Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller (29 page)

     “All right, then,” Armani agreed. His tone was once again mellifluous.

     Ken opened the door and they went inside. Dave moved in front of Armani to enter first, and stayed by his side as Ken directed their attention to the man in the room’s one stationary chair. The other was on wheels and the doctor claimed it as his own, as he probably had any other time he’d ever entered the room and stayed for an extended period of time.

     Armani observed the man Ken had only referred to as the patient. He verged on being grotesquely overweight, with a belly that strained the seams of his simple blue shirt and rested on his thighs. His jowls sagged, his skin rolled in places that added decades to his appearance. As he rested his head on his own chest to sleep, Armani noted no less than three chins.

     “That’s a looker you’ve got there,” Dave quipped dryly. Armani gave him a look that bordered on scolding. Dave quieted and offered an expression of respectful apology to the doctor. Ken marveled at how well Armani controlled his group, most of whom Ken assumed he’d met only since the Onset.

     “This man entered the clinic with a harsh cough, high fever, swollen throat, and adrenal glands,” the doctor stated as though explaining symptoms to colleagues.

     “Strep throat?” Armani guessed, and the doctor nodded. Armani’s middle son had experienced frequent bouts with strep until his tonsils had been removed. Shoving the thoughts of his family back down where they couldn’t hinder him, Armani focused on Ken’s words as he continued.

     “I prescribed him amoxicillin but before he could leave, your ‘Onset’ occurred. I felt it enter me, and knew it had infected him, as well.” Something clouded his dark eyes, some hardness Armani wouldn’t have anticipated of the slight, almost frail-seeming man. “He was easy enough to get tied. I didn’t trust what this is, you see. I can control myself well enough, but can he? I didn’t want to allow anyone the opportunity to jeopardize the security of this facility.”

     The way he said ‘anyone’ made Armani assume he and his group were included in the doctor’s mistrust.

     “Everyone with me has shown remarkable control since the Onset,” Armani said plainly, getting the issue out in the open. “I trust them all.”

     “It’s been two days,” Dave suddenly spoke up. “How has this guy gone to the bathroom, eaten and slept?”

     “It’s been taken care of,” Ken responded briskly. “I’ve even been keeping up on his medication to help him kick the strep. I am not a monster. I am merely protecting myself and this building. I didn’t know enough to let him loose before now.”

     Dave didn’t add anything else to that conversation topic, but he looked something between curious and concerned. His look told Armani he didn’t quite get and definitely didn’t trust the good doctor.

     “Less important issues aside,” Ken tried to continue, but Armani interrupted.

     “I don’t think so. That there’s a pretty important issue. Now that we have more people here to keep an eye on him, you can’t just keep him tied to a chair. What if this lasts for a long time? What if this is the new world?”

     “Oh, fine,” Ken declared with a testy wave of his hand.

     At the sound of voices, the man’s head came up and his eyes opened. Instead of being sleep-clouded, they were sharp, alert pools of blue in that sagging face.

     “Are you going to untie me?” he asked in a querulous voice.

     “Absolutely,” Armani declared, and began to move toward him.

     Movement erupted all over the room. With Armani’s step forward, he prompted a protective Dave to move in tandem with him, reaching out to caution the other man even as Ken found himself jerked forward by the incorporeal thing that had decided to make a play for the doctor’s control.

     The man in the chair began to shift and the shadow creature in Ken’s body sliced through his bindings with a terrifying and awesome quickness. Ken had yet to gain the reins over it, as it was the first time he’d been forced to fight the shadow entity for control of his body.

     “Get back!” Dave screamed as he simultaneously pushed Armani toward the door and raised the gun.

     Dave debated in the few seconds that he knew he had before irreversible damage was done. He could shoot the doctor, but Ken wasn’t the true problem or the best target. The man on the chair, however, had taken the opportunity the shadow creature had given him. Two days confined in a chair had opened his mentality to be overtaken by the creature inside of him with almost laughable ease.

     He hissed at the other three men as layers of skin melted off of him. Shifting alien eyes glowed amber and elongated even as three others burst from under his flesh and glowed with their own inhuman radiance. Horns erupted from his skull. Wherever his skin fell away, the flesh beneath glowed as though it was on fire. A hellish scent, sulfur and fleshy rot, gushed from him. It seemed like heat radiated outward from him, as well, and Armani would have taken another instinctive step back if Dave hadn’t shoved him again.

     “Get the fuck out of here!” Dave snapped as he made his decision and squeezed the trigger.

     It hit the man square in the chest, to absolutely zero effect.

     Ken reeled back, having exerted his will over the creature in residence. He was pale and shaking, and tripped over his wheeled chair as he tried to stand and flee the room.

     Dave shot again, aiming for the man’s head. He wasn’t a habitual shooter, though. To make his aim worse was the fact that it was a tense situation and the head was a pretty small target. He missed. The bullet buried itself harmlessly in a cabinet.

     The being within Ken had freed the man in the chair, and he raised rapacious, grotesquely-changed hands in menace as he lunged forward. His body had slimmed to that of a claw-footed predator in its prime; a lithe and limber killing machine that weighed two hundred pounds less but packed one hell of a bigger punch than the man it had previously been.

     Dave fired twice more, not trying for the headshot. He hoped at least to slow the creature down.

     It was coming for him, Armani knew. He wanted to run, didn’t want to be a coward, tried to move, but was frozen in place. If Dave didn’t take the beast down, the thing charging at them would take Armani down to Hell with him.

     The two shots hit and slowed the hell-spawned terror, but it was not felled even by three bullets buried in its chest cavity. Dave didn’t know how many more shots the gun had, but he felt the thing had come close enough to risk another head shot.

     If he missed now, it didn’t really matter where the last shot had gone, anyway.

     He squeezed the trigger right before the beast slammed into him, and he believed he heard the skull shatter under the impact of the bullet fired into it at incredibly close range. Though he expected death as the sulfurous creature collapsed on top of him, Dave realized the last shot had been a killing blow. The amber eyes lost their glow. The abscesses on the body ceased to smolder like hot coals.

     Dave went down with the thing on top of him and the heat it baked with felt almost as though it would sear him, as well. He shoved the body to the side and Armani helped him to stand. The doctor sat trembling on the floor, tucked into a corner of the room. He looked no bigger than a frightened child, and possessed no more composure.

     “Like a fucking zombie,” Dave said in disgust.

     Armani clasped the man’s hand tightly, and then hugged him briefly. “Thank you,” he said emphatically.

     “My ears,” Dave said, and his tone vibrated with annoyance instead of trembling with terror. Armani thought Dave would likely end up being one of his best assets, as strong and unshakable as he had proven himself to be so far.

     “Yeah, firing into close quarters,” Armani began, but trailed off as he heard the others coming.

     Voices overlapped, the anxious chatter all expressing the same concerns about what had happened and if everyone was all right. It was impossible to get everyone in the room, or even down the hallway, and Armani would have been amused if his hands weren’t still shaking.

     “Back to the waiting room,” Armani demanded in a raised voice. Though he wasn’t shouting, it carried well enough through his flock that they all began to filter back to the bigger room. Armani gestured to Ken. “You, too.”

     The frail-looking doctor appeared even more perilously breakable, and it took Dave’s help to get him to his feet.

     “Lean on me, honey,” Molly offered, as she had stayed behind to offer her help if anyone needed anything. She looked at the destroyed thing on the floor, noting the blood and other, unidentifiable fluids it leaked. She wrinkled her nose at the stink, and then caught Dave’s and Armani’s gazes in turn. “That looks like it was a bad one,” she commented.

     “Aren’t they all?” Dave asked as he and Armani followed Molly and the doctor out.

Chapter Twenty-Three

     There was someone at the door. Stephanie and Darcy were frozen in place in the hotel room they’d claimed for their temporary sanctuary. Darcy’s hand went protectively to Dylan’s back. The infant still slept, but she didn’t know for how long.

     “Stephanie.” Whoever was at the door whispered her name against the wood, and Stephanie started visibly. She knew the voice.

     “Shane?” she asked. She sounded both hopeful and doubtful.

     Darcy wanted to stop the other woman as she moved forward to open the door, but she wasn’t as terrified as she would have been an hour before. The sun had been up for a while and any of the horrifying creatures after them were confined to the night. This person would have to be affected by less of the blight, or not at all.

     Stephanie eased the door open a few cautious inches, and then flung it open the rest of the way as she identified who stood outside.

     “Shane!” she screamed as she wrapped herself around the attractive African-American man who stood at the door. She clung to him tightly, at first not even noticing what he carried.

     Dylan awakened and cried with gusto until Darcy shushed and soothed him. His squalling set off baby Leila, who added her weeping to Dylan’s. Shane just laughed. He was so happy to see Stephanie he could have cried with the two babies.

     Stephanie backed away from Shane and ushered him in, closing the door behind him as she turned to Darcy.

     “I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t even think of him. Poor baby.” Stephanie cooed over Dylan, stroking his damp forehead and soft, mussed hair. Sleeping wrapped in blankets and his mother’s warmth had made him sweat. His cheeks were pink with the heat.

     “He’ll be fine,” Darcy assured Stephanie with a smile. She looked at Shane, and the car seat he carried. “And who are we?” she asked.

     Shane heard the protective edge in her voice. It was definitely a mom tone. He gave her a disarming smile, which didn’t sway her liking of him. He didn’t mind. In his opinion, no one should trust anyone with the way the world had become.

     “My name is Shane. Stephanie texted me and it actually went through. Crazy, right? I didn’t think you’d still be here but…” He trailed off and gave Stephanie a big, goofy smile that the blond woman returned in equal measure. “You’re here. You’re here and,” he examined them all before continuing, “and you’re not corrupted. You’re all uncorrupted.”

     “Like you,” Darcy said softly. “None of us are touched by whatever’s happening. That’s pretty rare, right? I mean, the people in this room are the only uncorrupted people I’ve seen since it started. I’m Darcy, by the way.”

     “Nice to meet you,” Shane said, but the politeness seemed like a product of habit instead of genuine interest. He quickly continued with the more important part of the discussion.

     “I’ve seen two other uncorrupted, that’s it,” Shane said. “And more that were…” He shivered. “Well, I’m sure you know. Listen, I don’t think this area is safe. We’re too close to people, one little boy in particular that I think we need to get as far away from as we possibly can.” He turned to Stephanie. “We have to go. We have to move. Do you trust me on that?”

     Stephanie hesitated. “With two babies? Where can we go that’s close enough and safe enough to risk them?”

     “Nothing is low risk anymore,” Shane said in a tone of agreement. “But staying here is a bigger risk than moving. We’re not twenty minutes from the Walkers. That’s the group I was with and I was warned away from them. Darcy, you’re in this, too. What do I need to say to convince both of you we need to leave?”

     Darcy sat on the bed and Dylan crawled to her, nuzzling her thigh and using her shirt to pull himself up. She picked him up and held him to her shoulder, then turned her face when he opened his mouth to deliver baby kisses. He hadn’t quite mastered the art of closing his mouth for kisses yet. She continued to think on what Shane said even as she cooed and cuddled her son.

     “I believe we need to move,” she finally admitted after consideration. “As soon as we got here, I didn’t really consider it a permanent option. When will the electricity go out, the heat? This isn’t the place to hunker down if whatever’s happening continues to happen. We aren’t safe enough here.”