There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (76 page)

He would disappear for a while, lay low, regroup, and start all over again. Possibly Iran or North Korea, where the officials weren’t so squeamish. He pulled the wad of blood- soaked paper towels from his nose.

“Ugh. Still bweeding.”

He adjusted the ice pack on his throbbing balls (or what was left of them) and waddled over to the cabinets. He really needed to get his ass on over to the E.R. in Beaufort, but was obligated to prepare the files and flash drives for pickup. USAMRIID didn’t give a shit if some crazy cunt caved in his balls! The military equivalent of the CDC wasn’t exactly known for its understanding and patience. If he left his office before they got here, he could expect to be arrested the second he set foot on the mainland. The bastards were currently going over his home with a fine toothcomb, and would soon be on there way here.

No sweat there. Except for the paper and hard copy files at his office, there was no other trail tying him to the Center or to RS13.
Until now, that is…

Thanks to that scheming little bitch there was now evidence to the contrary! It was only a matter of time now before the
Boys in Black
came looking for him.

For Clint Bidwell, life as an American had ceased to exist. He felt not a twinge of regret at losing his country or citizenship. In the end, his only allegiance was to his wallet. He figured he had at least until after the hurricane passed—maybe 48 hours—before the media caught wind of his illegal experiments. By that time, he hoped to be in a more hospitable environment, enjoying his fortune and newfound anonymity.

He checked his watch. They would be here soon, and then he could go home and pack. No sense in packing up the office; those assholes were going to seize everything anyway. Might as well let them do the work....

             
                                                                     
*******

             
                           
3:10 p.m. Tuesday:

The thing that used to be Tansy Wilky peered out from between the tangle of palmetto fronds, overlooking the backyard of someone she hoped could help her. The swelling in her brain had taken the memory of the man’s name. She knew that he was a doctor and had once taken care of another problem of hers, long ago. What that problem had been, she likewise couldn’t recall. She remembered her name was Tansy, but couldn’t recall her last. She was sick. She knew this, too. And doctors were supposed to help sick people. Weren’t they? Her head felt like it was coming apart at the seams, the pain giving sweaty birth to pulsating waves of nausea. A glut of bile left her mouth in a greasy torrent and washed over her chin and chest. Her features didn’t betray any signs of distress, as the black gusher left her mouth; nor afterwards did she attempt to wipe herself clean. The vomit dripped unchecked from her breasts and chin.

              Unperturbed, she watched the men in camouflage fatigues ransack the house, carting several objects out to their Humvees, before they left in a cloud of dust and diesel. She waited a while longer, and then darted out on all fours across the backyard and into the house.

             
It was overcast and raining, so the light was nearly bearable, even if the hated water wasn’t.

             
She went from room to room looking for the doctor, leaving a noxious trail in her wake. The good doctor wasn’t in. That was all right. It was dark and cool in the house.

             
Like a patient spider, she didn’t mind waiting…

             
                         
*******

4:27 p.m. Tuesday:

Sheriff Rupert Henderson stuffed what little clothes he had into a duffel bag and looked around his small apartment one last time. He tried to ignore the throbbing in his left forearm, the blood staining through the hastily wrapped bandage there. He would have to consider the implications of the wound at another time. He went to his medicine cabinet, and finding no topical solutions for the injury settled on three Anacin.

             
Grimacing, he patted his pocket for his wallet and bankbook as he chewed the aspirin. Things had gone south on Moon, and it was time for him to make tracks for calmer climes. Besides, with The Center shut down now, that was the end of the old Gravy Train. But that wasn’t why he’d decided to leave town. Something was going on here. Something
bad
…and he didn’t want to be around when it got any worse. And if the nightmare he’d just witnessed on the West End was any indication, then that’s exactly what was going to happen!

             
Things were about to get
very bad
indeed.

             
It started Saturday night, when the 911s began filtering in. At first the calls were about strange noises heard outside the homes of those properties abutting the Pines. Escalating on Sunday. Reports of screams. Domestic quarrels gone very bad.
And rape
. The first since the solitary rape/murder back in ‘96. By Tuesday, there’d been eight of them. Three of them incest related. It was a miracle he’d been able to keep a lid on all that commotion. As far as he knew, though, even that busybody Ham Huggins was unaware of all the recent trouble. That of course was due to the approaching hurricane. If it wasn’t for the specter of that enormous storm headed their way, distracting all the gossips down at the diner, Rupert had little doubt this mess would be the talk of the town.  

            
Maybe even the local branch of the FBI.

            For instance: Five-year-old Bobby Reed from the East End had been missing since Monday morning. His mother claimed to have last seen him on his swing-set in the backyard, which grew right up to the edge of the Pines. She’d been washing the breakfast dishes at the kitchen sink, looking out the window, straight into the yard, when she’d bent down for more Joy. When she looked back out the window, Bobby was gone, his swing still going back and forth, as if he’d just jumped into another dimension…

But that wasn’t the worst.

There were reports of other missing children as well. Although these were all teenagers, most of them disaffected youths. There had been a suicide, as well as a possible homicide, all in the past 24 hours. Earlier today, after checking out reports of a gunshot fired at the Wilky domicile, Henderson discovered the body of Walter Wilky in the man’s private study, a blood spattered suicide note underneath his hand on the desk. Apparently, the bastard had molested his slutty stepdaughter, and killed hisself out of grief and shame. Tansy’s present location was just one of many new emerging mysteries and hardly at the top of Rupert’s priorities right now. Henderson’s last deputy, while attempting to serve a summons to Andy Noonan, had quit that very morning after discovering the gory mess at the Noonan trailer. He also claimed to have seen the Red Eyed Man staring back at him from the edge of the woods! At the time, Henderson thought his deputy must’ve been drinking on the job. Now he knew better. Both deputies had been young, and up until recently had only had to give out parking tickets and the occasional speeding violation. Both men had taken the last ferry to the mainland, leaving Rupert with this anarchy on his hands. The bodies of Andy Noonan and Walter Wilky still lay decomposing where they were, waiting for the town coroner, Clint Bidwell, to show up and do his damn job! Only that wasn’t going to happen now, was it? His dispatcher, Miss Purcell, had quit on him, too, making his job next to impossible. The volume and types of calls simply being too much for the old lady to handle. Thankfully, the phone had quit ringing after the lines went down around two o’clock. Not that it mattered anymore to Rupert. He wouldn’t be here when they came back up anyway.

That decision had been reached just a little while ago. Shortly after his ill-fated visit to Clint Bidwell’s home. He’d driven out there for dual purposes. One, to make sure Bidwell knew of the corpses waiting for his attention. Two, to get what was rightfully his. According to Rupert’s calculations, Bidwell still owed him one last payday. He’d checked the doctor’s office, only to find it locked tight. A note on the door informed Bidwell’s patients that he was taking this opportunity to go on an extended vacation.

Yeah,
extended
was right.

Henderson had jumped into his patrol car and high-tailed it over to the doctor’s home on the West End, siren blaring. To Rupert’s relief, the doc’s kiss-my-ass Humvee had still been in the driveway. The front door of his palatial home stood wide open, beckoning entry. Rupert got out of his Crowne Vic and did just that.

What he’d seen inside that house was what nightmares were made of.

He was calling out to the doc, when he’d heard what sounded like
“wet”
sounds coming from Bidwell’s bedroom. Moans and groans of an intimate nature.

Rupert tiptoed down the hall. Peeking through the bedroom door, he snickered through his hands, clamped over his mouth, certain that the old doc was getting hisself a little fellatio before taking his leave of the island. Only, something about that little scene in there didn’t seem right.

Even though the girl, slurping away at Bidwell’s crotch, as if it was a cherry flavored Icee, was naked, she wasn’t what you would call
desirable
. Blood, dirt, and what looked and smelled like shit, covered her from frazzled hair to muddy toe. She was so filthy in fact, and smelled so wretched that Henderson thought it a wonder the old doc could get his pecker up at all!

They were on the floor, doing their
thing
, and despite his disgust, Henderson had watched for a moment more undetected.
It was then that Bidwell had spied him…

The light of reason had fled Clint’s cold gray eyes, replaced with a desperation borne of intolerable torment.

To put it mildly, the man was in some distress.

“Shoot me,”
he’d told Henderson, clear as day. Not,
‘shoot her.’
“Shoot me!”
The girl turned and glared at Henderson, still standing there in the doorway, mewling like a frightened child. Blood and bubbling saliva drooled from her open mouth, spattering on Bidwell’s polished mahogany floor.

“Why, it’s Tansy Wilky!” the sheriff had declared somewhat comically. Only no one was laughing at his unintentional impression of Andy Devine.

Rupert saw then what Tansy had clutched in her gory grip. The sight of that pathetic lump of flesh, dangling from between her fingers, looking like a half-gnawed bratwurst, brought his lunch up in a hot rush. The meatloaf special, he’d eaten earlier at Peg Leg’s, splashed onto the floor, right between his Cat’s Paw boots.

Looking at the steaming puke, Rupert had two nonsensical thoughts. One:
That shit ain’t coming off the floor.
And two:
What the fuck is that crazy cunt sucking on, if she has the doc’s sawed off peter in her hand?

He’d looked up just in time to see Tansy coming after him! Like one of those King Cobras he’d seen the other night on the Discovery Channel—the worst kind of snake God had seen fit to create. Her upper-half rose up off the floor, her head and shoulders flared rigidly forwards like a hood, while her lower half slithered across the befouled hardwood. A locomotion that was humanly impossible. For some reason it reminded Rupert of a coloring picture he had once filled in as a child. Back in Bible Camp, at good old First Baptist, in Tooter, Tennessee. A picture of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. Slithering along a branch in the Tree of Knowledge. 

Tansy’s eyes glowed as if a fire burned bright and hot in her head, her teeth clacking together like a set of novelty chattering teeth.
Hey Kids! Wind ‘em up and watch ‘em go!

Henderson stood rooted in place, hypnotized by the hellish vision before him. Those bright eyes lulling him to sleep. He could see the yawning cavity between Bidwell’s legs, where Tansy had been supping only moments before. She’d finished the job Josie had begun earlier that morning, emasculating the man once and for all. The blood spurting from the ragged hole had slowed as Bidwell’s expiration drew nigh.
“Shoot me,”
he’d said again, though his ordeal was almost at an end.

Henderson had no intention of obliging the man, anyway. By some miracle he’d managed to get his pistol out of the holster, but he wasn’t going to waste any bullets on a dead man. The realization that his revolver was in his hand broke the spell. He managed to tear his gaze away from the thing’s eyes, and pulled off four shots in rapid succession. The first two went wild, thumping into the hardwood floor on either side of the red-eyed bitch. The third grazed the right side of her head, leaving a bloody ditch in its tumbling wake. The fourth had done the most damage, blowing apart half her jaw. Tansy’s teeth had scattered across the floor like tossed Chiclets.

Tansy shrieked, writhing insanely on the slippery hardwood. Too fast for the naked eye to see. Once again, a locomotion humanly impossible. Feces exploded out of her ass, and the hot stench in the room became ungodly.

Henderson had stumbled down the hall, falling to his knees at the front door, sucking in the fresh air for all it was worth. He never heard her come up behind him.

He was getting up, his left arm braced against the doorframe, when a white-hot fire ignited in his forearm. Stupefied, he’d seen that the bitch had bitten off a mouthful of his arm. This, despite missing half her damn choppers! She’d stood behind him, calmly chewing the flesh that rightfully belonged on Rupert’s arm, like a cow chewing its cud, when the chunk of muscle fell out the missing half of her face. It plopped on the floor like a piece of raw liver.