The Beast Within (13 page)

“I can’t believe she called them that.” Donna was still shocked and a little disgusted with the woman’s attitude.

“She’s bonkers, babe. Which is why she needs to be taken down. The sooner the better. If she’d shown any sign of being more rational, I’d feel better. As it is, people in this kind of state are too unpredictable. We need to stop her.”

“I can see that, but it won’t stop me from worrying about you.”

John stopped in front of her. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. This is what I do.” He held out his arms and she walked into them, grateful for his reassurance.

She wanted to cling to him but knew she had to let him go. “Just be careful out there, John.”

“It’s only a little recon. Depending on what I find, I’ll either go in and take her down or come back here. No harm, no foul.”

Everything looked quiet to John’s trained eyes. Not too quiet. Just a normal foggy, creepy night on the lake. The ambiance was right out of a classic horror movie, but it didn’t bother John. A little fog never hurt anyone. It was what might be hiding in the fog that could be the real problem. But his sixth sense told him nothing at the moment. Nothing stirred in the fog that shouldn’t be there. The place was clear.

He’d crossed onto the estate’s grounds twenty minutes before and had circled the big place twice. Nothing appeared out of place. If his third circuit of the grounds turned up nothing again, he’d go in closer. If he could take down his mark tonight, he would. That woman had to be stopped. The sooner the better.

He moved closer. He could see in the windows. There was no activity on the first floor even though there were lights on in almost every room. Security lights, most likely, on timers. The first floor didn’t look lived in. The only place he could discern traffic was near the stairs. Footprints marred the lush pile of the carpet there, but nowhere else.

There was a balcony running along the back of the house that faced the water. If he could get up there, he could get a good look inside the second story. John looked for a likely tree and found one that wasn’t ideal, but would do for his purposes.

A few minutes later, John was peeking into the upstairs windows. Bingo.

The doctor was moving between what looked like her bedroom and a dressing room, changing from the elegant dress she’d worn to the restaurant into something more casual. She tossed the dress over a chair and finished buttoning an expensive white shirt over equally pricey khaki pants. Both had little men riding polo ponies embroidered discreetly on them. The woman had a lot of money and didn’t mind throwing it around. Her house was testament to that.

He looked around. The sun was almost completely gone now and the fog on the water had thickened even more. There was a chill in the air, but John didn’t let the sinister atmosphere disturb him. The fog would cover his activities.

He had the perfect opportunity. Dr. Bemkey was alone in the house as far as he could tell, with no zombies around to defend her. He was going in.

He turned back to the window, but the light had gone out. The doctor was gone. She’d headed downstairs. Rather than take the risk of making a racket by going through the upper floor and stalking the woman down the stairs, he retreated to the tree so he could approach from the ground.

John dropped to the ground and thought about the most likely entrance he’d scoped out before. There were a set of glass double doors in the center of the back side of the house. John had used a tree at the end of the balcony closest to the woods.

“John!”

Donna’s shout froze him in his tracks. He whipped around to find her running toward him from the tree line. What in the world was she doing? John went to her, surprised to see she had her pistol in one hand. Immediately, he looked around. The fog had moved in closer to the house. It obliterated almost everything, but he could see…movement. In the fog. Shit. The zombies had snuck up on him after all. He pulled his weapon and met Donna in the swirling mist.

“I saw them come up from the water.” She spoke in an urgent whisper.

“Honey, you were supposed to wait at the cabin.” John took only a moment to roll his eyes at her so she’d know he was only kidding. “Not that I’m complaining.” He kept his voice low as they edged back toward the trees.

“I was watching the sunset over the lake when I saw something strange. John, they’re actually hiding
in
the lake!”

“Son of a bitch.” He shook his head. “That’s a new one.”

“They don’t need to breathe,” she went on in a whisper. “They can stay in the water all day while the sun is out and only come out of the water at night.”

“I don’t think they’ve seen us.” They’d reached the tree line safely. John tucked Donna next to him under the cover of some thick branches as he watched the proceedings.

A cluster of dripping zombies paraded past them toward the house. A light clicked on in the upstairs room and the French doors opened to reveal Dr. Bemkey standing like some Eva Perón–wannabe on the balcony, ready to address her people.

“See that old guy at the front of the pack?” John whispered in Donna’s ear. So far neither the creatures nor their creator had detected them. He wanted to keep it that way.

Donna nodded. Her eyes were glued to the action on the back lawn of the estate, but she was attuned to John’s every word.

“Judging by the file photos I’ve seen, I’d say that’s Dr. Bemkey’s ex-husband. File said he left her for his secretary. I’d say the blond bimbo in the bikini is probably her.”

“The others all look like fishermen. Mr. Bemkey isn’t too damaged, but the rest all have bad bite marks. Dr. Bemkey probably made her ex her first victim and he made the others.”

“I believe you’re right.” John was counting heads, trying to assess troop strength.

“Look at that big one. He looks like the fishing guide that advertises on those billboards.”

“Bubba’s Bass Tours.” John remembered seeing that billboard as they drove here. Sure enough, the big guy from the sign looked a lot like the zombie that stood head and shoulders above the rest. Tall as well as wide, this guy was imposing. The creatures stopped beneath the balcony, all looking up at the woman above them. “Here we go. Evita’s about to address the peons.”

Donna stifled a laugh but John could tell she was nervous. Her body trembled in the chilly mist as she pressed against his side. She wasn’t snuggling too close, but she seemed to need the bodily contact. He could understand that. This was a situation unlike any he’d ever been in before.

“My creations.” Dr. Bemkey’s voice floated down to them from the balcony. “Our time has come. Men have come to destroy you, but I want you to destroy them instead.”

“Oh, shit.” John felt his stomach drop as he reflexively checked his ammo supply.

“Your mistress wants you to go to the fishing camp. I want you to kill. Kill them all!”

The zombies began to stomp their feet and make those inhuman sounds. A few began to chant the word “kill.”

“This can’t be good.” Donna looked from the zombies to John and back again. They were getting riled up into a frenzy.

“I counted twenty-three of them. I think we can take them, if we’re smart about it.”

“That sounds like an awful lot, John. Are you sure?” Donna’s eyes were wide and fearful as she looked up at him in the misty darkness.

“The fog can work to our advantage. You just can’t let too many of them track you at once.”

“Now, my lovelies,” Dr. Bemkey shouted from her balcony, “go now! Kill them all! Make me an army.”

“Our time just ran out.” John dragged her close for a quick kiss. “No matter what happens, I want you to know…I love you, Donna. It’s crazy and it’s sudden, but I love you more than any woman I’ve ever known.”

“John…” Her reaction was a mixture of shock and what looked like joy, but it was dark and misty. And they had bigger fish to fry at the moment. He shouldn’t have said anything, but he couldn’t help himself.

“Go, sweetheart.” He turned her around and pointed her toward the cabin. “Get all the ammo we’ve got left and meet me on the porch. I’ll be right behind you. I just want to divert some of these guys first.”

“Why?” she asked even as she took a step away, toward the cabin.

“Divide and conquer. We’ve got to get them into smaller groups so we can pick them off and they don’t overwhelm us. I’ll start that now while you get the ammo. We’re going to need every last dart.”

“Be careful.” She gave him a pained look even as she sprang away through the trees toward the cabin.

John watched her go for only a moment before she was swallowed up by the swirling mist. John turned back to find the zombies heading slowly toward the tree line. All but one. It looked like Evita had held one back from the class: her ex-husband.

“Go jump in the lake,” she ordered him and John wasn’t all that surprised when he turned around and walked right back into the lake. Fine. That left twenty-two creatures for him and Donna to deal with. They’d handle Mr. Bemkey later.

J
ohn came in hot, creatures on his trail as he hit the porch running. Donna was waiting there for him, bless her heart, with every dart and weapon in their small arsenal. She handed him a fresh clip before she said a word and he slammed it into his empty dart rifle.

“I’ll reload this empty for you.” She grabbed the empty clip he’d just taken from the weapon. Her small fingers deftly reloaded the clip with its deadly cargo and handed it back to him.

“You’ve got the pistols?”

“Yeah.” She turned to show him her hip where one of the pistols rested in its holster. She handed the other to him.

“You keep it.” He tried to hand it back.

“You fire faster and more accurately than I do. You need it more,” she argued. “I’m good with the one I have and I packed plenty of ammunition in my bag.”

He saw she had a canvas bag slung across her chest. It was the one that had been loaded with their pistol rounds.

“Open the bag. Let me see how much you have in there.”

She turned the other way and lifted the flap on the rectangular bag. It was half full. She’d divvied up the pistol ammo to his satisfaction. She had about three quarters of their supply and he had the rest.

“Good. I want you to start down by the lake. Beware of anything coming from the water. There shouldn’t be any left in there except Mr. Bemkey, but you never know. Start at the shoreline and work your way inward. Don’t let anything get past you. We need to keep the zombies away from the other cabins. The line we don’t want them to cross is from the lake to our cabin. I’ll watch the woods on this side, you take the area from the lake to about halfway to here. We’ll meet in the middle and overlap.”

“All right.” She looked scared but willing to do her part. Damn, he loved her courage and spirit as much as he loved her.

“Drop tags as you go if you can, but don’t let it slow you down. We can always go back later to drop the transmitters.”

She nodded, handing him the last clip and watching him stow it in a pouch on his utility belt. They were armed as well as they could be. He looked at her, wanting to say something meaningful but he saw her eyes widen as she peered over his shoulder.

He spun.

Damn. The zombies had found them.

“Be careful. Head for the water. I’ve got these guys.” He gave her a quick kiss and vaulted off the porch. He hit the ground running, already firing darts at the zombies coming toward him.

They spent the next few hours zigzagging through the woods between the cabin and the lake, shooting zombies left and right. Some went down easy, some were more canny. Most were wearing fishing gear of one kind or another and John surmised that most of the victims had been fishermen, attacked while out for a day of leisure.

John met up with Donna every fifteen minutes or so as their paths intersected in the woods. The bulk of the creatures had come through the woods farther away from the waterline, as he’d hoped. So far, they were doing well. None had gotten through their defensive line. John still worried for Donna’s safety when she was out of his sight, but there was no help for it. They had a job to do and, so far, Donna was holding up well.

He was so proud of her. She’d stolen his heart with her smile and her personality. Her courage under fire impressed the hell out of him and only made him love her more.

The girl in the bikini had no doubt once been beautiful. Her silicone-enhanced breasts were now a thing of the past. The bikini was lopsided with prominent chunks of her flesh missing. She’d been chomped on by the zombies and the result wasn’t pretty. Not at all.

Donna watched her disintegrate with a feeling of compassion. The girl—even if she had been a home-wrecking bimbo in life—hadn’t deserved to die that way. Nobody deserved to die like that.

As she fell into a pile of goo at Donna’s feet, something silver glinted in the grass, catching her eye. She bent down to take a closer look, using a stick to push the tattered remains of the bikini aside.

“What’s this?”

John crouched to look over her shoulder.

“A tracker. And it’s not one of ours.” Donna looked up to catch his expression. His lips had thinned into a grim line. “That had to have been implanted beneath the skin. I’ve seen something like it before.”

She didn’t ask where. As a CIA operative, John had lots of secrets she would never be privy to. She knew better than to pry. If he said it was a tracking device, it damned well was a tracking device.

“You think Dr. Bemkey implanted it?” Donna stood, dropping the stick next to the remains. It would have to be collected and burned along with the rest of the surrounding debris that might now be contaminated.

“That would be my guess. This girl was her ex’s mistress. Bemkey’s crazy enough to want to keep tabs on her.”

“So Dr. Bemkey probably knows she’s gone, right?”

“Right.” He checked his ammo and she did the same. She was down to a measly six darts. They would have to be enough. “We’d better get over to the mansion. With this one, our count is twenty-one. If my numbers are right, we’ve got two more to hunt down, plus their creator.”

“I don’t have enough ammo for two more. I’ve only got six darts left.” But she was game. She walked fast, beside John as they crossed through the trees heading for the mansion’s backyard.

“I’ve got eight. We need to make every shot count.” He slowed as they reached the tree line.

The fog had dissipated. They could clearly see the lakeshore, though a fine mist still swirled above the water’s surface. Dr. Bemkey paced on the sand, screaming. Her tone alternated from glee to anger and back again in violent swings of emotion.

“You stupid bastard! Your bimbo is gone. Do you hear me? Gone! And good riddance. She ruined my life and I took away hers. And you can’t do a damned thing about it, you bastard.”

“Oh, no.” Donna saw something come out of the trees. “She doesn’t see him.”

It was Bubba. The tall wide mountain of a man who had towered over all the other creatures. He was heading right for the doctor and he looked hungry.

John was already running down the long expanse of lawn toward the lake. The doctor was still ranting, shaking her fist at the water and screaming. John fired as he ran, plugging the giant zombie with three darts in quick succession. Donna followed behind, saving her darts until she had a better shot. She couldn’t fire on the run and hit anything the way John could.

John was still ten yards away when Bubba grabbed the doctor in his meaty fists. The woman screamed even more shrilly as Bubba sank his bloodstained teeth into her shoulder.

“Damn.” John slowed to a stop and fired two more shots into the behemoth zombie. That made five. It had only taken four darts to stop the other creatures, but Donna agreed with John’s unspoken reasoning. This guy was huge. If weight and height had anything to do with dosage—and it usually did—he’d need more than the usual four darts to take him down.

“John!” Donna saw Mr. Bemkey rising from the lake. He just walked straight out of the water and headed for Bubba and his struggling ex-wife.

“I see him.” John fired another shot into Bubba. “Use your darts on the husband, Donna. I’m concentrating on Bubba for the moment. Four shots, Donna. The ex is normal size and we might need more for the big guy, the doc, and any stragglers who might show up.”

Donna went to work, taking her shots carefully, making every one count. She shot at the ex-husband as he bit into his ex-wife’s flesh, infecting her with the deadly contagion she’d invented. She’d killed him with it. It was a sort of poetic justice that he was doing the same to her.

But John and Donna had wanted to take her alive. They hadn’t planned to kill her. The likelihood that she would survive this was small. They had the doomsday shot that had saved one person to date, but it wasn’t perfected. It likely wouldn’t work on the doctor. Still, they’d try. As soon as the coast was clear.

Donna paused to fire her last shot, taking aim and firing. Her darts were spaced out evenly over the ex-husband’s body. If all went well, he should be disintegrating any minute now. All she had to do was wait. And withstand the screeching from the doctor as the two zombies continued to munch on her flesh.

“This big guy isn’t going quietly,” John muttered. “How many darts do you have left? Two?”

“Yeah. Two. That’s it.”

“I’ve got two. So between us we have enough to take down one more. Let’s hope there aren’t any more zombies down in that lake who decide to come up for a stroll right now.”

Donna was too keyed up to smile, but she appreciated his attempt at humor. They’d been through hell that night and it was almost over. They’d taken out a lot of dangerous creatures that night. Now all they had to do was wait out these last two and deal with the doctor.

“Finally.” Donna heard the satisfaction in John’s voice as he watched the struggling threesome on the beach. The big man named Bubba slithered to the ground, disintegrating before their eyes. The ex-husband followed suit a moment later. The doctor hit the sand with a splat as John and Donna ran over to her.

She was bleeding from multiple bites. Her eyes fluttered open as Donna reached her side.

“Is he dead? Is the cheating bastard really gone?”

“Yes, Dr. Bemkey. He’s gone.” Donna tried to break the news gently.

A cackling laugh was the doctor’s response. Her eyes flared wildly, showing the whites around her dilated pupils and shocky irises. “Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. My only regret is that the bastard managed to take me with him.”

“Maybe not.” John had been working steadily, removing things from his utility belt as he prepared the Hail Mary dose that just might save the woman’s life if she was one of the lucky ones.

“Don’t be silly, boy. The contagion kills. It kills everyone.”

“It didn’t kill me,” Donna said softly, dragging the woman’s attention back to her. “I was attacked and I didn’t die. I’m naturally immune.”

“No such thing.” The doctor looked scandalized and very upset that her killing cocktail wasn’t one-hundred-percent efficient.

“I’m afraid you’re wrong.”

“And this could save you, Doctor. Brace yourself.” John aimed the long needle for the doctor’s heart. He paused only a moment to perfect his aim, then pushed it inward and depressed the plunger. The doctor screamed as the needle went into her flesh.

“You stupid son of a bitch!” Dr. Bemkey raged. “That hurt.”

“It might save you, it might not.” John removed the needle and sat back on his haunches. “Frankly, the chances are slim, but we had to try. Do you have any final messages? Maybe to your business partners? Now’s your time to come clean. You may never get another chance to drag them down with you.”

“Why would I want to do that?” The doctor seemed to lose strength before their eyes. “Henry is my lover as well as my business partner. I wouldn’t hurt him for the world.”

“Henry? Henry who?” John prodded.

“Nice try.” Dr. Bemkey turned her head as she began to fade. “Henry’s identity will go with me to my grave. But I’ll give you one tidbit before I go. Zalayat. Berthold Zalayat. The evil bastard cheated me and called me crazy. Take him down and I’ll have my revenge.”

“Where do we find him?” John pushed, but the woman was gone. Her eyes closed and her breathing stopped. She was dead. “Damn.” John put away the special serum and took a deep breath before moving on. “We’ll take her inside and keep an eye on her. If she rises, we’ll use the last of our darts. This has been one hell of a night.”

The gray light of dawn gave way to the pink and gold of true sunlight as they sat there, looking at each other. Donna greeted the sun with enthusiasm. If the sun was out, the zombies—if any still existed—would be in hiding.

John stood and lifted the doctor’s body into his arms. He strode to the mansion at a fast clip and Donna did her best to keep up. She preceded him to the double glass doors and found them open. Dr. Bemkey must have come out this way and left the door open behind her. Convenient. Donna threw the doors open wide ahead of John and his gruesome burden.

She went ahead of him into the house. He placed Dr. Bemkey down on a chaise longue near the back door. He then stalked through the lower floor of the two-story mansion, checking each room while she followed.

“The place looks okay. I’ll watch over her and call the cavalry. We have to go out there and drop markers for the cleanup team.”

“I’ll do the two at the beach. I marked all my other targets along the way.”

“Good girl. So did I. So it’s just those last two, and her….” he looked over at the body by the door. “Run down to the beach and mark them. I’ll watch you from here while I make the call. We can’t leave her unattended.”

Donna ran outside and dropped the markers quickly, walking back to the house at a slower pace, enjoying a quiet moment in the early morning sun. By the time she got back to the mansion, John had hung up the phone.

“We’re staying here for the day. I called the cleanup team. They’ll be here in about an hour. I also reported to the commander. He wants us to search this place, but we need sleep too. I saw a guest room down the hall, or you can sack out on the couch until the cleanup guys get here.”

Donna didn’t want to leave him in the lurch, but now that the excitement was over, the adrenaline rush that had kept her going was leaving her drained. “I’ll lie down on the couch for a few minutes. I’m not used to these all-nighters anymore.” She smiled at him, weariness sapping her energy. “But if you need me, just let me know. I don’t want to leave you shorthanded.”

John caught her hand as she passed him on her way to the couch. He reeled her in and placed a lingering kiss on her lips.

“You’re perfect, Donna.” He smiled at her as he let her go. “Get some rest while you can. We’re going to have a busy day.”

He wasn’t kidding. Donna napped for only about forty-five minutes before the cleanup crew arrived in the house. They took Dr. Bemkey’s body away. She hadn’t risen…yet. But they had the equipment to deal with her if and when she did. They also replenished John’s supply of toxic darts. He split the wealth with Donna when he saw that she’d awakened.