Anonymous Rex (37 page)

As planned, my tail helps to soften the jolt, and I tuck into a roll, spinning along the ground, bringing myself to a halt only a few inches from the other side of the electric fence. Popping up as quickly as possible, I stand and brush myself off. “Piece of cake,” I say to no one in particular, and my voice scrapes against the stillness of the night. I resolve to remain quiet if there’s no one else around.

There’s a scent of death, of decay, coming from a nearby corner, odors that should send me back into fighting mode, but it doesn’t carry that tinge of danger, so I step closer to investigate, delving into a small niche. I peer around, my eyes taking time to adjust to even less light than before. From the long scrapes covering the roughly rounded walls, I’d say it looks almost scratched out, as if a feral beast had decided to carve out its den right here, concrete be damned.

Animal bones, cleared of their gristle, their surfaces cracked open and marrow sucked dry, lay in a two-foot-high pile around a bed made of tattered mattresses, newspapers, and old clothing. Blood cakes the walls in finger-painted murals, childish pictures of humans, of dogs, of dinosaurs …

I think I know who—what—lived in this den once upon a time. Before it attacked me. Before I killed it.

There’s an entrance to the clinic within another small niche, and
the locks on this one are easy enough to pick with the right tools. The credit card and soda can tricks are useful for the everyday door, but a job like this one requires a locksmith’s set, which I was wise enough to bring along this time. Luckily for me, Ernie had a friend who had a nephew who had a pal whose mother worked at a manufacturing plant for such equipment, and he passed a kit on to me at cost. At least, he
told
me it was at cost.

I expect an alarm of some sort—and am relieved to find that none blares out at my arrival. The hallway I enter is dark and dismal, more so than outside due to the lack of ambient moonlight, and has the extra added attractions of mold spores and cobwebs dotting the walls. The corridors meet and converge in a haphazard, almost random pattern. The clinic didn’t look nearly this large from the outside, and I wonder if there is some type of optical illusion involved.

I locate the front entrance quickly enough, and unlock the five dead bolts set in place on the inside.

“It’s freaking cold out there,” Glenda says, and I shush her with a finger.

Together, we move through the corridors, utilizing hand signals to suggest directions and courses of action. A continuous hum echoes through the building, and I imagine we’ll find the power source sooner or later. And when we do, we’ll see how right or how wrong I am about this whole mess.

“Psst!” I turn to find Glenda standing in front of a partially opened door. “I hear something—through here.”

We make our way down a wide, darkened corridor, the walls lined with a metallic substance that picks up whatever electrical charge is running through this place; I can feel the tingle if I place my palm up against the wall. Small blue streaks of light shoot across the length of the walls at random intervals, and I can’t help but wonder if we’re approaching the center of the hub.

Another door, and behind it a low murmur, like a river pressing on a rusty water wheel, the mumble of an audience after a particularly bad film. “I think it’s through here,” Glenda says, and opens the door without caution. It’s pitch black inside, and she slaps the inside wall in her search for a light switch.

“Wait a second,” I whisper. “Take it easy—”

With a crash! a bank of fluorescent bulbs slam into life above our heads, illuminating a long rectangular room, a hundred feet long by at least forty feet wide, cage after cage after cage lining the walls and stacked three high. The curious babbling intensifies, and as we step inside the room, our mouths falling open involuntarily, we get a perfect view of what is making all the noise.

Each cage contains a … creature, for lack of a better term, a miniature version of the beast that attacked me three days ago, but that’s not precisely correct. There are Stego genes and Diplodod genes and Raptor genes and Allosaur genes, and I can see the genetic traits of all the sixteen species of dinosaur in every single one of these things. Small, misshapen horns poke at odd angles out of large, misshapen heads atop twisted misshapen necks and disabled misshapen bodies. The sounds we hear are so odd to our ears precisely because no two mouths are alike—for those creatures who have been blessed with mouths. Some of these things have nothing but gaping holes in the sides of their heads, and the tiny, tortured whimpers that emanate from within are amplified by the horrible, empty cavity.

They’re small. Two feet at the most. They’re nothing but babies. But that’s not all. Not by a long shot.

There are fingers. Honest-to-God fingers. And legs, real legs. And ears, and earlobes and noses and torsos, and the kicker about all these body parts is: they’re human.

“He did it,” Glenda says in a perfect blend of awe and revulsion. “Vallardo actually did it.”

“It … it seems so …” I stutter.

“But what—what’s wrong with them—”

“I think—I think they’re the misfits,” I explain.

“Misfits.”

“Nothing gets accomplished without a few failures first. That’s them.”

As if on cue, they begin to cry out in small wailing tones. Kittens, puppies, babies in need of help and care. “But he’s got them locked up, like … like animals.”

I nod. “In a way, they are—”

“How can you say that?” Glenda nearly shouts, turning on me in anger. Great—Glenda Wetzel’s mothering instincts have to make their debut at a time like this. “They’re
babies
, Vincent.”

In a daze, Glenda walks into the middle of the room, staring slack-jawed at the multitude of misfit monsters surrounding her. Before I can stop her, she reaches into one of the cages and scratches what looks to be a Hadrosaur/human mix behind a grotesque ear. It coos in delight.

“Look, Vincent,” she says. “It needs to be loved, that’s all.” Her face darkens, her tone growing angrier once again. “And that sonofabitch Vallardo locked them up like this.”

“I agree, he’s wrong and needs to be punished,” I say, “but we don’t have time for this. C’mon, Glen, step back.”

Glenda doesn’t seem to agree. She heads toward a console set into the far wall, running her fingers over the buttons, ire rising with each passing second. And a funny thing’s happening—as Glenda gets angrier, the noise in the cages begins to increase.

“Apefucker thinks he can screw with nature and then lock babies up behind bars? Is this science? Does this amuse him?”

“Glen, I really think you should stop.” The bars are rattling now, all of the creatures awake, alert, and banging at their confines. The whimpering has turned into hooting, and screaming’s not far around the corner.

But Glenda doesn’t hear my protestations or the rising racket. She’s flipping switches left and right, and the console, once dead and quiet, lights up with a burst of energy. I trot over toward her, eager to stop whatever she thinks she’s going to do.

“I’ll show that sonofabitch what it is to screw with the gene pool,” she’s yelling. “I’ll show him!” And now the menagerie of misfits is really letting loose, jumping up and down in their cages like a pack of monkeys, slamming their bodies against the bars, as if they know that escape is imminent, that a messiah has come to release them from their bondage.

“Glenda, don’t—” I shout, just as she slams her palm into the button that pops open every cage at once.

With a wild group shriek that puts to shame Tarzan and all of his jungle friends, a hundred horrible creatures fall out of the sky, leaping into the room, onto Glenda, and onto my back. The attack is on.

My first thought is that I misjudged these things, that they’re no more harmful than a flea, but that’s over with as soon as the first one takes a nip out of my ear, ripping away a section of guise as well as a
nice hunk of flesh. Without thinking, I reach behind me, grab it by the scruff of the neck—a ridged neck?—and toss it through the air, football style. It thwacks against a far wall and falls to the ground. Undaunted, it picks itself up and leaps back into the pile of writhing creatures.

But more are coming my way, jumping at me, using coiled, stunted tails to launch themselves into the air, crooked mouths wide open, razor-sharp teeth deadlocked at my eyes, my face, any soft tissue on my body. It’s a deadly combination—those human fingers help some to grip on to my hide while their dino teeth do the dirty work. Through the clamor, I can see Glenda go down beneath a heap of the beasts, and I struggle to fight off as many as I can and make my way across the room.

My claws, poking through my guise like thorns on a rose, rake through any flesh they come in contact with as I use my hands to ward off attacks from the front. My tail, already freed up earlier, comes in handy taking out enemies that take a shot at me from behind, and though I’ve been bitten and clawed a hundred times in two minutes, I’m dishing out more than I’m taking. The majority of blood on the floor of the cage room is not mine.

“Glenda!” I call over the caterwaul of shrieks, and I hear a “Vincent!” in return.

“Are you okay?” I yell through another lance of pain, this time at my wrist, and I look down to find a set of teeth attached to a misshapen hunk of flesh planted firmly in my arm. I shake the arm up and down, curling the creature as I lift, but the teeth are caught tight, buried in my muscle. With the underclaw on my other hand, I reach out and spear the creature through the head; it issues a slight whimper of pain, then releases its grip and falls to the ground, dead.

And now Glenda’s beside me, bloodied worse than I am, but we’re both alive, and we’re both standing up.

In a corner.

The creatures back off for a moment, at least seventy of the vicious little goblins, each no more than two feet high, horns included. They still cackle and shriek like a pack of mutated pigeons, but it’s taken on a conversational tone, as if they are somehow communicating, deciding their next plan of attack.

“Okay, so I was wrong,” Glenda admits. “They’re not sweet little things.”

I take a quick look around. The wall behind us is perfectly smooth, no room for hand- or footholds. “What now? They’ve got us cornered.”

And they seem to know it. Glenda and I try a quick move to the left, and in unison, they shuffle over to block our escape. A quick move to the right produces similar results. “We’re trapped.”

The sounds are growing louder again, the creatures regaining their blood lust. In the back of the pack, two of them are going at it, little human fingers and little dino claws, fighting to the death, powerful jaws with stunted human teeth snapping instinctively toward unprotected necks and major arteries.

“Go,” says Glenda.

“What?”

“You go, lock the door behind you. I’ll take care of—of this.”

“You’ll be killed.”

“Maybe not. Look, what you found is too fucked up not to stop. You started this investigation, and you have to be the one to finish it. I screwed this part up, I’ll deal with the consequences.”

“But I can’t leave you—”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Rubio—go!” And then: “Find what’s her name. Take her back to LA. Name a kid after me.”

I don’t have time to argue. Glenda calls out, “Hey, you ugly fucking leprechauns! Take a bite outta this!” and jumps to her left, kicking out with her legs as she flies through the air, claws raking at the tens of bodies already leaping toward her. Instantly, she disappears beneath a mass of improper flesh and disparate body parts.

A path opens in the chaos, and without looking back I take it, running at full speed down the corridor. One of the baby dino/man mixes breaks off from the pack and hops after me, making it out of the room as I slam the door closed and bolt it from the outside. The thing issues a feeble warning cry—cut off from its littermates, the sound is more pathetic than powerful—and makes a futile attempt to chomp down on my shin. I thrust my leg up and out, and the creature goes flying into the ceiling, landing on the floor below with a thud and a squish.

Good-bye, Glenda. Go quickly to wherever it is we go.

I stick to the right wall of the complex, utilizing an old maze-solving maneuver, and soon that hum grows in volume. Opening doors indiscriminately, I wander the clinic, keeping myself on high alert. The run-down sections of the building eventually give way to newer, decorated,
cleaner
areas, and I feel it’s safe enough to remove my bloodied mask, free up my true nostrils, and take a good sniff around.

That chlorine scent again, this time mixed with the roses and oranges I had been expecting. Vallardo’s scent of anisette, of pesticides, is present as well, and I assume emanating from the same location. Like a cartoon Country Mouse drawn by the aroma of a scrumptious city feast, I follow my nose up, up, and away.

I saunter into the “health clinic’s” main laboratory five minutes later, tossing out smiles like so many free-trial magazine subscriptions. Technically one per customer, but I serve up a dozen each to Vallardo and Judith McBride. The two of them pale at the sight of me, Vallardo’s naturally green Triceratops hide unable to hide the shock. He blanches into a yeti-white pallor; if I had my camera I could score ten thousand dollars from a national tabloid for offering proof of the creature.

Each of them—Vallardo, Judith, Jaycee (emerging from behind the good doctor)—sizes me up. I can feel the weight of their stares, of their unspoken questions.
How good is he with that stubby body? Can I take him solo? Can we take him together?

I quench it all with a snap of my tail and a roar that manages to pierce even my own eardrums. They back away.

“You didn’t even lock the laboratory door,” I chastise, dropping from my growl into a conversational tone. “I’m disappointed in the lot of you.”

Jaycee comes galloping up to me then, unsure of what to do with her body. Does she hug me? Does she push me out of the room? She opts for the safety of stopping a few yards outside my striking range and saying, “Vincent … you have to go.”