Trout cut in and out of traffic. Cars blared horns at him but he didn’t even slow down long enough to give the finger. His heart was racing faster than the engine.
Goat licked his lips. “The military … that’s good, right? I mean…?” His voice trailed off. A moment later he said, “We’re in deep shit.”
“I know,” said Trout, and he stepped down harder on the gas.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
“Where is he?”
Irene Compton, the desk nurse, looked up at the intern, who looked about a year younger than her daughter. “Pardon?” asked the nurse with a half smile.
The intern, a petite redhead who could not possibly be out of high school let alone a medical student, was not smiling. “Patient in Sixteen. Chart says he presented with a bite?”
“Oh, that’s Mr. Wieland. One of the farmers picked him up at a gas station and brought him in. We took vitals and put him in … um.…” She punched a few keys on the computer. “Yup … in sixteen.”
The intern, whose name tag read Slattery, narrowed her eyes. “No, he’s not in sixteen. I just came from sixteen. There’s no one there.”
Nurse Compton kept her smile in place. She was well aware that she looked matronly and these interns usually started thinking of her as a mom figure. “Maybe he went to the bathroom.”
Dr. Slattery turned and stalked away. No thanks, no nothing. Nurse Compton watched her slim figure retreat down the hall. “Bitch,” she said quietly.
Dr. Gail Slattery pushed through the double doors leading to the emergency unit. There were two central nurses stations surrounded by rows of curtained bays. Each bay was marked with a number that was painted on the floor and stamped onto a bright plastic disk mounted on the ceiling just outside the curtain tracks. She stomped past bays eleven through fifteen. Most of them were unoccupied. Fourteen had a broken hip, fifteen had a seventeen-year-old skateboarder. Sixteen was supposed to be the bite victim, but wasn’t. The room was a mess, too. Bloodstains on the sheets, pillow on the floor. Open suture kit sitting on a chair.
She snorted and kept going, peering into bay seventeen, also empty, and eighteen, probable torn ACL. The last bay, nineteen, was next to the bathroom. The patient in nineteen was one that Slattery had already seen. Mona Greene. A geriatric with chest pains. Woman was ninety-three, a smoker, and had a history of angina, emphysema, and congestive heart failure dating back to the Clinton presidency. It was a wonder she was alive, let alone able to drive herself here about once every three months for “chest pressure.”
The curtains were drawn, and Dr. Slattery parted them for a quick peek.
She was about to say something, but she froze, her lips parted.
Mrs. Greene was there, sure enough … but so was Mr. Wieland. He was bent over the old woman, and for an odd moment Gail Slattery thought that the man was kissing her. Or whispering something in her ear.
He wasn’t.
Dr. Slattery gasped.
Mr. Wieland heard the small sound and his head jerked up, eyes darting toward the part in the curtains. His roved over the curtains, not lingering for even a moment on the narrow part. Those eyes were completely empty.
His mouth, however, was full.
Red bubbled on his lips and ran in lines down his cheeks and over his chin and splashed on the ivy pattern of the Wolverton Hospital patient gowns. Mr. Wieland’s mouth worked and worked, and even across the twelve feet that separated them, Dr. Slattery could hear the sucking, smacking sounds as his teeth chewed on what he had taken from old Mona Greene.
Dr. Slattery should have backed quietly away. She should have cleared the area and called security. She should have called the police. She did none of those things. Instead, Gail Slattery did the one thing that she should not have done.
She screamed.
Mr. Wieland’s eyes snapped back toward her and now he did see the narrow part. And the eye that looked through it. His lips curled back from his teeth and he dropped the remains of the sticklike arm he’d held.
With a howl of insatiable hunger, a hunger not at all satisfied by all that he had consumed, Mr. Wieland rushed around the bed straight toward Dr. Slattery. She screamed and screamed. She screamed as long as she could. As long as she was able.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
“This is Magic Marti at the mike with new tidbits for travelers. Well, it’s official, campers … the cow manure has hit the fan. We got a major storm clamped down over the region. Airports and bus terminals are shut down. Schools are closed and all nonessential activities have been canceled all across our listening area. And there’s still some police activity on Doll Factory Road in Stebbins. And we have unconfirmed reports of an incident at Wolverton Hospital on the Stebbins-Bordentown border. No details yet except that state police are on the scene. And … one more thing, kids. I know that big storms are kind of fun in a haunted house, roller-coaster ride sort of way, but this is serious business. Folks are out there dealing with this. Police, fire, and rescue units are going to be pushed to the limit, so please … no more of the crank calls about monsters eating people. Aunt Marti likes a good prank as much as the next gal, but c’mon guys … now’s not the time.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
Hartnup moved through the woods a dozen yards from the road, paralleling Doll Factory, heading toward Mason Street. He had no control over where his body went, just as he had no idea where it was going. There were more like him in the woods. Some close enough to see, others merely gray shapes in the rain. Some headed in the same direction, drawn by some force beyond Hartnup’s perception; others walked across his path, going north or south or east, drawn by other needs, other calls.
The body around him moved stiffly, and he could still feel it. The hoped-for rigor mortis was upon him now, slowing him, making his limbs move like stilts … but they kept moving. It hurt, too. No human before could ever appreciate the terrible, ceaseless pain of rigor. He knew the science and that was no comfort. The pain was going to get worse and worse. It was a process that starts as soon as respiration ceases. Muscles begin an inevitable and irreversible contraction. It was worse than a charley horse, worse than stomach cramps. It was everywhere at once and each jarring step sent nerve flashes through the dying muscles.
Hartnup’s world was pain. He tried screaming to endure it, but there was no way to escape this hell. All he could do was experience it.
His body moved like a badly managed puppet, and there, beneath the pain, was something far worse. Something that burst through the cracks of agony in each contracting muscle.
Hunger.
