No! He was better than this. The cops were here. He’d heard the sirens. He’d stay in here and explain through the door what had happ—
Hungry! So hungry! That smell was driving him crazy.
His hand seemed to move of its own volition. Hard to turn the knob with those claws, but he managed. And when the door swung open the blood smell enveloped him, banishing every desire but to feed, every feeling but hunger.
He saw a pair of wary EMTs—fat woman pulling in front, middle-age guy pushing from behind—hesitantly wheeling a stretcher through the door. The siren hadn’t been police, it had been an ambulance.
Blood! Fresh blood!
Lanz leaped up on the nurse’s station and launched himself at them. The claws of his left hand pierced the side of the fat, lead EMT’s face as Lanz sailed by. The hooks caught and set. Lanz felt a tug and then a give as the face ripped free.
By then he was upon the second, sinking his fangs into his exposed throat, tearing the flesh, chugging the hot gush of blood as it rushed into his mouth. The guy went down, kicking and trying to scream but he had no throat so how could he scream? And then he stopped struggling and the blood stopped flowing.
So soon?
More!
Lanz turned and saw the fat EMT on her knees, screaming as she held her ripped face in place. He lunged at her and tore into her throat.
Again, the rush of the gush. For the first time in his life Lanz truly felt alive. He couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop!
Nurse Winslow
THE two big orderlies emerged from cold storage into the autopsy suite where Janine stood by one of the tables, gripping the stainless steel so her hands wouldn’t shake. She’d been head nurse at Blessed Crucifixion since Jenny Bolton had been fired, and nothing had rattled her up until now, not even the ten burn victims who’d come through her ER six months ago when the Doublespruce Hotel had gone up in flames.
But she’d just watched Ralph and Benjamin roll a man past her on a gurney whose head had been ripped off, and she didn’t have a filter for that. They’d set the victim’s head in his lap with his hands positioned so it appeared as though he was holding his own noggin, one of them cracking a joke about Ichabod Crane as they wheeled past, and she would’ve dressed them down right then and there, but it was all she could do to keep standing, her legs threatening to give out at any moment.
Nothing about this was right. They’d brought that rich old man in several weeks ago on a morphine OD scare, and he’d barely had the strength to get himself around without a walker.
She looked up. Ralph was standing in front of her.
“Anything else, Ms. Winslow?”
Low, booming voice. Bloodshot eyes suggesting a healthy marijuana habit.
“No, but go check with Dr. Lanz.”
She followed the orderlies to the entrance of the morgue. “I’m going to lock myself in,” she said. “Call me when they’ve caught the old man.”
She closed the door and turned the deadbolt, knew she should feel safe now—no way to open that door from the outside unless you had a key—but something about being down here in the basement with six corpses still unnerved her.
Janine drifted over to the coroner’s desk and eased down into the metal folding chair. God, she was tired. Her shift should’ve ended an hour ago. Couldn’t wait to get home, crack open that four-pack of Bartles and Jaymes Strawberry Daiquiri wine coolers, and watch the newest episode of House she’d TiVo’d last night.
Hugh Laurie.
Yum.
Even now, she felt that warmth between her legs. House would know how to handle a situation like this, no doubt. She’d never admitted it to anyone, but she often imagined that Lanz was House, and she was Dr. Cuddy, took the whole fantasy quite a bit farther than she was comfortable admitting, even to herself, especially after two or three wine coolers and her lounging in a bubble bath with her Natural Contours Personal Massager.
It had suddenly grown very quiet. She never liked coming down to the cooler. Not even in the middle of the day with the medical examiner and his team buzzing around. The chill that radiated out of cold storage just plain creeped her out.
She rubbed her arms, gooseflesh spreading across her skin.
Her navy scrubs wouldn’t keep her warm down here.
A sound perked her head up.
Soft, muffled. Sourced from cold storage.
Temperature gradient, she figured. The metal doors of the refrigerated morgue drawers contracting and expanding.
She glanced at her watch: 9:12 P.M.
She should be home by now, dammit, already into her second—
Another sound. Unmistakable. Like someone had thumped one of the drawers. She stood up. If Ralph and Benjamin were fucking with her, she’d make certain they were drug-tested next week. Would bet her next two paychecks they’d both come back with hot UAs.
She walked through the autopsy suite toward the large door to cold storage, which stood wide open.
From what she’d heard, practical jokes were a common occurrence down here, but she couldn’t believe even those two stoners would try to pull something on a night like this.
She stepped through into cold storage and put her ear to one of the drawers.
Sounded like fingernails scratching against metal.
The scratching stopped.
BANG.
She jumped back.
BANG. BANG.
What the hell?
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Janine stood facing the refrigerated nine-drawer cabinet, and she could see the metal vibrating.
The body in there was still alive.
Winslow rushed to it, fingers locking around the stainless steel handle.
Then she paused.
The woman was in there. The mother, who had her entire intestinal tract torn out. The orderlies had used a snow shovel to scoop her insides back into her body cavity.
How could she still be alive? There was no way.
The banging had stopped, and Winslow wondered if she’d somehow imagined the noise. Fear and stress could make the mind play tricks. After what she’d seen in the ER, Winslow might even be exhibiting symptoms of shock. Or post-traumatic stress disorder. Auditory hallucinations weren’t unheard of.
BANG!
The loudest yet, the handle vibrating so hard it stung her palm.
And it was accompanied by a scream. The loudest, rawest, most agonizing scream Winslow had ever heard.
My god! How can that poor woman still be alive?
Heart thumping, throat dry, Winslow tugged hard on the handle, putting her entire hundred and ten pounds behind it, the drawer sliding out with a metallic ring.
Yes, the poor woman was alive, her eyes wide, the pupils dilated. Her guts were strewn all over her body, and her head thrashed back and forth in unbearable pain.
No…not pain. It wasn’t pain at all.
The woman’s head shook because she was trying to chew her way through her own intestines.
She held a loop in both of her hands—her twisted, clawed hands—and her mouth tore at the tough, stretchy tissue of her transverse colon, which was still attached to the gaping hole in her abdomen.
The woman screamed again, her wide eyes locking onto Winslow’s.
Then she spat out her digestive tract and reached her horrible hands out for the nurse, her hideous, fang-filled mouth yawing open to an impossible size.
Winslow reacted instantly. She pushed the handle, leaning into it, her rubber soled nurse’s shoes squeaking against the polished tile floors as the drawer slid closed.
The mother creature rolled onto her chest, sliding off the drawer on a pool of her own blood, slipping out and plopping, face-first, onto the ground just as the door slammed shut.