Voracious (9 page)

Anthony bared his blood-drenched fangs, and the officers recoiled. He saw a potential meal in every one of them. The orderly’s flesh had tasted wonderful. It had briefly taken the edge off his mind-numbing, soul-consuming hunger. He looked from one officer to the next, spotting a blonde woman with an oddly shaped mouth that appeared to have been altered somehow, like she’d had cosmetic surgery to repair a cleft lip. She had the wide hips and ass that seemed to be common to this little corner of Austin.

Anthony began to drool as he took in her curves, imagining how the bloody meat would taste, no longer thinking it odd to consider such things. He had completely abdicated all reason to his appetite. His animal brain had taken control, and it knew how to feed the hunger far better than Anthony did. It knew what it needed. Meat.

“Jesus!” the woman said, staring at his gore-streaked fangs and taking a step backward as Anthony locked eyes with her and took several steps toward her. She aimed her pepper spray at him, preparing to douse him with it.

“I’m hungry! I’m so hungry!” Anthony moaned.

“I said get down!” the balding cop shouted, but Anthony took no notice of him. The officer’s voice came from somewhere beyond Anthony’s hunger, an echo from another plane of existence, another dimension.

“Just calm down, big guy. Let’s talk about this. Nobody else has to get hurt here,” the blonde cop with the hair-lip said. But she was wrong.

Anthony covered the distance between them in one stride, like he was leaping across a basketball court for a lay-up. He tackled her and bit into her throat, and every muscle in his body locked and vibrated, waves of agony coursing through him as the balding cop hit him with a hundred thousand volts from the taser gun.

Seconds later, Anthony’s brand new heart stopped forever.

14 

In the same hospital where Anthony Berkeley was tasered to death by cops while attempting to cannibalize an orderly, Tammy Galindo saw her mother’s face for the first time since she’d lost her eyesight four years ago. She had received a cornea transplant, and although the image was blurry, she could see the corners of her mommy’s lips pulled back into an unmistakable smile.

It had only been a few days since the surgery, but every day her vision improved by leaps and bounds. Today she was going home with her parents.

Dr. Alonzo Savaresse stood smiling above her. She could make out his perfect white teeth, chiseled bone structure, square jaw, professionally quaffed raven-black hair, and unfortunately crossed eyes.

She smiled back at him as he gave her instructions on how to care for her new eyes. Tammy was hungry again, and she was finding it hard to concentrate on what he was saying.

“Recovery could take anywhere from one to three weeks. If your recovery thus far is any indication, I think you’ll be closer to one week than three. Still, there are precautions you need to take while your eyes are healing. You need to try not to rub your eyes. That could detach your retinas and ruin all my good work.”

He reached out and ruffled her curly red hair. Tammy smiled wider and giggled a little. She looked like a redheaded Shirley Temple. Her long curly hair, dimpled cheeks, and brilliant smile had helped compensate for her cloudy white corneas.

“Okay. I won’t.”

“Good. That’s good. Unfortunately, you can’t go swimming or play any sports or even go to the playground and hang from the monkey bars or anything for at least two weeks. We don’t want you doing anything that will increase blood pressure to the head or the eye. No activity that requires heavy lifting, bending the head lower than the waist, or any straining that requires holding your breath. No riding your bike for a while either. And you should wear sunglasses when you go outside. Your eyes are going to be sensitive to light for a few days. And wear your eye patch at night until you’re fully healed. Okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Mom, you need to make sure little Tammy here takes her medication exactly as prescribed, and I want to see you both back here in one week,” the doctor said, ruffling Tammy’s hair once again and giving her dimpled cheeks a pinch for good measure.

Both Tammy and her mother agreed. They left the hospital holding hands while one of the nurses pushed Tammy out to their waiting car in a wheelchair.

“Mom?”

“Yes, baby?”

“Can we stop by McDonald’s? I’m starving!”

“What’s going on with your little appetite? You just had ice cream and a cookie before we left the hospital.”

Tammy shrugged. “They only gave me a little bit. I’m so hungry, Mom. Pleeeeease?”

“Okay. Okay.”

15 

Dr. Trevor Adams arrived at the opulent home of actress Alexis Mourning just in time to see the woman’s daughter attack two men in a lab coat. They were leading her out of the house when she suddenly turned and slashed one across the face with fingernails that appeared unusually long and thick. The man howled in pain and fell to his knees. The other man was still holding on to the girl’s arm when she bit his shoulder. The man punched at her, yelling and shouting, while she tore a large chunk from his deltoid muscle and then climbed up onto his chest and rode him to the ground, biting at his face, neck, and chest, tearing savagely at him with her teeth and claws. Yes, those were definitely claws.

What the fuck did I do?
Trevor thought, and then his mercenary nature took over and he wondered if there might be military applications for this little fuck-up. Maybe there was a way to turn this to his advantage and make even bigger profits off it.

In the doorway of the enormous mansion, Alexis Mourning cowered, watching her only daughter brutally destroy the man in the lab coat. Trevor stayed in the car until it was over.

The man whose face Star had slashed ran into the house holding his face together with his hands. Blood poured from between the man’s fingertips. The lacerated skin on his cheek hung like cheese cloth from the exposed bone. Trevor could see the man’s teeth and gums through the hole in the side of his face.

Alexis went back into the house as well, leaving her daughter alone with the man she was cannibalizing. Trevor watched in horrified fascination as Star Mourning vigorously eviscerated the man, frantically digging at his stomach with her massive claws. Trevor covered his ears to muffle the sound of his agonized cries.

“HELP! Oh, God! Heeeeelp! Aaaaaah! OH,GOD!” She pulled out the man’s intestines and crammed them into her mouth as he shrieked and tried in vain to fend her off. She had both hands deep in his stomach, yanking out organs and eating them whole. The man stopped screaming and was lying on the porch, quivering and convulsing, while Star continued plundering his body for food. Blood poured off the edge of the porch in sheets like a dark red waterfall.

When she was sated, Star Mourning staggered to her feet and walked across the porch. She banged on the door for her mother to let her in. When there was no response, she curled up by the door in a fetal position and fell asleep.

Trevor got out of his car. He didn’t know what he could do or say, but he had to do something. What he needed was a tranquilizer. Something to sedate the girl with before she got hungry again. Unfortunately, he hadn’t thought that far ahead. Despite what Ebersol told him about Lelani Simms eating her fiancée, he hadn’t really expected to find anything like this. He was completely unprepared. Only now did he start thinking seriously about his other patients.

Oh, fuck. This could be happening to all of them.
Trevor pulled out his cell phone. It was time to tell Sarai what was going on and pray to God she didn’t fire him for this. But first he needed to warn Dr. Ebersol.

16 

Andrea heard a noise. She knew she wasn’t supposed to go into Mommy and Daddy’s room, but she was scared. It sounded like there was a monster in the house.

Something growled. It came from the end of the hall. Mommy and Daddy’s room was down there.

Andrea grabbed her Lalaloopsy doll and crawled out of bed. She dragged her blanket and pillow with her as she crept out of the room and tiptoed down the hall where the ferocious noises got louder. It was coming from her parents’ room. She stopped in the hallway. Last time Andrea heard noises coming from their room and she’d gone to investigate, she’d seen her daddy on top of her mommy and he’d gotten very angry at her. He told her never to come in their room in the middle of the night again, but she was scared. The noises sounded different this time. Scarier.

“Mommy?”

The growling sounds paused. She heard a snuffling sound, like a dog sniffing. Then someone moaned. It sounded like her mommy.

“Mommy?”

Andrea crept closer to the door. The snuffling sound stopped, replaced by wet smacking sounds like someone eating something wet and juicy. Then there were wet ripping sounds and more moans. Andrea peered through her parents’ open door.

Her mommy was on the bed, and there was someone on top of her, but it wasn’t Daddy. Daddy was lying on the floor, and his head was gone. Blood pumped from the ragged stump where his head had been. She knew it was Daddy because of his pajamas-soft and blue with pictures of cars on them. Mommy bought him those pajamas for Christmas. She put Andrea’s name on the card and said it was from both of them. Now they were all torn and bloody.

Andrea stared at her mommy, and her mommy stared back. There was a scary woman on top of her with wild wooly hair. The woman wasn’t looking at Andrea. She was eating Andrea’s mommy. Biting her again and again and ripping at her with big sharp nails. The scary woman had her head buried in her mommy’s stomach, and she was chewing and pulling stuff out of her.

Her mommy’s lips were moving, like she was trying to speak, but her mouth was filled with blood that bubbled out and ran across her cheeks. She mouthed syllables like she did when she was trying to tell Andrea a secret she didn’t want anyone else to hear. It took Andrea a while before she realized what her mommy was saying. RUN.

Andrea turned and ran back down the hall. She began to sob. The woman was hurting Mommy. She had hurt her daddy bad, and she was going to hurt Andrea too. Behind her she heard a thud and then the sound of something running fast behind her. Andrea looked over her shoulder and saw the scary woman coming for her but running down the hall and dragging her mommy by the throat.

Andrea ran out the open front door, passing her daddy’s severed head in the doorway. She screamed as loud as she could and kept screaming until her neighbors in the apartment next door, the Johnsons, opened the door to see what was going on.

Mrs. Johnson was in fuzzy pink pajamas. She held out her arms to Andrea and called her to her, but Andrea kept running for the elevators. She could hear the scary lady behind her. She repeated what her mom had said. “Run!”

Then she heard Mrs. Johnson scream. It was too late.

17 

The entire building stood swathed in a funereal silence. Dr. David Ebersol stepped out of his rental car and looked up at the brightly lit building, at the amber-tinted windows overlooking Town Lake, behind which some of the wealthiest people in Austin resided. There was no movement inside. It was barely eight o’clock in the evening, yet nothing stirred. There was no movement at all in the monolithic wall of tinted glass. Something was wrong. He could feel it.

Ebersol was staring up at a window on the tenth floor of the building when he saw a lone figure stagger up to the glass and bang on it with both hands. There was something wrong with her that Ebersol could not quite grasp at first. The distance and the dim light backlighting her silhouette obscured her image.

Ebersol gasped in horror as she turned slightly and more of her features became clear. She was naked. There was blood all over her, and one of her breasts was missing. Moments later, the calm, still night exploded with the sound of police sirens and ambulances. Ebersol saw a line of police vehicles making their way down Lamar Boulevard. There were more than half a dozen of them. It was only then that Dr. Ebersol noticed the people huddled across the street. Some were wearing pajamas. There were even a few in their underwear. One or two had spatters of blood on their clothes. They were all staring up at the building, and a few were weeping. Others appeared to be in shock. A little girl, no more than four or five, sobbed inconsolably and cried out for her mommy, reaching out toward the building.

“Shit!”

Ebersol sprinted into the building, knowing he had to get inside before the police arrived and cordoned it off. He cast one last look up at the window, following the crowd’s line of sight. He saw a swift shadow move over the woman and drag her away from the window. Dark liquid spattered the glass as both silhouettes vanished from sight. Ebersol knew in his heart who the shadow was and what she had just done.

On the way here from the airport, Ebersol had stopped to grab two twenty-four-piece buckets of chicken from a fast food place. If Lelani had been hungry enough to eat her fiancé, he knew going in there without food would not be smart. Now he worried that he might be too late to help her. He considered leaving the whole matter to the police, but he knew that would be career suicide. The Aphrodite Aesthetic Reconstruction Clinic had made him famous, and if any connection was made between the clinic and Lelani’s rampage, it would make him infamous. He would be a pariah in the industry even if he didn’t lose his license. The other issue was his conscience. None of this had been Lelani’s fault. He couldn’t leave her to take the blame for this mayhem.

He was making his way to the elevator when his cell phone rang.

“Ebersol? It’s Trevor. Man, be careful. I was wrong about this thing. Shit is completely fucked over here! Star Mourning-she-she’s changed. Her mother called a mental hospital to come get her daughter after she chewed up her own hand and she attacked them. She ate one of the counselors from the mental facility right on her front porch, right in front of me. I don’t think we can control this thing by ourselves. I left a message for Sarai, telling her what’s going on. She hasn’t called back. I don’t know what to do, man.”