The Containment Team (11 page)

“They’re coming!” Madelyn pointed behind us, back in the direction we’d come from earlier. “And they’re coming fast.”

The mob came around the corner, looking like some sick marathon of the damned. I continued to count, sweat pouring down my face.

“What are you waiting for?” Ron asked. “Let’s get out of here.”

I ignored him as I stared at the mob. My guess was that we had about thirty seconds before they arrived at the gas station. They hadn’t been running earlier. What had caused the urgency? Had it been a reaction to our plowing through some of them. Or had they heard the cries of distress from the monsters that we’d been fighting?

Pete pounded on my seat. “You’re cutting it too close!”

I waited a bit longer. Mercifully, the engine started this time without a problem. I pulled forward just as the monsters swarmed into the gas station parking lot. I swung the car around and plowed forward, not bothering to find the exit and driving straight over a patch of grass and out onto the road.

One of the monsters sprung onto the hood of the car, reminding me of a cat as it landed and placed a hand down to brace itself. I gunned the gas as another of the monsters slammed into the driver side door head first. It bounced off and was left behind.

The monster on the hood grabbed hold of the windshield wipers as I increased the speed and slammed on the brakes, hoping to send him flying off like I had the last one. The wipers twisted and were almost ripped free but the monster managed to hold on. Its feet were braced on the hood with a stance that reminded me of a person riding a snowboard.

It roared, its face contorted into an inhuman expression of rage and malevolence.

Not knowing what else to do, I punched the gas. I was willing to bet that the wipers wouldn’t withstand much more abuse.

“Watch where you’re—”

I shifted the wheel to avoid a car coming from the opposite direction. My whole focus had been on the monster, so I hadn’t noticed it approaching. The car whizzed by, its horn blaring as it did. In my rearview mirror, I saw brake lights as the oncoming horde of blutom monsters surged towards it.

The monster on the hood roared again, looking down at us with a look I could only describe as hunger. Its teeth flashed in the light of a passing streetlight. The monster didn’t have a tuft of hair left. The blood film was there, but it wasn’t as prevalent as it had been on the others, so I wondered how far along in the shifting process it was.

I slammed on the brakes again, gently turning the wheel so that he was caught off balance as well. The monster lost his footing, right after that the windshield wipers gave way and he toppled off the hood of the car. I sped away before the creature could get to its feet.

“Did the other car get away?” I asked, turning the corner without looking back to see what was happening behind us.

“He was backing up without turning around,” Pete said. “He’ll have a tough time if they catch him, but might get away if he doesn’t stop.”

A part of me wanted to return and help whoever was in the car, but I doubted that anybody else shared the same sentiments. My guilt was starting to weigh me down and just as I opened my mouth to say something, I saw headlights in the rearview mirror. The car followed us for a block before veering off to the right.

Assuming that it had been the car that had passed us, I let out a sigh and relaxed a tiny bit, glad that they had gotten away.

It was quiet in my car for several blocks.

“Look,” Ron said, “about pulling a gun on ya’ll earlier, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Pete said, clapping me on the shoulder. “We weren’t that worried. Seems like we all have nine lives today.”

I didn’t respond. We still didn’t have anything we could use to kill any monsters we found at Pete’s lab.

A monster came running out of the shadows and stopped to stare at our approaching headlights, his blood film clearly visible. I couldn’t say for certain, but it reminded me of the monster that had just been surfing on the hood of our car.

It had to have been my imagination because nobody else commented on it as I slammed down the gas pedal and left him in the dust.

THE NEXT GAS station we stopped at wasn’t infested by monsters or homicidal clerks that were itching to put a bullet in anybody that looked slightly suspicious. It was dirty, and smelled of cigarette smoke and unwashed bodies, but given everything else we’d been through, it was downright hospitable. After perusing through the drinks, we purchased a bunch of soda pop in glass bottles.

I had attempted to buy beer first because those were the most readily available glass bottles. I had been on my way to the cashier before Ron had pointed out it was against city ordinance to sell alcohol after midnight.

That was when I had checked my watch for the first time in hours and realized it was two-thirty in the morning. The beer had gone back to where I had got it and we’d searched until we found some soda in glass bottles. A few four packs of Coke and one of something called Dew Shine. I wasn’t familiar with the drink, but it had the Mountain Dew logo on the top. I figured I’d take a swig of the stuff before we emptied it all out and replaced it with gasoline. 

We also purchased all of the gas containers that the store carried. The clerk raised his eyes when he saw how many we were buying, but he didn’t make any comment.

He glanced back at the security camera as if to check to make sure that it was still working. He no doubt thought that we were up to no good, buying glass bottles and containers for gas. I was a bit surprised that the station was still open, given everything that was happening tonight, but maybe we’d driven far enough out of the way to put the madness behind us for now. 

The clerk was an older man, probably pushing seventy. His full head of greasy hair was all gray and it didn’t look as though he had combed it anytime in the last decade. His smell made Madelyn wrinkle her nose and take a step backward.

She tried asking him for any news, but he only grunted. Even after giving him one of her most ingratiating smiles, she hadn’t been able to get more that a word or two out of him, though, I did see him checking out her backside when she walked away.

It made me smile. There was nothing quite like a dirty old man.

“There is trouble in the town tonight,” I said to the clerk. “You may want to close down the store.”

He lifted part of his upper lip. “What you saying, boy? That a threat?”

I held up my hands placatingly. “No, no. Nothing like it. You been watching the news?” I motioned to the television behind him.

He scowled, his eyes becoming slits. Given the trouble we had with Ron at the last one, I shut up and pulled out my debit card. Despite the proffered payment, the tension didn’t ease.

There wasn’t much else I could do. He looked like the sort of man that would have had trouble getting worked up about anything outside his store, much less some rumor coming from a bunch of college students.

Pete, Madelyn, and Ron were already heading for the door as I finished paying. When I followed after them, the clerk’s eyes practically burned holes in my back.

While Pete and I filled up the gas containers, Ron and Madelyn sat inside the car. The wind was still blowing hard and I thought that I detected a hint of smoke in the air which wouldn’t have been a surprise if the wind had been coming from the east, back towards the direction of the fire we’d encountered earlier. The wind was coming from the west, from the center of town. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had happened there that we weren’t yet aware of.

As we pulled out of the gas station, I rolled down the window, listening for any other howls or screams from the monsters. It was silent.

“I think we left them all behind,” Pete said. I didn’t like the relief that I heard in his voice, afraid that the others in the car might start to think that we were safe as well.

I shook my head. “We have to assume the city has been infested until we know otherwise.”

“At the very least,” Madelyn said, her face in her phone again, checking the news, “I think it’s safe to assume that with every minute we get closer to the lab we are also getting closer to ground zero. Or patient zero. Or whatever it is that you want to call it.”

“We never asked how you made it all the way across campus without being overtaken by the monsters.” I tried to speak with as little emotion as I possibly could, but Pete picked up on my tone. I wasn’t sure if I’d just done a bad job of hiding it or if it was because he was already sensitive to the idea because there was more that he was hiding.

“Are you suggesting that I brought them back with me so I release them on all the unsuspecting people in our dorm?” The edge in his voice could have cut a steak.

“No, that’s not what I’m suggesting at all,” I said. Pete’s anger seemed to be genuine but I had to be sure. If Pete was involved in this in a different way than we suspected, there were now two others beside myself whose lives were at stake as we made our little joyride through hell. Sure, one was an ex-girlfriend and the other had held me at gunpoint not more than thirty minutes ago, but I still felt obligated to do what I could to look out for them. “Perhaps I should have phrased it a little better. These things attack anything that moves. You can’t have been the only person on campus tonight, even if it was the middle of the night.”

“I don’t like your tone. I ran like the fiery hosts of hell were on my tail, because, point of fact, they were.”

I’d known Pete a long time and this seemed to be the real him speaking. I decided to let up a little bit and take it a slightly different direction.

“You said it yourself,” I said. “When these blutom creatures are in their infancy, they don’t have half the brains they’ll have when they’re fully developed. No, something more is going on here. Think this through with me, Slammer. They followed you all the way across campus and up four flights of stairs without once peeling off. Were they coordinating their attack? Or did they have orders to follow after you?”

“You’re making too much of this.” I could see Pete in the rearview mirror shaking his head. “There’s also a flaw in your brilliant deduction, Sherlock. You’re ignoring one salient point. What about the one that attacked Madelyn. If they were working together or following orders, why didn’t he stay with me?”

“That’s a good point,” I said, shrugging. Why would that monster have come all this way only to be distracted by Madelyn?

“I may have an answer for that.” Madelyn twisted uncomfortably in her chair. “I think I knew the man.”

“How?” I asked.

My question was met with silence.

I looked at her and she shrugged. “I may have gone out with him once or twice. When I ended things, he didn’t take it very well.”

“That was something you could have mentioned sooner,” I said. When I noticed that she’d gone red in the face, I did the best I could to hide the satisfaction in my voice at seeing her off her guard. It was such a rare thing that I can hardly describe the pleasure I felt at seeing her so uncomfortable. Even when we’d found her in the bathroom, she’d been more composed than she was right now. It made me wonder exactly what had gone down between her and the man. “I suppose, though, it didn’t become relevant until just now.”

Madelyn gave me a grateful look, so I must have been successful at hiding my true feelings about the fact that she was squirming. It galled me that my heart thudded in my chest with the accompanying smile that she gave me.

I was too predictable when it came to women, especially when I was dealing with her. I needed to be better about that.

“Okay.” I cleared my throat and looked away. “Assuming then that this guy noticed Madelyn and decided to go after her instead—maybe he smelled her perfume or something—that still doesn’t answer the question of why they all followed you back across campus. There had to have been other distractions on the way. There are only two possible conclusions. One, they were communicating among themselves and were chasing after you to keep you from spreading the word. Or two, they were under orders from another more fully developed blutom monster.” There was silence. “Time to poke some holes in my theories.”

“Actually,” Ron said, “that really is more of a hypothesis.”

I rolled my eyes but kept my mouth shut. I was beginning to regret inviting the kid to come along. Well, I suppose that isn’t exactly the truth. I wouldn’t have left him back at the station, he would have been captured and shifted by the monsters for sure.

Since that time we’d learned that despite his appearance, Ron was, in fact, twenty years old and attending the same university as us. He normally had his roommate pick him up from work. I’d offered to drop him off at some place along the way but he’d insisted on coming with us. Madelyn had shrugged and Pete had looked annoyed, primarily because it was yet another person that we’d be taking back to his precious top secret lab.

Ron had been staring at Madelyn when he’d said that he wanted to stay so it wasn’t too hard to figure out what exactly it was that kept him in the car with us. We were heading into unknown but certain peril, and the kid here wanted to hit on my ex. Well, all the more power to him. I wasn’t going to feel bad if he got himself killed along the way.

Maybe I’d feel a little bad.

Ron cleared his throat. “While it is unlikely that Pete could have made it to your dorm without anything else distracting the monsters, it isn’t impossible, so we shouldn’t just rule that out automatically. We also shouldn’t ignore the possibility that there was some other reason that drew the monsters to Pete. Perhaps they were attracted by the soap he used, or there is something about a six-foot five-inch man that they find irresistible. Perhaps you tall boys taste better.” Ron was a good four inches shorter than me. He was looking at Madelyn again, but from where she sat in the front of the car she didn’t notice.

I could practically see the fantasy playing across his face of the monsters being distracted by Pete and me, allowing him to play the hero and save the day. I might have knocked the little twerp upside the head if a cop car wouldn’t have just come zooming around the corner, lights on and siren blaring. It was closely followed by several more. 

Once they had passed, I watched in my rearview mirror expecting them to head in the direction of the first gas station, but they took another turn and went a different way. They were all headed towards the center of the city. The smoke on the wind coming from that direction, couldn’t have just been my imagination.

Why were they heading to the city center? If the epicenter of the monsters was the lab, shouldn’t that be the place where we find a bunch of police, perhaps a bunch of government men in dark suits?

“It’s a good hypothesis, Morty,” Madelyn said, “but Freckles back there is right. There could be any number of reasons.”

Ron made a face at the name, but in the dark, I was unable to tell if he was pleased or perturbed. My guess was the latter and I refrained from grinning. Madelyn only gave nicknames to men that she had absolutely no interest in. It was her way of subtly putting them down. It usually had the opposite effect of what she intended and they wanted her all the more.

I shook my head, that was exactly what she wanted. It was easier to control things when the men around her were smitten.

“We don’t have enough information to say one way or another,” Pete said, “but I don’t think we can discount anything at this point. We should assume that if there are this many blutom monsters, there will be some that are advanced beyond what we’ve seen.”

“What did the rats that had fully converted look like?” Madelyn asked as she wrapped her arms around her chest.

“They looked like any of the other rats. Given time, the fur grew back.”

I shifted in my seat. “Will there be a way for us to tell the difference between a blutom human or a normal human?”

“I don’t know. The rat fur didn’t change but their skin might have been paler. It’s hard to say for sure because nobody actually shaved the critters to find out.”

“What makes you say that these things are at the core of the myths about vampires?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “they like to bite for one.”

“Really,” Ron said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

I snorted. “That’s just because you shot off the head of the one that attacked you.”

“That’s not what I meant—”

“Relax, I get sarcasm.”
Kid. Relax kid.
I added in my mind but didn’t say out loud. I didn’t need to entirely alienate Ron. I was only having a bit of fun with him.

“Did the nature of the rat teeth change at all?” I asked. “One of the monsters I fought had fangs.”

“They didn’t, but rat teeth are already fang-like. It may be that the human variety does need to develop sharpened teeth. I don’t know. That would be one more similarity, if true.”

Madelyn didn’t look up from her phone. “In your research, did you ever try killing them with a stake through the heart or anything like that?”

“There was one man, Ted Samson, who was obsessed with the possibility that this was where the legends came from and he spent a bunch of time researching into the ancient folklore as well as performing experiments. It was he that discovered that heat was a catalyst but that flame would kill the blutom. His experiments on the rats didn’t involve dismemberment or anything like that. There was one thing that might prove useful, but it won’t help us for hours yet. The blutom monsters don’t like sunlight. It doesn’t do anything like what you see happens to vampires on television. They just prefer the dark of night and tend to avoid it.”