pressing back hard against the seat. “This is not a laboratory, and these are not controlled conditions.”
“What?” Eric looked at him. “Oh, yes. Quite.”
The . . . whatever it was, opened its mouth and roared, exposing a top and bottom row of animal-like teeth.
“Fangs,” Eric muttered. “So it isn’t human.”
“Mister!” a guard blurted. “If you’ll just get outta here, I swear to you, I’ll tell you everything I know about this place. I swear to you, I will.”
“We came here after a little girl named Ange,” Jay told him.
“Jay, it’s too late for her. By now, she’s already been to see that thing in there. It’s just too late.”
“If you’ve never seen this . . . thing, how do you know what it can do?”
Tim leaned back in the seat, his face shiny with fear-sweat.
The guard with the busted nose opened his mouth to say something. A huge fist crashed through the glass beside him. A large hairless hand hooked its fingers into the man’s open mouth and twisted. The sounds of bones breaking and crunching were accompanied by the guard’s wild shrieking. The hand jerked; the lower part of the guard’s face disappeared. Blood squirted from severed arteries as the skin from jaw to shoulders was jerked off like the peeling of a banana.
Eric jerked up his sawed-off gun and pulled the trigger, the noise from the blast momentarily deafening the men. The creature on the outside of the car dropped the jaw it was holding as the buckshot took it flush in its face.
The creature on the hood began pounding the glass and jumping up and down, roaring arid screaming in rage.
“Get out of here!” Eric yelled, just as the windshield began spiderwebbing.
Jay cranked the engine and dropped the lever into reverse, slinging the howling creature off the hood to land on the concrete parking lot. Eric leveled the shotgun and shot the creature in the chest, the blast knocking it over.
Outside floodlights were popping on all over the grounds. Jay and Eric could see the shapes of creatures scurrying to free themselves of light and seek the darkness.
In the back seat, Tim was moaning and crying. The guard was still alive, his blood spurting upward in red ribbons with each beat of his heart.
“Somebody’s closed the gates!” Tim wailed. “Oh, no. They’ll torture us to death if they catch us.”
“Shut up, you sniveling Godless bastard!” Eric lashed at him. “Crash the gates, Jay.”
Jay floorboarded the Caddy and roared through the wooden single-board barriers, knocking out a headlight in the process.
Lights from following vehicles popped up behind them.
“They got nothin’ to lose, now,” Tim moaned. “They can’t afford to get found out.”
“Stop at the top of this hill, Jay. You take your side of the car, I’ll take mine. When they get in shotgun range, aim for the windshields.”
The guard with only half a face was burbling and moaning.
Jay slid to a halt and both men jumped out. When the lead car came into range, both men began pulling and pumping.
The car slewed once, then slid around and around in the road, finally turning over. Eric and Jay put their final rounds into the front of the second car, blowing out the windshield. It crashed into the first car.
“Let’s go!” Jay shouted.
Eric paused once to look at the carnage in the still burning headlights of the wrecked cars. One man had been tossed out through the door or windshield; Eric couldn’t tell and really didn’t give a damn. The man had slid on his face on the road, leaving a dark smear for several yards.
“Heathens!” Eric muttered, then got into the car.
Tim was crying helplessly in the midst of gore.
“I want the almighty press to see and film this,” Jay said through clenched teeth.
“Their reactions should be interesting to behold,” Eric replied calmly.
9
With one look Shari and Nick both got sick.
“Film it!” Jim stated flatly. Polite but firm is what they teach at the academy.
“He was in a wreck?” Shari asked, wiping her mouth on her sleeve.
“He had his jaw ripped off by some sort of creature,” Jay said. “At the local hospital compound, which is something else you people should investigate.”
Jay had pulled around to the rear of the house, into the big double garage/storage area. The other cars had been shuffled so that the driveway was blocked.
Shari looked again at the carnage in the Caddy’s interior. Blood still dripped. “What kind of... creature could do this damage?”
Before he could reply, Eric said, “The guard is dead. What shall we do with him?”
Nick was filming the dead man, the camera lights bright in the closed area.
“You can bet the cops will be here before long,” Jim reminded them all.
Jay walked to the edge of his property. “Hey, Milton?”
“What’d you want, asshole?” the old man squalled over the squeaking of his rocker.
“You mind some company on the porch?”
“Oh, Jay!” Father Pat shook his head.
“Why, hell, no! Be kinda nice to have someone else to talk to. My old woman ain’t much for talking; hasn’t been for years.”
“This is grotesque!” Shari objected.
“Stick around, kid,” Jay told her. “Like the saying goes: You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
The guard’s body was carried over to Milton’s porch and placed in the swing.
“Howdy, boy!” Milton hollered. “You like baseball? Stan the Man hit quite a homer last week, didn’t he?”
It had been a couple of decades since Stan the Man had actively played baseball.
“Guess that tells us how long Milton’s been out of it,” Jay noted.
“Incredible!” Shari said.
“Yeah!” Milton yelled. “Me and the boys went up to St. Louis last month. Saw ol’ Stan smack one clean out of the park.”
In the house, Kelly and Jenny smiled at each other. In the living room, Dev
a and Piper smiled at one another.
Flashing and whirling lights from city police cars illuminated the night as the prowl cars slid to a stop in front of the Clute house.
“All right!” Craig yelled. “This time, Clute, you’ve stepped in it.”
Jay locked the door to the garage and walked out to meet the chief of police.
“What do you want, Craig?”
“You’re under arrest, Clute!”
“On what charges?” Jim asked.
“You stay out of this. This ain’t none of your concern.”
“I am officially taking over this investigation,” Jim informed him. “You may take your men and leave.”
“Can he do that?” a cop whispered.
“I think so,” another cop returned the whisper.
“You’re interfering in city business, Klein,” Craig blustered.
“State business. You want to force the issue, chief?”
The cops heard the snick-shuck of rounds being chambered in shotguns. It was not a very comfortable sensation.
“You know what you’ve done,” Craig said to Jim. “You’ve left us no choice.”
“You’re in a bind, chief. Either way you go, it’s right down the toilet for you. The TV station in St. Louis knows their crew is here. No matter what you did with Piper’s car, her friends in St. Louis and her agent in New York City know she’s here. My people know I’m here. That many deaths could not be easily explained away. Think about it.”
“And you’re forgetting that I helped build the old OSS,” General Douglas said from out of the night. “And I was a company man for a good many years. Don’t you think for an instant that I haven’t called the company and told them where I am and my suspicions about this hideous place.”
Craig popped what looked like a couple of antacid tablets in his mouth. He chewed and then smiled. “Well, boys, I reckon what we got here is a Mexican standoff, ain’t it?”
Nick was not filming, but Shari had a tape recorder rolling.
Jay and his group said nothing. Shari would have liked to say something, but she didn’t know what to say. She was, for the first time in her short but successful broadcasting career, speechless.
“Y’all cain’t go nowheres, and we can’t do nothing,” Craig said. “So well just let . . . nature take its course.”
Chief Craig and his cops wheeled around and left the yard, getting into their cars. Had any of them looked toward the Milton house, they would have seen the guard, sitting in the swing, his eyes wide open and staring in shocked death.
* * *
Tim Bickhan knew very little about what went on inside the hospital buildings. But he did say that the chief of psychiatry, a Dr. Stoner, was unhappy about something going on. He had tried to leave the area several times. He had been blocked from doing so by people from something Tim called The Committee.
What was The Committee?
Didn’t know. Only that Ellis Fletcher and Parnell and some other local hotshots were on it.
Jay left the living room to walk outside. He stood in the front yard. He could hear Milton rocking and squeaking and talking to the dead guard. The screen door opened. Jay turned around. Amy was walking out to join him. Just as she left the steps and was on the walk, a woman and child stepped out from beside the house. Looked like Deva and Jenny.
“Amy,” Jay said.
“I’m scared, Jay.” He noticed she had something in her right hand. “They’re acting funny in the house.”
“Who?”
“While you were gone, Deva and Jenny . . .”
Something crashed into the back of Jay’s head. He thought he heard Amy screaming, but he couldn’t be sure. Through his pain and gathering blackness, he thought he saw a little girl dancing around him as he was falling.
* * *
Jay had lost all track of time. He was very confused and his head ached. He told himself to open his eyes; but that seemed to be too difficult a task to accomplish.
Finally, with an effort, he opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. A very white ceiling. It took yet another monumental effort to raise his hands to his face. He rubbed his face with his fingers. Well, at least I’m not strapped down, he thought.
His finger rasped on a stubble of beard. I’ve been here awhile. A day at least. Maybe two.
It was painful to sit up, but he managed it. With both feet on the floor, he looked around him. And he did not like what he saw. Not any of it.
The walls were covered with what looked like white, heavily padded canvas or rubber. No table or chair in the room. A narrow bunk that was bolted to the floor. The floor. It sloped slightly, with a drain set in the center. The floor was soft and pliable under his feet; some sort of synthetic material, easily hosed down. There was a very solid-looking commode against a wall, and an equally solid-looking sink. Both looked to be made of steel.
“No!” Jay muttered. It came out more like a croak.
He looked at the closed door. He’d bet a thousand bucks that door was made of steel. About three quarters of the way up from the floor, there was a slide panel. Just below that, a slot that looked like it might be used to pass a food tray through.
Jay looked at his feet. No shoes. His trousers were white, as was his shirt. He had no belt and nothing in his pockets. He wondered if his future held the same: nothing.
He stood up and promptly sat back down. He was very dizzy.
He sat still for a moment, letting the feeling pass.
He looked at his arms. He could see the marks left by needles. Drugged, he thought. Or worse. He chose not to dwell on the latter thought.
Piper and Kelly. Deva and Jenny. Jim. Amy. The others. The names popped one by one into his brain. He wondered what had happened to them. He was so confused. He couldn’t think properly. He tried to think back; to reconstruct what had happened.
He could remember nothing.
Then, slowly, events began returning to him. He could remember a car – no, a van. The ride to the hospital complex. He could remember a man, not very tall, and his protesting voice.
“No. No. I will not do it. I told you before. You brought me here by lies and deception. I want no more of it.”
Amy! She was taken with him. But she’d been unconscious – no, just groggy. And one of the men in the van had ripped her clothing from her and raped her during the short ride.
Jay remembered a room; his clothing being taken and being dressed in what he had on now. Two big orderlies. And he could remember one of the orderlies taking Amy like a dog, on the floor, and other men laughing as the young woman screamed.
It got hazy after that. But Jay did remember his old high school buddy, Parnell, facing him and slapping him.
“You’re a fool, Jay. An arrogant fool.”
“This is kidnapping,” Jay remembered telling Parnell, his face stinging from the slap.
“Oh, no, Jay. Not at all. You see ...”
But Jay didn’t see at all. He couldn’t remember what else had happened.
Sitting on the bunk, Jay tried to pull together what had happened after that. But it would not come to him.
Jay recalled someone screaming. Awful, frightened screams.
Nothing else. A total blank.
He looked up at a slight noise. The screened panel in the door had opened. Eyes were staring in at him.
“How do you feel, Mr. Clute?” The voice was vaguely familiar.
“How do you think I feel?”
“I am sorry, Mr. Clute. Your . . . predicament is not of my doing or choosing. I’m practically a prisoner here myself.”
“If that’s the case, maybe we can work something out.”
“Would that we could, sir. I’m not even supposed to be talking to you. Your food tray will be arriving shortly. Eat nothing but the bread. Please believe me.”
The paneling slid closed.
“Stoner!” A hard but familiar-sounding voice drifted through the door. “What are you doing in this ward?”
“Seeing to my patients.” Stoner’s reply was short. “Am I still allowed to do that?”
“You just keep away from Clute’s cell.”
“Whatever.”
Seconds passed. The food flap opened and a tray of food slid in. “Din-din, Jay. Come and get it.” The voice giggled.
Jay recognized it. Gordy Matthews.
Before Jay could say anything, someone began screaming hideously. The horrible howling sent waves of chills racing up and down Jay’s spine.
Trying to block out the shrieking, Jay took the tray to his bunk. He picked up the spoon. Rubber. He dropped it back into the tray, right in the middle of the mashed potatoes and gravy.
He looked at the bread. Two thick slices of whole wheat bread. He’d take Stoner’s warning to heart and eat that; flush the rest of the slop down the commode.
Slowly, savoring each bite, for he was very hungry, Jay ate the bread. He went to the sink and drank deeply from the cold water tap and washed his face. He dumped the rest of the slop down the commode.
He went back to his bunk, feeling somewhat better, both mentally and physically. But he was worried about Piper and Kelly and all the others – especially Amy. He wondered if she was in the same ward.
The screaming in the complex had died away. It was very quiet.
He stretched out on the bunk and closed his eyes. He did not plan on falling asleep, but he did, although his slumber was not deep.
But as he dreamed, more blanks were filled in his memory gaps. A man, a creature, a snarling beast, a pulsing mass, a metamorphosis that was too fast for him to follow. Dark laughter; sinister – no evil. Then the changing slowed. It was in human form, but very old.
Jay formed the impression that the thing was as old as –
Time!
* * *
Voices brought him awake. He kept his eyes closed and tried to even out his breathing as his ears picked up the sounds of the steel door being unlocked.
“He’s out cold,” a man said, his voice filled with contempt. “The stupid bastard ate everything on his tray. Enough medication in that slop to knock out a horse.”
Another voice laughed. “Yeah. A couple more days like this and he’ll be as easy to handle as the rest of them.”
Toy Cemetery Page 19