Depraved 2 (36 page)

“What kind of parents would let that happen?”

Horst pulled off the shirt and began to fold it. “The mysteriously found dead kind.”

“Oh.”

Horst placed the shirt atop the folded apron and stood there bare-chested, leering at her as he again fondled the bulge at his crotch. His brutish, muscular physique made him look more like a Viking displaced in time than a scientist. “I thereafter raised the girl as my own, though as far as she knew she grew up the adopted daughter of a simple butcher.” He unbuttoned his pants and began to slide them down his legs. “I’m going to mount you now.”

Daphne whimpered. “Please don’t.”

Horst smiled. “First I will mount you. Then I will cook you.”

Daphne began to shiver uncontrollably. “No. No. Please.”

The big man lifted a leg and began to climb up on the table. Daphne tried to brace herself for the terrible thing that was about to happen, but there was no way to keep the terror and revulsion she felt in check. She was about to start screaming again when something went wrong for Horst. Before he could finish climbing up on the table, his body went rigid with shock and his face registered a severe level of pain.

Daphne might have derived significant satisfaction from this had the development not come as a shock to her as well. She watched in stupefaction as Horst’s right leg slid off the table. His face twisted again and he unleashed a howl of agony as whatever it was that happened the first time happened again. He braced his palms flat against the table’s surface in an apparent effort to keep from being dragged to the floor. The muscles in his arms shook with the strain of the effort. It was then that Daphne realized he was being attacked by someone or something at floor level. She felt hope for the first time since Horst gunned down Vivian’s dinner party, because someone, either one of Vivian’s guests or a member of the waitstaff, had survived the assault, after all. Whoever it was had been playing dead, biding their time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike back—and that moment was finally here.

Horst twisted his head around to get a look at what was happening to him. He started screaming again an instant later, the sound so shrill it was almost womanish. He twisted his hips and tried to kick out at his attacker, but this wound up working against him. His rigidly braced arms buckled and he slid to the floor, banging his head against the edge of the table on his way down. Once he was out of sight, Daphne heard more cries of pain and sounds of struggle. There was also a strange slavering sound, a moist slurping, as if…as if…

But Daphne couldn’t credit the idea that danced through her head then. It made no sense at all, less even than any of the other wild shit that had happened today. What she was hearing had to be nothing more than the ragged breathing of a very badly wounded person engaged in a fearsome struggle to stay alive. Horst was a huge man and it was difficult to imagine him being easily defeated, even after being taken by surprise, but she had to hope his adversary somehow got the best of him. It was the only way she might get out of here alive.

After a few more frenzied moments, Horst stopped shrieking and the sounds of struggle ceased, but that slavering sound continued. Daphne soon became aware of other sounds, a ripping noise, followed by something that might have been mastication. The crazy thought she’d had moments ago recurred, but this time it refused to go away. She began to be afraid again and wished whatever was happening wasn’t happening out of her limited field of vision.

A bloody hand reached up and slapped the edge of the table.

Daphne looked at it and screamed.

Another hand covered in blood appeared and groped at the edge of the table. Daphne saw a wedding ring on one of them. The only person she recalled seeing with a wedding ring was Ambrose Prescott, the guy whose wife led him around on a leash. It was hard to imagine a guy like that subduing and possibly killing Horst. But then a head appeared above the edge of the table and she saw it was indeed Ambrose.

Only he wasn’t quite himself anymore.

Ambrose held on tight to the table’s edge and hauled himself up to a standing position. The rich submissive made a guttural, groaning sound as he stood canted at a weird angle, like a man who had forgotten how to use his legs properly or was having balance issues. The front of his shirt was soaked in blood and bore evidence of multiple bullet wounds, all of them concentrated around center mass.

There could be no doubt of it. The man was dead. Blood was smeared all over his face and Daphne saw bits of tissue stuck between his teeth when his head rotated slowly in her direction.

Zombie.

That was the wild notion she had tried to deny moments ago, but there was no denying it now. Her life had become one exercise in horror show insanity after another. Maybe it was time to reexamine the idea that perhaps none of this was happening. Some kind of psychotic break with vivid hallucinations would account for a lot of this. The idea was comforting, but she knew it was bullshit. Unfortunately, she felt as firmly tethered to reality as she always had.

It was just that something had gone totally fucking wrong with reality.

Ambrose took a lurching step toward her and slumped over her when he bumped against the table. Daphne screamed as his torso pressed down on the knife embedded in her hip. She screamed again when she felt his teeth graze her skin. Her terror adrenalized her and she bucked against her restraints harder than ever in an attempt to dislodge Ambrose, maybe even knock him back to the floor. That didn’t happen, but the gyrating of her pelvis did temporarily prevent him from sinking his teeth into her. Buoyed by this meager success, she kept at it, screaming again as she thrust her injured hip against him with all her might. She again narrowly avoided being bitten, but the zombie’s cold fingers clutched at her and dug into her flesh, holding on tight. Ambrose raised his head and growled at her. The next time he tried to bite her she wasn’t able to stop him. His teeth pierced her thigh and dug deep, making her writhe and scream some more. He wrenched his head back and forth and tore loose a chunk of bloody Daphne meat.

Daphne screamed and screamed.

Through her screams, however, she became aware of more groans rising up from other parts of the room. Within moments, she saw the portly little Frenchman Francois pop up at the opposite end of the table. His beret was gone, exposing the expected bald dome.

He bit off one of her big toes.

Daphne’s screaming was nonstop by this point.

Soon the rest of them were back on their feet. To Daphne’s amazement, this included Kate. Given the deteriorated condition of the woman’s body by the time of her death, becoming ambulatory again should have been impossible, but here she was, converging on the table with the rest of the resurrected dead.

They were hungry and she was the only warm food in the room.

Daphne was hyperventilating by the time the others reached her. Ambrose had already taken a couple more bites out of her, but she was now moments away from being thoroughly devoured by these growling remnants of the people she had dined with a short while ago. It was going to hurt. A lot. Her only hope left was a quick end.

And then their teeth were on her, biting hard, digging in deep, tearing away huge chunks of flesh. She was right about the pain. It was an explosion of soul-scorching agony worse by far than anything Horst had done to her. One of the last things she felt was Kate’s mouth stretching wide across her throat. The dead woman growled and tore her throat open, severing the carotid vein. Blood jumped from the wound.

The last thing Daphne saw was Kate.

Chewing her flesh with a rapturous look on her undead face.

31.

Jessica waited three days to visit her father. It was three days of switching vehicles, hiding out in abandoned buildings, and sleeping under overpasses. In a bid for anonymity, she cut her hair short and dyed the remaining choppy locks black. A cheap pair of aviator sunglasses and some dark clothes from a thrift shop completed a sleek new look. She was accustomed to a certain image of herself—tough blonde bombshell—but right now she had bigger concerns than her vanity.

On that third day she drove by her father’s house in a stolen Toyota. The owner was in the trunk, bound and gagged and beaten varying shades of black and blue. She hadn’t decided whether to kill him yet. That would depend on how the visit with her father went. And there was always the chance she might not come out of the old man’s house alive. In that case, the guy would become somebody else’s problem.

Her father lived in a nice neighborhood. The houses here were old but well-maintained and, in most cases, extensively renovated. A lot of the city’s wealthiest and most influential citizens lived within a few square blocks of her father’s house, which was not the house Jessica had grown up in. Captain Sloan had moved into his new home shortly after Jessica enlisted in the army. She had done some digging over the last few days. His house was worth somewhere in the vicinity of three-quarters of a million dollars, which was a hell of a lot of house for a retired army man. The man also had a curious amount of pull and influence for someone who’d achieved a relatively modest rank. It was hard not to conclude that much of what she knew about her father’s military career was a carefully crafted fiction. She suspected a deep involvement with the same secret unit that had plucked her out of the regular army.

She drove by the house at a hair over the posted speed limit. Though she did not look directly at the house, she was able to do a good visual scan of the area from behind her dark sunglasses. There was no sign of a security detail. Of course, if he did have people watching the house, it was safe to assume they were consummate professionals. They would not be seen unless they wanted to be seen.

Jessica continued down to the next intersection. She took a right turn and kept going until she reached the middle of the block, where she took another right turn into a narrow alley. A pass through the alley would give her a good view of her father’s back yard. From an intelligence-gathering perspective, that could prove enormously beneficial. However, it might also allow her father’s security team, if he had one, to box her in and trap her.

But Jessica was willing to risk capture and possible execution. She had been itching for this confrontation from the moment she learned of her father’s treachery. It had consumed her days and nights to the point of total obsession. Moving on with her life simply wouldn’t be possible without this. At the first hint of trouble, she would go into suicide mission mode and bolt from the car, and, if necessary, shoot her way into the house.

But there was no obvious evidence of surveillance as she passed through the alley. The only person she saw was a middle-aged man in khaki shorts, sandals, and a Hawaiian shirt taking out garbage on the opposite side of the alley from her father’s house. He lifted the lid on a large silver trash can, dumped a bulging white bag inside, and raised a hand in greeting as she drove by him. Jessica responded with a terse nod and kept going. The guy might be an agent in disguise, but she doubted it.

Her father’s manicured back lawn was as devoid of human presence as the front yard had been. A glance at the rearview mirror showed that Mr. Hawaiian Shirt was gone. Either he had ducked out of sight to call her dad or he was back in his own house doing whatever guys like him did, listening to Jimmy Buffett and guzzling margaritas, probably.

Jessica turned right out of the alley and circled back to her father’s house. There was still no visible evidence of surveillance. She parallel parked at the curb almost directly in front of the house. This was a decision based on impulse. She knew it was a dumb thing to do and that it contradicted everything she had learned about approaching a target. The smart thing would have been to go somewhere far away and disappear for at least several months, perhaps as long as a year or more. A prolonged absence would lull her father into a sense of false security. And then one day she could show up, put a bullet through his head, and walk away with no complications. But that wasn’t really an option, not with her emotions running so hot.

After a final look around at her surroundings, Jessica got out of the Toyota and opened the trunk. The bound man looked up at her with wide, frightened eyes. Jessica took another look around, saw no one watching, and removed a hunting knife with a long, serrated blade from her jacket. She punched it into the man’s throat and left it there as she slammed the trunk shut. She took no pleasure from killing the poor slob, but she didn’t know how long it would take to conclude her business here, business that might have been made more complicated had he been allowed time to make noise and draw attention to the car.

She strolled across her father’s front lawn at an unhurried pace, doing her best to stay alert for any threats that might be converging on her. But she reached the sidewalk in front of the house and climbed the steps to the porch without incident. She raised her hand to knock, but hesitated one last time.