Authors: Steven Barnes,Tananarive Due
C
onsidering
the commotion behind the nurses’ desk, Kendra might have ignored the gentle mechanical
whooshing
of the lobby doors on the opposite end as they opened and closed, opened and closed. But Kendra couldn’t ignore the sturdy, sixtyish woman standing in the doors’ path as they swatted her on the back and then opened again. Open, closed. Open, closed. The woman stood in a wide stance as if she didn’t feel the doors trying to push her inside, her wispy, snow-colored hair splayed across her face as she stared at everyone staring at her. She swayed right to left in an odd counterrhythm that looked like a dance with the doors.
She was barefoot, dressed in blue silk polka-dotted pajama bottoms and a too-big lumberjack shirt that was halfway unbuttoned. Since she wasn’t wearing a bra, the open V across her chest showed far too much of her sagging, freckled bosom.
The woman’s eyes were mostly hidden beneath swaths of her hair, but a glimpse was enough to turn Kendra’s skin to gooseflesh: The woman’s eyes were red-black, a color that wasn’t human. Her lips
parted to display blood-slimed teeth. Someone was yelling outside, and Kendra made out a guy in a business suit crawling across the driveway’s asphalt. The portrait of the woman in the doorway and the yuppie on the ground collided in a way that slowed everything down to syrupy slow motion.
When Kendra blinked, the woman was lurching inside.
One man in the waiting room, himself as big as a lumberjack, jumped to his feet as if she looked like she needed rescuing. “Ma’am?” he said. “Are you all right?” He reached for her elbow, ready to guide her to rest and safety.
The room seemed to vanish, shrouded somewhere in the memory of the woman’s teeth, the businessman crawling outside, and the still unidentified screams from inside the ER. When Kendra’s eyes focused again, the Amazon’s teeth were clamped into the meat of her rescuer’s hand. He howled, trying to shake her off. But the Amazon wouldn’t let go, even after he lost his chivalry and pushed against her with all his might, a hard
thud
sounding as they both fell against the wall beside the doors.
A yard to the right and they might have broken through the glass door, but Kendra didn’t think the woman’s teeth would have budged even if they had.
“Get this bitch off me!”
The man’s eyes rolled back as he screamed.
Several people ran toward them at once. The Amazon let go of the first man to bite the ear of the old man with the brother in Arkansas. Kendra closed her eyes when she saw more blood in the tangle of arms and legs. Closing her eyes didn’t keep her from drowning in a soup of red and black. Was this what fainting felt like?
“Kendra, come on!” Devon Brookings barked, and she realized her parents were dragging her toward the door while she pulled against them with all her strength.
That woman
was near the door!
Kendra wasn’t thinking—her brain had shut down, body reduced to primal drives—but one glance over her shoulder in search of an
other way out gave her instincts a jolt. The doors to the ER burst open, emitting a frenzied stampede of doctors and nurses. Their faces told a story Kendra didn’t want to hear.
Her limbs were jelly. Her parents had to keep her upright.
“This way!” Dad said. “Hurry!”
They had just reached the doors, squeezing past the wriggling mound of confusion, when her father yelled out an epithet she had never heard from his lips or even realized he could fathom. His leg had been caught as he tried to scramble past. When he shook himself free, he was limping. “She
bit
me!” he said, outraged at the idea.
“Dev?” Mom said, distraught. Kendra barely heard her over the noise.
“I’m fine, I’m fine!” Dad said, urging them on, because they didn’t know yet how far from fine they all were; fine was a distant planet away. “It’s just my ankle.”
Ankle-biters.
The term floated nonsensically into Kendra’s mind, a memento from a bygone world, as her parents helped her escape into the day’s last light.
Seattle, Washington
E
xit
165 off the I-5 was Seneca Street, and a left turn at Pike headed them toward the biggest open-air market Terry Whittaker had ever seen, a warren of little stores, restaurants, venders, and bakeries abutting Puget Sound. He loved the smells and sights, and was reminded that one of his favorite bakeries was just a few dozen feet away. There, hidden among the cakes and crullers, were the largest, fluffiest buttermilk bars he had ever tasted. His mouth watered at the very thought, and he knew that one way or another, he was bringing a bag of the soft, sugar-frosted delicacies back to Skokomish with him.
That would please the other members of the Round Meadows Five, the kids who, like Terry, had had a choice of either Washington’s juvenile justice system or a summer herding brats at summer camp. Lockup was a bitch, so it was weenie roasts and sack races for the duration.
Their boss, Vern Stoffer, parked in a little merchant’s lot next to
a restaurant advertising fresh lobster tamales, and the big black kid called Piranha was the first out. Guy moved fast. Hard to believe he was brainy enough to be a hacker and the short con master of Plaza Park. He was such a jock that it was easy to underestimate him.
It was 3:13 in the afternoon. Only twelve minutes remained before this very normal day became something quite unnormal indeed. Vern was a bulbous sunburned guy who resembled a chubby version of his hero, Bill O’Reilly. Vern walked them up a narrow stairway to an office above one of the larger fish markets. The door said Sal Overton, Manager. Vern opened the door without knocking, admitting them into a small, cluttered office. On the walls were calendars depicting brave sailors risking the Alaska glacier fields to bring back fish sticks, or something.
“Vern,” the tubby guy in the swivel chair said. Terry could believe they were cousins, from the same logging family before, as Vern put it, “the Obama recession” had sent logging into the crapper. “You need to call Mom.”
“Phones out at the camp aren’t right. Been busy.”
“Too busy to call your aunt? You know she’s going in for her biopsy, and she’s scared spitless. You was always her favorite, you know. Step up, Vernie.”
Vern shook his head. “I’ll be there, Sally.”
“Sally” opened his top desk drawer, and pulled out a manifest. “Anyway, like I said, we’ve got a great deal for the camp. We can give you a price on the salmon because the Jesuits over at Seattle University decided to play footsie with Parker’s market instead of mine. Damn mackerel snappers.”
Sally looked at Terry cannily. “You ain’t Catholic, are ya?” Terry shook his head. And noticed that he didn’t bother asking Piranha. “Good. Not that I got nothin’ against Catholics, y’understand. Just they tend to stick to their own. Stick together like a buncha used Kleenex. Anyway,” he said, grinning at what he seemed to consider
great good humor, “we got twenty crates, Alaskan crab and salmon, can let you have ’em for fifty a pop.”
Vern tilted his head and shook a Camel out of its wrinkled pack. He didn’t smoke in front of Molly, his wife and the camp nurse. Not that she didn’t know he smoked. It was just a little game they played. “Forty.”
“Forty-five.”
“Deal. Net sixty?”
“Works for me. See you brought some strong backs to help out.”
Now
he looked at Piranha, who was busy cleaning his fingernails with a toothpick, studying the results as if they were far more important than anything Sally might have on his mind.
“Anyway… let’s get to it.” He leveraged himself up from the desk and headed with them back down the stairs. The market was bustling, and would be for another three hours until the shops closed for the day, and only the restaurants would stay open. Terry was wondering when he’d have time to grab that doughnut. Those doughnuts, actually. If he didn’t bring back a half dozen, he’d catch holy hell from the Twins.
In glass display cases, rows of dead fish gaped into the great beyond, glassy eyes staring at the customers. There was an odd sense of surprise in that expression. As if to say:
A net? It was a net? How did
that
happen?
The room beyond the display cases was an ice cave, a kind of dry cold that felt exactly like walking into a refrigerator, which it was. “The red stack,” Sally said, pointing out a flat loaded to the ceiling with red boxes.
“I’m going back up. Get us some coffee for the drive back,” Vern said. Then the cousins went back upstairs and left them in the cold. Piranha took the first dolly, and pushed it out through the double doors and down the sidewalk.
Terry took the second, a stack of six boxes packed with ice and
fish, and levered back on the handle. Had to weigh two hundred pounds, but he managed to find the balance point, and was strong enough to steer.
He and Piranha stacked the fish into the van, came back, made another run while Vern loafed about in Sally’s office and smoked Camels.
On their fourth run, Terry guessed that they were almost done. He was just thinking about those buttermilk bars again, savoring the first spongy bite, when he heard the first scream.
It was high, wavering. Disbelieving. A woman’s voice. Pain.
Terry and Piranha looked at each other. Piranha acted like he didn’t give a damn about anything, but Terry knew different. He’d watched the way the big guy had picked up the little girl who broke her toe in the Friday-night talent show a month back. Carried her as gently as a glass doll. He acted hard, but Terry suspected it was just that—an act.
A woman was running along Pike Street, one hand clasped to the side of her neck, or perhaps at the juncture of neck and shoulder, as if trying to hold something in place. She was a thin woman, a “whisper,” as Terry’s dad used to say, wearing a T-shirt that said HODAD’S OPEN 24 HOURS!
That shirt, gold letters against black, was stained red. And red leaked between the fingers pressed to her neck. Piranha had taken a few steps in her direction when there was another scream, and then another, and people were running in all directions.
“Holy—” Terry didn’t get the rest of the thought out, because something was coming down Pike Street, and it was, as Terry’s father had often said, bigger than a butterfly and hotter than hell.
The guy was the size of a pro fullback but dressed like a cop. Terry had never actually
seen
a pro fullback, except on TV, but his chest and back swelled out of his torn blue uniform. The face above the muscular chest was distorted with rage, or pain, or… something.
His eyes were crimson. And by that, Terry didn’t mean like his old man after a night down at the Lancelot. No, it was as if those eyes were
bleeding.
The big cop was grabbing people as they ran, pulling them close—
And then taking a bite. Just one bite. Arm, face—people were stunned, fleeing in all directions. Terry saw Vern rumble down the stairs carrying a big silver thermos—curious, not alarmed, just wondering what all the fuss was about—and turn the corner, coming face-to-face with the big man with the bloody eyes.
Vern’s back was to him, but he imagined that his black eyes must have gone wide.
“Mr. Stoffer!” Piranha screamed, running now, and damn, he was fast, flying, even though he really didn’t care much for Stoffer, and not at all for his redneck cousin. But it didn’t matter. Before the big kid was even halfway there, the cop had his hands on Stoffer’s arm, and yanked him around. Now he could see Stoffer’s face, and the expression was such pure shock, such
what-the-hell
that it was almost comical. The cop stared at him, red eyes to black eyes, and then those bloody teeth snapped forward, tearing at the upper arm.
Stoffer screeched and tried to yank his arm away, and his cousin Sally jumped with astonishing agility, hitting the big guy from the side. The cop staggered, but didn’t go down. Then Piranha was there, and he saw the grappling and tussling and the blood and seemed uninterested in joining the mob. Instead, he picked up a mop someone had been using to wipe up a spreading stain of melting ice, and smashed it across the big man’s neck.
Then Terry was there, and managed to get ahold of one of the muscular arms.
Damn
he was strong! Sucker had three guys on him, but the cop was still almost upright, as if he was on crack or meth. For a moment his leg buckled, and it seemed as if he was going down, then he turned his face to Terry, and at this range he could clearly see the thread of little red veins… more like little vines, really… all over
the whites of his eyes.
Then the man convulsed, throwing them off, and got up. He seemed to be distracted, disoriented, as if uncertain where… or even who… he was.
The cop staggered out into the middle of Pike Street just as a car speeding the other way, slewing to avoid one of the fleeing pedestrians, slammed into him, sending him cartwheeling into that Great Doughnut Shop in the sky.
“Jesus. Jesus…” Vern moaned, holding his arm, and looking up at them through the shock. And then, just as if the third time was the charm, he added another fervent “Jesus.”
Cousin Sally was blubbering, his hands covered with blood. “What the hell—get him out of here!” People were still running in all directions. There was another disturbance about fifty feet away, more people screaming, and Terry didn’t need another invitation. They got Vern to the van, buckled in, and took off as sirens began to howl from the other direction.
Terry drove fast. Without the tie-downs, the flats of frozen fish
in the back of the van bounced and swayed in response to the road. Vern sat in the back, holding his arm, as Piranha did a pretty decent job of sponging out the semicircle of nasty bite dimples. It was bleeding, but not rapidly. No arteries, then. “Damn it! Damn it,” Vern murmured, laying his head back against the seat. “I want to get back, clean this up, hit the sack. Then first thing, Molly’s a nurse. She can take care of me.” He closed his eyes. “I’m sleepy. Tired.” He closed his eyes.
Piranha nudged him with his elbow. “You stay awake until Molly says it’s all right for you to sleep. Deal?”