And the new kings were hungry.
DAY ONE
CHAPTER 4
Piercing screams, unnaturally loud, echoed through abandoned streets.
She was hurt. Badly.
In the course of his duties as a police officer, Officer Bob Knowlton had dealt with severely injured people before; he’d pulled mangled bodies — some dead, some not — from twisted and torn cages of steel on the highway more times than he could count, but he’d never seen anything quite like the screaming, bloody woman he now struggled to hold in his arms.
“Calm down, lady!” the officer pleaded. “Stay still! Stay still!” He fought to hold the woman steady as she thrashed against his grasp, trying with all her might to break free and get farther away from the building from which she’d stumbled seconds before, away from whatever had ravaged her body so savagely. From the look of her injuries, Knowlton thought the woman had been attacked by an animal, a big one at that, and it’d nearly torn her to pieces.
But, that’s impossible… right?
Sheer horror was flowing from the woman’s body like a pungent, acidic mist, seeping from every single pore. Knowlton could smell it, almost taste it, as if he’d popped a triple-A battery into his mouth and bitten through the casing.
The woman’s eyes were wild, crazed, shining like two bright lamps of absolute terror. Blood gushed from a deep gash on her forehead and flowed freely down her face, soaking the neckline of her dress and cementing strands of her long blonde hair to her shoulders in pinkish, sticky swirls. Her dress was torn from shoulder to midsection, long parallel tears running down the fabric, crimson edged. A shredded stocking hung from her left leg, revealing hideous slashes running from thigh to calf, torn skin, and muscle dripping blood on the asphalt.
Stinging, bitter bile filled Knowlton’s throat as he watched ropes of pinkish bowel begin to erupt from a yawning gash glimpsed beneath the torn remnants of the woman’s dress, pushed from her belly with each terrified scream, with each struggle. Oh Jesus and Mary I don’t want to be seeing that… Quit moving! Oh God please quit moving.
Her piercing screams suddenly became throaty, a low and mournful moaning, as she instinctively reached down to retrieve what was spooling from her body. As she did, Knowlton noticed part of her hand was missing. The thumb and index finger were all that remained above a thin gold watch circling her delicate wrist. The rest of her hand was gone… No, not just gone, it had been bitten off. Bitten clean off!
Swallowing a sudden mouthful of vomit, Knowlton took the woman’s face in his hands and forced her to look up at him. “Tell me what did this to you!” he shouted, hoping to get some sort of information from her before she succumbed. Her eyes were sightless, rolling back in their sockets like two small ships starting to capsize. Her skin, slippery with blood, felt icy cold, shock and blood loss having taken their final toll. Knowlton looked up at his partner and exchanged a knowing glance. They both knew she was a goner.
As the woman mercifully went limp in his arms, he gently lowered her body to the pavement, trying to provide some sort of comfort to her as she died. There would be no EMTs arriving at the scene in time to save her. Not this morning, anyway. And even if there were, they wouldn’t have been able to do anything. Knowlton was amazed she’d lived as long as she had.
After the woman’s last breath escaped her lungs in a long, wheezing sigh, the street grew quiet again. Unnaturally so. All the normal noises of the city were absent. The air seemed flat, dead. All Knowlton heard was his own breathing, and the sound of his heart pounding away furiously in his chest. Knowlton suddenly felt very alone and vulnerable in the abandoned center of the city, with only his partner — and gun — for company.
The two officers looked into each other’s eyes; both saw apprehension, both saw fear. The radio calls they’d heard all morning had been choppy, undisciplined. Frantic calls for help, for backup, had raced across the net. They’d heard reports of abandoned vehicles, empty streets, and shattered buildings… along with other things, similar to what they’d just experienced. Whatever was happening, it seemed to encompass the entire downtown area.
Knowlton stared at the smashed doors of the building from which the woman had emerged. Something was in there, he knew. Something terrible.
As he wiped the sticky blood from his hands onto his uniform trousers, Knowlton wanted nothing more than to run away, to get back into his cruiser and drive as far away from this place as he could, as fast as he could. His instincts were screaming at him to do just that, but he couldn’t. He was a cop. No matter how scared he and his partner were, no matter how unbelievable this all seemed, one fact remained: they still had a job to do. To serve and protect.
Drawing his weapon with a trembling hand, Knowlton motioned toward the building and whispered to his partner, “Let’s go take a look.”
Both officers sprinted to the lobby entrance, taking positions on either side of the smashed doors. Broken glass crunched underfoot as they pressed themselves against the burnished brass door frame.
Peeking inside, Knowlton saw most of the lobby was illuminated by sunlight pouring in through huge plate glass windows, which formed the building’s facade, but the rest of the interior was cloaked in shadows. The interior looked like a hurricane had swept through. Overturned furniture was scattered about and papers littered the marble floor, but what shocked him most was the stench. It was an animal smell, a dirty stink of something unclean, wafting through the shattered entrance. He’d grown up on a farm and had spent countless hours cleaning horse stalls, replacing dirty straw with fresh. Mice loved to nest in the hay, leaving intricate tunnels through the soiled straw, which he uncovered with his pitchfork. The stench coming from the building reminded him of the smell of mouse droppings in dirty hay, but this was stronger, much stronger. Glancing toward the rear of the lobby, he saw that the main hallway, extending toward the back of the building, was dark. The power was still on, as evidenced by the low hum of the ventilation system, but all the light fixtures had been smashed. Every single one of them. Knowlton tried to ignore what his gut was telling him. The lights had been smashed on purpose, by something — or some things—aware of what they were doing.
The main hallway looked like a darkened throat leading far back into the belly of the building, swallowing the light. For a few seconds, both officers stood still and listened. Nothing. No motion inside that they could hear. No motion they could see. They could hear themselves breathing.
From the south, a string of gunshots echoed. From a fellow officer? A citizen? Then, silence again.
With a nod of his head, Knowlton signaled his partner to enter the building, he himself following just a few steps behind. Both officers walked slowly across the lobby, sweeping their eyes, and weapons, from side to side.
They walked farther into the building, following the trail of blood on the marble floor left by the woman now lying dead in the street. Something was wrong — the air was wrong, the sounds were wrong. Something evil was here, hiding in the shadows, lurking menacingly at the back of the building’s throat. The hair on the nape of Knowlton’s neck stiffened, and tiny pinpricks of trepidation rippled up and down his spine. Knowlton couldn’t shake the sudden feeling that he was being watched.
He stopped, crouched, and stared down the darkened hallway, trying to discern any detail. The focus of his right eye alternated between the three white dots on his 9mm’s sights and the broken light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. Broken glass covered the hallway floor.