Origin (28 page)

S
un didn’t like enclosed spaces. With Andy in front of her, and Dr. Belgium at her heels, she felt like a sardine. The dust coated the inside of her mouth and nose, and made her eyes water.

Belgium tapped her ankle. “They’re right behind me.”

“Faster, Andy!”

“There’s a light ahead. Just a few feet.”

Sun scurried forward, trying to push Andy’s feet to move him quicker.

“There’s a vent. I’m over a hallway.”

A clanging sound; Andy banging on the vent, trying to force it open.

Behind Sun, Dr. Belgium screamed.

“Biting me! They’re biting!”

Two more clangs, and then Andy disappeared.

Sun saw the light ahead. Andy had knocked out the grating, and gone face-first through the opening on the bottom of the vent.

“Keep moving, Frank!” she yelled. “Just a few more feet!”

Sun got her head over the opening and blanched at the ten foot drop. Andy knelt on the floor, moaning softly. His staples had come loose, and his head gushed blood.

“Andy!”

He glanced up at Sun, his face bathed in confusion. He must have hit the floor hard.

Sun couldn’t wait for him to get his bearings.

“Andy! Catch me!”

She wiggled through the opening and fell into his arms. He caught her and hugged her tight to his chest, and they tumbled over onto their sides.

Andy blinked, then grinned at her.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he said. “People will talk.”

“Coming down!”

Dr. Belgium dropped through the grate like a stone, landing on top of the couple. He hit Sun with such force that she saw stars and had the air knocked out of her chest.

Belgium was followed by a dark wave of batlings, which quickly filled the hall with swirling fury.

Sun sucked in a breath and looked around. They were in the Blue Arm, only a few yards away from her room. She had a can of mace in there. Along with something that might be even more helpful.

Sun managed to get to her feet and scrambled for her door, batlings swooping on her at all angles. She tugged the knob, dove onto the bed, and wrapped her fists around the two racquetball racquets she’d left there since her earlier game with Andy.

Sun rushed back into the fray in time to see Dr. Belgium run screaming down the hall.

“Andy!” she yelled, tossing him a racquet.

The batlings went straight for blood, biting at Suns wounds. She pulled off the ones that had begun to chew, and adopted her game stance.

The demons flew fast, but not as fast as a racquetball bounced. On Sun’s first swing she smacked one down the hall, splattering it against a door.

It felt good.

Another dove straight at her face, screeching , and she backhanded it to the left.

WHACK!

She forearmed another into the ceiling.

WHACK!

Two flew at her head-on, and with an overhand smash she catapulted both into the floor. Sun hit another so hard its claws got stuck in her racquet string. She yanked it out and tossed it aside.

The former American Racquetball Association Women’s Champion swung again and again, her racquet slicing through the air in all directions, knocking away batlings as fast as they could fly at her.

She chanced a look at Andy, who was displacing so many demons he seemed to be waving around a large net.

The batlings smartened up. They stayed out of Sun’s swinging range, and tried to attack her from the side and from behind. Sun dodged left, jumped, and hammered two more.

Less than twenty remained, and Sun kicked it into overdrive, bringing the fight to her attackers. She set her jaw and sprang into the thick of them, staying on the balls of her feet, moving the racquet as fast as she could. Blood hung in the air like a mist, coating her face, making the racquet handle slippery. The constant flapping and screeching became intermittent, and then almost non-existent.

Just a handful remained, and the veterinarian hunted them down, one at a time.

A final demon, screaming like a smoke alarm, bee-lined for Sun’s face in a suicidal attempt to get at her throat.

Sun whacked it so hard it bounced off two walls.

The veterinarian turned completely around, searching for another flying attacker.

There were none. The floor was littered with the dead and dying; almost a hundred of them. Several were still twitching or trying to flap their broken wings. The once pristine hallway now resembled a slaughterhouse.

Something touched her shoulder, and Sun whirled around, ready to swing.

Andy.

“I’m checking Race’s room for the cattle prod.”

She touched his head. He flinched.

“I’ve got some super glue in my room.”

“For what?” Andy’s eyes looked up, as if he could see his own scalp. “You’re kidding, right?”

“It’s better than staples. Surgeons use it. What time do you have?”

Andy checked his watch. “Thirty-six minutes until we’re fried.”

“I’ll meet you back out here in two minutes.”

Sun turned to go, but Andy caught her arm.

“Wait a sec.”

She turned. “What is it?”

Sun searched his face, saw tenderness.

“Watching you, since all of this began, you’re so brave.”

“We’re both brave.”

“No. I’m just trying to stay alive. You told me about your fear of bats, how they freaked you out. You faced that fear, and won. I want to be like that.”

Injured as he was, she never had a man look at her with so much longing.

“It’s easy to be brave,” she breathed. “Don’t think about it. Just do it.”

Andy put his arm around the small of her back, pulled her close, and kissed her.

Sun hurt in a hundred places. Andy tasted like blood and sweat and dust, and he smelled even worse, and his hand was pressed right up against an open batling bite on her side, and this was the worst possible timing in the history of male/female relations.

It was also the best kiss of Sun’s life.

She kissed him back, enjoying the spark of electricity that ran helter-skelter over her nerve endings. She may have even moaned a little.

When they finally broke the kiss, Andy said, “Wow.”

No one had ever given Sun a “Wow” before.

“Meet me back here in two minutes,” she said. “And be careful. We don’t know what else is running around here.”

Sun hurried to her room, and only after closing the door did she wonder what happened to Dr. Belgium.

W
hen the hallway filled with batlings, Dr. Belgium looked to Sun and Andy to tell him what to do. He watched Sun tear down the hall and run into her room.

Good idea,
Belgium thought.

He took off after Sun, a swarm of demons striking him from all directions. He almost panicked. The batlings instilled the same primordial fear as a swarm of bees or a nest of vipers. Even worse, they were intelligent, aiming for Belgium’s eyes, biting at his legs and back and other places he couldn’t swat with his hands.

The high-pitched squealing sound they made, the electric pain appearing all over his body like bullet hits, the blood blinding his eyes—part of him wanted to just give up and die.

He quickly realized he wasn’t going to reach his room alive. The creatures were in his face, and he couldn’t see. Every time he knocked one off, another took its place.

So Belgium did what he was taught in grammar school.

Stop, drop, and roll.

The batlings that clung to him were crushed under his weight. The others couldn’t land on him. Dizziness be damned, this was the perfect protection.

Until he hit the wall.

Disoriented, he reached up, his fingers finding purchase on a doorknob. He got to his knees and entered the room, slamming it closed behind him.

He checked his clothes, to see if any batlings still clung to him. One was gnawing on his left calf, and he tore it off and tossed it at the bed.

It was then that he noticed what was left of Dr. Harker.

“…oh dear oh dear oh dear.”

Something had gotten to her. Something big and hungry. Her dead eyes were wide open, and her mouth frozen in a scream of raw agony. Glancing at her lower body, Belgium could guess she’d been alive for much of the meal.

The batling on the bed squeaked, shook itself off, and took flight. It came straight at Belgium, and he moved up his forearm to shield his face from the attack.

But before the demon reached him, a long pink whip snatched it out of the air with a
THWACK!
The batling, and the tongue that held it, vanished behind the bed.

Then came munching sounds.

Belgium held his breath, reaching his hand behind him, seeking the doorknob.

In the hallway he could hear the squealing of the brood. Going back out there wasn’t a viable option.

Maybe if he kept very still, the thing behind the bed wouldn’t come out.

As soon as the thought left his head, the thing behind the bed came out.

It looked like an albino alligator, with a grossly inflated and misshapen human head. Bulging, cloudy white eyes without pupils darted left, then right, eventually resting on Belgium. The creature blinked and stretched open its mouth.

It had more teeth than Bub did.

“Oh shit shit shit.”

Its six legs bent, and it hopped onto the bed. Belgium watched its nostrils flare as it sniffed the air.

The hallway was looking better and better.

“Um, hello there,” Belgium said, his mouth so dry he felt as if he’d gargled with sand.

The creature cocked its head to the side. The milky eyes regarded him.

“Hello,”
it said. Its voice was that of a child’s.

Frank came very close to wetting his pants.

“I’m, um, Dr. Belgium. What’s your name?”

It moved closer.

“Do you have a name?” Belgium asked again.

“Shirley,”
said the monster.

Belgium glanced to the left. The bathroom. If he could get in there and lock the door…

Shirley’s tongue fired from its mouth as if spring loaded, wrapping around Belgium’s ankle.

He screamed, then threw his whole body toward the bathroom, barely getting out of the way as Shirley leapt at him.

Frank moved faster than he’d ever moved in his life, diving for the tile floor, kicking the bathroom door shut—

It wouldn’t close.

Shirley’s tongue was still around his leg.

Belgium placed both feet on the door and pushed until the veins stood out on his forehead.

Shirley let out a heart-wrenching cry, and then the tongue severed, becoming slack.

Belgium pressed the lock button on the door knob, kicked away the slimy tongue, and almost wept with relief.

The relief was interrupted by an odd sound—a mixture of scratching and gurgling—coming from the door.

Belgium crab-walked away from the sound, and watched in horrific fascination as a small hole appeared.

Shirley, like an organic chainsaw, was chewing her way through the wood at an alarming rate.

Frank looked around for a weapon. He picked up a toothbrush from the sink, then put it back down. In the medicine cabinet were various pill bottles, some tweezers, and a comb.

He checked the door again, and Shirley had widened the hole to a ten inch circumference. She’d be crawling through any second.

Belgium reached up for the shower curtain rod, but it was bolted to the walls. The curtain itself was thin, useless. He spun and faced the toilet. Maybe the toilet seat? No time to unscrew it. But atop the tank was a heavy, porcelain cover. Belgium hefted it, whirling around just as Shirley stuck her head through the hole in door.

He gave the swing everything he had, cracking her skull so hard that the lid split in two. The creature was knocked backward, out of the hole.

Belgium craned an ear, listening. He could only hear his own beating heart.

Did he kill it? Was the thing dead?

He slowly reached for the door knob, but then thought better of it. Instead he took a step away from the door, then cautiously bent over to look through the hole.

Almost there… can almost see…

The tongue slapped against his face like a garden hose and wrapped around his neck, pulling Belgium to his knees. He gasped in horror as Shirley stuck her head through the opening, mouth open wide.

She began to reel her tongue in.

At first, Belgium’s mind couldn’t grasp the situation. Inch by inch, he was being drawn into her gaping jaws.

Then reality hit, and once again he screamed.

Unwilling to submit to the impending facectomy, Belgium planted both feet against the door and pulled hard.

Shirley answered by pulling even harder, tightening the tongue noose around his neck.

Belgium’s oxygen got cut off, and he began to lose the tug of war. Though he loathed to touch the beast, he made a V with his fingers and poked them right into Shirley’s bulging white eyes.

She cried out, the tongue loosening its hold. Belgium yanked on it with both hands, stretched it upward, and tied it in a quick granny knot around the door knob.

Then he shoved the door open and crawled past the thrashing, screaming Shirley.