V-Wars

But what are her options? A scene from another movie, an old comedy called Love at First Bite starring George Hamilton, blots out the bloodier scenes in her mind and Mooney laughs out loud at the idea of breaking into a blood bank in the middle of the night. She cannot remember the last time she laughed at anything, a joke, a television show, something she read in a book, and it feels good. She raises her face to the sun and luxuriates in its warmth and in the almost-complete sensation of fullness in her belly. For the first time, she dares to think of herself as not human and to accept that without it feeling wrong. She is what she is; not human, but better. There are things on which she can feed, rabbits, coyotes, other creatures of the desert. She might crave human blood, but she’s just not ready to take that huge, permanent step.

Not yet.

— 10 —

“What’s up with my hair?” She is sitting on the side of the examination bed in Dr. Guarin’s office, swinging her legs like an energetic kid. The glossy black mane of her ancestry — at least the human part — is gone. What now falls from her head to her hips is hard to describe, like thin, shimmering strips of rattlesnake hide lying side by side. It’s still hair, but the pattern and its perfection are something neither she nor the physician have ever seen before.

“I can’t answer that, Mooney.” He lifts an inch-wide piece of it and peers closely at it, then lets the lock of hair drop. “If you haven’t colored it, obviously it has to do with whatever chemical changes are going on in your system. I warned you on your last visit that I’m in a no-information zone here.” He listens to her heart, then takes her blood pressure and temperature before having her lie back so he can examine her stomach and press a stethoscope against it. “You seem to be doing much better,” he finally says. “You’ve gained a few pounds, your blood pressure is good. Did you try changing your diet as I recommended?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“It helped some,” she answers. Although she’s not lying, the truth is that she hasn’t eaten anything at home since killing the rabbit three days ago. Until then she had thought she knew the desert, its climate, its creatures, its good and bad, light and dark. After all, she had been born in the Sonoran desert, grown up with the blistering heat and frigid nights, played with the four-inch grasshoppers and horned lizards, and avoided rattlesnakes and tarantula wasps. The desert had taken her parents and she had been raped in it, but she had never realized what a rich source of food it could be until she’d slipped out of the trailer just after dawn two days ago and gone hunting for the first time.

When she doesn’t elaborate, Dr. Guarin gives her a sharp look. “You’re not telling me everything,” he finally says. “I admit that I don’t have very much knowledge about how to help you, but to give me the best chance at it, you need to be honest, Mooney. You can’t know how to fix an engine if the driver doesn’t tell you what it does wrong out on the road.”

Mooney looks at her hands, then just blurts it out. “I’ve been catching animals in the desert.”

She expects him to looked shocked but he doesn’t. “And you feel better.”

“Yes.”

“Then keep it up,” he tells her. “Just be careful.” When she sends him a puzzled look, Dr. Guarin adds, “Rabies is not unknown around here, Mooney. Do you know what would happen if you consumed the blood of a rabid animal?”

“No.”

“Neither do I. Let’s not find out.” He writes something on her chart. “How much blood are you ingesting per day?”

Mooney hesitates. She had started with the rabbit, then quickly graduated to animals that could provide a heartier meal, discovering immediately that it was easier to snap the neck of something larger than have it struggle within her grasp. As much as the old man insists he wants honesty, she doesn’t think it will sit well if he learns that last night she killed a twenty-five-pound bobcat with her bare hands and drained it dry. “Whatever I can get,” she finally says. “A couple of coyotes yesterday.”

“Well, at least it will help keep them away from the livestock,” he comments. He catches her with his gaze. “The baby’s heartbeat is strong,” he tells her, “but there’s something odd about it, almost like an echo. I don’t know what’s causing that so I’d like you to take it easy if you can.”

“Okay,” she says, but the if you can part is not lost on Mooney. How many creatures that have to hunt their own food can take it easy? She slides off the table and stands, but Dr. Guarin makes no move to step out of the room so she can get rid of her gown and back into her own clothes.

“Mooney,” he says, “the baby is growing at an astounding rate, much faster than it would in a normal pregnancy. I really recommend you go to the clinic for an ultrasound.”

She shakes her head. “I can’t do that. Even if the state covers it — and I’m not sure they will — there’s a chance it could raise a whole bunch of flags. We just talked about what that could mean.” She shrugs and wishes she could somehow convey to him the sense of well-being that has been tickling at her senses over her the last couple of days. “Ifeel great, really. It grows as fast as it grows. I can hide it for bit longer, but I can’t stop that.” She raises her eyes to his and doesn’t flinch. “I can’t change whatever this baby turns out to be, and I won’t stop it.”

He walks to the door but stops and glances back at her unhappily before leaving. “Are you sure, Mooney? Absolutely sure? Because I have no idea how this is going to turn out.”

She nods. “Yeah, I am. Mother Gaso was watching this old movie last night and the blonde woman who starred in it kept singing this French line, over and over. Stupid thing is stuck in my head. Que sera, sera.”

“Doris Day,” he says. “Whatever will be, will be.”

Mooney nods again. “What she said.”

"JUNK" PT.4

Jonathan Maberry

— 14 —

NYPD 6th Precinct

October 12, 5:51 p.m.

One Day before the V-Event

“Did they hurt you?” asked Swann.

Fayne shrugged. “Who cares?”

“I do.”

“No you don’t. Nobody cares.”

“You must care, Michael,” said Swann frankly. “You obviously don’t want to be executed. You don’t want to die. Okay, not in the heat of the moment, not when you were freaking out and the police were all over you, but later — now — you clearly don’t want to die.”

“Maybe.”

“What does that mean?”

Fayne shrugged again. “Maybe I want to die but he doesn’t.”

“ ‘He’?”

“He, it, whatever the fuck this is. The thing inside me. The thing that killed nine goddamn women. Jesus.”

Swann leaned forward; at that angle he could see his own reflection superimposed over Fayne’s. In that light his face looked as pale and ghostly as the prisoner’s. It was a disturbing insight that Swann did not need to see, so he sat back and crossed his legs.

“You refer to this ‘thing,’ Michael,” he said. “What is it? Are you hearing voices?”

“No. It’s not like that.”

“Then what is it? Help me understand.”

Fayne stood up abruptly and walked right up to the glass, stopping so close to it that his breath smoked the surface. “Listen, motherfucker, why don’t you tell me? Tell me what you think? What have you assessed?” He slapped his palms against the glass so hard that the big pane trembled in its frame. “What am I?”

“Michael — ”

Fayne slapped the glass again. Harder. The door to the observation room banged open and Detectives Schmidt and Yanoff came hurrying in.

“The hell’s going on in here?” demanded Schmidt, but Swann waved them to silence.

“C’mon!” yelled Fayne, and again he slapped his palms against the glass. The whole wall seemed to shudder under the impact. “Tell me! In your professional opinion, you self-righteous prick, you tell me what’s living inside me. Is it a monster? Well? Am I a goddamned vampire?

Another slap.

Swann covered the microphone and whispered to Schmidt. “Can he break that?”

“No way,” answered Yanoff. “It’s half-inch tempered glass. He could swing a chair at it and not —”

“Am I?” screamed Fayne as he struck again and again.

Spider-web cracks suddenly jagged out from both points of impact.

Fayne froze.

So did Swann and the detectives.

Fayne stepped back and looked at his hands. They were unmarked.

He looked at the cracks, and then once more seemed to stare through the glass to the observation room.

He half-turned away, then paused. His body trembled with inner turmoil.

With a howl of rage and pain, Fayne swung back and slammed his palms once more against the glass.

It exploded inward, driving Swann, Yanoff and Schmidt backward with arms flung across their faces to protect their eyes. Chunks of reinforced glass slashed at them, cutting their arms and shoulders and thighs. None of the cuts were deep, but Swann felt like he was cut everywhere. He staggered backward and lost his balance, falling against a row of chairs, slipping, collapsing to the ground as the glass disintegrated into a million fragments.

Yanoff fell, too, his right thigh cut to the bone by a sliver of glass as thin and sharp as a sword blade. He screamed and dropped, blood pumping from the gaping flesh.

Only Schmidt remained on his feet. Swann and Yanoff had both been closer to the window and their bodies kept him from the greatest harm. He was bleeding, but with a growl he whipped open his jacket and tore the Glock from the nylon holster.

“Freeze!” he bellowed. “Freeze right there, you son of a bitch or I will kill you.”

Fayne had already frozen in place, shocked by the enormity of what he had just done, and by everything that impossible act conveyed. He stood wide-legged, his hands still palm out from where they had struck the glass. His eyes were as wide as his gaping mouth.