“Stay still,” Kate said, “don’t try to talk, you’re really hurt. God, you’re bleeding so much.”
“He bit me. I can’t believe he bit me, Kate.”
“How bad is it? Can I see?”
As soon as the words left her mouth Kate wished them back. She didn’t want to see it. She was terrified to see it because he was bleeding so much, and she couldn’t even imagine what the wound must be like to cause that kind of bleeding.
Donald shook his head and opened his mouth to speak, but it was too much effort and he stopped himself, leaned farther back against the concrete structure behind him and seemed to drift off.
“Donald,” she said, kneeling in front of him. “Can you hear me? Donald, don’t go to sleep. You have to stay awake.”
He didn’t move at all, and he looked as if he was going to sleep. Or maybe he was already asleep. Kate felt panic rising from the pit of her gut. She tried listening to the phone again, but the same recorded message was repeating itself in the same feminine, robotic voice:
“… are currently experiencing a high volume of calls. If this is an emergency, please remain on the line. You have reached 9-1-1. We are currently experiencing a high volume of calls. If this is an emergency, please remain on the line…”
“Oh God,” Kate whispered softly.
What now? WHAT NOW?
There was a soft plopping sound, and every inch of her body flinched at the sight of the gaping wound in Donald’s neck. The hand he had been using to hold against the wound had fallen away, and blood was flowing freely down his shoulder. Down the front of his suit — his expensive suit, the one that she knew he’d bought with the advance she had given him — into his lap, and pooled on the floor underneath him.
The sight of the wound mesmerized her. It was red and black and ugly, and there were very noticeable indentations: teeth marks. Donald hadn’t just been bitten, she realized. Someone had actually bitten a whole chunk out of his neck.
Kate dropped the phone, heard the clatter of the screen breaking, and desperately grabbed for Donald’s neck, pushing both hands against the ghastly wound in an attempt to stem the flow of blood. Her fingers turned instantly red and became wet and slippery. Trying to keep one hand over the wound was impossible, but with two hands it was almost doable. Blood found ways through her fingers, and she grew queasy as it dribbled down her wrists and along her forearms.
My God, where is all the blood coming from?
She was pondering that deranged question when she heard the soft sound of bare feet against hard concrete behind her. The smell — like rotting vegetables — instantly hit her, choking her down to her core. She fought against the overwhelming instinct to grab at her nose and mouth in order to shut out the stench, because doing that would mean removing her hands from Donald’s neck.
How many pints are in the human body?
Kate turned her head slowly, careful to keep both hands on Donald’s neck. The blood had become slick and made her grip more tenuous, but she scrambled to hold on. She told herself not to turn around, but she couldn’t stop herself. There was something back there. She could smell and feel it.
Death.
It stood behind her in the form of Jack. The security guard. The one with the friendly smile every morning, who never tried to look down her blouse as she drove underneath his security booth. The same man who always shared pictures of his six-year-old daughter from some game she was playing or some play she was in.
Jack. Friendly Jack.
She recognized the guard uniform he was wearing. He looked different — rail thin. The man she had said “Hi” to this morning and exchanged small talk about the U.S. debt to China looked as if he had lost fifty pounds between then and now. His guard’s uniform hung absurdly on him, as if it was two sizes too big, the nametag drooping halfway down to his waist. And his eyes. They were black, deep and dark, like the bottom of a forbidden well. The thick patch of hair from this morning was gone, replaced by a few hundred strands that clung pointlessly to his pinkish scalp that was slowly turning mud black.
It was his mouth that grabbed Kate’s eyes. It was covered in thick blood that drooled down his chin and onto his sunken chest, and crooked and brown-stained teeth jutting off in different directions. He didn’t have those this morning, either.
Jack took a step forward, and Kate heard herself screaming as she scrambled up to her feet and staggered away. Donald — handsome, strapping Donald — slid off the support column and flopped like a great big bloody whale, the sound of his face hitting the floor making a sickening thwack that Kate didn’t think she would ever forget for the rest of her life. Blood poured out of Donald’s neck in thick rivulets.
Kate stared at the thick strands of blood, like fingers stretching across the concrete, hypnotized by the sight of so much dark red.
Jack, whose dark lifeless black eyes had zeroed in on her a few moments ago, now lost interest as he moved past her. She jumped away with a gasp, thinking he was coming after her, but he crouched next to Donald and began lapping the blood off the dirty floor.
Kate stared, sick down to the pits of her soul, and she thought she might vomit — throw up this afternoon’s sandwich and chips and Diet Coke. Somehow she held them back in her stomach. She didn’t know how, maybe it was the horror of the whole thing, maybe she was simply too stunned, too paralyzed by what she was seeing to even do something as simple as wretch.
Move! Move, you idiot, while he’s not paying attention to you. Move your stupid ass!
Kate turned and ran and almost tripped over her purse lying on the floor on its side. Before she knew what she was doing, she stumbled back for the purse (What are you doing, you idiot?) and reached for it on the floor, eyes focused on Jack the whole time.
He was crouched in the widening pool of Donald’s blood, his pale pink tongue — had it gotten longer, more reptilian? — slobbering up the redness flowing around him like a greedy child that couldn’t get enough. She was afraid he would notice her at any second, but he didn’t. She realized, with a mixture of relief and numbed horror, that he had simply lost complete interest in her, because there was just the blood now. Donald’s blood.
And so much of it… How can one man bleed so much?
Kate pried her eyes away from Jack’s ghoulish form, snatched up her purse, and turned and ran. Somewhere between Donald, Jack, and her car, her heels were no longer on her feet. They were in her hands, and she clutched them like weapons. She ran past a parked black Mercedes with shiny gleaming doors and windows, and Kate caught sight of her own reflection staring back at her for the briefest of seconds.
Her long dark mane, always immaculately positioned around her head to complement the shape of her face, looked wild and streamed behind her. Her mascara-smeared face contorted in anguish and fear, tears flowing down her cheeks in streams and destroying what was left of her make-up, though she didn’t remember actually crying. Her hands were covered in blood, as were the front of her blouse and parts of her skirt, and the image of Donald’s blood pouring out of his body kept flashing across her mind.
So much blood. Where did all the blood come from…?
CHAPTER 3
WILL
It took them four hours to fight their way back down to the tenth floor of the Wilshire Apartments, dragging a bloodied Peeks between them, and Danny was still making with the jokes.