Blood Born Page 28

  I’ve always been there for her. I have no choice. I’m her mother. If I die trying, then at least I’ve tried.

  Carrying a crowbar and Henry’s handgun, Margaret headed out to her car.

  The traffic was worse than before—cars were backed up all the way down Route 7 and Gallows Road—but the weird part was that the cars were all abandoned. Margaret drove down road shoulders past lines of unmoving vehicles, marveling at what she saw.

  At first, it was only like people had parked in the middle of the street. When they realized traffic wasn’t moving, they’d calmly turned off their engines, pulled their keys out of the ignitions, got out, and gone home by other means. Their vehicles clotted intersections and turn lanes beneath traffic lights that continued to cycle mindlessly.

  But as she neared the Beltway’s onramps, Margaret saw the truth—and that was that there’d been nothing calm about it. Doors hung open, showing the mutilated tatters of bodies. Viscera and body parts lay scattered in careless clumps swarming with insects. And yet as she passed these sights, relying on the Isuzu’s truck-like suspension to drive over curbs and medians, she sped past streets where she saw police and National Guard vehicles.

  They would only stop me from finding Daniella.

  She reconsidered this approach when she turned down the first residential street in her path.

  A bigfoot stood in the middle of the road. It was crossing from the overgrown yard of the brick Victorian house on her right to the yard of the Victorian on her left. It dragged the body of a young man by its ankles. The victim wore jeans and a bloody T-shirt. A baby bigfoot sat on the young man’s chest, like the body was some kind of litter. Margaret thought of a child being pulled in a Radio Flyer red wheelbarrow and nearly screamed.

  As she watched from behind the wheel of her Isuzu—by now stopped in the middle of the street—the baby bigfoot reached down into the victim’s stomach cavity like it was a bowl of popcorn. The monster then pulled away a handful of meat and stuffed it into its mouth.

  Both bigfoots cast indifferent glances in her direction. They disappeared behind some shrubbery on the side of the street.

  “I’m gonna be sick,” Margaret mumbled.

  “You, in the car.”

  She looked in her rearview mirror to see that a military Humvee had pulled up behind her.

  “Turn off your engine, and put your hands on the wheel.”

  She found that she was relieved to comply.

  A minute later, soldiers were standing on either side of her car. They carried submachine guns—M-16s or F-16s, she didn’t know what they were called.

  They asked why she was out driving around in violation of the curfew. She answered them truthfully, saying she didn’t know about the curfew. She was searching for her daughter.

  “Ma’am, we’d like to escort you to the nearest shelter.” The younger one had blond hair and cold, blue eyes. “Would you please follow us in your vehicle?”

  “But Daniella’s still out here.”

  “We’ll get some information from you, and then we’ll come back and look for her, okay?”

  “You—you will? You’re not just lying to get my cooperation, are you?” She searched the young man’s stony features.

  “No, ma’am. We’re doing searches out here all day. If she’s here, we’ll find her.”

  Margaret started to tear up. God, she was so, so tired. “Thank you.”

  The soldier’s gaze alighted on the handgun on her passenger seat. “Is that the only weapon in your vehicle?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll have to take it.”

  Minutes later, she arrived in the parking lot of the Camelot Elementary School, only a half mile away. The soldiers directed her to a grassy field being used as an extra parking lot. There, she parked within rows and rows of other civilian vehicles. She felt like she was going to a football game.

  The blond-haired soldier who’d promised to look for Daniella escorted her to the school’s side entrance, walking behind her.

  “What’s your name?” she asked him.

  “Private Ludwig.”

  “Can I tell you about Daniella now? Where to look for her?”

  Another soldier held open the door and said, “If you’ll just go up this hallway, a gentleman there will take care of you.”

  “Just a minute.” Margaret turned back to Private Ludwig. “Let me tell him where to—”

  But the private was already ten feet away and walking fast.

  “Wait!” She started to run after him.

  “Ma’am,” the one behind her said.

  “Ludwig!”

  A Humvee roared up to Private Ludwig. He got into the passenger side, then it took off. The guard grabbed Margaret’s elbow. He wasn’t rough, but his grip brooked no argument. She cursed before going with him.

  Once inside the school building, he let her go. Margaret paused at once to regard the crayon drawings by Mrs. Cathaway’s first grade summer school class hanging on the painted cinderblock walls. The mundanity of this sight struck her as absurd in the middle of this nightmare.

  She gasped as the exit door slammed shut behind her. Through its thick panes, she saw the soldier pull a chain through the handles and padlock the ends together. That didn’t seem right at all. Why would you chain and padlock a door from the outside?

  As the lock snapped home, Margaret wondered if she had traded one kind of hell for another.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Randall was reassigned to community-outreach activities, which surprised her. She’d expected to be outfitted with SWAT gear and loaded into a personnel carrier bound for destinations unknown. Instead, she was given a female partner, a police cruiser, and orders to visit every apartment in several condominium complexes in Falls Church. She was to reassure the public that things were under control.

  Were they out of their fucking minds? The interstates had just been turned into a slaughterhouse, and they were worried about community outreach? Even worse, the duty put her and her new partner at unnecessary risk. It was as if the feds didn’t care.

  Still, Randall performed this assignment for the rest of the day and late into the night. That was something else that was different: no more graveyard shifts. Until further notice, she would work twelve-hour shifts starting at twelve p.m. and ending at midnight. Not that she would be able to sleep.

  The conflict between the utter inanity of her new duties and the risk posed by simply being outside set her permanently on edge. Hello, ma’am/sir, how are you, is everyone all right, have you seen anything, are there any questions I can answer, do you know where the nearest shelter is, blah, blahblah, blahblah.

  What a dangerous waste of time. Such conversations were actually few and far between since most knocks on doors went unanswered. Several times, she and her new partner found homes that had been broken into, with obvious signs of foul play. They simply noted these crime scenes before moving on without wasting much time in investigation. This was per orders. Also, if they saw any UPAs, they were not to engage them but to retreat to safety and call for National Guard backup.

  Ha. As if we would get away from them in time.

  Her partner, a rookie named PFC Sarah Adams, especially didn’t appreciate what she called the “bullshit duty” and said she really wanted to be out there blowing away bigfoots. “I’d serve as bait if they wanted me to,” she said as they drove from the Cedar Garden Apartments to the Oakwood Condominiums. “Sounds like the feds need it, but they’re too stupid to try that, you know?”

  “Oh, who knows what the feds are doing?” Randall sighed. Her words slurred with fatigue, so she sat up straighter. She couldn’t afford to be sluggish while outside.

  “I’ll tell you what they’re doing: a lot of yakking about the meaning of the bigfoots’ second bite, that’s what.”

  “You mean the bite they give victims after they’ve raped them?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Interesting. That’s one of the pieces in my jigs
aw file.”

  “Your what?”

  “Never mind.”

  They arrived at the Oakwood condos and scanned their surroundings before leaving the car. They also unsnapped their holsters’ pickpocket guards in case they had to draw in a hurry. In the glare of the street lamps, Randall frowned at the complex of garden-style condos, remembering that her ex-boyfriend Paul used to live here.

  Need to keep my mind on track. “So what’re they saying about the second bites?”

  “Huh? Oh, they think it’s to inject a virus into the victim’s jugular vein. They said that during an autopsy of a creature, they found an organism in its salivary glands.” PFC Adams kept scanning the woods and shadows as she talked. A hand rested on the butt of her gun.

  “And?” Randall said.

  “And they think it’s to cause changes in the mother to help the rapid pregnancy. Stuff like speeding up her metabolism. The guy I saw on TV said the virus could also set up a kind of hormonal feedback loop with the placenta as the baby develops. Wacky stuff.”

  They began their rounds. As luck would have it, the third door they knocked on used to be that of Randall’s ex-boyfriend. An older Hispanic man lived there now. He thanked the police for stopping by.

  Afterward, Randall tried to lighten her own mood by asking her partner, “So, you ever plan on having kids?”

  Adams laughed. “After this week? Yeah, right.”

  Later that shift, Randall asked her to drive to Margaret Connolly’s house. It was going on eleven p.m. by that point, so Randall figured Margaret would answer if she was home.

  She was not. PFC Adams stood on tiptoes to peek through the decorative windows in the top of Margaret’s door. All was dark. “Maybe she evacuated.”

  “Maybe. And she could be out there, dead on that highway. Dammit, I really wanted to ask her about the fertility clinic and Nick Schaefer.”

  Adams turned so she could keep watch on their surroundings. The night hummed loudly with insects. “They’ve been towing abandoned vehicles off the highways all day. If you want, we could ask them if they’ve impounded any cars with tags matching hers.”

  Randall said that was a good idea although she didn’t expect the fed-dominated command structure to give her an answer any time soon. Back in their cruiser, she CAD-messaged the request to dispatch.

  They finished their shift by visiting Randall’s apartment in Arlington. There, she picked up some clothes and toiletries so she could continue to sleep at the station. PFC Adams asked about the medal on the shelf and tactfully avoided critiquing the bareness of the walls. Randall felt embarrassed anyway.

  On the way out, she showed Adams the destruction at the Asian Grocery-Mart down the street. Aside from the grocer’s body being removed, nothing about the crime scene had changed. The shattered window, mashed produce display, and the boundary she’d marked off with police tape all remained the same.

  They returned to the station under the light of a full moon. There were no clouds and none of the usual traffic. The air seemed cleaner than ever. They passed several military vehicles and no UPAs as they drove, which she found reassuring—in a totalitarian-state kind of way.

  God, this place was going to hell.

  Chapter 17

  Margaret’s next two days passed in a haze, but then every day since Daniella’s rape had been a haze. After all, none of this could really be happening, could it? Still, there were events that stood out like signposts on a foggy road.

  The first was the doctor’s exam, which occurred almost immediately after her entry into this prison. Yet another soldier had approached her as she stood there next to Mrs. Cathaway’s summer school class gallery of crayon rainbows and swimming pools. He asked her to accompany him to the “infirmary.”

  Apart from having what was apparently an Army-issue defibrillator machine and a portable EKG unit, the infirmary still looked like the school nurse’s office it used to be. There, a reedy black man named Captain Snyder took her blood pressure and asked if she was pregnant. Margaret said no and that it would be none of his goddamned business if she was. Captain Snyder gave her a bored expression, then asked if she had any injuries or conditions that needed attending to.

  Margaret hesitated before reluctantly baring her injured shoulder. “It needs a fresh dressing.”

  Captain Snyder’s eyes went wide. “You were attacked by a UPA?”

  “A what?”

  “Unidentified Primate Animal.”

  Margaret snorted despite herself. “Yes. Yes, I was. But he wasn’t interested in me.”

  Snyder didn’t seem surprised by this news. “Ah. I imagine that explains the bruises around your neck as well.” He opened a drawer and took out sterilizing swabs and gauze.

  “Captain, I need to talk to somebody about my daughter. I was out there looking for her when the soldiers brought me here.”

  “Your daughter’s missing?”

  “Her name’s Daniella. She’s sixteen.”

  “I see. Well, thousands of people evacuated the area before the government set up the perimeter, so maybe she got away. Take some comfort in that.”

  “But . . . but she was—”

  “All right, Private Kallen, you can take this one back to the common room.”

  Margaret blinked at the new bandage on her shoulder. She couldn’t believe he was finished already. Her escort poked his head in and asked her to accompany him.

  She stood up, shaking her head. “None of you really give a shit about Daniella, do you?”

  But Captain Snyder was already walking out through another door. Private Kallen just stared at her. Margaret sighed and went with him.

  The bed he assigned to her was a canvas bunk crammed among hundreds of other bunks on the gymnasium floor. It had to be no more than two feet wide, and it came with a green, woolen blanket that was completely inappropriate for this time of year. Her neighbors included a young married couple who carried on long, murmured conversations about their missing dogs, and a seventy-year-old retired woman who was delighted to discover Margaret was a doctor because it meant that she had somebody to talk to—or rather, talk at—about her heart problems and fibromyalgia.

  Meals were served promptly at nine, twelve, and six in the school’s cafeteria. The menu consisted mostly of food scavenged from the school’s own storage: pancake-thin hamburgers, tater tots, microwaved green beans, and pints of two-percent milk in cardboard containers that were impossible to open.

  There were no bathing facilities. After all, the refugees—or prisoners, as Margaret thought of them—were expected to be transported out of here any day now, or at any hour. Or so the rumors said. At least the jarheads gave her an Army-issue toothbrush. No Army-issue toothpaste, however.

  And all the while, her heart sung a continual dirge of her daughter’s name.

  The only thing to do during those two days and nights she spent in the school/shelter was watch television. The jarheads wheeled in an ancient RCA model from the school library with a backside a big as a filing cabinet. How it could receive the new digital signals that had started monopolizing the airwaves was beyond her ken. The color balance was so bad—everything in greens and purples—that Margaret thought she was watching a broadcast from an alien planet. It gave her a fucking headache. Worse, the networks showed nothing but wall-to-wall news coverage of the bigfoot epidemic, complete with continually recycled, jerky video footage, debates among talking heads who were obviously angling for their own future book deals or TV shows, and headlines crawling along the bottom of the screen. It reminded her of those first few days after 9/11, when she quickly overdosed on news footage to the point of making herself ill and yet was unable to tear herself away from it.

  On Wednesday night, after a dinner of congealed macaroni-and-cheese and flat Coke, she watched a White House press conference. Its location was listed as Federal Executive Building, New York City.

  “Mr. President,” a reporter said, “there’s been considerable discourse about the fa
ct that the creatures initially made organized strikes to kidnap their children from hospitals. Has the government determined whether this signifies intelligence and communication among the creatures, or that someone may even be coordinating them?”

  “As far as we know, Sandy, the animals don’t have a centralized command. We haven’t found any evidence of that. The raids on the hospitals were most likely an instinctual parenting behavior on the part of the adults. But that’s not their usual mode of operation. It appears they really prefer to kidnap the mothers and stow them away in their nests until delivery.”

  “But Mr. President, if the raids were instinctual, then it begs the question of how they even knew where their offspring were in the first place. How they could home in on them? Have the scientists explored whether there’s something in there that could be used to make an effective pheromone lure for hunting them since the first LH-based lures failed?”

  “I’m not sure I understand your question.”

  “I said, have the scientists explored—”

  “You know, maybe I should put you on the staff, and you could help us figure this thing out.” Laughter. “No no, I hear what you’re saying. We believe the best lure to drawing them out lies in exploiting the younger ones’ considerable appetite for raw meat. We’re working on that and may have something within the next day. Next question.”

  “Mr. President, the U.N. and the European Union have both offered to send international peacekeepers to assist in quarantine operations and anti-looting efforts, but your administration has refused outside help. The French president has criticized this move as hypocritical in light of your insistence on placing peacekeepers in such places as—”

  “Look, look, there’s never been an equivalent situation to this in human history, so I’ll thank our esteemed international colleagues not to cast aspersions. We’re not a Third World nation that’s unable to provide the security necessary to conduct a free election. That’s not what this is. What we’re dealing with here is an animal-control crisis. What we really need is for the world to lay off of the irresponsible statements. And it wouldn’t hurt if they resumed the granting of visas to U.S. travelers. I can assure them we’re not letting anyone out of the country who’s been infected.”