Blood Born Page 33

  We have to get out of here.

  She didn’t want to leave Daniella, but her daughter was dead. The need to survive was stronger than the need to grieve. Margaret glanced at the haphazardly parked police vehicles, then looked back at Detective Randall still lying on the floor.

  “Come on. Come on, Daniella.” She realized her daughter’s name had just popped out of her mouth but didn’t care. She tugged Randall’s pants back up. The detective revived a bit and reached down to help.

  Tears poured off Margaret’s face as she hooked Randall’s arm around her neck. She strained her sore back muscles and hauled the younger woman to her feet. Randall groaned and grimaced.

  “Come on, honey. Come on.”

  Climbing through the window was the hardest part. Margaret went through the splintery opening first and reached back to help. Once through, Randall collapsed onto the grass outside and yelled in pain.

  Across the road, the younger bigfoots began dropping off the trees.

  “Come on, come on!” Margaret picked her back up. Panic made her strong—made her forget her inflamed back muscles, even forget Daniella for a moment. “We gotta go. Come on!”

  Halfway to the cars, Margaret knew they wouldn’t make it. She kept pulling Randall anyway. One of the small bigfoots, its tongue hanging out, dropped to all fours. It began loping across the road.

  Randall suddenly stopped and shook off Margaret’s supporting hand. She drew another gun from the holster on her hip, aimed, and fired.

  The nearest animal dropped with a bullet in its head. A second shot hit the one right behind it, this time in the leg. The creature tripped and got back up—then fell as Randall shot it again.

  Yet more animals emerged from the woods.

  “Come on!” Margaret pulled her toward the cars.

  Please let them be unlocked. Please let there be keys inside.

  They reached a car. It was unlocked. There were keys inside. Margaret yanked open the passenger door and pushed Randall in. When she saw she wouldn’t have time to circle around to the driver’s side, she dove in after her. She pulled the door shut.

  An instant later, a gray bigfoot the size of a dog jumped onto the hood. It grinned at them through the windshield. Margaret screamed as she climbed over Randall into the driver’s seat. She turned the keys in the ignition and fought with the gearshift.

  She couldn’t put the car in gear.

  “Foot switch,” Randall said.

  “What?”

  “Press the floor with your foot!”

  The gray bigfoot smashed a fist into the windshield, creating a spiderweb pattern.

  At last, Margaret understood Randall’s meaning as she felt the switch with her left foot. It was hidden under the carpet, probably an anti-theft device. She pushed it as she pulled on the gearshift, and this time the shifter moved.

  The bigfoot fell off as she peeled out of the parking lot and onto the grass.

  An instant too late, she saw they were rocketing straight at a tree. Randall yelled as Margaret jerked the wheel to the right and slammed the brakes. The car fishtailed, its wheels ripping up clods of grass and dirt. The rear quarter panel hit the tree’s trunk.

  Still drivable. Margaret saw the road ahead of her and floored it. The emerging swarm leapt out of the way as the car kissed pavement.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Randall slipped in and out of consciousness, positive this was a nightmare. It must be a nightmare because she was a passenger in a police car driven by Margaret Connolly. The woman was calling her “honey.” It’ll be okay, honey, I’ll take care of you, honey.

  But she realized this was real when her stomach flipped upside-down. Eyes bulging, she leaned over and puked onto the floor. God, her neck was hurting where that thing bit her.

  “That’s okay, honey. You’re in shock. It’ll pass.”

  Randall nodded. This made eminent sense. But she really needed to call in their position to dispatch. Needed to report that all the officers were dead.

  She fainted again before she could do so.

  When she came to, the car had stopped and it was nighttime. No, they were just in a dark parking garage. Margaret opened the passenger door and told her to come on, honey, we’re almost there.

  Randall stumbled along, one arm around the smaller woman. Her vagina burned like it’d been scrubbed out with sandpaper. She tried not to think about what happened, not to think, not to think . . .

  “No, no, don’t sit down here, honey. You have to keep walking.”

  It was like being drunk. Margaret said something about being dehydrated, her electrolytes being off, that the new bite on her neck might have infected her with something. Yeah, the electric lights were off. This struck her as funny, so she tried to laugh but started crying instead. They were now in an elevator, rising on a cushion of air, going to the special floor of the hospital. If Dr. Bowen was on duty, he would know how to handle this.

  “It’s okay, honey. You can cry. It’s all right.”

  “It hurt me.”

  “We’re almost there, Daniella. Come on, right in here. There you go. You can lie down now.”

  Did she just call me Daniella?

  Something pricked her hand. A bee, probably. This pain was mild compared to that in her genitals and neck. Still, she should really open her eyes. She was feeling better now.

  Christina Randall opened her eyes to find herself in an examination room, like in a doctor’s office. The lights were off and the door cracked open to a fluorescent-lit hallway. She shifted under her blanket and heard the paper covering of an exam table crackle under her ass. That was another thing: her ass. She wasn’t wearing pants. She felt between her legs to find an unfamiliar pair of loose-fitting panties. They held an extra-thick panty liner against her abused genitals.

  That’s because I’m bleeding. Because I was . . .

  The image came back to her of the bigfoot pumping into her. Hrah hrah hrah.

  Oh, no. I can’t be. I can’t be pregnant with one of those things.

  Her eyes filled with tears as more images intruded: officers dying, Baker pulling the pin on the grenade, Lively showing confidence in her ability to command the mission.

  The back of her left hand ached where the bee stung her. She felt there and discovered someone had inserted an IV line into her vein and taped it in place. A bag of clear fluid hung from a stand. She touched the left side of her neck, where the UPA had bitten her, and found a bandage.

  Where am I?

  Fighting nausea, she sat up and tried to take stock. This wasn’t Fairfax Hospital. She could tell that by the walls and sounds—or lack of sounds. She still wore her police T-shirt. Her pants were draped over a chair, along with her shoes, a gun belt, and a bulletproof vest.

  Deciding she felt well enough to walk, Randall pulled the IV out of her hand.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Outside of the room, a long hallway extended in both directions. To her left was a nurse’s station with overhead cabinets of supplies and a scale for weighing patients. Someone was talking in a room at the end of the hall, so she started in that direction—shuffling, actually. It hurt her crotch too much to take normal steps. She was now clothed, all except for the vest, but she walked with her arms folded protectively around herself. At her hip hung Officer Heager’s gun. Her other gun, the one she wore in a shoulder holster, was lost back at the bigfoot nest.

  She stopped. Closed her eyes and clenched her teeth. The rotten-meat smell of the bigfoot’s fur hung in her nose and mouth.

  Don’t think about it. Put it out of your mind. Maybe a doctor here can give you an abortion. But didn’t they have trouble trying to abort them?

  I’m gonna die. . . .

  “No,” she said, aloud this time. “No.”

  The conversation at the end of the hall turned out not to be speech at all. Someone was crying. Randall turned the corner into a small, windowless office. Margaret Connolly wore a white doctor’s coat and sat behind a desk mounded with
paperwork, her face in her hands. She looked like a person mourning the impossibility of ever working her way out from under such a deluge of bureaucracy.

  Randall spied a diploma hanging on the wall from Duke University Medical Center and a certificate from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. They both contained Margaret’s name. The rest of it clicked into place: they were at the CalPark Fertility Clinic. Margaret must have driven them here. Randall looked at a window down the hallway and saw it was still daytime. In the distance, she saw the top of the “handbag” building behind Tyson’s Corner mall, so named because its decorative cornice resembled the handle of a handbag. They were far up, at least ten stories off the ground. She breathed a small sigh of relief. Margaret had taken them to the safest place possible.

  “The last time I sat behind this desk, Daniella was alive.”

  Margaret was regarding her with splotchy red eyes.

  Randall swallowed. “I’m sorry. You did all you could.”

  “And you know what, it’s like nothing changed. Like it if never hit this place. They even left me voice mail, for godsakes.”

  Chuckling in a way that made Randall’s skin crawl, Margaret placed her phone on speaker and tapped a speed dial button. Randall took a seat in a spare chair as a message began to play. It was from some stuffy sounding woman who must have learned how to socialize at a gun range. “Margaret, this is Rita Vellines calling about the status of your rebuttal article on PGD testing? I know things are a little distracting there right now, but it’s important you submit your draft as soon as possible. The communications director has to approve it before release to the newspaper. When you get this, please call me in the Sacramento office at extension 213. Thank you.”

  Randall shook her head. “Who owns this company? Satan?”

  Shrugging, Margaret opened a desk drawer and took out a box of tissues. She noisily blew her nose. “That’s another thing. A week ago, this company and my place in it were all I could think about. Now I could give a shit.” On that last word, she threw the box against the wall.

  Randall couldn’t bear to look at her anymore. The woman was in so much pain. Yet she still had to ask, “Can . . . can you help me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I want an abortion.”

  Margaret placed her cracked eyeglasses onto the desk and covered her face with both hands. She sobbed as she said, “We should get out of here and go to a hospital outside the quarantine.”

  “No, I want you to do it. While we’re here.”

  “I hate them.”

  Randall wasn’t sure what she was referring to. Margaret blew her nose again, then lay her head down on the desk. As gently as she could, Randall tried again: “Margaret . . .”

  “No. I don’t perform that procedure. Other doctors here do, but I won’t. You have to be at least three weeks pregnant, anyway.”

  “With this thing in me, that should take, what, a day?”

  Margaret kept her face in her arms. “I just lost my daughter. Leave me alone.”

  Randall punched the arm of her chair. She surprised herself by beginning to cry as well. There had to be a way to gain control of this. I can’t be a complete failure.

  Margaret looked up at her and took a deep sigh. “There’s a pantry down the other hall. The coffee tastes awful, but there’s a vending machine. Come on.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The coffee dispensed by the Insta Puke-a apparently didn’t taste too bad, because Randall gulped down three cups of it, one after the other. Youngsters, Margaret thought. They have stomachs of iron. Of course, thinking of youngsters reminded her of Daniella, which reminded her of—

  She abruptly stood up and rummaged through a cabinet until she found the paper cup labeled Late-Night Emergency Food Fund. It was half full of coins. She used some of them to purchase a sandwich and packet of crackers from the vending machine. She sat down to watch Randall devour both of them, already feeding the monster growing inside her. Margaret didn’t have an appetite, herself.

  There’s no reason to go on living.

  “Your co-worker claims responsibility for all this,” Randall said. “Says he created the bigfoots.”

  Margaret blinked and refocused. “What?”

  “Nicolae Schaefer? Isn’t he a scientist here?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. There’s a man in the research department named Nick. I just met him last week.”

  “Is he tall and have dark skin?” Randall said.

  “Yes. And funny creases around his mouth.”

  “That’s the one.”

  Margaret felt a sudden surge of rage. Someone was responsible for what happened to Daniella? Someone here? She tried to recall details from her late-night encounter—the same night Daniella was raped. “I don’t understand. What did he say to you? How did you meet him? That bastard!”

  “Have you ever heard of Frederica Wolford?”

  “No.”

  “She was a missing person. Mr. Schaefer hired her to be a research subject here—at this office.”

  “I never go to that department. It’s upstairs. Honestly, I don’t know anything about the man. He wouldn’t even give me his last name.”

  Randall stared at her for a long moment. She seemed to arrive at a decision. “All right, I believe you. I’ve been trying to decide if you and Daniella are tied up with him, but I think you’re just random victims.”

  “We have nothing to do with him. Now would you mind explaining what’s going on?”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Over the next ten minutes, Randall filled her in on the details of her investigation. She told her about the Frederica Wolford missing-person case, the girl’s connection to Schaefer, and the scientist’s falsified home address at the empty lot. Randall could tell Margaret had trouble following the story—in her state, that was understandable—but she seemed to absorb the important part easily: Schaefer claimed he genetically modified Frederica’s fetus in the hopes of creating a super being, but instead he created a monster.

  “The way this place is run, no wonder he fucked up,” Margaret said.

  “Yeah, well, he did something right, at least. He changed himself. He acquired some of the bigfoots’ characteristics. When he wanted to escape custody, he simply jumped twenty feet into the air and got away from me.”

  Margaret stared at her. “Okay, start over again.”

  Randall obliged. When she was done reviewing the details of her encounter with Schaefer, Margaret was stroking her chin and staring hard at the tabletop. Randall decided that she liked this woman.

  I don’t know how put-together I’d be after just losing my daughter, but I certainly wouldn’t be doing as well as her.

  Margaret’s eyes glistened, and her chin shook. “I haven’t visited that department in four years. I’m not cleared for access. Every time I ask, the CalPark executives ignore me.”

  “You think they knew something about his experiments?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. This place has changed so much. I never did understand why they wanted to put a fertility clinic and a reproductive research lab in the same building but then not allow people like me into the lab.”

  “Could you get us in there? Now? . . . Oh, no. You said you don’t have access.”

  Margaret smiled with the corner of her mouth. “Let me get something out of my desk.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  As they walked to the elevator, Margaret handed her the blue keycard and explained how she’d stolen it from the corporate counsel’s office the previous week. She padded this with further details about her history with CalPark, especially how much she’d grown to despise the bureaucrats and their emphasis on making profits at the expense of patient care. They didn’t even have patient support groups anymore.

  Randall bit her lip as she examined the piece of blue plastic with its corporate logo that consisted of the letters C and P. If Margaret showed me this earlier, I might have decided she really was in league with Schaef
er.

  But what she was more concerned about was the propriety of entering the research lab at all. She was still a police detective, even if she didn’t feel like one right now. She still had a duty to respect Fourth Amendment protections against improper search and seizure. Anything she found in there would be inadmissible in court. Not to mention that police had already searched this lab during the Frederica Wolford missing-person investigation.

  Then she remembered the searing pain of the white-chested bigfoot ramming its enormous penis into her. She remembered the concussion of the grenade explosion, the dead police officers—Sergeants Tucker and Lively. The body parts strewn across the interstate. The tightening vice of martial law. In light of all that, scruples about the Fourth Amendment seemed silly.

  Besides, I’m going to be dead in a week. What the hell.

  Randall pressed the elevator call button to go up.

  A second later, the glowing button winked out. Darkness engulfed the hallway.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “What happened?” Margaret said.

  Randall swore. The hallway was pitch black. “You know, I’m not surprised with all the military operations around here. And I doubt Virginia Power has been at work this week.”

  “What do we do?”

  Illumination returned to the ends of the hallways as a back-up system kicked in. Randall also noticed a red dot reappear in the card reader mounted beside the fertility clinic’s door.

  “Will we be able to get back in there?” she said.

  Margaret swiped her white keycard across the reader, and the door unlatched. “No problem.”

  The operating ceiling lights were over doors labeled STAIRS. Randall started for the nearest one. “Good. We can just take the stairs up.”

  “No, that won’t work. Those doors are locked one-way. Once you’re on the stairs, you have to descend to the bottom and leave the building.”

  “Shit.” Randall sighed as she looked back at the elevator. There was a small hole toward the top of the elevator door. “Do you have a coat hanger?”