Primal Fear (10 page)

A floorboard creaked behind him, from a spot just inside the office door.

Hughes, he assumed, already back from his jaunt upstairs.  He was about to murmur an apology to Del for using the phone for so long, but Charlie came back on the line before he could get the words out.

“Sorry about that.  Ben was looking for some more evidence bags.  Anything else?”

“Only that I appreciate what you guys are doing out there.  I haven’t been able to raise anybody to relieve you yet, but I’ll have Dana keep trying.”

“No problem.  Talk to you later.”

Charlie broke the connection, a hollow click that reached Harry as he leaned across the desk and set the receiver back into its cradle.

“That was Charlie,” he said.  “He read the note to me and—”

He stopped short.

He’d caught a glimpse of Hughes in the polished surface of the mahogany desk top, reflected from his position beside the office door.  Just behind Harry.  There was something terribly wrong about the blurred features Harry could make out, something horribly off-kilter, as if Hughes had met with some disfiguring accident on his way upstairs.

Harry began to turn, his eyes once again taking in the distorted reflection in the desktop beside him.  He’d been mistaken, he realized.  It wasn’t Hughes who’d stepped up behind him.  It was someone else, someone who seemed familiar to him in some way, but whom his mind refused to identify.

A smell reached him then, a sharp chemical odor that suddenly seemed to fill the entire office.

Realization came in a whirlwind of sudden fear.

The identity of his visitor slammed home, the name rising in his thoughts even as he turned to confirm his suspicion.  His hand upended the framed photo of Del and his father.  He dimly heard the crash as it shattered on the hardwood floor, but the sound barely registered in his thoughts.

Marty Slater stood in the doorway, his single eye centered intently upon Harry, his dead hands rising to clumsily form some mysterious pattern in front of his chest.  The chemical reek in the room had grown even stronger and a sudden chill seemed to permeate the air around them.

Harry wanted to scream, but the sound caught in his throat.  He felt paralyzed by fear, and it was all he could do to take a single, staggering step backwards.

Marty moved forward, advancing stiffly into the office, his mouth lolling open while his fingers continued to flex from one odd configuration to another.  He was naked, a ragged incision traversing his chest and belly in the shape of a wide letter Y.  Hughes had stitched the body up following the autopsy, of course, using the standard metal staples of his trade.  But the impossible rising and movement of the body had loosened several of them and the flesh was once again beginning to open up at numerous points along Slater’s midsection.

The damage to Slater’s face was even more unsettling.  With the overhead lights glistening across Slater’s ghastly features, and the obscenely stiff motions of his body as he stepped once again towards Harry, the terrible wounds caused by the shotgun seemed even more devastating.

Harry stepped back again and felt his shoulders brush the wall behind him.  There was no place left to run.

The corpse advanced another step, a soft breath passing between its lips, little more than a whisper.  The dark orb of its right eye was still fixed on Harry.  There seemed to be a faint glimmer of life deep within its pupil, a hint of intelligence completely alien to the body that had shambled in from the hall.

Slater’s lips moved again, this time forcing out a single guttural sound, one that might have been a word.  “. . . jhuk . . .”  His hands stopped moving, one of them rising to stretch towards Harry, its index finger extended crookedly in his direction.

“. . . jhuk kata . . . iti huttut . . .”

The words seemed to come more easily now, as if through ceasing the strange movement of his hands, Slater had gained greater control of his lips and tongue.  Still, his voice was weak, the words riding on a breath he should not have been able to produce.

“. . . jhuk atae . . . katta atae . . . iti huttut . . .”

Harry shook his head, as if the simple gesture might be enough to rid him of this vision forever.  A part of his mind that had been stricken helpless by the sight of Slater’s walking corpse suddenly freed itself, pushing aside a bit of the fear that had paralyzed him.  He reached for his gun, as if he’d just remembered he was carrying it.  His fingers fumbled at the strap, trying desperately to unsnap it.  But the fear had not departed completely, and had left his fingers weak and clumsy.

A tense five seconds passed—seconds that seemed to stretch themselves into an eternity—before he was able to manipulate the holster’s strap and tug it out of the way.  His eyes never left Slater’s the entire time, riveted on the dim spark of intelligence that still seemed to burn there.

And so he saw the sudden change in the depths of that eye at the moment it happened.  He watched with mixed fascination and dread as the dark circle of Slater’s right pupil spread slowly wider, completely eclipsing the faded white around it.

He raised the gun and clicked off the safety, staring in horror as a look of naked, uncompromising rage flooded across what remained of Slater’s features.

Something about the old man’s behavior seemed to be changing.  Morris sensed it before his eyes could even detect the physical signs of that change.  He leaned forward, peering closely into Mahuk’s face, somehow convinced the first indications of trouble would be glimpsed there.

Within seconds, he began to see subtle variations in the patient’s expression: the slow creasing of the brow, the sudden twitching at the corners of his mouth.  It was as though something had gone terribly awry, something deep within the dreaming mind.  An expression of deep regret rose on his face, the look of a man who is watching his best-laid plans crumble to dust in front of his eyes. 

What was the old man dreaming about that was so important to him?  Did it have anything to do with the movement of his hands, the cryptic motions that had abruptly ended just a few minutes earlier?

The patient’s vitals were getting weaker once again.  Each breath seemed like a struggle, as if it might be his last.

“Hang in there, buddy,” Morris whispered, “we’re going to do everything we can.”

The old man’s upper lip twitched, curling up into a hideous snarl.  His teeth were bared now, crooked and yellow, his face taking on the feral look of a predatory animal.

Something was definitely happening.  Something that Morris understood all his years of medical training could never have prepared him for.  But all he could do was watch, and wait, and hope silently that it would pass.

The gun shivered in Harry’s grasp, his hands shaking so badly he could barely keep his fingers locked in place around the grip.

The corpse had taken another two steps toward him, its features twisted into a grotesque mask of hate.  Its single eye burned with rage and with each passing second, Slater’s body seemed to gain more strength, all of its earlier clumsiness gone.  

“Jesus,” Harry muttered, “this can’t be happening.”

The words seemed to chase away some of the fear, to push away some of the numbness that had claimed his thoughts.

You have a gun, his mind reminded him.  Use it.

He dropped his eyes to the weapon, just for an instant, just long enough to reassure himself that the safety was off and the gun was ready to fire.  He lifted it swiftly, brought it to bear in the exact center of Slater’s chest.

And at that precise moment, the body lunged at him.  It moved with surprising speed, closing the gap between them before Harry could squeeze the trigger.  It slammed into him, slapping aside his outstretched hand with only the slightest effort.

The gun clattered to the floor, sliding beneath Hughes’ desk and out of Harry’s reach.

Harry felt himself going over, his balance thrown off by the unexpected attack.  The corpse brought him down hard, the bare floor beneath him forcing the wind from his lungs.  A field of stars exploded behind his eyes, a dizzying sense of nausea assaulting him as he struggled to remain conscious.

Slater’s body fell on top of him, its hands digging at his face, the dead fingers trying to close around his throat.  Its stench was overpowering, and it was that, more than anything else, that helped Harry to snap out of his stupor and force his head to clear.

He felt a sudden anger of his own, a familiar emotion, one he could work with.  Earlier, the fear had practically paralyzed him.  Now, the anger, the sweet burning rage brimming over inside of him served to make him stronger, to feed his will to fight.

At this moment, only survival mattered.  Because this creature certainly meant to kill him. 

He lifted his hands and tried to force the body off of him, to topple it to either side, but Slater wouldn’t budge, possessing more strength and tenacity in death than he ever had in life.

His fingers tightened on Harry’s throat, his thumbs pressing savagely into Harry’s flesh.  A terrible grin was stretched across the lower half of Slater’s face, a malevolent smile that suggested he was enjoying this violent and brutal act.

And the blackness in his gaze had grown deeper, encompassing the entire eye now, burning into Harry’s thoughts and memories.

Harry could feel himself beginning to slip away, the lack of oxygen taking its toll.  He knew he wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer, that he was dangerously close to passing out.  And then Slater could go about his awful business undisturbed, choking the life out of Harry without even a struggle.

Still, the anger inside Harry persisted, giving him the strength to attempt one final action, one last desperate bid for his life.  He could feel something sharp pressing against his back, something that he’d fallen on when Slater had knocked him flat.  It was fairly solid, jutting into his lower back at a point just above his belt.

A moment later, it came to him.  It was the framed photo of his father, the one taken on the fishing trip with Delbert Hughes.  He’d knocked it off of the desk just as Slater had come into the office.  He could remember the crash of the frame’s glass now, as it had smashed against the floor.

With every bit of strength he had left, he pushed his right hand underneath him, his fingers clawing at what seemed to be his only weapon.  He felt its jagged edges, the tips of his fingers bloody now as the shard of broken glass cut into them.  Ignoring the pain, or perhaps too desperate to even acknowledge it, he curled his fist around the piece of glass and tugged it free.  Without hesitation, he brought his hand up in a swift and decisive arc, burying the shard in Slater’s exposed side, pushing it in as deeply as he could.

Slater howled, though Harry couldn’t say whether the body could even experience the pain.  He seemed enraged, furious that Harry dared to strike back at him.  He lifted one hand from Harry’s throat, dropping it to his wounded side to slap Harry’s hand away.

The wide end of the piece of glass snapped off in Harry’s hand.  He let it drop uselessly to the floor, stained with his own blood, a wide slash marking his right palm.

Taking advantage of Slater’s distraction, Harry slammed his right fist into the side of the corpse’s head, finally upsetting his attacker’s balance and forcing him over onto his side.  Harry wriggled out from beneath Slater, his eyes automatically scanning the floor for his lost gun.  He saw it under the desk, still too far to reach in his current position.  Rolling onto his stomach, he pushed himself across the floor and stretched his arm out under the desk, swept it to either side until his fingers made contact with the gun.

He seized it, dragging it back towards him just as Slater renewed his attack, falling onto Harry’s legs and clawing at his back.

A line of blood welled up suddenly from the old man’s left side, a jagged crimson blotch that appeared out of nowhere before Morris’ startled gaze.  The shaman’s face registered the pain, the expression of rage replaced by a grimace of intense suffering.

“Nurse!” Morris shouted, coming to his feet beside the bed.  “Get a trauma team in here now!” 

He peeled back the sheet in one quick motion, his hands already tugging at the hospital gown, trying to reveal the wound beneath.  Blood was flowing steadily from a point just below the patient’s bottom rib, leaving a dark and horrible stain on the bedclothes.  He finally succeeded in ripping a small hole in the gown, his fingers tearing at it to widen the gap.

A deep gash had opened in the old man’s side, as if someone had run into the room and stabbed him.  But no one had come in this way, no one had disturbed Morris since he’d come in to keep a close watch on his patient.  Even more confounding was the fact that the old man’s hospital gown had not been cut, and yet the flesh beneath had clearly been slashed wide open.

An emergency medical team rushed in, moving their equipment into place beside the bed while Morris issued orders, a peculiar quiver apparent in his voice.

The old man’s face was once again going slack, a look of serenity falling into place there.

“This is not happening,” Morris whispered, but the denial felt like a waste of breath.  He’d just witnessed the impossible but there was no time to think it through now, there was only time to get to work.