Blood Born Page 32

  “If you must know, they benefited greatly from my observations. The quarantine, for instance. That was my idea.”

  “You mean the one that bottled up people on the interstates so they’d be sitting ducks for the bigfoots? Yeah, great move that was.”

  “It was necessary.”

  “Well, if you’re so full of ideas, then why are you back here?”

  “They’re stepping up the ‘threat-con’ level, or whatever they call it. Civilian law enforcement is being withdrawn from the quarantine area. Mr. Gastineau didn’t see the need for a continued liaison program.”

  “So now you’re back here stinking up my breakfast. Lucky me.”

  “My, my. You’ve become a mouthy little tart. I ought to have you written up for conduct unbecoming an officer.”

  Randall laughed. “If you’d been at roll call, you would’ve learned that a cop shot at a civvie vehicle trying to drive cross-country out of the QZ. Another was reprimanded for getting rough with a pregnant woman who disguised herself as a fat man. My conduct takes a back seat to that.”

  “Such incidents are merely a byproduct of war, detective. Those officers should be commended for their zealousness. It’s more than I can say for you.”

  Randall slammed her mug onto the table. “I won’t be lectured to by some self-serving, jerkoff cornpone whose idea of a good time is stabbing colleagues in the back. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have better things to do than—”

  Heager’s cell phone rang on her belt, interrupting her. Randall sank bank into her chair as she glanced at the caller ID. She didn’t recognize the number.

  “Randall here.”

  “Who is it?” Baker said.

  “You’re . . . what? All right. All right—don’t move. Don’t move from where you are. I’ll be right there. Yes. Give us ten, fifteen minutes. Okay, bye.”

  Randall flipped the phone shut and leapt to her feet.

  “Where are you going?” Baker said.

  Randall stared at him. As if I have to answer to him. But then she thought better of it. There was no point in being quiet about this. She told him what happened.

  Baker used his cane to leverage himself to his feet. “Let’s go.”

  “You must not have heard me. I’d rather eat shit then spend another second with you.”

  Baker threw back his head and laughed, exposing his gold fillings. “Then you’d better get out the spoon and crackers, girlie. Sergeant Lively assigned me to be your partner today. I came down to tell you the good news. So lead on.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  After Margaret hung up with Randall, Daniella said, “Is help coming?”

  “Yes, baby, you’re going to be all right.”

  “You . . . you can’t be real.”

  Margaret wondered the same thing about Daniella as she swept hair out of the girl’s eyes. She settled onto the squalid floor beside her daughter to wait.

  Behind them, Jan Lee began to wail in pain.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Word spread quickly that Detective Randall had been called by a woman inside of a bigfoot nest.

  By the time she put on her vest and gun belts, the remaining civilian police force had convened in the roll call room. PFC Adams was there and so was the man who’d been restraining Nick Schaefer’s other arm the night he escaped. Except for Detective Baker, perhaps, who carried nothing more than a service revolver, cane, and a vague expression of disdain, everyone looked eager for a fight. This was their last opportunity to exercise authority as police officers and maybe to strike back at the monsters who had turned their home into an inhospitable jungle. After they left tonight in personnel carriers and their own vehicles, the Quarantine Zone would be solely under military control.

  Randall paused at the door of the room to gawk at the sight of so many officers—more than who showed up for roll call that morning. At her elbow, Detective Baker made a contemptuous grunt.

  Randall turned to face him—but instead found herself face-to-face with Sergeant Weston Lively. The thin black man wore a heavy tactical vest and a sniper’s baseball cap turned backward on his head.

  “You ready for this?” he said.

  “Yes, sir. What are your orders?”

  Instead of answering, Lively bellowed at the assembled officers: “All right, everyone, listen up. Detective Randall will be our team leader for this operation today. She received the call from the woman in the nest and is the most familiar with the situation.”

  Randall stared at him in shock, feeling her mouth drop open and her cheeks grow warm. And to think that at one time Lively didn’t trust her because she was a young woman, an upstart who didn’t deserve her promotion.

  As if sensing her thoughts, the sergeant smiled and nodded. He indicated for her to stand at the podium. Behind it hung a street map of the county. Randall cleared her throat as she marched to the head of the room. A moment later, she was gesturing at the map and issuing orders on who would enter the old Catholic school from the various directions.

  Buoyed by Sergeant Lively’s confidence, she voiced her thoughts from earlier as she concluded her remarks: “This is our last chance to contribute something, so let’s do it right.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Jan Lee’s screams scaled in pitch and intensity despite Margaret Connolly’s efforts to comfort her. Daniella watched her mother’s feeble attempts to soothe the young woman. She still didn’t believe any of this was real.

  That can’t be my mom. I’ve been here too long. I’m seeing what I want to see.

  Something jumped in her own enormous belly. The movement was enough to jostle the damaged nerves in her neck—to push the power cord into the socket long enough for the lamp inside her brain to sputter—bringing with it a few seconds of bodily awareness.

  She didn’t like what she felt.

  Abdominal pain crashed over her body like a surf against a cliff face. Her moan drew her mother’s attention.

  “Daniella? Still with me?”

  She couldn’t answer. Everything in her body hurt: her sore, leaking breasts; the infected, week-old bigfoot bites on her shoulder and neck; the fracture at the crown of her head; even her teeth, which moved in her mouth when she pushed them with her tongue. When her body lapsed back into numbness, she gasped in relief.

  Across the room, Jan Lee screamed, “Help me, help me, help!”

  “I’m trying, honey, I’m trying,” Mom said. “I’m taking off your pants, okay? I have to look to see what’s going on. I—okay, you’ve broken your water, honey. That’s nothing to be worried about. As soon as the—”

  “It’s coming out of me!”

  “I . . . oh, shit.”

  I’m next, Daniella thought.

  The drumbeat she’d been hearing and which she assumed was her heart resolved into the rapid thumping roar of a helicopter. Something crashed in the hallway. The outside sounds were suddenly louder.

  A woman’s voice called, “Is anyone here?”

  “Yes!” Mom answered. “Yes, in here!”

  A second later, a woman strode into the room whom Daniella found vaguely familiar. Unlike the SWAT members who followed her, she didn’t carry a rifle, just a handgun that she pointed with her elbows locked. Her long, dark hair was pulled into a ponytail. Even from here, Daniella saw the been-up-all-night shadows under her eyes. Those eyes now scanned the room, following the sweep of the gun.

  “Clear!” someone shouted from another room. More “clears” and “all clears” followed from other directions. Everyone wore bulletproof vests, like they were afraid the bigfoots would shoot back.

  “Holy shit,” the woman mumbled, and the sound of her voice jogged Daniella’s memory. It was the detective who interviewed her in the emergency room that first night when she was raped.

  “Randall?” Mom said.

  Jan drowned out Detective Randall’s response by shrieking that she could feel it, oh God, she could feel it and it was coming out right now.

  “Margaret, go back t
o your daughter. You two—” Randall gestured to the paramedics carrying in a stretcher, “we got two victims to get out. Margaret, are there any other animals around?”

  “No, I think we’re alone. I saw one come out just before I got here. I haven’t seen any others.”

  “Okay.” Randall spoke some words into her walkie-talkie that sounded like bomb coordinates or trucker’s lingo.

  Daniella’s head was swimming. “Mommy, I think I’m . . .”

  Margaret placed a hand on Daniella’s bulging belly. “Is there another stretcher for my daughter here?”

  There were more people in the room now than Daniella could count. They all spoke at once.

  Gunfire erupted outside. Randall rushed to peek through a window where a crack in the boards allowed light through. Mom held Daniella’s hand until a second pair of medics shoved her aside.

  Jan Lee was screaming continually now—not words. Someone was talking in an annoying Southern drawl, saying he insisted they shoot it dead when it came out of that girl’s body, that it was an abomination.

  “Shut up, Baker, goddammit!” Randall yelled over the gunfire and screaming. Into her radio, she said, “Delta leader, how many of them are there, over?”

  “Lost count, Alpha. Over.”

  Suddenly everyone shrank away from Jan Lee. Mom said, “Oh my lord, oh my lord,” and Baker shouted to shoot it, shoot it, shoot the goddamn baby, it’s a fucking animal.

  More confusion and voices and movement. Bodies stepped over and around her, and there was Mom’s face peering into hers, tears filling her eyes. Someone screamed outside, and there was an explosion, a deafening clap of sound—and Daniella realized the sound was from inside. She saw a smoking handgun. Detective Baker was holding it, pointing it in the direction of Jan Lee. Mom told him he was a fucking asshole.

  “Shut up, everyone, shut up!”

  It was Detective Randall, somehow louder than the pervading noise.

  “I need everyone to cover the doors and windows. The bigfoots are coming in.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  No sooner did Randall issue the order than the boarded-up window beside her exploded inward as a bigfoot crashed through. Randall shielded her face with her arm against the flying wood and splinters. PFC Adams, standing in a straight line from the window, fell under the creature’s weight. The monster sank its fangs into her neck before they hit the floor.

  Baker reacted by firing twice into the tangle of bodies—the fucking fool. The bigfoot’s brains splashed down its back. The second shot missed and blew off a piece of Adams’s skull as well.

  “Baker, cease fire!”

  Another creature jumped through the new opening. But by this time the other officers had recovered from the surprise and set up their shots. Randall dove out of the way as they opened fire on full-automatic. They emptied their clips into the animal’s chest and face.

  She scrambled to get a wall—any wall—to her back. She aimed her gun at the window and listened to the sounds of battle outside. From somewhere echoed the BANG-hiss of one of those useless LH-hormone grenades the feds had passed around.

  Gonna die. We’re gonna die.

  For the first time in months, her sinuses opened up completely. She inhaled the stink of shit and blood.

  My fault. This raid was under my command. Need backup. Where’s my radio?

  Everything moved in slow motion—a cliché, but true. Two more UPAs came in. The first slashed out the throats of the medics cowering in the corner—one, two—as if it was doing nothing more strenuous than painting a wall. Randall fired her gun but hit the SWAT member who’d been thrown at her by the second bigfoot. The body landed on her heavily.

  More explosions and gunfire. More screams. She struggled to push the man off.

  The first bigfoot tried to bury the dying paramedics with handfuls of one of those blood-goo piles, like a cat burying its feces in a litter box. Then someone shot it in the legs, and it fell over. Gunpowder hung on the air.

  And in the middle of all this—Jesus Christ, she’s crazy!—Margaret Connolly pulled her daughter by the ankles toward the door. “Hang on, Daniella! I’m getting you out of here!”

  Baker lay across the room, his cane beside him. His ankle cast was cracked and falling off. His lacerated forehead bled into his eyes.

  “Baker, get Margaret under cover!”

  He wasn’t listening. He was intent on the officer who lay dead next to him. The officer wore a combat vest. A fragmentary grenade hung from it—not one of those hormone canisters, but a real grenade.

  “Baker, no!” Randall regained her feet. “It’s too close!”

  But he was staring at the other bigfoot, the one who threw the SWAT member onto Randall. It shook its head as if to clear it. Randall took aim. It bared its teeth at Baker and growled.

  Baker pulled the grenade’s pin. “You’re coming with me, pervert!”

  No time. Randall tackled Margaret to shield her. The moment they hit the floor, the grenade exploded. The world turned white.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  When Randall came to, she couldn’t hear anything. She’d been deafened by the explosion. Something jostled her—a paramedic, she hoped, strapping her onto a backboard. Her vision cleared, and bodily awareness returned.

  The head moving over her possessed tall, pointed ears.

  It ripped her pants off.

  She wanted to kick it away, but the grenade’s concussion had robbed her of all strength. She felt strangely distant.

  The monster’s thatch of white chest hair swam into view as it positioned its massive cock against her vulva. She realized it was the same animal that bit her behind Eric Gensler’s house and which she shot near Jan Lee’s house.

  It remembers me.

  Its grin exposed long, pointed teeth. Then it began to thrust into her, and all she felt was pain. She screamed. The animal grunted as it worked—hrah hrah hrah—a noisome sound of snarling phlegm. Her vagina bruised and tore with each penetration.

  Her hearing unclogged at the same moment the bigfoot ejaculated inside her. It withdrew for the last couple spurts to coat her already blood-slickened thighs with more fluid. She heard sobbing—Margaret Connolly’s sobbing. The place was otherwise silent, with not even the moans of the dying.

  The bigfoot finished by biting Randall’s neck so hard that she passed out.

  Chapter 20

  Margaret sobbed as she knelt next to Daniella. She tried in vain to staunch the bleeding from her daughter’s temple. She had already pulled out the inch-long piece of shrapnel embedded there. Daniella seemed to look over her mother’s shoulder, one eye closed, one open, the pupil a fixed pool of black.

  Her stomach still moved.

  Beside them, the bigfoot grunted as it finished raping Detective Randall. The monster cast a look at the devastation—the blackened walls, the bodies, the debris—until its gaze alighted on Margaret. It instantly sprang off of Randall and landed on her.

  “No, no . . . please!”

  Margaret gasped as the creature licked blood from her scratched face with a sandpaper tongue. Thanks to Detective Randall, the scratches were her only injuries from the grenade, save for still-ringing ears. The overturned desk, behind which Randall had thrown them both, had been obliterated by the explosion.

  She remembered the animal’s white marking. This was the one that attacked her behind Eric Gensler’s house. It hadn’t raped her then because it didn’t like her taste—and it didn’t rape her now.

  The bigfoot growled low in its throat before jumping out the destroyed window.

  Her vision fuzzed and shook as she looked over at her daughter. Daniella was more misshapen than ever: the stomach was smaller, but a lump stretched the thin gray sweatpants tight across her hips. She realized the growing lump must be the baby coming out—emerging from its dead mother’s loins.

  Detective Randall’s pistol lay on the floor between them. Margaret had never fired a gun before. She picked it up.

  She
vowed not to miss. She knelt beside her daughter and placed the gun’s muzzle directly against the moving bulge.

  Afterward, she felt like dying herself.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Margaret dropped the gun. She covered her face and sobbed.

  She knew she was vulnerable here—all the cops were apparently dead—but she didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to do anything except mourn.

  Daniella . . . no . . .

  She saw it all in a flood of images, her daughter’s whole life: that first moment she held her in the birthing room those many years ago, the amniotic tang of Daniella’s skin when Margaret kissed her forehead; she and Henry lifting Daniella by the arms and swinging her between them as they walked through a park, the air fragrant with spring; helping her do homework as they sat side-by-side at the kitchen table; applying a Band-Aid to a skinned knee and wiping her tears; arguing with her over whether she’d wear a coat or a hoodie during the winter; brushing Daniella’s hair while they talked about movies and school; huddling next to each other at Henry’s graveside service on a frigid winter day; applauding from the bleachers as she watched Daniella perform a cheerleading routine; a dozen, a thousand other memories. All gone. All amounting to nothing except for the charred, bleeding corpse before her—and the obscenity between its legs.

  The world returned in sounds. The buzz of a circling helicopter. The movement of a bigfoot in the trees outside. Detective Randall’s groan.

  Randall huddled on her side, holding her violated sex. Her pants and underwear hung around her ankles. She still wore the bulletproof vest that had helped shield them both from the grenade blast.

  More movement outside—crashing sounds, like a gorilla smashing through trees. Margaret rose shakily to her feet and went to peer out of the busted window. She saw the parking lot and empty police vehicles. A dead cop, a black man, lay face-down in the grass a few feet from her. His vest had been torn partially off his body to expose the flesh beneath, which had similarly been torn away.

  Across the road, a juvenile bigfoot dragged the body of another cop into the woods. Other bigfoots peered out of the foliage. The smallest ones clung to the trunks of trees like squirrels, their heads pointed downward as they watched the proceedings. Margaret knew they were observing the buildings, judging if it was safe to return after the explosions. There was no sign of help on the way, not even an approaching siren.