Breeds 2 (13 page)

“No guards,” Morris said dryly. “Lucky us. Your conscience is saved.”

Kirk didn’t bother with a reply.

“You coming in now?”

“No.”

Morris shrugged and opened the door. “Suit yourself. Keep the motor running.”

The shapes of Baxter and Ezekiel jumped from the pickup’s bed, their heels clattering on the pavement. Ezekiel slapped the hood and pointed gun fingers at Kirk as he passed, still wearing that shit-eating smirk that had to hurt. Kirk glanced around the empty parking lot as the three wardens regrouped at the main door. Two other cars were parked nearby, facing the building.

He rolled down the window. “Hey.”

All three wardens looked back to the truck.

“Can’t see any guards at all. Outside or in the lobby.”

No one answered him.

Kirk sighed. “Be careful.”

Ezekiel’s smile widened. The
weres
ignored the warden in the truck and studied the glass door. Morris inspected the wide handle before rattling the door in its frame.

“Locked,” he reported.

The lobby and reception area beyond the clear glass door was deserted.

“Break it,” he said to Ezekiel.

“There might be alarms,” Morris pointed out.

Baxter considered that possibility. He peered inside the office building and reluctantly rapped a knuckle off the glass.

Nothing appeared.

He knocked a second time with more urgency.

“Where are the guards?” Morris asked impatiently.

“Maybe a late-night poker game?” Baxter offered.

Morris ignored him. “You smell that?”

The two wardens took deep whiffs.

“Blood,” Baxter said.

“Yeah,” Morris agreed, reaching underneath his coat and gripping the handle of his knife.

“I’m breaking it,” Baxter said.

“That’ll bring the cops.”

“We’re on the outskirts of town here,” Baxter pointed out. “I give the cops a good fifteen to twenty minutes before they respond.”

Morris gestured,
Be my guest
.

Baxter drew his own length of silver, a great silver Bowie knife that dazzled in the scant lobby light. The glass was strong and it took three solid blows before the warden smashed a hole through, just above the door handle. He then stepped away and Ezekiel replaced him. The stocky warden jammed a fist through the opening, his crooked teeth bared as he manipulated the lock. A loud
snap
rewarded his efforts.

“No alarm,” Morris said as Ezekiel pushed the door open with a hydraulic hiss.

“No guards either,” Baxter observed.

All conversation died as a rich waft of blood and meat accosted the three wardens. The smell was so strong, so unexpected, that Ezekiel’s smile actually dimmed at the corners.

“Blood,” Baxter said, his knife tapping at his thigh. The others bared their own weapons.

“Cooling,” Morris added, taking a breath.

“A lot of it.”

The three wardens proceeded, fanning out in a line as they entered the lobby. Baxter drifted to the front desk and looked behind it while Ezekiel headed for the washroom.

“Hey,” Morris said softly, stopping both men. The Pictou warden nodded toward the single L-shaped corridor. A wide shard of shadow coated the juncture in sharp lines. There still wasn’t any difficulty in discerning the huge blood blot on the wall and at the base of the hall’s crook, or the black streak leading out of sight. The jagged stripe painted the center of the floor tiles and disappeared around a corner.

“Smell that?” Morris asked, his senses alive and thrumming.

“I smell it,” Baxter answered.

Ezekiel nodded. “It got out.”

Baxter studied the empty corridor. “Couldn’t have gotten out. Couldn’t have fucking healed so fast. It’s a
head
for Christ’s sake.”

Morris didn’t reply, which was an answer in itself. He walked down the corridor with his knife out, wary of the corner where the glass ended and cinder blocks began. Ezekiel followed, strolling not three paces behind the lead warden. Baxter brought up the rear, his attention divided between the gruesome blood spatters and the glossy partitions forming the hall.

The rooms behind the glass were an assortment of classrooms, laboratories, and even meeting halls with overhead projectors. Morris inspected the dark splotch at the wall’s base as he neared it. Black and thick and dried, it looked like several full blood bags had been pitched at the wall. He stopped at the corner and stuck his head out for a peek.

“Sweet Jesus,” he whispered.

Baxter stopped directly behind Morris’s back and looked over his shoulder.

Ahead lay a twenty-five-meter walk, give or take a meter, of beige cinder blocks. Gray doors marked both walls at regular intervals, and fluorescent lights hung overhead. Some of the tubes had been smashed, drizzling the tiles in glass, while one dark set hung off kilter from its metal casing. The remaining functioning lights streaked the passageway in broad tiger stripes of shadow and light.

But that was all secondary.

The real attention-grabber was the blood streak right down the middle of the corridor as if a person had been dragging a fat mop. From the initial spatter behind the wardens, all the way to the shadowed far end. In that patch of darkness was an open door, a gaping black cave that might have been the facility’s walk-in freezer. Blood spattered the walls in thick lines of code. Detached limbs rested against the bases. Glass fragments sparkled within the maroon pools like fizzy bubbles. Slabs of skin and fingers further drizzled the tiles like morbid cake sprinkles. Morris counted three arms and what might have been a knee, with no thigh and only half of an exposed shin.

The three wardens stared, motionless, at the carnage spread out before them.

“It got out,” Ezekiel whispered. He was no longer smiling.

“And fucked up whoever was handy,” Morris whispered, catching a curious scent of fear emanating from one of the wardens. He gripped his knife tighter and approached the distant freezer door bathed in a curtain of shadow. The others trekked behind him, through sticky smears, each step squeaking like sneakers on a basketball court.

Morris kept his attention on the nearing doorway, his face half-hitched into a grimace. Other smells assaulted him as he walked through the massacre––unknown chemical compounds, perhaps cleaners, as well as what might have been formaldehyde. And the unmistakable reek of stomach matter, ripped straight from the source. A tantalizing scent of something familiar mixed with the butchery on the floors and walls, teasing Morris with its mystery.

A sharp expulsion of breath issuing from the corridor’s end halted the advancing wardens. They stopped midway to the freezer door, knives drawn, tensed, and waited.

They didn’t wait for long.

A figure from some haunted nightmare stepped into view, partially draped in shadow as if abhorring the light. The thing stood just a little shorter than Morris himself, but that wasn’t the disturbing thing. The reborn was without clothing, the meager light revealing only patches of his stained person, a deep maroon hue, as if he’d just emerged from a violent bath.

The
were
-thing lingered near a wall and eyed the three wardens curiously, a slight frown on otherwise smooth features. Morris gawked. The face, the eyes, nose, and mouth resembled the one called Bailey, he realized, but there were some features not quite right. Minor details and flourishes, as if the sculptor had rushed the finer points. The wild light in the
were’s
eyes belonged to Bailey, however, there was no mistake there, but brighter. Much more feral.

The
were
-thing stepped into a gunslinger’s pose, presenting itself face-on to the three law bringers.

Morris lifted his knife. The pair behind him palpably tensed.

That subtle change in posture brought a growl from Bailey. His hands came up, fingers extended into hooks. He stepped toward the three newcomers with a thick splash of red, and flashed his teeth.

Some of those teeth had been shattered into shards.

“Bailey,” the Pictou warden greeted as he lifted his knife like a holy relic.

The reborn
were
charged, blurring forward, possessing a speed entirely unexpected. Morris slashed for the creature’s neck but Bailey slapped the weapon away, pinging if off a wall. The naked
were
gathered Morris up with two fists and, using him as an unwilling shield, crashed into all three wardens.

Morris got stomped on like a welcome mat.

Bailey slapped Baxter across the face, faster than the warden could react, and slammed the New Brunswick warden into the cement blocks, bouncing him off the unyielding material.

Ezekiel lunged, his weapon instantly caught and broken. Bailey whipped him into one wall, reset himself, and slapped the stunned warden into another.

Baxter attempted to rise and had his head cracked left then right, the blows staggering him. Skin split. Blood sprayed.

Morris attempted to rise and got a one-handed shove from behind, driving his face into a cement block. His nose and teeth shattered.

A livid Ezekiel, furious at being manhandled, got to one knee and sprang forward, landing on Bailey’s back. He clamped a hand over the
were
-thing’s mouth, but Bailey yanked it away and threw himself backwards, mashing the smaller warden against a wall. The reborn
were
turned and grabbed the smaller man’s throat, sinking his fingers in to the knuckles. Ezekiel’s rage winked out with the abrupt pinching of his air pipes. Bailey pulled, the resulting explosion as spectacular as it was gory.

A pale Ezekiel crumpled, grasping at the rich tide spurting through his fingers.

Morris got to his feet and roared. Bailey spun, grabbed him by his coat’s front and flung him into the lights above. Metal clanged. Glass blew apart in slivers and rendered the battlefield even darker. Morris fell in a heap. Bailey stomped on an arm, a hand, and kicked the warden’s head hard enough to snap vertebrae.

Baxter recovered and pinned the monster to the wall, stabbing his silver deep into the creature’s back. Bailey hissed, screamed, and grabbed the warden. He whipped Baxter headfirst into the cement, where the warden’s skull shattered like a knob of sunbaked clay.

Triumphant, Bailey threw his arms wide and screamed again, the sound ear-splitting inside the narrow confines.

His legs still working, Ezekiel kicked and crawled along the white floor tiles like a tadpole half crushed. He’d been badly hurt. Badly. The worst he could remember, but he was alive. Already he could feel the arterial flow slowing, his body repairing the damage. He would live to fight another day. All he needed was to get
away
.

A hand clamped around his ankle.

Ezekiel no longer had the vocal cords to scream.

On impulse, Kirk glanced through the driver’s window and caught a whiff of that metallic bouquet he knew in an instant. Fresh blood. And not the foulness that had drifted to his parked truck like septic gas. He fumbled for the latch, intent on leaving the vehicle when, from the depths of the medical examiner’s building, came a man––a naked man––striding toward the main door. Kirk blinked as disbelief seized his innards and gave them a yank. The figure slapped the door open with bare palms. The door rebounded and crashed into his face as he was halfway through. He stopped, surprised at the contact, and shoved it back. Metal yipped as the hinges gave away and the barrier crashed into the glass wall. The
were
––as this clearly was no human––yelled gibberish at the thing’s brazenness until determining it to no longer be a threat.

The
were
proceeded to walk across the parking lot.

In his wake, the door toppled to the concrete.

The naked
were
-thing marched into the night air. Then he stopped and turned toward Kirk’s truck.

Fuck this
, Kirk thought and started the engine. The
were
-thing half crouched at the sound. Kirk shoved the truck into drive, lit the creature up with headlights, and accelerated right at the beast.

The
were
-creature ran, shot off like an Olympic sprinter with a couple of afterburners mounted on his ass, and disappeared into the trees. Kirk watched the figure wink out of sight and, for a fleeting second, contemplated giving chase. He gripped the door and pulled it open.

Then stopped.

Three wardens armed with silver had gone into the building. They had not walked out. Kirk hesitated, dreading what that meant. If he did go after the
were
-creature, he’d probably fare no better than Morris and the others.

Which brought Kirk to his next concern.

He shoved the truck into drive and positioned the vehicle next to the ruined entrance. He parked it and hopped out, scanning the forest to see if the creature had decided to return. Kirk ran inside and slowed, breathing in the thick, unchecked violence lacing the air. He coughed, held a hand to his nose, and raced down a hall to a corner.

The sight ahead stopped him in his tracks.

Morris floundered in a pool of gore. He twitched and drunkenly rolled around, pitifully attempting to will his limbs to function. But his body was anchored to one spot by his head. Morris was the only one moving among the three splayed wardens. When the Pictou law bringer saw Kirk, his eyes widened and he grunted a high note of relief.

Then he collapsed, nose down in blood.

Baxter and Ezekiel didn’t move. Both appeared as if they’d been stomped on by the heel of God. Baxter, in particular, resembled an egg that had fallen from a very high place.

“Oh sweet Lord,” Kirk whispered, horrified at the carnage. He stumbled forward, slipping in places, heedless of the spawny slush drenching the soles of his sneakers. He hurried along the hall, dismayed at the battle’s aftermath, and located an orange bin tucked near the freezer door at the corridor’s end. Other half-devoured corpses lay strewn about, but the contents of the bin were untouched. Kirk reached down and grabbed handfuls of gray sheets. He spread out two and covered up Morris.

The warden mewed, a soft string of unintelligible syllables.