The Montauk Monster (19 page)

There were no more screams.

Nancy struggled to catch her breath, leaning against the underside of the table. Samar finally let go of the hand and scrabbled on her rump all the way to the far wall.

Grace, having settled down, moved toward Nancy. “Do you think this will keep them out?”

Nancy shot her an incredulous look. “No. Grab a knife and be ready for anything.”

When she looked at Samar, she saw a woman who had had a complete break with reality.

Samar rose to her feet, her legs unsteady. “I have to go shopping.” A line of blood snaked down her neck. “I have to get fruit at the fresh market. People are coming for the weekend and I have to get things ready.” Her eyes were like pinwheels, spinning and seeing something that wasn’t there.

“Sit, Samar,” Nancy hissed. “And keep your voice down.”

She ignored her, walking to the barrier.

“The market only takes cash. I’ll have to stop at the bank.”

One of the creatures vaulted over the barrier, pinning Samar to the floor. She didn’t make a single sound of protest. It bit into her breast, reeling backward when its teeth penetrated the silicone-laden bag underneath. Samar’s body trembled, but Nancy thought she heard her say something about looking for her American Express black card.

She spied the knife in Grace’s hands. “Go for its eye.”

Grace nodded, her hand tightening on the steak knife.

“Now!”

They lunged at the creature, arms held high, knives pointed at the sides of its head. Nancy heard a crunch as Grace drove hers home. Nancy followed suit. The creature’s eye popped and a geyser of black and green ichor hit her in the face, filling her mouth. She heaved immediately, vomiting the vile, burning fluid. Her mouth, throat and chest felt as if someone had poured gasoline into her and dropped a match.

The monster thrashed about, knocking into Grace, sending her tumbling into the wall. Samar’s breast was still in its mouth. Looking over, Nancy could see one of Samar’s exposed lungs.

As the beast struggled, blinded and wounded, the other two scrabbled over the barrier. Both turned to Nancy.

Her mouth had gone numb and it was hard to breathe.
What the hell are they made of?
she thought as she faced her death. It would be a welcome relief from the fire trailing within her.

“Go fuck yourselves,” she croaked.

When the first monster bit into her throat, she wanted to cry out in thanks.

It was a miracle that Captain Hammerlich had let them finish telling their story, from Meredith’s first run-in with one of the strange, dead creatures on the beach to their narrow escape from the federally protected Plum Island Animal Disease Research Facility. To his credit, he interrupted them only a few times to ask questions. When they were done, Meredith was exhausted. She’d been running on an adrenaline high the entire time. The captain’s complexion seemed to have turned a sickly gray. Or was that just her imagination telling her how he
should
look after receiving news both this bizarre and grave.

Staring at the pictures she’d taken, he said, “Wait outside.”

She followed Dalton out the door. He closed it slowly, careful not to make a noise. They walked to the break room. Meredith lifted the empty coffeepot from the warming plate.

“Of all the nights for there to be no coffee. I need a cup, bad,” Meredith said.

Meredith pulled at her bottom lip as she leaned against the counter. Now that she’d had her chance to lay everything out for the captain, she had a moment to think about what she and Dalton had done in her shower. It was a welcome break from the reality of the creatures that had broken free from Plum Island.
You have to admit, that was pretty amazing. Are we a couple now, or was that just a pre-Rapture roll in the hay? What will my friends say? I can’t be a cougar yet. I’m not even thirty-five. And what will his friends and family think, being with a crippled older woman? You stepped in all of it this time, Mer.

Her thoughts were broken when he wafted a fresh cup of joe under her nose.

“So, you’ve been here longer than me. How much trouble do you think we’re in?” he asked, blowing across the surface of his mug. He didn’t look the least bit worried. Just the opposite; there was a hard look in his eyes that said he didn’t give a shit what the captain thought. They both knew what they saw. She worried that he might jump in a free squad car and look for a fight.

She shrugged her shoulders. “I have no frigging idea.”

Before Dalton could press her, they heard a door bang open. “Hernandez, Dalton, get in here.”

Dropping their half-full mugs in the sink, they returned to his office. Meredith saw all four extensions blinking on his phone.

“I made some calls to the directors of the federal agencies that crashed into town while you were playing Hardy Boys.”

Oh boy, we’re doomed.
He looked so angry he could break his desk in two.

“Every time I said the words ‘Plum Island,’ collegial calls either turned to ice or I was disconnected.”

“Sir, we didn’t make this shit up. We could get a team together with some heavy-duty firepower and go back to the island.”

Dalton touched her shoulder, silencing her.

Captain Hammerlich stood up and pushed his chair away. “What I was going to say is that it seems I touched a nerve. When my call wasn’t disconnected, I got the distinct impression I was being fed heaping spoonfuls of bullshit. Did you know we have FEMA and the CDC and the damn military prowling around? And I just got word that the National Guard will be here in the morning. About an hour ago, all Internet service to this end of the island was cut. No one can give me any answers, at least straight ones. Any other night, I’d send you both to be evaluated by a horde of shrinks.”

He pulled his hat off the hat rack in the corner of his office and squared it on his head.

“If what you say is true, those goddamn feebs are going to do their best to keep us in the dark.”

Opening the door, he motioned for them to leave. To their surprise, he followed them into the hall.

“We just got an animal disturbance call that stray dogs are all over the condo complex over by the plaza in Montauk. Conrad and Leeks are already there. I’m going to assume our communications have been tapped, so the military and feebs will be there soon to make a mess of things.”

They exited the station house. Hammerlich grabbed the keys to a squad car on the way out. He said, “I’ll drive. You may need some clout to get through that military roadblock getting into Montauk.”

Meredith was tempted to reach out for Dalton’s hand in the darkened rear seats.
What are we driving into? If it’s a pack of those things, we’re going to need all the help we can get.

Dalton stared ahead in silence. She knew that look. She grew up with four brothers, the most rough-and-tumble foursome in their neighborhood, and possibly the county.

He wanted revenge. No roadblock was going to keep him out.

Winn didn’t think anything could make him forget the searing pain in his ribs. His call to the station changed his mind.

“What do you mean there aren’t any paramedics?” His hip rested against his car, one arm draped over his ribs. Every breath was a struggle. The little boy he’d shot was being tended to by his mother, who was too focused on her son to register the cold fact that her husband had just been killed by some unidentifiable animal.

Fred Paulson sounded ready to explode himself. “From what I’ve heard, none of them showed up for work tonight.”

“Even Jerry?” He recalled the man’s face at Kelly James’s house when her body went off like someone had dropped an M-80 down her throat. The only way Jerry wouldn’t be on duty was if he was dead or dying, which, after everything he’d seen, was probably the case.

He heard Paulson flip through some papers. “It says he went to the hospital with a patient last night”—(
that had to be Kelly James
, Winn thought)—“and since the place is in full quarantine, no one’s been allowed in or out.”

Winn hoped to hell Jerry was at least getting proper treatment if whatever had killed Kelly had somehow gotten into him.

“Look, Fred, I’ve got a man down who needs a fucking coroner. I . . . I accidentally shot a four-year-old boy. He’ll be all right. It looks like the bullet nicked his arm, but he needs medical attention. And I’ve gotta have at least a half-dozen broken ribs.”

Leaning back to see if that would help lessen the pain of breathing, he stared up at a full canopy of blinking stars. He couldn’t tell the difference between real stars and the sparkling bursts of his brain misfiring from oxygen deprivation.

“No one’s responding at the medical examiner’s, either, Jake. I hate to tell you, but you’re just going to have to sit tight until I can find someone.”

“Call Dr. Gandhi.”

“Dr. Gandhi? He’s retired, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but he lives nearby. He may not be practicing but he’s still a damn doctor. Tell him I asked for him and to get here as fast as he can.”

“Right. I’ll call him before I head out. I just got a call about a disturbance at the Plaza Condos.”

As much as he wanted to lie down in the back of his car and wallow in his own pain and misery, he still had a couple dozen distressed people who needed a level head, even if it was on the shoulders of the man who shot a boy. With each step bringing fresh waves of agony, he made his way to the mother and her son. They were surrounded by several adults, including Ernie, the owner of the motel. The boy’s sobs had settled into hitching breaths.

“Is he okay?” Winn asked, staring at the bloody towel wrapped around his arm.

His mother looked up at him. “He will be. The bleeding stopped. Thank you for saving my son.”

Winn was too shocked to reply.

She pulled the child close to her chest. He popped a tiny thumb in his mouth. “He’s all I have left.”

The sound of screaming was carried by the breeze. He couldn’t tell from which direction it came. Everyone in the lot stiffened.

“I need you all to get in your rooms and lock your doors and windows. Ernie, Dr. Gandhi will be coming to check on the boy. You still have that .38 you keep under the check-in desk?”

Ernie’s bald, liver-spotted head nodded.

“Don’t be afraid to use it.”

Everyone filed into their rooms, leaving the man’s cooling body facedown in the gravel, alone.

Winn struggled to get into his car, turned the ignition, rolled down his window and went in search of the source of the screaming.

As Captain Hammerlich pulled across the entrance to the condo’s cramped lot, Dalton saw they were late to the party. It was in full swing and everyone was invited.

“It looks like other people in the know may share your concerns,” the captain said, slamming the car into park. The smell of exhaust and gun oil was overpowering.

Aside from county and local police, the three-story condo was surrounded by soldiers wielding assault rifles, grenades clipped to their belts. Dalton lost count at thirty-three men in full combat gear. A FEMA truck sat idling to their right. Looking around the lot, he also spotted a silver sedan with a Centers for Disease Control logo on the driver’s-side door. He thought of Margie and Anita and the first two bodies, Randy and Rosie, smoldering in their own juices on the beach. Someone had to know what was going on at Plum Island, and that someone had sounded the national alarm.

Mickey Conrad left his post behind his squad car and came rushing over. “First call came from a woman who said there was a wolf running through the halls.”

Dalton looked at Meredith. Her face betrayed no emotion.

“Let me guess; it wasn’t a wolf,” Captain Hammerlich said, flexing his shoulders. If Dalton didn’t know better, he would swear that his boss was itching to run into the condo and take the monstrosity prowling the halls head-on, Putin style. He wasn’t sure he’d hesitate to join him.

“I’ll be honest with you, we don’t know what they are,” Conrad said. The harsh glare of flashing red and white lights made it difficult to see the ground floor of the condo itself.

“They?” Meredith interjected.

“They,”
Conrad said with a sharp nod. “It looks like there are two of them. Local PD was the first to arrive. She entered the condo and was immediately attacked.”

She. There was only one
she
on the Montauk force—Jane McGrath, president of the fighting Irish.

When Mickey showed them the picture he’d taken of her body, the shredded blue of her uniform, stained forever red, her limbs, ten or more feet from each other, tossed about the lobby like the broken bits of a piñata, Dalton had to turn away. What the hell were they going to tell her husband, her kids?

He went on, “Everyone is holed up in their apartments, but every now and then we can hear screaming and something scuffling. The GI Joes are putting together a team to sweep them out.”

“Anyone get a look at them?” Dalton asked, ignoring protocol and not letting his captain ask the questions.

“Some of the residents have been on the phone with us. What they’re saying doesn’t make much sense.”

Hammerlich grimaced at Dalton. “Did we leave that folder of yours in my office?”

“We did.”

Meredith called up an image of one of the living creatures they encountered on Plum Island and showed it to Conrad. “Does this match the description?”

He took the phone from her hand, his eyes wide and unbelieving. “Are you kidding me? Yeah, this is kinda like it, only the face was a little different. Where the hell did you take this?”

Hammerlich took the phone from him and handed it back to Meredith. “Never mind that now. Point me in the direction of the CO for the military.”

Conrad motioned to a tall man with a barrel chest in the center of the parking lot. He looked every inch the grizzled officer.

Hammerlich took several steps and turned to ask, “And where the hell is Sergeant Campos?”

“He left with three men to respond to another call over by Star Isle.”

The captain strode off.

When he was out of earshot, Mickey said to Meredith, “What the hell are we dealing with?”

“Your federal government dollars working for the greater good for democracy’s proliferation.”

He turned to Dalton.

“Those things were made in a lab on Plum Island. They’re bred to kill everything in their sight. And they carry some kind of disease that seems to melt you from the inside out, like Ebola on speed.”

Conrad hooked his thumbs in his belt. “This is the part where I’d normally ask if you were shitting me, but all these feds wouldn’t be here to catch a couple of rabid wolves. I’m not sure how or why, but you two seem to know more than most. What do we do?”

Dalton drew his revolver. “We wait and see what the army can do. Whatever happens, don’t get bit and stay the hell away from anyone that does. Even if it’s one of us.”

He and Meredith left Conrad puzzling over their warning.

Sergeant Dennis Campos pulled his car to a screeching halt, narrowly missing a man standing in the middle of the street. He was bent at an odd angle, holding his arm up as if it could stop the car.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Campos grumbled.

“That’s the same question I keep asking myself,” wheezed the man in uniform.

Finally seeing who it was, Campos trundled to his side. Officer Winn leaned into him, grateful to have someone take his weight.

“What happened to you?”

“Some kind of animal loose at one of the motels. It must have broken some ribs when it dove into me.”

Two other county cars pulled up behind them. “We need to get you to a hospital.” Winn was wheezing bad. Blood flecked the corners of his mouth.

The Montauk cop shook his head. “Can’t. No paramedics available and the hospital is under quarantine. I’m going to have to tough it out for a bit. Besides, there’s this.” He motioned with his head to the front yard of the house to their left. The sloping lawn was littered with what looked like garbage.

Campos, still holding on to Winn, walked to the curb to get a better look.

“Don’t get too close,” Winn warned him.

He pulled up when he spied a dog’s leg, pulled from its body like a Thanksgiving drumstick, seeping blood into the grass.

“What the hell?”

Winn pointed to a stake in the ground and two long leashes. “That’s what’s left of two dogs. The owner saw them ripped to shreds. I spoke to him through the front window. I told him not to come outside, under any circumstances.”

Acid reflux burned the back of Campos’s throat. “What killed the dogs?”

Winn peered into the darkness, then said, “I think it’s hiding on the side of the house. I keep hearing movement.”

It was exceedingly dark in this corner of the block. The streetlight across the street was out. The only light they had to go by came from the windows of the house. They couldn’t see past the bedlam of the front yard.

“Maybe you should call Animal Control, though I don’t think even they’ll know what to do with this”—Winn paused, struggling to find the right word—“monster. Whatever’s out here isn’t a dog or a rabid wolf or fox. I killed one. They’re like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

The sound of a plastic garbage can lid thudding onto the pavement had Campos reaching for his gun. He said, “Anita’s dead. Animal Control won’t send anyone out. We’ll have to handle this ourselves.”

Winn winced, pulling in a ragged breath. Campos couldn’t tell whether it was the pain in his ribs or a reaction to the news about Anita Banks.

“We have to be very careful,” Winn said. “These monsters are fast and more vicious than a fucking wolverine.”

Campos pulled one of his men over. “Frank, take Austin to Fern Street and come toward us through the backyard. I need you to flush out an animal—”

“A monster,” Winn added.

“—I need you both to guide it toward us where we can see it better. If it turns on you, shoot the damn thing.”

They jumped into a car, made a tight U-turn and disappeared around the corner.

“Now we wait,” Campos said, feeling the burden of his age strangely lifted from his sagging body.

Everything was silent now. He saw the blinds open up in the front window, two heads peeking out between the slats. He hoped they had enough sense to stay inside. He thought of those doctors from the CDC and the military convoys that had thundered into town. Everything was connected, but no one was talking to one another. He’d heard that FEMA was in the mix as well. Weren’t they supposed to bring different agencies under one roof, sharing information? Government fuckups, every one of them. The price for their secrecy was going to be the lives of this town.

They heard a sharp “Ho!” from within the darkness. It was followed by the report of a gunshot, then a scream, followed by another shot. Austin Hammel came charging from the side of the house. He tripped and fell face-first onto the grass, the top of his head plowing into a pile of entrails.

More screams came from the back of the house. Campos ran toward the house, Winn lagging behind. He shouted at Pete Kenealy, “Stay back in case it gets past us!”

Before he could get to Hammel, who had flipped onto his back and struggled to get to his feet, something large, fast and feral burst from the darkness. It landed on Hammel’s chest. Campos stopped, aimed and shot at the four-legged creature. Blood spattered from its wounded shoulder. Ignoring the pain, it dove for Hammel’s throat, ripping everything down to his spine with one bite.

Mouth crammed with Hammel’s neck, Hammel’s life, it looked to the man who had dared shoot it.

Campos felt his throat close the same way it would when he ate peanuts, triggering his deadly allergy.

It was completely hairless, a topaz wraith from an unseen world of beasts and demons. Its face was at once canine, bovine and something else, something unthinkable. The flesh on its impossibly long snout seemed a paper-thin covering of what he knew was a hard-shelled beak, one with sharp fangs carved into its blackened jawline.

A shot kicked up the turf by the monster. It skidded away. Winn was on the ground, trying to hold his ribs together with one arm. He pulled the trigger again, going wide and right.

Campos shook the inertia from his brain, steadied a hand under his gun hand. He squeezed off a shot. The round buried itself in the spot where the monster had been standing a fraction of a second before.

The sound of crashing glass pulled his attention to the house. The monster had leapt into the front window. The shrieks of a man and woman reverberated down the residential street. For some reason, the crack of gunfire had drawn people
from
their homes instead of sending them farther within.

His heart pounded, out of rhythm, dangerously tripping on its own beat. It was hard to catch a breath.

Somehow he managed to croak, “Kenealy, get everyone inside.”

The man seemed eager to move away from the house. Winn looked to be unconscious. The melee inside the house came to a fevered pitch. Furniture was being torn apart, thrown? The monster’s snarls were reedy, thin, compared to the bursts of raw terror coming from its newest prey.

Something was very wrong with his heart. He wasn’t sure he’d make it even if there were paramedics nearby.

Adelle’s safe
, he thought.
I wish we could have retired to Vermont like we planned.

The woman inside the house let loose with a long peel of abject panic.

Taking as deep a breath as he could, Campos ran to the shattered window. What he saw inside froze his blood. A man lay amidst torn cushions, furniture reduced to kindling. His face was gone. Shards of bone, what remained of his skull, looked heavenward.

The open floor plan gave a direct view into the kitchen. The woman had climbed on top of the sink. Her knees were pulled to her chest, one hand holding a carving knife. The monster stood coiled at the entrance to the kitchen. He could tell by the flexing of its blue hindquarters that it was readying itself to charge.

Leaning over the windowsill, he fired four quick shots at its legs. One of them blew apart into tatters. The monster slumped to its side. As it craned its head to cast one last withering stare, he fired once more. Its head jerked back, blood spraying onto the refrigerator and cabinets.

Campos staggered, collapsing onto the windowsill.

Oh God, I can’t breathe!

Through the haze that had fallen across his eyes, he saw the woman coming toward him. She seemed a million miles away.

Tears rolled down her face, staining her purple T-shirt. “Are you—”

He felt something stab into his lower back. The pain unlocked his lungs. He was instantly numb. He couldn’t feel his legs or arms. Helpless, he slid down the front of the house.

Another of the monsters stood before him. The officer he’d left as a backup lay mauled in the street.

A hunk of his own flesh quivered in its maw.

He couldn’t even raise a hand to slow it down as its jaws clamped down on his face.