Savage

  She looked at him, surprised by his attempt at a joke. Then she leaned into his shoulder. “I’m really sorry about your dad,” she said.

  “Me too,” he answered, trying to keep his emotions in check.

  They continued to eat in silence.

  “He didn’t hate you, you know,” Cody said after a moment.

  Sidney looked at him. “Really? Could have fooled me.”

  “It wasn’t hate at all,” Cody explained. “I think it was more like . . . jealousy.”

  “He was jealous of me? How?”

  Cody shrugged as he munched on another square of granola.

  “I think he knew how smart you are, and how much I admired that about you. How I would listen to you”—Cody shrugged— “and not really listen to him all that much.”

  “I would never have guessed that,” she said, breaking off a piece of chocolate and putting it in her mouth.

  “It’s not like you could have,” Cody told her. “He kept a lot of stuff to himself, but I could see it, how he acted whenever I talked about you.”

  She unscrewed the cap on her own bottle of water and took a long swallow. “Now I feel really bad.”

  “Why?” Cody asked. “I just thought you’d like to know he didn’t hate you.”

  “I guess it is good to know,” Sidney agreed.

  “Anyway, it’s all good,” Cody said with finality, finishing his granola bar and crinkling up the wrapper, wishing he could believe his own words.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Officer Riley Donovan stroked the head of his dog Scarlett and then of her brother, Samson.

  He had carried their bodies down to the station garage and was kneeling between the two.

  He told himself that he wouldn’t cry, but he felt the barriers he’d erected start to crumble as emotion welled up inside of him and the tears began.

  He’d loved these dogs, and he was certain that they’d loved him. He knew that they’d had no control over their actions. What he’d seen in the office were not his dedicated, loving, and hardworking partners. They had been replaced by something else.

  Something cold, calculating, and monstrous.

  Donovan couldn’t take his eyes from the pair of German shepherds. He could tell himself that they were only sleeping, but he knew the truth, and it was like a knife to the heart. Finally he stood and threw an old comforter he’d found in a supply closet over them, watching as it settled across their unmoving bodies.

  He sniffled once, then took a deep breath and turned away from the dogs. Might as well check the generator before I go back up, he thought, walking toward the chain-link enclosure where the generator rumbled.

  Stepping inside the enclosure, he checked the gas gauge and saw that the tank was half full. They still had a few hours left. Satisfied, Donovan left the enclosure, shut the gate, and was ready to leave the garage area when he heard a faint bump. He turned toward the closed garage door, where he saw the profile of a man walk past the long horizontal window.

  He quickly walked toward the door.

  “Hello?” he called out.

  The man’s face appeared in the window again, followed by a single bang.

  “Holy crap,” Donovan said. “Hold on! I’ll raise the door enough for you to crawl under,” he hollered to the stranger.

  Again there was the single thump of a fist hitting the metal door.

  “Get ready.” Donovan hit the button on the side of the garage door, and it began to rise with a whine and the clanking of gears.

  A flow of insects immediately scuttled inside.

  “Jesus!” Donovan cried, frantically stomping on the spiders, centipedes, and beetles that washed in like water. “Hey, buddy, hurry it up!” he shouted.

  The man suddenly appeared, trying to duck beneath the door. Donovan grabbed his arm and pulled him in. The man stumbled to the floor, and the officer left him there while he darted over to the controls and hit the button to shut the door.

  “Are you okay?” Donovan asked over his shoulder as he stamped on the remaining bugs. The man didn’t reply, so the officer turned, only to look directly into the face of the man he’d saved.

  It was then that he could see the man wasn’t okay at all. There was something seriously wrong with him. It looked as if his skull had been bashed in, and there was a glistening covering, like a cataract, over his right eye. And his mouth—his mouth was stained red as if he’d just taken the biggest bite from a blood pie.

  And before Donovan could react, the man rushed toward him with incredible speed, mouth open, and sank his teeth into the officer’s throat.

  It happened so fast, Donovan didn’t even have a chance to scream.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Sidney watched as Officer Isabel spoke softly with Officer Kole in a corner of the room. The older officer handed the young woman another firearm in a holster, which she secured to her belt as they spoke.

  Finally Officer Isabel approached Sidney, shotgun slung over her shoulder. “Are we ready?”

  “Yeah,” Sidney said, leaning down to retrieve the trash bag. A nasty odor wafted from it, and she tried to cinch the top tighter.

  “Are your two friends coming?” Isabel asked, looking around for them.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Sidney said. She looked up to find Cody talking with Officer Kole. The officer handed him a gun as well, and the two shook hands. Cody stuck the gun in the front of his pants and walked over to Sidney and Officer Isabel.

  “Do you know how to use that?” Sidney asked, nodding toward the gun.

  “Well enough,” he said.

  In all the years they’d been together she had never known him to have any interest in guns.

  “When did you ever learn to fire a gun?” she asked incredulously.

  “You weren’t always in my life,” he said petulantly. “My dad taught me how to shoot when I was little.”

  “You never mentioned that.”

  “I’m sure there’s a lot I never mentioned,” Cody said, and looked away from her to Officer Isabel.

  Ouch! Sidney thought. So much for still being friends.

  “Where’s the other one?” Isabel asked. “We need to get rolling.”

  Sidney looked around at the various groupings of people and found Rich with Amy Levesque, surprised by what she saw.

  What would Rich be saying to a preschooler?

  * * *

  “But the ponies are animals, right?” Amy asked. She sat atop a desk, watching as Rich drew a picture.

  “Yeah, they’re animals, but they’re nice.”

  “But the animals want to bite us,” Amy said. “That means the ponies would want to bite us too.”

  “No, not the ponies,” Rich reassured her, looking up from his drawing and shaking his head. “The ponies are magic, and smart, and nice—”

  “Not Nightmare Moon!” The little girl shook her head vigorously.

  “Well, she starts off bad, but I’ll let you in on a little secret.” Rich looked around, then leaned close to the little girl and in an exaggerated whisper said, “Remember the name Princess Luna, okay?”

  The little girl nodded. “Princess Luna, got it.”

  “Good.” He went back to drawing. “So I want you to keep this drawing with you all the time, and when you get scared, you look at it.”

  “Okay,” Amy said, tilting her head to see his work. “Which pony is that?” she asked him.

  “Which one is your favorite?”

  “I like Twilight Sparkle, but Rainbow Dash is my favorite too.”

  “This is Rainbow Dash,” he said, trying to remember some of the cartoon pony’s details.

  “No, that’s not,” Amy told him. “That doesn’t look like Rainbow Dash at all. That looks more like Pinkie Pie.”

  “Okay, it’s Pinkie Pie.”

  “I hate Pinkie Pie.”

  Rich couldn’t help but laugh, putting his head down on top of the drawing.

  “Hey, Rich?”

  He tur
ned to see Sidney standing behind him.

  “You coming?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, sure.” He picked up the paper and gave it to the little girl. “Here ya go. Since it doesn’t look like Rainbow Dash, and you hate Pinkie Pie, maybe you can make this your very own pony,” he said as she studied the drawing very carefully.

  “I’ll name her Richacorn!” Amy proclaimed. She took the pencil from Rich’s hand and began to add to his drawing. “But I’ll have to give her a horn on her head.”

  “Her?” he asked.

  The little girl nodded.

  “All right then. I’ve gotta run some errands while you do that.”

  The little girl continued to draw, singing to herself as she did. Rich watched her for minute, then stood and joined Sidney.

  “Ready,” he said.

  “Rainbow Dash?” Sidney asked.

  Rich shrugged.

  “Pinkie Pie?”

  He shrugged again.

  “I don’t know you.” Sidney slowly shook her head.

  “I’m a mystery wrapped in an enigma.”

  “Yeah, you’re something,” she said, smiling slightly, and he felt his heart do that stupid thing it often did when he was around her.

  He hated that.

  “Are we going or what?” Rich asked, feigning annoyance.

  “Yeah, c’mon, Richacorn,” Sidney said, walking away. “Cody and Officer Isabel are waiting by the door.”

  “I’ll never live this down, will I?”

  “Absolutely not,” she said with a smile.

  It was the last thing Rich saw before it all went dark.

  * * *

  There was a collective gasp as the lights went out.

  “It’s all right, everybody.” Officer Kole’s voice boomed in the darkness. “The generator probably ran out of gas. Give me a minute and—”

  He never finished.

  Snowy began barking just as Sidney heard the clicking. The unmistakable sounds of animal toenails upon hard wood.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” she said, hoping that Officer Isabel was close enough to hear. “We’ve got to get everybody out of—”

  Multiple cell phone screens lit, illuminating the darkness, revealing the darting shapes of animals that had somehow found their way into the building.

  “They’re inside,” Sidney hissed, searching the darkness for her friends. She could feel Snowy protectively at her side and put out her hands for Rich.

  “Rich!” she called out.

  “I’m here,” he answered just as screams erupted through the room.

  It was madness. A sensory nightmare of the highest order. The sounds of panic reverberated through the office, footfalls as people ran, furniture toppling over, objects crashing to the floor, and other sounds . . .

  Sounds that Sidney did not want to hear.

  Screams—screams so filled with fear that they were almost contagious, screams that were savagely cut short, one after another after another. She wanted to shut her brain off, curl into a ball, and wait to die.

  But she wouldn’t do that—couldn’t do that.

  She needed to get out of there, to escape the beasts. That’s what they were now. They weren’t really dogs and cats and raccoons and squirrels anymore; they were something else, and “beasts” seemed quite appropriate.

  Sidney reached out and felt Snowy quivering by her side. The poor animal could not hear the chaos—the screams of the dying—but she could sense what was happening.

  See what was happening.

  Smell what was happening.

  “Sid!” she heard Cody call out, and she turned toward the sound.

  He stood no more than six feet away, near the entrance to the office, holding up the illuminated screen of his cell phone.

  But the light attracted more than just Sidney.

  “Cody, behind you!” she screamed as she watched three large dogs emerge from the darkness to his right.

  Cody began to turn, just as the deafening blast of a shotgun sounded. Cody jumped back, dropping his cell, and the dogs scattered as a portion of the wall behind them tore away.

  “Let’s go!” Officer Isabel cried out. The beam of a flashlight lit up the area around her near the back of the office.

  It was still chaos, the screams and sounds of people trying to escape. Sidney moved toward the light, making sure that Snowy was by her side. She looked to where Cody had been and saw hints of frantic movement before her ex appeared. At first she thought he’d been hurt, his face spattered red.

  “I’m all right,” he said, reading the panic in her eyes. “The blood’s not mine this time.”

  Rich was suddenly with them, little Amy in his arms. She was crying but clutched the drawing tightly in her small hand. The child’s mother followed closely behind. More people joined them, drawn to the moving light of the flashlight.

  “C’mon,” Sidney said, trying to push people toward Officer Isabel.

  The screams were suddenly close as people behind her were pulled back into the darkness. They didn’t last long though, ending in wet ripping sounds and gurgling.

  She could only imagine what was happening.

  She was turning away to follow the light when something snagged the leg of her pants and she fell forward, chest and hands hitting the floor with a loud slap. The trash bag flew from her grasp as she felt herself dragged back, away from the light.

  She watched as Cody, Snowy, and Rich continued toward Officer Isabel, unaware of her plight. She tried to cry out, but the air had been punched from her lungs when she hit the floor.

  Tamping down the fear and panic, she dug her nails into the hard wood and flipped herself onto her back. Hauling back her free leg, she drove the heel of her foot into the snout of the dog—the beast—that held her, a chocolate Labrador with a head as square as a box. It did not yelp or cry out, even though blood poured from its nose, as it continued to tug on her leg. She raised her leg and was ready to kick again, when a Saint Bernard appeared beside the Lab. She knew this dog. His name was Tiny, and he was, to quote Doc Martin, a gentle soul.

  Her brain quickly corrected that bit of info as the animal took her entire foot into his mouth.

  She managed to cry out as the massive maw closed upon her ankle. The pressure was incredible as the dogs pulled her farther into the shadows. She thrashed wildly, screaming now, knowing it was only a matter of time before her bones snapped and the dogs came for her throat.

  Suddenly the darkness exploded in a deafening burst of light and fire. The great beast that held her grunted, then fell into the Lab, blood spurting from his neck in a geyser of crimson. The Lab lost its grip on her pants, and she managed to wrench her foot, soaking wet but intact, from the mouth of the once-gentle Saint Bernard.

  Sidney scrabbled backward, eyes frantically searching for her savior.

  Officer Kole leaned against a file cabinet, one hand clutching his revolver, the other holding on to a bleeding wound torn in his throat.

  “Go,” he croaked.

  She jumped to her feet and started toward him, but he raised his weapon and she froze. The gun fired, and Sidney spun around to see something dark and muscular thud to the floor.

  “Didn’t . . . you . . . hear me?” he asked, firing his weapon again. “I said go . . . I’m done. . . .”

  She wanted to help, but that awful sense of being too late overrode the desire, and she turned away. The officer continued to fire at the beasts that converged on him, covering her escape, until his gun went silent.

  And the beasts took him.

  * * *

  Sidney raced through the doorway at the back of the office and into another hall. It was dark, and she couldn’t see the others ahead of her.

  She removed her phone from her pocket and illuminated the screen. In the dim light she could see that she was in a short passage with a stairway at the end. She also saw the body of a man lying on the floor, eyes wide open in horrific death, his belly torn open, his insides s
trewn about like a discarded piece of rope. She remembered seeing him earlier near the coffee machine and had watched him pull a liquor bottle from his coat pocket and pour its contents into his coffee.

  I could use a little of that right now, she thought.

  Carefully she stepped over him, then put her phone back in her pocket. Running her fingers along the wall, she cautiously made her way to the stairs, stopping at the top until her hand found the metal railing.

  She made her way down, counting the steps as did.

  Twenty-four.

  She reached a small landing where the air smelled of oil and gasoline, and she remembered the closed garage door that she’d seen at the end of the driveway when they’d first driven into the station lot.

  Five. Five more steps.

  And then she remembered the trash bag.

  “Shit,” she hissed, feeling that sense of nearly overwhelming panic.

  She turned and considered going back up the stairs. The twenty-nine steps.

  No, a voice inside her head ordered. Hell, knowing the doc, she probably already had her own damn specimen.

  She took the phone from her pocket again and used it to illuminate her path as she turned and slowly walked forward into the darkness of the garage. The cement floor was slick beneath her sneakered feet, and she almost fell as she stepped in a dark puddle.

  Oil, she guessed, based on the smell of the place.

  Ahead of her, she could make out the metal garage door, half open. Officer Donovan was slumped against the wall next to it, his head lolling oddly to the side.

  Not oil.

  And now, sadly, she knew how the beasts had gotten into the station.

  She continued to move slowly toward the open garage door, listening intently for sounds of animals. It was still pouring outside, and the smell of the ocean carried on the wind reminded her of how much she loved the summer rain—correction, used to love the summer rain.

  Her foot touched Officer Donovan’s leg, and she turned the light of her phone on him. His head looked as though it was merely hanging on by a thread of skin. She was about to turn her phone off when she noticed the gun, still holstered at his hip.