"I don't care anymore. I only care about getting the cure."
"Kil ing me won't cure you."
"It's worth a try."
He sliced a long line down the unctuous pervert's chest, cutting so deep that he could feel the blade bounce over the fat man's rib cage. Damon's pal id flesh
opened up, revealing thick yel ow globs of adipose tissue smothering the ruby
red muscle fibers surrounding his ribs. Damon cried out despite the warning.
"Arrrrgh! Stop! Stop!!! Hel l !" Joe smashed an elbow down into
Damon's solar plexus, shattering his
xiphoid process and rupturing his lungs. Damon wheezed and choked, gagging
as the blood fil ing his thoracic cavity and crushed his lungs. Blood bubbled up
from between the pervert's lips as he
struggled to breathe.
"This won't cure you. I didn't make you what you are," Damon wheezed in an exhausted whisper.
"I would have been normal, just like any other person, if you hadn't passed this disease on to me!" Joe struggled to keep his voice down as his entire body
vibrated with rage. His cold blue eyes
were livid with half a lifetime of shame and anger.
Damon began to laugh. A hideous
gurgling sound issued from his lungs and blood sprayed from his lips as he
wheezed and cackled.
"You were made long before I came
along. Why do you think I picked you as my first? You were made by the same
person who made me years before. The
disease was already in your blood. Just like the legends say, you have to kil the original vampire, and I wasn't the first one. I was just a victim, like you. I was made into a monster."
"By who?"
Damon's voice was growing fainter as
he continued to try to breathe through his col apsing lungs.
"Haven't you guessed it already? There is no curse. It's al in the genes."
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
"You figure it out. You know. Deep down, you know. You've known al along." Joe leapt onto the mattress, straddling the child kil er's bloated stomach, and plunged the scalpel deep into the wound he'd made in Damon's chest. In a near
frenzy, Joe began ripping the obese
pederast apart. He cut chunks of flesh
out of the man's torso, slicing deep into his fat and muscle and then digging his fingers down into the meat and jerking it free with both hands. Pul ing off his
pectoral muscles with a wet sticky riiiiiip!
He stripped the meat from the man's
arms and legs, wrenching loose his
flabby biceps and triceps from his
humerus and tossing them to the floor,
tearing his huge fat enclustered vastus muscles and hamstrings from his femur
as Damon tried to force a scream up
through his blood-clogged larynx.
Damon passed out from the pain, blood
loss, and shock of seeing his body so
recklessly unmade, yet Joe continued to rip into him with the scalpel and his own bare hands until large hunks of warm wet meat lay al over the floor around the
bed.
The room was now a gruesome abattoir.
The sterile white wal s and ceiling ran red with Damon's depleted life. The
mattress upon which his savaged
carcass lay was a blood-drenched
sponge that squished beneath their
weight, leaking more blood down onto
the tiled floor. Joe's anger began to ebb. He stared down at the ruin he'd made of the corpulent pederast and felt muscles uncontracting and relaxing for the first time al over his body, as if he'd been flexing for years and hadn't been aware of it. Joe let out a long sigh and it felt as if he'd been holding his breath for a
decade. He stabbed the scalpel down
through the pederast's rib cage,
impaling his heart, and then climbed off the bed, continuing to stare at the corpse as it voided its body fluids.
The floor was littered with flesh. Blood poured from the mattress in long sheets, covering the linoleum in a shimmering
blanket of burgundy-wine red. Joe had
never seen so much blood come from a
single person. It was as if al the blood the child kil er had sucked from his
victims' wounds had stil been in him and had only now been freed. He imagined
the souls of al the children Damon had consumed pouring out of his bloated
corpse on that endless river of dark
plasma.
Joe stared intently at Damon's face as
the pederast's life fled his mutilated
carcass, hoping to see some sign that
the curse was over. He half expected the man's body to col apse into ash like the vampires in the movies, but instead the fat freak simply expired. Joe studied the man's features for a while longer,
recal ing the long hours he'd spent
cringing in a damp basement as that
pudgy face leered at him from behind a
mask of Joe's own blood. He didn't
know for sure if the curse had left him, but he had no desire at al to feast on Damon Trent's fat vulgar corpse. He
walked out of the room, quietly shutting the door behind him.
Part III
Forty-one
Joseph was drenched head to toe in
Damon's blood. The lab coat he'd
appropriated now looked like a butcher's smock. It was plastered to his skin, the blood already beginning to coagulate.
Joe had to peel himself out of it, as if he were removing the skin from a
particularly wet and juicy piece of
tropical fruit. Blood-soaked meat always reminded Joe of mangoes and ripe
peaches, when you opened it up and it
flooded your mouth with its sweet nectar. Joe thought once more about Alicia as
he dropped the lab coat to the floor. She had been the sweetest fruit of al . He had to find a way in to see her. But they
wouldn't let him anywhere near her
saturated in blood, especial y once the two corpses were located.
The polo shirt Joe had been wearing
underneath the lab coat had already
been red, but now the darker, truer red from Damon's arteries stood out clearly against it and even more so against his blue jeans. Somehow he had to get a
fresh lab jacket or something to cover
his clothing.
Joe walked into the bathroom and
stared into the mirror. Even though he
had not fed, his face was covered in
blood from where Damon's severed
veins and arteries had sprayed him as
he worked the meat free from his bones. The eyes that stared out at him from that grisly crimson mask were feral, the eyes of some ravenous beast. Joe ran water
into his cupped palms and splashed it
over his face again and again. He
lathered his arms, face, and hair with
liquid hand soap and washed it away
until his handsome Clark Kent face
reemerged from that gory fright mask.
He took a deep breath and watched as
al his features settled down, the beast within him slipping away, leaving him
alone in the bathroom of a hospital room with a child murderer's eviscerated
corpse bleeding out on the mattress and his own clothes stil dripping with blood.
"I've got to get the hel out of here." He slipped out of the bathroom and out
of Damon's room, casting one last look
at his mutilated corpse before shutting the door behind him.
"Rot in hel , you son of a bitch." Before anyone could notice his grisly
hulking form tracking blood across the
immaculate hal way, Joe slipped into
another room directly across from where Damon's corpse lay bleeding out onto
the floor in great bucket-loads. He was lucky to find an obese elderly woman
lying catatonic in her hospital bed. With considerable effort, straining beneath the weight of rol s of bil owy fat, Joe rol ed her over so that he could remove her
hospital-issue dressing gown.
Suppurating bedsores had leaked their
pus onto the mattress, forming a gooey
adhesive that stuck her loose, moldy
flesh to the even moldier bed. There was a wet, sticky, ripping sound when Joe
peeled her off the bedspread, leaving
bits of her flesh stil clinging to it. The back of the dressing gown was
caked with pus and gore and stained
with urine and feces. Joe peeled it off of her. In this filthy gown he would fit right in. Joe faked a lumbering stagger as he
made his way down the hal . There was
an emaciated teenager with tufts of hair missing and black scabs al over his
scalp where the hair had been yanked
out by the roots. He staggered down the hal in a similar fashion just ahead, and Joe caught up to the disoriented youth
and linked arms with him. Together they made their way up the hal toward the
reception desk.
The kid smel ed as bad as the dressing
gown Joe was wearing and his eyes
were dul and flat as if his mind had long ago fled and his body was merely
fol owing a preprogrammed ritual back
and forth through the antiseptic hal ways. The only indication that he was at al
aware of Joe's presence at his side
were the occasional giggles, his left
hand firmly planted on Joe's rock-hard
buttocks, and the erection growing
beneath his gown.
The guard was no longer in front of the elevator. The nurse was not at her station either. Joe heard a radio squawk and an excited voice shouting breathlessly.
"We've got a 187 on the third floor!
Officer needs assistance!"
Joe stumbled down the hal and looked
down the adjoining hal way where he had left the janitor's body. He could see that the blood had seeped out into the
hal way, which had no doubt alerted
someone that there might be something
amiss in the closet. The door was open
and two corrections officers were
kneeling in the blood, leaning over the body as if there were anything they could do for him now. Three nurses, including the one from the front desk, stood
around gasping in horror and chatting in excited whispers as they peered in at
the janitor's corpse, unable to resist their own morbid curiosity.
The guard was looking up and down the
hal , searching for something out of the ordinary. A suspect. Joe clutched the
haggard teen tighter as they continued
past. The guard had luckily looked right past him, assuming he was just another
patient. As soon as they reached the
other side of the hal and were out of
sight of the guards and nurses, Joe let go of his teenaged camouflage and
sprinted for the elevator. He pressed the down button and the door opened right
away. The hal way was stil empty when
Joe slipped quickly inside the elevator. The mauled and murdered janitor was
apparently too fascinating for the guards to tear themselves away.
Joe tried to catch his breath as he rode the elevator back down to the first floor. Adrenaline dumped into his
bloodstream, lighting his nerves on fire. His muscles were bulging through his
clothes as if he were about to burst out of them like the Incredible Hulk. He
looked completely insane. If the doors
opened right now, anyone with half a
brain would know he was a kil er. He had to calm down.
The elevator descended to the first floor and Joe closed his eyes and took a
deep breath. He let it out slow and wil ed his muscles to relax. He let the
satisfaction of final y avenging the loss of his childhood seep into his body.
When the doors opened he was the
picture of serenity.
Hospital guards and policemen were
running everywhere. Joe slipped
unnoticed from the elevator. By taking
Damon's advice and waiting until half the hospital staff was on lunch break, the big musclebound predator had found just the right amount of wiggle room to get in
and out of the hospital's detention wing unnoticed. Now he had to do something
even harder. He had to get out of there with Alicia.
Alicia was stil in Emergency fol owing her surgery. Her chart showed her listed in critical condition. Joe slipped into her room and knelt down beside her bed.
Her chest was covered in bandages.
There was a morphine drip feeding into
a pulsating vein behind the elbow on her left arm.
"My God. What have I done to you?" There was no way he could take her out
of the hospital in this condition without causing her further pain or death. He
would have to leave her.
"I'l be back for you. Don't worry. I won't leave you like this."
Joe thought he saw a smile creep
across her face at the sound of his
voice.
He removed his bloody smock and
walked out the front door of the hospital as police officers began to swarm the
place. He stalked across the parking lot and slipped behind the wheel of his van. Minutes later he was back at the motel
listening to the prostitute next door get her head banged against the wal by her latest trick.
Forty-two
up outside the state hospital only to find it swarming with police and news media. They were too late.
They parked the car in a parking lot
across the street from the hospital and walked across the four lanes of slowmoving traffic, making their way through the crowds of onlookers and
newshounds to get to the police officers. Professor Locke ran up to the yel ow
crime scene tape, ducked under it, and
seized the nearest officer. Professor
Douglas was right behind him.
Douglas was right behind him.
"You there! Officer! What happened here?"
"Who the hel are you? Get back behind that barricade! "
"I'm Professor John Locke and this is Dr. Martin Douglas. We're here looking for a murderer."
"Wel , take your pick. There's about a hundred of them locked up in that
hospital. Now please step back."
"What's going on here?"
"Nothing that concerns you. Now get the hel back behind that tape!" The
exasperated officer be gan forcibly
pushing the two professors back into the crowd.
"I need to know what happened. Has there been a murder? Has someone
been arrested?"
"If you don't step back, your ass is going to get arrested!"
"But we may know something that could help you," Professor Douglas spoke up.
"I'm real y not interested in what you know."
"Oh, but I am." Detective Montgomery stepped forward, flashing his gold
shield. The faces of the two professors fel in defeat.
"Is your captain around?" he asked the flabbergasted patrolman.
"Uh, yeah. Who are you again?"
"My name is Detective Montgomery of San Francisco Homicide. I'm here
investigating a series of murders that I believe may involve your fair city. I also believe these professors may be
material witnesses. Now, would you
please do me a favor and arrest these
two gentleman for withholding evidence
and interfering with the course of an
investigation and whatever else you can think up, then take me to see whoever's running this show?"
"I'd be happy to," the officer said, glaring at the two professors with an everwidening grin.
"We haven't done a thing wrong! You can't detain us!"
"Yeah? Wel , we'l see about that. I want them to be available for questioning.
There's a kil er on the loose and I think they know where he is."
Another officer took Montgomery to
meet the captain in charge of the
investigation. He was a stocky, middleaged man of medium height, with thick, weathered skin from too much time in
the sun. His eyes were hard but jovial. He looked like an old cowboy or
farmhand, like he would have been just
as at home on a horse as in a squad car.
"Captain Marshal . This is Detective Montgomery of San Francisco
Homicide."
They shook hands and leaned back
against the captain's vehicle.
"So what brings you al the way up from San Francisco?"
"I'm looking for a man named Joseph Miles. He's kil ed two people that we
know of and he's going to kil a lot more if we don't stop him. I have reason to
believe that he might be here in your
town and that he might be responsible
for whatever happened here tonight. Uh
... what exactly did happen?"
"A janitor was kil ed. He had his throat ripped out. The ME says it looks like his larynx was bitten through and the bite
marks look human. We've also got a
dead inmate. He was carved up,
vivisected. There's pieces of him al over his room."
"Are there any pieces ... uh ... missing? I mean ... is there any evidence of
cannibalism?"
"Not as far as we can tel ." The captain's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Maybe you'd better tel me what you know about al this."
"Unfortunately, I don't know a hel of a lot, but the two professors that I fol owed up here might. They're with a couple of your officers right now awaiting questioning. I have a feeling they know a lot more than they're tel ing. One of them used to be a profiler with the FBI. At the very least he may have a theory."
"I think we'd better go talk to them then. Oh, and there's something else. You said your boy was a cannibal?"