Voracious (11 page)

“You think a guy like me would like that club?”

Jeffrey rolled his eyes.

“No, I don’t think it would be your cup of tea.”

“I’m from Afghanistan. They don’t have clubs like this there.”

“No, I wouldn’t imagine they would.” Jeffrey sighed impatiently. He was getting hungry again and sleepy and irritated. He just wanted to eat, get a blowjob, and go to sleep. If he got lucky, maybe he’d get a blowjob while eating. He imagined a big, fat T-bone steak and a big, strong blue-collar man, maybe even a cowboy. That would be the perfect evening.

“Maybe you could take me there sometime?”

Jeffrey felt like an ass. The guy was gay. This was probably his first “out-of-the-closet” moment, and Jeffrey had almost brushed him off. Jeffrey remembered the first person he came out to. It was his Spanish teacher, Mr. Villaria. Jeffrey was only fifteen years old. There had been rumors about Mr. Villaria being spotted holding hands with guys and hanging out at gay clubs on Fourth Street, so Jeffrey had rolled the dice and opened up to the man. He’d secretly hoped Mr. Villaria would sweep him into his arms and make mad passionate love to him right there in the classroom.

What his teacher did instead was much cooler. He sat Jeffrey down and warned him about older men who use young boys like him. He told him about safe sex and steered him toward a few GLBT youth groups in the area, and finally he’d told him to always be proud of who he was and never let anyone make him feel ashamed for being gay. He even offered to call a meeting with his parents here at the school if Jeffrey was worried about how they would react to the news. His “coming-out” experience had been cooler than almost anyone he knew.

He’d heard all the horror stories about being laughed at, beaten up, kicked out of the house. He hadn’t gone through any of that. He also didn’t listen to much of his teacher’s advice about safe sex or avoiding older men, but that had been his own damn stupid fault. Mr. Villaria had been amazing. Jeffrey, on the other hand, had almost told this guy to fuck off.

“What’s your name?”

“Ajani.”

“Ajani? My name’s Jeffrey. I’ll tell you what, I’m starving. You take me to get something to eat and turn that meter off, and I’ll give you a night you won’t forget.”

Ajani smiled broadly.

“What do you want to eat?”

“I’m in the mood for a steak.”

In the back of the cab, in the parking lot of Simone’s Steakhouse, Ajani moaned and sighed as Jeffrey thrust deep into his virgin ass. He reached around and stroked Ajani off just as he erupted in the young Arab’s lubricated rectum, filling it with his seed. It had felt so good.

That’s when Jeffrey realized it had felt too good. He slid his lubricated cock out of Ajani’s ass and gasped at the site of the shredded latex curled up like a cock ring at the base of his erection.

“Oh, fuck. Oh, shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Ajani asked, still panting. His face appeared elated, like he was having the time of his life.

Jeffrey almost felt bad telling him the bad news.

“I think we have a big problem.”

That night, Ajani went home with two diseases. The genetic retrovirus created by Dr. Trevor Adams piggybacked onto the HIV virus, using the virus to carry pygmy shrew DNA from Jeffrey to Ajani in a few brief thrusts of Jeffrey’s cock into Ajani’s ecstatically receptive virgin anus. Over the next few weeks, Ajani’s increasingly popular asshole would spread the virus up and down Fourth Street. Within a month, it had spread to the heterosexual community.

20 

The greasy, fatty, high-calorie fried meat tasted good. It was warm and soothing. The surge of calories quieted Lelani’s hunger. She stared at the face of the man who’d brought her the food and tried hard to remember who he was. She had known his name just a second ago and then the hunger had resurfaced and obliterated all recollection. He had interrupted her meal but had provided her with another. Now the hunger had been momentarily quelled. She was feeling sleepy again. She’d burned so many calories hunting down prey, and she’d consumed so many more from the people she’d killed. Her stomach felt bloated. She needed to rest, to recover.

The memory of murdering and eating her neighbors caused only the slightest pang of remorse. It had been necessary. They had the calories she needed to survive. Killing and eating them was no different than slaughtering a cow for beef or hunting deer for venison. It was a biological imperative. If she didn’t eat, she would die, and there were no cows in downtown Austin, but there were plenty of people, and human flesh contained enough calories to sustain her for hours.

“David. Dr. David Ebersol,” Lelani said between bites. She looked at David Ebersol and saw the succulent flesh, the smooth, supple skin, the jiggle of fat around his waist and neck. Her mouth began to water.

“Yes, Lelani. It’s me. I’m here to help you,” Ebersol said as he pounded on the elevator button, urgently pressing the one that took them to the basement.

“Help me?” Lelani asked, tilting her head slightly in a way that made her look even more animalistic, like a feral dog examining some strange prey it had never encountered before, trying to decide if it was dangerous or something else it could kill and eat. She knew Dr. Ebersol was here to help her. Somewhere deep in her unconscious mind she knew there was danger around. People were coming to hurt her. People were chasing them. Police. Police were coming to arrest her because she’d eaten people. She felt a brief moment of revulsion followed immediately by the most profound sensory recall. She remembered how delicious it had all tasted. How good it felt to feel their life forces fill her belly. The taste had been like warm sushi with a pulse. The fatty meat melted like butter on her tongue. She closed her eyes and shuddered at the memory.

“Yes. I’m going to get you out of here. Get you back to the clinic and get you back to normal.”

“I need food.”

“I know. There’s more food in the car. We just have to get you there. There’s police all over the building. We need to get past them to get to the food.”

Lelani bared her teeth and raised one of her taloned hands so Ebersol could see them. It was coated with gore and chicken grease.

“I’ll kill them!”

“No. We can’t kill anyone else, Lelani. They have guns. They’ll hurt you.”

As powerful as Lelani’s hunger was, her survival instinct was just as powerful. “Okay, David.”

“I’ll feed you. I’ll help you, but no more killing. Understand?”

“Okay, David,” Lelani replied, nodding as she crammed another chicken breast into her mouth and crunched it between her serrated teeth.

Lelani felt the sensation of falling and remembered she was in an elevator. There were people chasing them. People with guns. Lelani was barely conscious of the danger. The hunger made it so hard to concentrate on anything, but the chicken had helped. It had soothed the maddening ravenousness for a while.

David said the police would try to hurt her, lock her away, but he didn’t want her to kill them. She could do it easily. She could open up their fat bellies with one swipe of her claws, tear out their throats with her fangs. The thought was empowering. It was better than being onstage and hearing the crowd applaud as she pranced like a show pony in clothes designed to make women feel ugly without them and like royalty if they were one of the lucky few who could actually afford them. She had thought being desired by men and envied by women was power, but this was real power-the ability to take a life with ease, to inspire fear. She smiled as she chewed up another piece of fried chicken and reached into the bucket for more. She wasn’t hungry anymore, but the food was there, so she continued to eat. What she really needed was sleep, but they had to get away first.

The elevator doors opened, and they stepped out into the nearly empty parking garage. The concrete structure was well lit, and security cameras were affixed to the thick pillars that held up the ceilings. The parking garage itself was two stories, buried below street level beneath the building. A steel gate with a digital keypad protected the garage from unauthorized entry, and a guard was usually posted there as well. But Lelani had already murdered the guard when someone had called him to help after Lelani had broken into her neighbor’s apartment and torn him apart. She’d done the same to the armed guard, ripping his corpulent belly open and pulling out his steaming insides, stuffing his wet squishy organs into her mouth by the fistfuls before he could get his gun out of the holster. She ate his liver in front of him while he watched, dying. The liver was full of calories and nutrients, but she’d always hated liver before the treatment. Her mother used to make her eat liver and onions as a kid. She’d have to sit at the table, long after everyone else had finished and were in the kitchen watching television, until she finished her plate. But this time she had scarfed it down in a few quick bites and then yanked out his pancreas and ate that as well, followed by his heart. They were all delicious.

“This way,” Ebersol whispered, taking Lelani by the arm and leading her across the parking garage.

His car was still on the street, and getting to it would mean going through cops, if they were already circling around to the back of the building as he suspected. Still, getting out of the parking garage and on to the street was their only chance at escaping.

“We need to run. Maybe they haven’t gotten back here yet.”

They sprinted toward the exit, reaching it just as two police officers stepped through. Dr. Ebersol threw his hands up in surrender. Lelani slashed a claw across the face of the first officer through the exit door, cutting his cheek down to the bone, puncturing his left eye and gouging it from the socket. It drooled down his face, dangling from the ocular nerves like a dead jellyfish.

The officer, a kid no more than twenty-five, fell to the floor screaming.

“My eye! My fucking eye!”

The next officer almost got his gun out of the holster before she leaped into his arms and bit down on his nose, crunching through the cartilage like a dry chicken bone and tearing it off his face, leaving a ragged crater in the center of his face. He cried out for help as she slashed her claws across his face, silencing him as she rode the balding, fat, middle-aged police officer down to the concrete. She slashed and ripped at him, tearing open his chest and throat, rending his face to ribbons before Ebersol grabbed her and pulled her out the door.

The cop with the missing eye was still crying out, and he was going for his radio. Lelani dived on top of him and seized his throat between her jaws. With a single jerk of her head, she tore out his trachea. The arterial spray saturated her hair and clothes and misted the exit door behind her. She paused to grab the bucket of chicken before she followed Dr. Ebersol out into the night. The exertion had made her hungry again. She was still chewing on the flesh she’d torn from the young officer’s throat when she shoved another piece of chicken into her mouth.

“Come on! The other cops might have heard their screams. We need to get to my car!”

They jogged out into the night. Gardens surrounded the property, and beyond that, just over a low stone wall, was the jogging path that circled Town Lake.

“Go down to the lake. I’ll get my car and meet you at the dog park on Congress Avenue. Do you understand?”

Lelani nodded and picked up another piece of chicken and shoved it into her mouth.

Ebersol looked into the bucket and she did the same. Only two pieces left. She saw the worried expression on his face when he looked back up at her.

“I’ve got more in my car. Don’t hurt anyone else while you’re waiting for me. I’ll be there right away, okay?”

“I’m so hungry, David. I’m so hungry,” Lelani said, shaking her head.

“Please, Lelani. I promise. I’ll help you, but you can’t keep killing people.”

The problem was, she was beginning to enjoy killing. Fried chicken didn’t fight back. It didn’t scream. It didn’t fear her. Fried chicken just wasn’t as much fun.

21 

Police were everywhere. It took Dr. Ebersol nearly twenty minutes to get to his car and then to navigate through the throngs of gawkers and curiosity seekers onto Congress Avenue and down to the lake.

The dog park was a large open area beside the lake, just under the Congress Street bridge. There was little grass left that hadn’t been trampled and pissed on until it had shriveled up, leaving large brown patches and even larger areas where there was no grass at all. He found Lelani asleep in the dirt, alone, shivering like a dope fiend in detox. The empty paper bucket had been ripped to confetti and littered the ground around her. Her huge claws were caked with blood. Her mouth hung open, revealing blood-stained fangs. She was naked, and her body was little more than a collection of bones, like a feral dog someone had shaved bald.

Ebersol left the car running as he walked over and lifted Lelani into his arms. She weighed less than his ten-year-old niece, seventy or eighty pounds at most. It was like lifting a papier-mâché Halloween scarecrow. He was certain he could crush her waifish body with ease if it wasn’t for the fangs and claws. She stirred slightly but did not wake while he carried her back to his vehicle. Her skin was as hot as asphalt in August. Ebersol began to sweat as he carried her across the park to his waiting car. Her heartbeat thundered against his chest. It was well more than a hundred beats per minute. It was the pulse of someone running a sprint, not someone in a deep sleep.

Ebersol felt his testicles shrivel up against him when Lelani nuzzled her face in the crook of his neck, making a growling, purring sound. A chill shivered up his spine. If she woke up hungry while he was still carrying her, Ebersol knew he was completely fucked. They made it to the car without incident, and Ebersol drove her to the airport. Sarai had arranged for the clinic’s private jet to meet them.

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