Out of the Night

by Robin T. Popp

  “Again,” she shouted, seeing the creature stumble back. Mac fired a second time, but the shot went wild. He grew too heavy to hold and slid to the ground.

  His ashen face was in stark contrast to the blood covering his neck and clothes. His eyes were closed, and his gun rested in a grip gone slack. Fear and anger raged within her and she grabbed the gun, turning it on the creature. A Texas girl, she knew a hell of a lot more about guns than she’d led Mac to believe.

  Firing one-handed would be difficult, but not impossible, and there was no way she was letting go of the light. She pulled the trigger. At this range, the creature was a hard target to miss, and she didn’t stop until the clicking of an empty weapon finally registered.

  The creature lay on the ground, unmoving. She knew she should check to make sure it was dead, but Mac was at her feet, bleeding to death—if he wasn’t already dead.

  Ears ringing from the sound of the gun, she cast the beam of the lamp over the creature one last time to make sure it wasn’t moving. She didn’t want to put down the lamp, but she couldn’t pull Mac out of the cage one-handed. She wasn’t sure she could pull him out at all. Tucking the gun into the back of her pants, she found the trigger-lock on the lamp and laid it outside the cage on the ground, shining in.

  Hurrying back inside, she grabbed Mac by the ankles. He was almost too heavy for her to drag, but there was no way she was leaving him there. As soon as she had his body out of the cage, she slammed the door shut and activated the lock.

  There was no time to relax. With effort, she ripped off the sleeve of her shirt and wrapped the material around Mac’s neck, hoping to staunch the flow of blood until she could get him inside. Next, she lifted Mac’s wrist and felt for a pulse. Thankfully, she found one. It was weak, but at least he was alive, though he wouldn’t be for long if she didn’t do something. He’d lost so much blood, it would take a miracle to save him.

  Lanie had no idea where the nearest medical facility was and knew that even if she called for medical assistance, they couldn’t get there any sooner than the team already on its way. She’d have to treat Mac herself.

  Remembering the medical supplies they’d found inside the building, Lanie made up her mind. He was too big for her to use a fireman’s carry, so stooping behind him, she squatted until she could leverage Mac into a sitting position and slipped her arms underneath his armpits. Locking her hands together across his chest, she stood and began the strenuous task of dragging him into the building, keeping up a constant dialogue. “Hang in there, Mac.” “You’re going to be okay.” “Stay with me.”

  It felt like it took forever, and Lanie was sure that every second cost Mac a little more of his life. Finally, she managed to drag him through the halls to the lab, and there, her strength ran out. Unable to lift him onto the gurney, she left him on the floor and set to work gathering the supplies she needed, giving a silent prayer of thanks when she found the collection of bagged blood in the refrigerator.

  She didn’t know Mac’s blood type, but knew if she found type “O,” the universal donor, then it wouldn’t matter. For a change, luck was with her. Mixed in with an assortment of animal blood, she found several units of human blood, types “AB” and “O.”

  She crossed to the sink and filled it with hot water. Then she placed the bags of “O” into the basin to warm while she searched the drawers and cabinets for the rest of the supplies she’d need. She was about to execute a very crude blood transfusion that under different circumstances she would never have considered attempting without a physician’s guidance, but she knew Mac would be long dead by the time other help arrived. She was his only chance.

  Praying she wasn’t about to speed his way to death, she removed the warmed blood from the sink and set to work finding a vein. Working carefully, she inserted the large IV needle, secured it in place with tape, and then opened the clamp on the tubing. Almost immediately, the blood began to flow into his body.

  Lanie bit her lip, knowing there were so many things that could go wrong and he might still die. As she waited for the first bag to empty, she cleaned away the blood on his neck and saw there wasn’t a gaping wound as she’d feared, only two very large punctures. Just like the other bodies, she thought, except these holes were bigger and spaced farther apart.

  She treated the wounds with antibiotic ointment, covered them with gauze, and taped it all in place.

  When the first bag was empty, she clamped off the IV, hooked up a second bag, and started over again.

  All through the night she watched over him, bathing his head, replacing each spent bag of blood with a fresh one. By early morning, it seemed that his breathing was steadier and the color was returning to his complexion.

  Sitting on the floor next to him, Lanie finally allowed herself to relax. Placing both the guard’s loaded gun and Mac’s empty gun on the floor beside her, she leaned back against the wall and let her eyes close.

  “Miss Weber? Wake up, ma’am.”

  Lanie’s eyes snapped open at the sound, her hand reaching automatically for a gun that was no longer there. Alarmed, she blinked several times to bring the face of the man bending over her into focus. “Who are . . . ?” Her voice cracked, and she had to clear her throat before trying again. “Who are you?”

  “Captain Sanchez, United States Navy, ma’am. I’m a physician.” He made a show of setting her missing guns off to the side. “I’m here to help. Admiral Winslow sent us.”

  As the cogwheels of her mind finally started to turn, she nodded and relaxed.

  “Are you injured? Hurt in any way?” Dr. Sanchez asked, turning to the black bag open at his side and pulling out a stethoscope to slip around his neck.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Good. Maybe you need some more sleep, though?” He didn’t wait for her answer, but knelt and began running his hands along Mac’s arms and legs, feeling gingerly for broken bones.

  “This is Captain Knight?” He glanced at her and when she nodded, he slipped the earpieces of the scope into his ears and listened to Mac’s heart and lungs.

  “Did you say Captain Knight?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Captain Michael Knight. Retired, I believe.”

  His comment was followed by a moment of silence as he continued to listen. Next, he pulled the stethoscope from his ears and checked Mac’s pulse while keeping track of the time on his wristwatch. From the outer room came the faint sounds of men shouting orders.

  Seemingly satisfied, Dr. Sanchez lowered the wrist he’d been holding. Shifting his position, he peeled the bandages off Mac’s neck. “Are these the only injuries?”

  Lanie nodded. “He was attacked by a . . .” She hesitated. How could she tell him that the statue had come to life? “I don’t know what kind of animal it was. It pierced his jugular vein, I think. Anyway, he lost a lot of blood.”

  “What happened to the creature?”

  “I shot it.”

  He raised an eyebrow and gave her an appreciative look before turning his attention to the empty bags of blood and discarded tubing on the floor. “You gave him a transfusion?”

  She nodded. “I didn’t know what else to do. I thought he was going to die.”

  “Well, he’s not out of the woods yet. How’d you know what to do?”

  “I’m an EMT with the fire department.”

  He nodded and then, apparently finished with his initial examination of Mac, he turned his attention to her. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

  “Yes—just really tired.”

  The physician gave her a warm smile, reminding her of her father. Since arriving, she’d been too distracted to think of him, and suddenly the well of emotion she’d kept tamped down for so long threatened to bubble forth and overwhelm her. Dr. Sanchez must have seen it in her face because he stood and helped her to her feet.

  “You should get some rest. I’ll take over here.” He held on to her hand while she worked the stiffness out of her leg muscles.

  “Lieutenant Da
vis!”

  A young man in his mid-twenties ran into the room at the doctor’s shout. “Escort Miss Weber to one of the bedrooms so she can rest.”

  The man nodded and then led her out of the room. When they would have gone left to the residence rooms, Lanie stopped.

  “I’ve got a bag in the Jeep.” She started for the front entrance, but the lieutenant stopped her.

  “You don’t want to go that way, ma’am. I’ll get it for you after I show you to a room.”

  He led her down the back hallway, stopping at the first door.

  “Do I have to stay in this room, specifically?”

  Lieutenant Davis gave her a puzzled look. “Beg pardon, ma’am?”

  Lanie smiled. “I mean, could I perhaps stay in that room?” She’d noticed the room in their earlier search and now pointed to the third door on the other side.

  He gave a final look at the door before them, shrugged, and dropped his hand to his side. “Yes, ma’am. My orders were only to take you to one of the rooms to rest. I don’t suppose it matters which room you take.”

  She rewarded him with a smile. “Thanks. I think I’d prefer that one, then.” She followed him to the other door and waited while he did a quick walk-through of the room.

  “All clear, ma’am,” he said, turning to her. “Try to get some sleep, if you can. We’ve got men all over the place; you’re safe. If you need anything, just shout. I’ll be posted outside.”

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded and started to leave, but stopped at the door. “Ma’am, if you don’t mind my asking, why this particular room?”

  She looked around at the mix of strange and familiar items lying about the place and felt her throat muscles tighten with emotion. “It was my father’s.”

  The young man gave her a sympathetic nod, stepped through the door, and closed it, leaving her alone. For a long time, she stayed in one spot, slowly turning as her eyes traveled across the room. Books were piled on virtually every available surface, including the floor. Most of the piles contained research books, but there were several stacks of popular fiction as well. Her father had been an avid reader.

  She didn’t know how long she stood there, but it must have been several minutes before a knock at the door startled her from her thoughts. It was the lieutenant, delivering her bag from the Jeep. Seeing it bolstered her spirits a little, and she set it on the bed before slowly wandering about the room, continuing to take it all in.

  Against the far wall was the desk her father had used. Several research volumes with yellow sticky notes bookmarking various pages sat to one side while magazines and printed articles littered the other. In the middle, a pile of used legal pads and mechanical pencils rested, as if he had just set them aside and was planning to return. Lanie trailed a finger across the surface of one of the pages, smiling when she spotted spilled pipe tobacco on the desk. She pinched the finely chopped leaves between her fingers and brought them to her nose to smell.

  She used to hate the smell of his smoking, begging him to at least try the aromatic blends if he had to smoke at all. He always refused, arguing that the blends that smelled good tasted bad.

  She rubbed her fingers together, letting the tobacco fall back to the desk. How she would give anything now to smell the acrid smoke from his pipe one more time.

  Something tickled her cheek and when she reached up to brush it away, she found tears. She hadn’t even realized she was crying, but once the waterworks started, she couldn’t turn them off. She cried for both her parents, brought down too early in their lives, and for all the men here who’d died. She cried for herself, so alone now, and for Mac, who’d risked his life saving hers.

  Finally, too exhausted to cry anymore, she crawled into her father’s bed. She closed her eyes, remembering all the nights she’d sat curled up in a favorite chair. She’d read a book while he worked at his desk nearby, writing in his journal and smoking his pipe. The faint odor of his tobacco clung to the sheets and pillow, so she turned her head into it, letting the familiar scent envelop her and lull her to sleep.

  * * *

  Lanie woke feeling refreshed and confused. It took only a second, though, to recall where she was and everything that had happened. It was enough to bring her fully awake.

  She strained to hear sounds from outside her room—something to indicate that she wasn’t the only living creature still in the facility—that the monster, which had killed so many, hadn’t returned while she slept and slaughtered her rescuers. All was quiet.

  Throwing back her covers, she walked to the door and listened. She heard no sound. Because she couldn’t remain in the room forever, she took a deep breath and placed her hand on the knob, turned it, and pulled open the door.

  When nothing rushed to attack her, she stepped out into the hallway.

  “Everything okay, ma’am?” Lieutenant Davis stood a few feet away, looking at her with polite concern.

  “Yes.” She gazed up and down the hallway. It was otherwise empty and appeared almost boring in its lack of ornamentation or activity. Satisfied, she turned to go back into the room, stopping in the doorway to look at Lieutenant Davis once more. “Did you stand outside my door all day?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” If he’d found guarding her door boring, tiring, or even insulting, he gave no indication of it. She suspected that was as much a credit to his personality as to his training, and she was grateful.

  “Thank you.” She gave him a smile to show her appreciation. “Would you happen to know how Mac—I mean, Captain Knight—is doing?”

  He pressed the mike at his throat and spoke. “Doc, this is Davis. Ms. Weber would like to know how the captain is doing.”

  She watched as he stood there, his eyes focused elsewhere as if distracted, and then he nodded. “Roger.”

  Then he turned to her. “The captain is sleeping, but the doc thinks he’s going to make it.”

  A wave of relief washed over her, making her almost giddy. Not wanting to embarrass herself in front of Lieutenant Davis, she thanked him again and went back into the room.

  Then she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and gasped. She’d had bad hair and makeup days before, but this set an all-time new low. Digging in her duffel bag for her toiletry case, she hurried into the bathroom and showered. Afterward, she felt almost human again. As she took the time to fix her hair, apply a little makeup, and put in her contacts, she argued with herself that she wasn’t doing this to impress Mac, who, other than saving her life, had treated her indifferently ever since she’d met him. She was doing this—just because.

  Finding a fresh change of clothes, she considered burning the ones she’d arrived in and tossed them into the corner, pending a final decision. When she was finished dressing, she stared around the room, somewhat at a loss as to what to do now. Something she’d remembered before falling asleep tickled the back of her mind and she reached for the memory, finally grasping it. Her father had always kept a private journal, so somewhere in this room, she might find her father’s last recorded thoughts.

  She began with a search through the piles of books on the desk, but the dark brown leather journal wasn’t among them. Next she turned her attention to the dresser and then to the small closet. After her first hurried search yielded nothing, she stepped back and surveyed the room, trying to imagine her father after a hard day, coming back to his room, anxious to fill the pages of his private journal with everything he’d learned.

  While the desk seemed a logical place to work, he’d want to be someplace where he could hide his notes from prying eyes. Her father would have kept an ongoing record of his findings on the computer in the lab for the government, but he was still old school and didn’t completely trust computers—or the government. His private thoughts and theories would have been recorded in the journal.

  Lanie also knew that he never wrote in the journal without smoking, so she scanned the room, locating each ashtray. The one by the big easy chair in the room caught her att
ention. She hurried to it. A book called Ancient Roman Times rested on the side table beside the ashtray. A bookmark poked out the top at the last page her father had read. Lanie ignored it as she searched under the cushions of the chair. Nothing. Next she examined the pile of books stacked beside the chair, to see if the journal was one of them, but again, she came away with nothing. Finally, her eyes returned to the large volume on the table. It was thick enough . . .

  She smiled as she lifted the front cover. There, set inside a cut-out section, lay the leatherbound volume.

  Sitting down, she began to read.

  March 6: I have arrived at the Taribu research facility. My excitement knows no limit. Never in my lifetime did I hope to verify the existence of El Chupacabra, the legendary goat-sucker. Now, thanks to the government’s spectacular discovery, I have two specimens to study. Oh, if only I could share this find with Lanie.

  Surprise and remorse filled her. She understood all too well what such a find would have meant to him. A life’s dream come true. She hurried to read the next entry.

  March 7: I have finished my initial examination of the chupas. One is much larger than the other and I believe it to be an adult, while the smaller one must be very young. At this time, I have no way of telling male from female, nor can I ascertain the relationship between the two creatures. As they were captured together, however, I suspect them to be an adult female and her offspring.

  The creatures appear much as described in reported sightings. They are gray-skinned with a round head, large glowing red eyes, a slightly elongated muzzle with two fangs (approx. three inches in length), and a long tubular tongue. Its preferred prey is domestic livestock, which it hunts at night, piercing the throat and sucking the blood through its tongue.

  The adult stands at about five feet while the younger creature is not quite two feet. It has powerful hind legs that enable it to leap great distances and heights. All four limbs end in sharp three-toed claws, and there is a single row of fins running down its back.