Second Skin Part 15

"Follow me," said Bart. He hurried down the hall, and I backed away from the door after him. Before we'd gotten five steps, the door burst off its hinges and the two males fell into the hallway, followed by Priscilla's shape and then slowly, as if he was in pain even in this gut-churning new form, Bertrand Lautrec.

"Bart, move!" I shouted, grabbing him by the tie and pulling him into the nearest open door. I slammed and locked it after us. "Where are we?" The place was dark and I flinched as a body hit the other side of the door.

"The autopsy bays." Bart turned on the lights and the green tile floor and steel tables gleamed serenely at me.

"s.h.i.t," I said. "Is there another way out of here?"

"No," said Bart sadly. "Just the big freezer, there. That's the only door."

Outside, the scrabbling and snarling abruptly stopped. Everything was so quiet I could hear the blood beating too hard through my veins, and Bart's heart thudding underneath his soaked b.u.t.tondown. At least in here there were no sprinklers and the shrieking alarms were m.u.f.fled.

"We can wait until the police and fire departments respond," said Bart. "The door is very secure."

I started to answer him, but I was drowned out. From outside came a howl, a scream that cut through the metal, through my ears, and sent a cold, cold hand down my throat.

The same sound I heard in the woods that night. But now it was closer, and I had seen its face.

"Bart," I said, as everything went quiet except for the echoes and our panicked breathing, "Is there any other way into into this room?" this room?"

"I can't think of any offhand," he said, but his lips compressed and the spots of color in his cheeks dimmed. "Are you suggesting we may have been flushed into our abattoir?"

"I think that these things are smart," I said, turning in a slow circle. "And that makes things pretty bleak for us."

From beyond a tiled archway, in a tiny room off the main bay, I heard hissing breath and the scrabbling of claws behind the wall. The only thing inside the small room was a plain metal door with a window in the center. I grabbed Bart's shoulder.

"That another freezer?"

"No," said Bart. "No, that is the incinerator."

"Where does the chimney vent to?" I demanded.

"The main ventilation system, one floor up, but . . ."

I saw a black shape drop into view inside the tiny window of the crematory furnace and my stomach dropped with it.

"This night couldn't just stop getting worse, could it?" Kronen was backed up against the wall near the banks of equipment used in routine autopsies, and I gestured at him to get down. The thing sc.r.a.ped at the inside of the door, fighting the latch with brute strength.

"Where's the switch?" I hissed. "For the furnace?"

"On the wall next to it," Kronen whispered back. s.h.i.t. There went my master plan.

I cast around for anything I could use to defend us. Inside a tile-lined room one story below the earth, I couldn't pull the trick of phasing like last time.

The tray nearest to me was set up with a sterilized set of scalpels and surgical tools, but if the thing in the furnace could get up after a gunshot wound and ma.s.sive blood loss I didn't think sticking it with a knife was going to do much except p.i.s.s it off.

With a chank chank the gla.s.s in the window of the furnace shattered and the thing snaked out a long-clawed paw and slipped the latch on the door. the gla.s.s in the window of the furnace shattered and the thing snaked out a long-clawed paw and slipped the latch on the door.

It spilled spilled into the room, re-forming into a cohesive shape with each movement, and stood upright, walking shakily, taking its time. Like the b.a.s.t.a.r.d child of the smoke creature in the woods and the corpse of a were that had been underground for a few months. Priscilla's wiry frame and sc.r.a.ps of blond hair were all that the thing had left to recognize the former person by. into the room, re-forming into a cohesive shape with each movement, and stood upright, walking shakily, taking its time. Like the b.a.s.t.a.r.d child of the smoke creature in the woods and the corpse of a were that had been underground for a few months. Priscilla's wiry frame and sc.r.a.ps of blond hair were all that the thing had left to recognize the former person by.

Not-Priscilla took one tentative step, then another. It could afford to. Not like we were going anywhere.

The drawers to my left were all closed and labeled, and I ripped open the one that seemed most likely to be helpful. I'd never used the machine within but I grabbed it in a defensive position. "Plug me in!"

Kronen obeyed, staying low, and the thing rotated its blank silver eyes to face him. Its nose-slits rippled as it scented the air and then with a hungry, guttural moan it started for Kronen, picking up speed. Its toenails clacked, digging chunks out of the tile.

"Hey!" I shouted. "Priscilla! You deal with me, you mutant b.i.t.c.h!" I let out the loudest, most territorial growl I could muster. Borne on my fear and my pain and rage, the were leapt to the forefront and I felt my eyes and teeth sting with the phase.

The thing swiveled back toward me and screamed a challenge, crossing the s.p.a.ce between us in two leaps, faster than I could process. Just smoke and shadow and hunger, coming straight for my throat.

As the thing's bony hands reached out for me, I lifted the bone saw and depressed the power b.u.t.ton, driving the circular blade in and up along the thing's sternum.

Priscilla screeched, reeling away from me with her arms akimbo. One set of claws caught me across the cheek but I swiped back with the saw and caught her on the shoulder, hacking her collarbone in two.

She retreated, mewling, one arm hanging useless from the socket and silver-black blood, like oil mixed dirty gray water, oozing from her wounds.

I let out a long breath that I hadn't really meant to hold, still brandishing the screaming bone saw between myself and the hunched thing that had been Priscilla Macleod.

"Luna," said Kronen, tugging at my pant leg. A booming started up outside the autopsy bay doors.

"Not now, Bart!" I snapped.

"Hey, anyone in there?" a voice bellowed from outside. I let my finger release the power switch on the saw.

"Don't come in!"

"Fire department!" the voice shouted. "Can you open the door, miss?"

"Meat . . . ," Priscilla whined from her corner. I may have been imagining things, but her wounds were starting to close.

"There's a dangerous . . . er . . . person in here with me!" I shouted. "I'm a police officer! Stay away from the door!"

"Miss, if you don't open up we're going to have to break the door down!" the firefighter shouted.

Where were the other three bodies? Had they gotten out of the morgue and into the labs above? I thought of the technicians working second shift and my stomach fluttered.

"Stay back!" I yelled at the firefighters, but even as I did, I heard the whine of another saw, one of the portable metal shredders that they use on car wrecks.

"Meat . . . ," Priscilla moaned again.

"Bart," I said, "we gotta get rid of her."

He nodded slightly, his eyes wide and all pupil behind his gla.s.ses. Bart may get scared, but he'd never go into shock over something as trivial as a dead body coming back to life and trying to gnaw the flesh off his bones. I liked that about him.

"When I start moving," I said, "open the big freezer. And be ready."

I dropped the saw and stepped toward Priscilla. She showed her fangs and I bared mine in return, moving in a crouch so that I looked like I was going to fight with her.

She smelled chill, over the stink of the autopsy bay, like frozen iron and smoke on a cold morning. Also dead, with the necrotic stench of a corpse.

"Come on," I taunted her. "You afraid of me now? Don't tell me that you're gonna tap out after losing an arm. An arm's nothing." I circled her, forcing her out of her corner, away from the streaks of her black blood on the tile.

"You couldn't take me even with two good arms," I snarled. "You're a pathetic little b.i.t.c.h. You understand what 'pathetic' means, right, Ugly? It means weak weak. It means prey. prey."

She hissed at me and I spread out my arms, letting my eyes go to gold. "Are you gonna stand there bleeding or are you going to make a move? Come on! Come on!" I screamed the last, a battle cry, and Priscilla sprang for me.

Clumsy as she was from her wounds, she still hit me and dug her claws in before I could react. I felt the bite in both of my shoulder blades and smelled my own blood over her stink as we fell back and I hit the floor.

I dug one leg into her gut, foot-first, and extended it straight, using her weight and momentum to push her over my head and crashing to the tiles behind me. Spinning, I got into a crouch.

She was still faster. She swiped at me and her claws rent flesh along my shoulder and my forearm as I threw it up to block her. I felt her claws dance along my bones and the jet of hot blood that hit her face made her pupils dilate and strings of drool grow at the corners of her mouth.

"Wolf . . . ," she moaned, in a tone rife with desire of the most perverse order.

"Bite me," I said, and kicked her in the gut with all of my were strength. On a good day I can dent a brick wall and right then it was a bad bad day, and I was p.i.s.sed off and cut up and tired of this s.h.i.t. day, and I was p.i.s.sed off and cut up and tired of this s.h.i.t.

Priscilla went back, falling and rolling like she'd been hit by a truck, into the mouth of the freezer. I screamed, "Bart, now!" and he slammed the door shut after her. The automatic bolts clicked into place and a green light came on above the door.

Bart slumped, breathing heavily. I tried to go over and make sure he was all right, but everything went soft at the edges and I sat down hard in a pool of blood. Mine or Priscilla's, I couldn't be sure.

"Oh dear," said Kronen. "You're injured very badly."

"I'm . . . fine . . . ," I gritted, but it sounded like c.r.a.p even to me. The were could heal up from small things, but Priscilla had cut me to the bone, literally. I could hear her screaming from inside the freezer as my blood pumped and soaked my shirtfront and my jeans. Kronen grabbed my arm and made a tourniquet out of the sheets used to cover up the cadavers. He fussed and made me hold my arm above my head. Slowly, things started to heel back over toward consciousness.

"She's not . . . gonna get out, right?" I whispered to Bart.

He shook his head. "I jammed the lock. You're all right, Officer. Just keep still."

The door to the bays crashed open and a two-man fire team came through, almost falling over each other as they drew up short. "Hex me," said the taller one. I recognized him as the voice from outside. "What happened here?"

"One of the patients got lively," I muttered. "Listen, we need to get out of here right now . . ."

"Control," said the firefighter, "I need paramedics and police down here right away . . ."

He got cut off as I stood, walked over, and ripped his microphone cord out of the base of his mouthpiece.

"You can't do that!" he yelled.

"Listen, tall, dark, and dumb," I hissed. "There's something down here that's got a taste for humans, and if we don't haul a.s.s back to the surface right now-"

A scream echoed down the hallway, and my head dropped to my chest. "No . . ."

"Check it out," TD&D ordered his partner.

"Dude, you do not want to check that out, believe me!" I said. "One of that thing's friends did all this to my arm!"

He hesitated, but the first firefighter yelled at him. "Get moving, Orris! Somebody could be hurt!"

"Please," I said to Orris. "Just come with Dr. Kronen and me and let's get the Hex out of here."

"Who's out there?" Orris called nervously, casting glances back to his commander and me before he stepped out into the hall.

I saw the shadows unfold behind his head, and then Orris was jerked backward off his feet, Aleksandr's mouth opening wide enough to wrap around the back of the firefighter's skull. The crunch and spatter were all that followed, and then Orris dropped, just a sack.

Kronen turned away, putting a hand over his mouth. The firefighter ran forward before I could grab him with my good arm, screaming and brandishing his hand ax.

Jin came from the other direction under the erratically flickering hallway lights and leapt on the man's back, taking him to ground and digging in his claws, wrapping his jaws around the firefighter's throat and biting down.

Aleksandr, not satisfied with Orris, dropped from the ceiling, looked up at us, and snarled.

"Observation room," I said to Kronen, pulling us into the small s.p.a.ce that had a window on the autopsy bay and locking the door. It was flimsy compared with the metal bulkhead that the firefighters had chopped through, but it was something. I braced myself against the wobbling barrier as Aleksandr howled on the other side. My blood had started to go cold against my skin in the proximity of the monsters. My heart felt like it would break my breastbone.

We were so Hexed.

Kronen tugged his key chain out of his pocket and unlocked a metal cabinet replete with hazard signs and stickers. He pulled a heavy jar off the top shelf and hefted it. "Open the door, Detective."

I jolted against Aleksandr's a.s.sault. "I don't know if that's such a good idea, Doc!"

"If we stay here, we'll die," said Kronen. "Give me a moment to prepare, then open the door." He slipped on a rubber ap.r.o.n and gloves, then picked up the jar again.

Aleksandr's malformed, taloned hand snaked through the crack in the door, and I felt a slow hot pain in my back where the doork.n.o.b cracked against it. "Go, Bart!" I said, and stopped trying to hold Aleksandr back.

Bart brought the jar over his bald head and smashed it down on Aleksandr's shoulders. Foul-smelling liquid gushed over his skull, the shards of gla.s.s embedded in his skin making blood spout. The stuff Bart had hit him with made Aleksandr's skin peel back from his wounds, shrivel, and turn necrotic before my eyes.

He collapsed to the ground, twitching and groaning. "Formaldehyde," said Bart. "Best to move out of here before the fumes get too bad."

My eyes watered and my nose stung like I'd shoved a lit match into it, but I still managed to stumble over Aleksandr's body. I stopped at the door to the autopsy bays, keeping Bart behind me. "Where's the other one?"

I couldn't smell Jin over the chemicals, but I knew he was out there, waiting. "Listen," I told Bart. "I want you to run. Get out and make sure no one else comes down here."

He nodded. "I won't pretend I wish to be n.o.ble, Officer. Do be careful."

"Don't worry," I muttered, stepping out into the hallway. "I'm always careful."

Kronen slipped away toward the emergency exit lights and I went the other way, being sure to make enough noise to draw Jin away from the doc.

"Hey you!" I shouted, banging open each door. G.o.ds, my arm hurt. It wasn't healing at all, just quietly bleeding. "Jin Takehiko! I'm talking to you! Show your lumpy face!"

The last door at the end of the hallway was the pathology lab. I'd been in there exactly once, during my first year in Homicide. My training officer, Detective Burke, and I were here regarding a dismembered woman dragged out of Siren Bay in the propellers of a garbage barge. I remember the smell, the mouth in her severed head frozen open in a scream. Her teeth were pulled, and the killer had chewed off the first digit of each finger to prevent identification.

Detective Burke retired not long after that case. Myself, I developed a healthy dislike of the pathology lab. Seeing dead bodies whole is one thing, but seeing them in all their bits and parts, organs and slides, was too close to mortality for me.

Still, I kicked open the door and bellowed "Jin!" to the blackness inside.

He emerged from the shadows, the bones and stringy embalmed flesh of someone's dead hand in his mouth.

"You're disgusting," I sneered, making sure to keep a lab table between us. Mark enough time for Kronen to get clear, and then run like h.e.l.l. Simple plan. Of course it wouldn't work out that way, but plans give me a nice sense of security.

Jin dropped the dismembered limb and stood up from his hunched position, the mist clinging to him like a coat of dewy fur. I picked up the nearest jar, which was labeled ALCOHOL, and unscrewed the lid. It wasn't toxic, but under the circ.u.mstances I'd settle for stinging like h.e.l.l.