Creature (42 page)

It wouldn’t come from either of the guards at his side—too much risk of the bullet penetrating him and slicing on into the guard on the other side. But if they lost the rear window of the wagon, who would ever care?

The wagon had slowed as it approached the gates, but the driver pressed a button on a control attached to the visor of the car and the gates swung wide, then immediately began closing again as they passed through. The car sped up, veering to the left to head around to the back of the building.

If he was going to have a chance at all, it would be when the car came to a stop and one of the guards at his sides got out. Unless there was a garage inside the building here, as there was at TarrenTech.

“Jesus!” The word exploded from the mouth of the guard behind the wheel, and the man in the passenger seat jumped with surprise, then glared at the driver.

“Goddamn it,” he began, but the driver ignored him, slamming on the brakes, and pointing ahead.

“What the hell’s going on?” he asked. “What the hell is that?”

Blake sat up straight, peering between the two guards in the front seat.

Twenty yards ahead, standing in the driveway and staring
at the car as if it wasn’t certain what it was seeing, was a creature such as Blake had never seen before.

It looked like some kind of strange evolutionary relic, some odd dead-end species that was neither man nor ape. It crouched down on its haunches, its head bobbing back and forth as if it were having difficulty focusing its eyes on the automobile.

The car screeched to a stop, and for a moment, as all five of its occupants stared at the strange half-man half-beast in the driveway, there was dead silence. As the driver started to speak, they heard a shout from the building. Seconds later Marty Ames burst out of one of the side doors, Marjorie Jackson right behind him. The creature in the road swung around, its eyes fixing on Ames. Suddenly it rose to its full height, a howl of fury bursting from its throat.

“Christ,” the driver breathed. “It’s going for Ames!”

He jammed the emergency brake on, then jerked at the seat belt with one hand as he shoved the front door open with the other. Then he was out of the car, his gun already out of its holster. Dropping to his knee, he grasped the pistol with both hands, braced it against the hood of the car, and squeezed the trigger.

The creature hesitated as the searing-hot bullet sliced through the flesh of its thigh, and then bellowed once more. For a split-second it couldn’t seem to make up its mind which way to turn, then it headed toward Ames once more.

“Shoot it!” Ames shouted. “For Christ’s sake, kill it!”

Marjorie Jackson had run in the other direction at the creature’s approach, and managed to flee around the building. Ames was alone now, pressed against the building. Watching Randy Stevens charging toward him, he recognized the same fury in Randy’s eyes that he’d seen only moments ago in Jeff LaConner’s. He wanted to run, wanted to turn away and flee back into the building, but his legs refused to obey the commands of his brain, and he stood where he was, frozen in panic.

Another shot rang out, and Randy hesitated again, staggering to the left. He dropped to the ground and his head
swung around as if looking for some unseen assailant that was jabbing at him with an invisible weapon.

All the guards were out of the car now, and Blake saw his opportunity. He scrambled out of the backseat on the side away from the building and broke into a sprint, hurling himself toward the fence that surrounded the property.

It wasn’t much, but it was a chance. If he could scramble over the fence while the guards were still occupied with the nightmarish creature in the yard, perhaps he could get away.

Two more shots rang out, but Blake ignored them, concentrating on the fence, his legs pumping. He was only thirty yards from it now, then twenty.

Another shot rang out, and this time he saw a puff of dirt and grass rise up ahead of him and to the right. One of the guards was shooting at him now, and he dodged to the left, then ducked back to the right. When he was still five yards from the fence, another bullet struck the earth ahead of him and he dodged away once more.

Then he was at the fence and he threw himself at it, leaping as high up as he could, his fingers closing on the heavy mesh only a foot or so below the top.

The two thousand volts with which the fence was charged blazed through his body, convulsing his muscles, frying his brain in an instant. His fingers, frozen in place by the sheer power of the shock, clung to the fence, holding his dead body suspended nearly three feet above the ground.

   A third bullet sliced into Randy Stevens, burying itself in his left lung, and he felt a stab of searing heat in his chest. He turned away from Ames now, every rational remnant of his mind focusing on escape.

He gazed once more toward the mountains, and broke into an uneven lope. His right leg was crippled, and every step sent spasms of pain shooting through his body, but he ignored
it, plunging on toward the distant hills and the refuge he sensed in them.

Another bullet slammed into his body, then another, and finally he toppled forward, pitching face first into the ground, then dragging himself along, his left arm now as powerless as his right leg. But he wouldn’t stop—couldn’t—for some deep instinct for survival drove him on. He was near the fence now, and as yet another bullet slashed into him, he reached out toward it, stretching himself almost beyond his own limits.

The fifth bullet struck him in the head, exploding in his brain just as his fingers touched the fence and his body recoiled with the sudden jolt of electricity.

The mountains were still far away, but it didn’t matter, for after a year locked in a cage in the basement of the sports center, Randy Stevens had at last found a final refuge.

   Mark had searched the basement carefully, and finally found a room that held a control panel for the security system. He’d heard Randy Stevens scuffling around outside the closed door to the room he was in once, but had ignored the sounds, concentrating on fiddling with the switches and knobs on the control panel until suddenly one of the monitors flashed with the image of his mother. He’d glanced at the label on the switch—
TREATMENT ROOM B
—then looked once more at the picture on the monitor. His mother turned around and looked up at the camera. Immediately, the familiar anger rose in Mark. He turned away from the monitor and hurried from the room.

He was at the foot of the stairwell when he heard the sounds of gunfire from outside. He hurried up the stairs, then paused as he saw the open door to the outside. An instinct inside him urged him to make a dash for the freedom beyond the door, to escape from the building while he could, but he forced the urge aside. Instead he hurried to the door, closed it and threw the bolt that would lock it, then turned back, loping quickly along the corridor toward the dining room and the gymnasium beyond.

As he passed Ames’s suite, he glanced inside Beyond the wreckage of Marge Jackson’s office he could see the crumpled form of Jeff LaConner lying in a pool of blood on the floor. He froze for a second, then rushed on.

He pushed his way into the gym and dashed across it to a small room on the other side.

There was a placard riveted to the door:
TREATMENT ROOM B
.

He crashed his weight against the door, and it burst inward.

He froze where he was and stared into the room.

Sharon, still strapped to the straight-backed chair, raised her head as the door burst open, her eyes falling on Mark.

His facial distortion had worsened, the supraorbital ridge over his eyes now jutting outward so that his eyes themselves had almost disappeared within the depths of their sockets. His jaw seemed far too heavy for his face and hung slightly open, and he held his overlong arms akimbo. As she stared at him, an anguished wail escaped his lips. Sharon stifled a scream. “Mark,” she gasped. “Help me.” She struggled against the heavy nylon straps, but they held firm, pinning her to the cot.

Mark stared at her face, and the familiar rage welled up in him again. But she hadn’t done anything to him—he had no reason to be angry at her.

And then, vaguely, a memory stirred.

A memory of being on the rowing machine and feeling a growing anger toward the images of his opponents. It was part of the treatment—he knew that now. They’d been giving him some kind of drug, a drug that induced anger, releasing extra stores of emotional energy from deep within his body.

A drug that made him furious, and made him desperate to win.

But yesterday—could it really have been only yesterday?— there had been other images, too. He could remember the flickering in the picture, could remember his anger shifting, focusing itself on his mother.

It was what they had wanted, and it had worked.

It was the sight of his mother’s face that triggered the irrational rage, nothing more.

“Don’t look at me!” he shouted. “Just don’t look at me!”

Sharon hesitated, but something inside her told her to obey Mark without question. She let her head flop back onto the table, and her eyes fixed on the ceiling overhead. In the distance, dimly, muffled by the building, she could hear the sound of gunfire.

“What’s happening?” she asked in a frightened whisper as she felt Mark’s fingers working at the straps, jerking them loose. “What are they doing?”

“Killing us,” Mark replied.

He jerked the last strap free, then turned away as Sharon sat up and rubbed at her numb legs.

“They want me to kill you,” Mark told her. “That’s what happened last night. I wasn’t mad at you, Mom. They—They did something to me. If I look at you, I just go nuts!”

Sharon felt a sob rise in her throat and forced herself not to give in to it. Not yet—not now.

Now she could think of only one thing—getting herself and her son away from this place.

“Where are we?” she demanded. She swung her legs off the table and tested them against her weight. They threatened to buckle beneath her, but she steadied them with the sheer force of willpower.

“The—The gym,” Mark stammered. “Behind the dining room.”

“Come on,” Sharon told him. She started to face him then, but remembered his words just in time. “Just follow me. I won’t turn around unless you tell me to.” Without waiting for Mark to reply, she ran out the door and across the gym toward the dining room.

Her heart was thumping and she was certain that at any second the attendants would appear, blocking her way, but when she burst into the dining room, she found it empty.

With Mark behind her, she ran through to the lobby and the front door beyond, praying that Elaine Harris’s car was still parked in front of the building.

She hesitated at the front door, gazing fearfully through its heavy glass.

The car was still where she’d left it. In the yard there was a strange silence now. She took a deep breath, then threw the door open.

“Get in the backseat,” she called over her shoulder to Mark. “Just get in and stay down.”

She jerked the driver’s door open and scrambled into the car, her fingers fumbling for the keys before she’d even slammed the door behind her. She heard the back door slam as she twisted the key, then uttered a silent oath as the starter ground but the engine failed to catch. Then, as her eyes flooded with tears of frustration, the engine roared to life. She released the brake and jammed the transmission into gear.

She pressed her foot to the floorboard, and the tires screamed as the station wagon shot forward, slewed around, then straightened. She ignored the driveway, heading straight across the front lawn toward the gates, coming back onto the roadway when she was still fifty yards from the fence.

She glanced at the rearview mirror, and behind her she could see Martin Ames, his hand waving wildly as he tried to get the guards’ attention. But they were all huddled around a nearly shapeless mass on the ground near the fence, and by the time they looked up, she had almost reached the gates.

The car was moving at forty miles an hour when it struck the gates, and only at the last second, when she was certain the car wouldn’t hit the stanchions to either side, did she duck her head down to protect herself if the windshield gave way.

She felt the impact as the car smashed into the metal. It lost some of its speed, then the gates gave way and the car once more sped up.

The windshield had held, and Sharon looked up again. Her foot was still jammed against the floorboard and the speedometer was going up rapidly now.

She braked as she came to the main road, then veered to the right, toward the mountains, and smashed her foot on the accelerator once more.

The car, with Mark crouched low in the backseat, raced away from Silverdale into the foothills of the Rockies.

26

Dick Kennally stood with his back to the window, staring out through the big picture window of Rocky Mountain High’s dining room toward the mountains that rose majestically to the east. There was silence in the room, and he could feel the eyes of the three people behind him, feel them watching him, waiting for him to say something.

His eyes left the mountains and scanned the broad lawns and playing fields within the confines of the fence surrounding the property. It looked serene and peaceful, and there was, truly, no sign left of the carnage he’d seen when he arrived at the sports center two hours earlier. He’d been stunned at the sight that greeted him: Blake Tanner’s body, still suspended from the fence, his dead fingers locked in the mesh, his body hanging limp, a pool of blood spreading beneath his feet.

A hundred yards farther down the fence another body, this one crumpled on the ground, riddled with bullets, but no more dead than Tanner himself. Ames had told him that the ruined remains had once been Randy Stevens, and as a wave of nausea threatened to overwhelm him, Kennally had rejected the statement as impossible. Whatever it was on the ground, surely it had never been human.