The Ancient Breed (32 page)

Hood threw his head back and laughed – a hauntingly, humorless laugh. “Goodbye, Nick. You and your brother, Thomas, will meet again in the great mutant hereafter,” he said, and gradually faded away into the dusky basement air.

Nick ignored the impulse to question Hood’s magical, vanishing act and studied Walkingman’s prone, unconscious form instead. There were already subtle changes in his appearance. His feet were barely discernable at the bottom of his pant legs, and his lone, exposed arm shriveled before Nick’s eyes.

Nick tried to muscle his way free from the manacles again, but he was too weak. Walkingman groaned. Nick’s head snapped forward expectantly.

There wasn’t much time left before Walkingman became Eatingman. Nick had to think of something.

Then it dawned on him. Where the hell was Neo? Was he lying dead outside, or was he searching for his partner?

Nick called Neo’s name at the top of his lungs several times, but stopped abruptly when the shouting expedited Walkingman’s revival. Most of the young terrorist’s hair had abandoned his skull and fallen to the floor in clumps, leaving wispy strands dangling at the edges of his scalp.

Walkingman stirred and lifted his head, but he wasn’t Walkingman anymore. The thing’s unblinking green eyes sized Nick up for dinner as thick saliva drooled through its black, pointed teeth. Its forked, serpent’s tongue shot from its mouth, curling and uncurling obscenely in Nick’s direction.

Nick turned his face away from the grotesque creature and imagined a dinner bell pealing ominously in the distance. If he was ever going to devise an escape plan,
now
was the time.

There was no guarantee of
later
.

36

M

indy Landers awoke in a moonlit rift between shadowy hulks, her head as thick as the curdled milk inside the dumpster behind Ari’s Carryout. She found herself reclining on several plump trash bags in an alley along her nightly route; the garbage cans surrounding her oozed a foul stench from steaming liquid rubbish that watered her eyes and gagged her.

Mindy propped her hands behind her and pushed forward into a sitting position, an old trick to compensate for the budding arthritis plaguing her back. To her surprise, she nearly pushed herself into a forward somersault. Her mental haze thinned some, and she studied her hands in the faint silver glow for a long while to be absolutely positive that she wasn’t dreaming. The four thin, jagged scars on her left palm were missing, as well as the scaly calluses and desiccated skin.

Her hands groped wildly in the darkness for her neighborhood-travel handbag, and they quickly pounced on it a foot away. She fumbled recklessly inside the bag’s yawning gullet, her quivering hands spilling its contents into the discolored seepage. But Mindy could’ve cared less. She felt younger and more alive than she had felt for several years.

After retrieving the objects of her search, she flung the bag aside, flicked her butane lighter several times before a flame sparked to life, and slammed her eyelids shut in prayer, begging God not to dash her hopes with yet another of life’s cruel twists. Reluctantly, Mindy’s eyelids fluttered open, and she unconsciously held her breath as she gazed upon the youthful visage in her cracked compact mirror.

Tears rained into her lap as she laughed and cried at the miracle that recovered her lost youth. She was twenty-something once more! Her face was smooth as cream with peach blush painting each cheek. Her sable lashes were lustrous; the crow’s feet and deeply etched age canals were absent from her complexion. She massaged a breast and found it to be firm and perched high, with her nipples now positioned front and center and ready to say “howdy-do” to every passing man.

She used the flickering flame to inspect her legs. The bulging varicosities and purplish-red spider webs were gone, displaced by supple, satin skin that gleamed in the bathing moonlight.

Suddenly, a cloud darkened her thoughts, staining her joy just when Hope had come in like a long shot at Belmont. All the years of pain, ruin, disappointment, and anger swelled into a roaring tsunami that flattened her precious miracle in seconds. There was much work to be done. Tricks to be turned. Money to be saved. New clothes to be purchased. Hair to be styled. Nails to be manicured.

And most important of all – a very special meeting to arrange.

Janet Staley watched the strange woman stumble and sway in the shadows along the darkened storefronts, ricocheting off the shabby brick walls and grimy display windows, but never falling. As the woman staggered into the streetlight’s yellowish cone in the prostitutes’ staked-out territory, Janet’s jaw dropped. The broad, and stoned out of her mind at that, was wearing Lurdene Walken’s raggedy duds!

Janet doubled her fists, kicked off her high-heeled, fuck-me pumps, and sprinted angrily toward the woman. The spaced-out bitch must have rolled poor Lurdene and stolen her clothes. Well, Janet planned to fix her wagon but good!

The lurching woman reached the loading access drive, a dark break between the storefronts, and toppled headlong into the gloom. The three other prostitutes ceased their jiggling parade and watched Janet disappear into the deep shadows. They were too frightened to join Janet and too broke to neglect any tricks that might happen their way.

Janet dived onto the muttering woman and pinned her arms to the cracked pavement.

“Why are you wearing Lurdene Walken’s duds, bitch?” Janet bounced her bony ass on the stranger’s stomach a few times, hoping to knock the wind and fight out of her.

The woman panted like a dog in heat, unable to form words.

“Speak up now, or I’ll pulverize you!” Janet growled breathlessly, adding a couple more bounces to emphasize her point.

The woman’s lips moved noisily for several moments, then they exploded with, “Janet . . . it’s . . . me!”

Janet leaned over to get a better look at this woman’s face in the weak light.

“I don’t know you, bitch liar!”

“Yeah . . . ya . . . do. Lurdene.”

“What do you take me for, a blind bat?” Janet snapped.

“I’ve . . . changed. Youn . . . ger.”

“Yeah, and I’m one of the Olsen twins.”

“Git off . . . me, and I’ll prove . . . it.”

Janet considered the woman’s request for a moment, and then warily released her arms and stood. “This better be good.”

Lurdene sat up, massaged her ribs, and tugged up her top.

“Jesus!” Janet turned away.

“Look, goddammit! Tha tattoo on my titty.”

Janet peered down. “Lean into the streetlight a little more.”

Lurdene scooted toward the street.

Janet moved lower and examined the tattoo on the woman’s left breast. It was a pair of roses, one red and one yellow.

“Damn!” she exclaimed. “It
is
you.”

Lurdene slipped down her top, slowly rose to her feet and propped a hand against the closest brick building.

“I was kidnapped.”

“What?”

“That asshole that picked me up tha other night at the curb.”

“The Cadillac?”

“Yeah. Anotha guy and him did some weird shit to me and some otha broads.”

“No shit!”

“I couldn’t see ‘em, and they couldn’t see me, but I heard ‘em. Then, thar was some kind of fuckin’ monster that . . .” Her eyes filled with tears, and sobs wracked her throat.

Janet wrapped an arm around her. “Take your time, honey.”

Lurdene nodded, and wiped the wetness from her cheeks. “This thing – I couldn’t see it, eitha – murdered some of tha others. Oh gawd, it was horrible. Just horrible.”

“Murdered them? How?”

“It . . . ate ‘em. Tore them ta pieces.”

“Eeew.”

“And tossed thar gawddammed bones against tha wall. Those I
could
see. It was fuckin’ . . . horrible. That’s tha only word I can think of ta describe it.”

“C’mon up to your apartment, honey, and get some rest.”

“Rest. Yeah, I need some rest,” she said distantly, her gaze focused somewhere far beyond the access drive.

Janet guided Lurdene to their crumbling apartment building down the block and then upstairs to her “rumpus room.” Janet fixed Lurdene a cup of green tea, tucked her in, and left her alone in the darkness to catch some winks.

After Janet left, a monstrous headache abruptly attacked Lurdene’s dazed brain with the force of a falling axe. It stoked a furious inferno beneath her flesh, beading sweat across her undulating skin. The modest apartment spun like a crazy merry-go-round as she feebly attempted to roll off the bed and call out her open window for help. Mercifully, her intense fever, muscle spasms, and vertigo disappeared less than a minute later, and there was no longer a reason to seek assistance.

She blinked in the thinning darkness; the room appeared brighter than before the headache. She threw back the sheet and allowed the night air to roam her naked body. She needed sleep. Lots of it. Maybe tomorrow she’d wake up and discover that her kidnapping had only been a nightmare and her newly found youth was merely an illusion.

But as she closed her eyes and drifted toward sleep, a ghastly thought burst into her mind. A violent, primal instinct. A malevolent force so compelling that it overwhelmed all reason. It swallowed the very essence of Lurdene Walken - her dreams, hopes, morality, and memories. It scorched her soul.

The horrible impulse grew to a yearning, and then swelled to an unrestrained hunger that, if left unsated, would plunge her into the spiraling depths of insanity. Her brown eyes rolled to a glowing green, then to brown again. She licked her dry lips hungrily.

Yes, she would devour Janet Staley and become head whore of their block once more.

37

T

o Nick, the minutes crawled by in the electrified, dank basement. Jay Walkingman was clearly being transformed into something inhuman by the same water he used to poison the wives of powerful world leaders. Walkingman’s shrinking form writhed violently on the floor, and his agonizing cries echoed off the basement walls as the last vestiges of his humanity succumbed to the potent poison. He was now a twisted, hairless creature with a Neanderthal skull gruesomely disproportionate to its new frame, ears curved to points, and black, spiked teeth. The little demon shredded away his clothes and shoes in the process, revealing a massive, pallid chest, and thick feet with splayed, tripod toes.

Nick tried to tear his gaze away from the terrifying transformation and concentrate on his elusive escape plan, but the mutation process mesmerized him. Hood had been right. He did have a front row seat to a macabre spectacle.

The demon’s green eyes glared at Nick, their pupils tomb black. Walkingman shook the cuffs from his emaciated wrists and ankles, rose to all fours like a grotesque animal, and hungrily sized up its prey.

The creature darted to the right, and quickly to the left, testing its new agility, but its eyes never left its quarry. Nick felt a desperate urge to test the manacles again to see if the adrenalin surging through his muscles had intensified his strength enough to break the steel, but his common sense overruled his fantasy. Such actions would only reveal his anxiety and instantly provoke an attack.

Where the hell was Neo?
Perspiration leaked from Nick’s pores and stained his shirt. Still, he didn’t move, and perhaps that was the only thing preventing the creature from rushing him. It seemed curious as to why its prey exhibited no fear.

C’mon Neo! Get your ass down here and shoot this little bastard, and I’ll live to investigate another day.

But there was no sudden tinkling of shattered window glass, no gunfire obliterating a door lock, or no heavy footfalls descending the basement steps. There was only mausoleum silence, interrupted only by the creature’s intermittent growling.

Walkingman scampered close, then quickly retreated. It repeated the action several times without making physical contact. Up and back. Up and back.

Playing cat and mouse. Nick’s heart thumped like a pulsating, super bass stereo system. His perspiration was a river of discomfort.
Think, man! Think!
There must be a way to get out of there alive.

Suddenly, he recalled the escape tunnel that led away from Alick Tobhor’s fortress where the demon guardian prowled. He wished to move to the front of the procession, and somehow he had.
Teleportation!
Of course. All he had to do was concentrate. Create a mental picture of where he wanted to go.

He imagined the section of the asylum driveway where he had parked the Navigator. He closed his eyes and focused on that scene.

The drooling mini-monster charged forward again, and this time one of its long, tapered fingernails ripped through his blue jeans and drew blood. Nick’s lids popped open, and it immediately retreated. It glowered at its prey, and then licked the bloody nail with a quick flick of its tongue. Grunting, it shoved the nail between its thin lips and sucked it clean. A malicious grin split its craggy face.

Nick sensed a change in Walkingman. It squealed and hopped around like a kid on Christmas morning. It had tasted blood and wanted more. Human blood somehow excited the damn thing.

It finally ceased its unnerving boogie and confronted Nick again, but this time it seemed more confident. As it edged closer, its wide, ominous mouth seeped pinkish saliva. Its thin lips retracted into a vicious snarl.

Nick redoubled his effort to teleport from the basement, but his lack of complete concentration doomed his efforts. The asylum driveway scene flickered in and out of his mind.

The snarl grew closer. Nick peered from beneath half-closed lids. Walkingman prepared for the kill; its legs coiled into sinewy springs.

A violent rumbling suddenly shook the asylum’s archaic foundation; dust snowed from the ceiling supports, and Nick and the creature were immersed in a choking fog. Blue lightning cracked and snapped in the eerie atmosphere, and an intense wind whisked the dust fog away. Nick’s hair stood on end from the electrified air, and his polo shirt collar and jeans flapped wildly like sails straining on a ship’s mast during a tropical storm.

Suddenly, the basement was quiet; the mysterious bluster subsided as swiftly as it had begun. Finally, Walkingman broke the stillness with a throaty growl.
This was it.
He tensed.
Time to be eaten alive.