Blood Lust: A Supernatural Horror (52 page)

McNeil shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

Simmons
grabbed
McNeil’s
wrist and applied pressure
. “Walmsley needs to rest.
He could die.
”

McNeil looked at his friend and relented. “All right.”

They picked up Walmsley in a
firefighter’s
carry
, linking arms to support his considerable weight
.
Simmons
hoped
the creature did
n’t
choose this inopportune time to attack. They reached the storage room
safely
and laid Walmsley on the table.
While McNeil fussed over his friend,
Simmons
closed the gate,
stripped the wiring from a dead light fixture and ran it from the breaker box to the wire mesh
gate
.
He connected one end of the wire to a closed circuit
breaker
.
He attracted McNeil’s attention. Walmsley was barely conscious, breathing heavily. He feared the man would not last
many hours longer
.

“
All you need to do is throw this switch
,” he informed McNeil
.
“
It will probably trip all the other breakers, leaving you in the dark,
so keep a flashlight handy,
but it should work
long enough to keep the creature out
.”

“If it doesn’t?”

“You have the rifle and the .357. Don’t be afraid to use them.”

McNeil smiled
and grabbed
Simmons’
hand and
grasped it vigorously
. “I won’t. You be careful, son.”

Simmons
smiled back
, deeply touched by the engineer’s concern
. “I intend to.”

He left the storeroom, closing the gate behind him
, praying he had made the right decision
.
Walmsley was
done in and couldn’t move on his own. Even McNeil, though he blustered and put on a good front, was showing signs of fatigue
. He might have once been physical
ly active
but too many years behind a desk had taken its toll on him.
Simmons
briefly considered leaving the stun stick
with them
as well
, but decided he might have more need of it than Mc
Neil. So far, the .357 had proven almost
u
seless.
The damn creature was harder to hit than
a
swinging piñata with a
spitball
.

****

McNeil
gently
wiped Walmsley’s
burning hot
forehead.
The fever had progressed more rapidly than he could have imagined. Walmsley’s
breath
now
came in ragged bursts
with a sickly wet sound, as if his lungs were filling with fluid. McNeil was afraid his friend could not hold on much longer
without
medical attention. He hoped
Simmons
found Hardin soon.
He pulled out
the
bottle of aspirin
he always carried in case his weak heart gave out
and forced two down Walmsley’s throat
to try to reduce
the fever.

Clad Simmons was a mystery. He had offered no explanation for his appearance other than
his desire to kill the creature. He moved and took command of a situation as if he was used to giving orders.
Was he another
cop
, like Hardin? That did
n’t
seem likely.
He knew Dr. Alvarez, acted as though they had a history.
Perhaps there were other people, other agencies involved
in the hunt for the creature
.
If they killed the creature and managed to survive, he imagined the authorities would force them to sign some Secrecies Act and the story buried in some government archives along with the truth behind the Kennedy assassination and the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

He eyed the electrified mesh gate
with some trepidation
. The wiring connections were good but the
mesh was old and rusty, likely to burst into flames under a heavy
amp
load. The wood
en
frame of the gate
was
as
dry and brittle
as
kindling. Even if
the gate
held the creature at bay, they could still roast to death in an inferno.
He stood by the breaker box, ready to throw the switch at the first sign of trouble.

He did
n’t
have to wait long. He heard the creature
’s shrill call before he saw it. It grabbed the gate and began to shake it furiously
. The hinges, rusty with age, began to pull loose from the wall.
McNeil silently prayed and pulled the switch. The lights immediately flickered and dimmed as
200
volts shot down the
frayed
wire. Sparks flew
from both the circuit box and the
gate. The creature screamed and
butted
the gate with its head, unable to break free
, held fast by the current passing through its body
. Wood smoldered; then burst into flames as
rusty
wire
became red hot. He fired the rifle at the creature, hitting it in
square
the chest. He was astonished to see a hole open up and a yellow ichor run out
. Flames danced along the edge of the wound. At that moment, the
tunnel plunged into darkness as
the
circuit
breakers overloaded
. Only the flames flickering along the wooden gate provided any
illumination
.

He
had left the flashlight on the table beside
Walmsley. He stumbled across the room to find it. The sound of metal ripping and wood shattering
disconcerted him. The creature was tearing down the gate.
He fumbled for the light
in the darkness but could not locate it
.
Suddenly, i
t flashed on,
briefly blinding him
. He shielded his eyes
and saw that
Walmsley, roused by the ruckus, held the light in a trembling hand, outlining the creature
in light
.
The .357 lay beside him. McNeil grabbed the pistol and
strode
toward the creature, cursing it while firing. From a distance of five yards, each bullet struck home
. He forced the screaming creature backwards from the storage room, following it
out
into the tunnel.

The creature, wounded, had had enough. It
took to wing and flew down the tunnel toward Simmons and Hardin.
His
adrenal
ine surge
burned out, Mc
N
eil collapsed against the wall of the tunnel, his heart beating staccato against his rib cage
.
His left arm ached.
He knew the signs of a heart attack after having survived
a mild
one three years earlier. He reached in his
pocket for
the bottle of aspirin and downed two, wishing for a drink of water
to wash
down
the bitter tablets.
It took him a few minutes to realize the fans were slowing. With the
breakers blown, they, too, were out of
commission
. Soon,
with no circulation,
the tunnel would be intolerably hot
and the already stale air would be almost
too deadly to breathe
.
He used his shirt to beat out the flickering flames of the gate
.
He took a few minutes to collect his wits and still his runaway heart before returning to Walmsley’s side.

“It’s okay
, my friend. They’ll be back soon.”

The rifle was empty and he had
only
four rounds for the .357.
He hoped
Simmons and Hardin returned
quickly
.

28

Joria Alvarez
watched McNeil and his friend chase off after their frightened companion and smiled. The
Chupacabra
could smell fear
as easily as
a human could smell
body odor. The fleeing man’s blood would strengthen the creature for the coming fight
, though she had no doubts as to the outcome. Hardin was determined but outclassed. She regretted that he must die but his
single-minded
resolve
to kill
his enemy could only end in his death.

She was amazed at how easily she had manipulated him. Even his obvious doubts about her had not
dissuaded him from her sexual favors. She had honed her skills
over the years
with many lovers, most of whom she had used in one way or another.
Hardin would have been appalled to learn that she had killed her father, not the
Chupacabra
, because of his insistence on destroying
the last clutch of eggs the creature had produced.

She rubbed the scar on her shoulder
,
grimly
remembering the pain of its origin
, smiling as she
thought of what she had in turn received.
She had revealed only part of the truth about it. The
Chupacabra
had made it,
as she had said,
but
the scar was its mark, placed there with her approval when she had deliberately sought it out and
conceived
a pact with it.
In return for studying it, learning from it, she would in turn teach it the ways of man and help
find its victims. It was a
covenant she had no regrets in making. What were a few human lives out of the billions against the
millions of years of evolution that had produced a creature of such intelligence and longevity? The
Chupacabra
had
risen shortly after the demise of the dinosaurs and had been sentient
long
before the first ape-like creatures that would become man walked erect.
The future belonged to it and its kind.

Though they bred infrequently
and only one juvenile survives
each hatching
,
she had lied about their numbers. Not all of the deaths
over the years were attributable to a single creature.
Scores
of
Chupacab
r
a
scattered throughout the Americas and across Eastern Europe and Asia
preyed upon their human cattle
under cover of darkness.
With her help, they would come to dominate.

Her fascination with
Chupac
abra
was not limited
to her desire to study them. Its gift, secreted from a special gland, delivered at the time of her marking
, endowed her with a small portion of the creature’s regenerative powers. To all outward appearances, she looked a very attractive
thirty-five
, but she was pushing
fifty. If only a few drops of
such enzyme
could do that,
she was certain her promised reward of youth
, longevity
and vitality was no myth.

The sound of footsteps alerted her to the presence of someone else in the tunnel with her. Hardin? No, the shadowy figure was larger.
She melted into the shadows until he had passed. She recognized him as one of the men from Section One. Their persistence in capturing one of the
Chupacabra
made her wonder if they had discovered the secret of its
glandular secretions.
She frowned as
gunfire
erupted in
the direction McNeil and the federal agent had gone
. She doubted they could kill the creature but still feared for it.

A short time later, the agent returned, passing within a few feet of her, and headed the direction she knew Hardin to be, if he was still alive.
She retraced her steps until she spotted the room in which McNeil and his injured friend cowered
as the
Chupacabra
attempted to get at them
.
She watched with amusement as the creature tore at the
chain link
fence
eager to kill the men
, then scowled as McNeil sent a high voltage current into
the fence.
To her horror, the creature could not release its grip. McNeil shot it in the chest, wounding it.
She had to do something to save it. Spotting the
heavy
electrical line running along the wall, she
jerked it with both hands, using her weight to rip the wire from its brackets
. The aged wire was brittle and broke easily. Sparks cascaded around her, singing her hair
,
but
the Chupacabra was free
.