Chris Sproles, the nighttime officer at the Conway Police Station, popped a second batch of headache killers into his mouth. It had been a long day for him. He monitored the security cameras throughout the department and it was his responsibility overnight to make sure nothing happened, and call for help if something did. The night before, he failed at that task, and one trip to the bathroom was all it took. He was gone no more than five minutes, and in that small amount of time someone, some seemingly inhuman freak of nature, had managed to rip steel fencing off a concrete wall, break into the evidence room, and make off with evidence for an ongoing investigation.
Needless to say he spent most of that day filling out paperwork and answering very loud, and sometimes angry, questions from his superiors. Now, here he was less than eight hours after he had left the longest shift of his life working the same job he had almost lost over a bathroom break. In his mind he ran through the checklist he had made himself to avoid that happening again.
Coffee pot was moved out of his room, he would only allow himself one cup a night. Bathroom break was already taken care of, and if need be he would call one of the girls away from the front desk to take over. It was also going to be a very long time before he brought a magazine in to read on the job. If this happened once, it could happen again, and there was no way he was going to get caught with his pants down, again.
It was just after one in the morning. Chris picked up his now cold cup of coffee and took a small sip, looking from one screen to the next. So far the night had been quiet, a drunk or two brought in, normal shift changes, but all in all not much activity around the building.
A flickering screen caught the corner of his eye, he looked over to notice the entryway cameras were showing nothing but static, suddenly they went black. A second later the cameras in the hallways started to show static, and as they went black the cameras in the entryway came back to life. Curious, he tapped in a few commands to try to bring the cameras back, nothing happened. He tapped the button for the intercom at the front desk.
“Hello? Jess” He called out, there was no answer.
The next set of cameras in the hallway just outside of the security room started to show nothing but static while the cameras at the front desk came back to life. He looked at the screens and got a shock, Jessica, the nighttime girl, was unconscious and half hanging out of her chair. In a panic, he picked up the phone to call for help, but when he put it to his ear there was no dial tone, the phone was dead. Footsteps were coming closer to the security room, echoing loudly on the tiled floors. His heart racing, Chris jumped out of his chair, reaching for his sidearm just as the lights in the room and all the screens went black. Breathing heavy in the darkness, he heard the sound of the door handle being turned, then the slow creak of the hinges as the door swung open. He took a stand in front of the sound and held his gun out in front of him, using the slow sound of the door opening as an aiming point.
“Who’s there!? I have a weapon drawn” he yelled. The door creaked open slowly until it came to a stop, gently tapping against the wall.
The room was dark enough so that the tiny bit of light still in the hallways silhouetted the figure standing in the doorway. He was taller than Chris but not by much, and it stood in the middle of the doorway not moving.
“I said I have a weapon drawn! Put your hands in the air and get down to your knees!”
The figure took a step forward, Chris could feel his hands start to shake. He had never been in a situation like this before. He was starting to panic.
“This is your last warning! Put your hands in the air and get down to your knees! I will open fire” as he yelled, the figure stepped forward again, only this time two tiny points of yellow light started to glow where it’s eyes would be. In the faint light Chris could see the figure’s arm start to move. He pulled the trigger.
Click.
Chris’s heart almost stopped. Panicked, he pulled the trigger again several more times.
Click, click, click…
“Shhhhh…” was the only sound the figure made. Chris’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and his knees buckled.
As he fell to the floor, the figure bent down quickly and grabbed hold of the front of his shirt, lowering him to the floor slowly. In the dark, the figure looked down at Chris, his form slightly lit by the two yellow lights in his eyes. He stepped over Chris and to the video screens.
He quietly spoke a few unintelligible words and the screen in front of him came to life. Controls moved on their own and buttons pushed themselves until the video of the previous night’s robbery appeared. In the dark, the figure’s eyes narrowed as he watched the footage, waiting for the thief to appear on camera. It didn’t take long.
The police and technicians who had spent a frustrating day slowing down the footage to get a clear shot were unsuccessful, only able to make out a blurry human form. The man now looking at the footage needed no help to see, he’d had a lot of time to practice. He knew exactly what he was looking at.
Having found what he was looking for, the figure stood upright. The yellow light fading from his eyes while the screen turned black once more. Stepping over the still unconscious guard on the floor, he closed the door quietly behind himself. As he walked out of the building, the lights and cameras sprang back to life behind him. Like at the hospital, nothing had been recorded to identify the man who had been there.
….
Across town at the hospital, the body of Kelly Johnson was scheduled to be sent off for autopsy to a bigger hospital and better labs than Conway could provide. The poison that had killed her was deemed to be too dangerous and too unknown for the lab there to handle, and at the moment, her body was being held in a plastic bag in cold storage. Her parents had already come and collected her personal belongings, leaving only the silver cross with her body. Her father requested it stay with her until she could be returned home for burial.
The room was cold, full of stainless steel doors that lined the walls to store the bodies. A large stainless steel table used for autopsies sat bolted to the floor in the middle of the room, waiting for its next occupant. The only sounds in the room were the light vibrations coming from the air conditioning in the ceiling and the plastic tick of an old clock on the wall. The quiet in the room was suddenly broken by the muffled sound of tearing plastic coming from one of the storage cubbies on the wall. The plastic stopped tearing, and was soon replaced by a panicked shuffling around.
Thud!
One of the steel doors buckled slightly, the flat surface now had an outward facing dent in its middle.
Thud! Thud, crack!
With every hit the door buckled outwards a bit more, the metal hinges that held it on bending with every blow, the concrete around the door cracking. Finally, with one huge blow, the door broke off its hinges and fell to the floor. For a moment there was silence in the room again; then a pair of small hands felt their way out of the black hole in the wall. They were quickly followed by the rest of Kelly Johnson, she crawled, naked and trembling from the hole and fell to the floor, landing on top of the door she had just beaten off the wall.
She stood up and looked around, confused and slightly disoriented. Something was wrong with her, she could feel a change within herself but at the moment couldn’t put her finger on it. The room was dark, the few lights that were on were either the tiny LED lights blinking on some of the equipment in the room, or the exit sign above the door. Even with the extremely low light, she could still see everything as clear as day. She could hear every sound as well, the low vibrations sounded like drums, and from across the room she could hear a fly buzzing against the tiny window up near the ceiling. She could also smell everything around as well, from the dizzying smells of various chemicals, to a smell that sent painful pangs of hunger throughout her body.
In the corner of the room she found the source of that smell, a large steel refrigerator sat vibrating alone, padlocked shut and marked with a large biohazard sticker. The smell coming out of it sent an animal hunger through her so intensely it threatened to knock her to her knees. She slowly walked over, and without realizing what she was doing snapped the padlock off the door like it was no more than a piece of brittle plastic. The flood of light that came from inside when she opened the door made her blink in surprise. When her eyes adjusted, she saw containers labeled with different blood types lining the shelves.
The smell and hunger grew more intense as she peered into the refrigerator, the smells coming from the containers more tempting than any meal she had smelled in her entire life. Pulling the nearest container out, she ripped the top off and looked inside, it was filled with bags of blood. Blind instinct took over and without thinking she grabbed one of the bags and tore the top of what looked like a nozzle off with her teeth and sucked the bag dry. She had never tasted anything so good in her life, it was like a drug. Before she knew it she had drank all the bags in the “AB” container and was moving on to the next.
When she finally stood up again, she had finished off all the blood bags in the fridge. Wiping her mouth she could feel a surge of strength filling her body. A drop of blood landed on her chest and she looked down, noticing for the first time that she was naked. She searched around the room for clothes but came up empty. The only thing she found was a small brown envelope on a desk with her name written across the top. She tore it opened and dumped the contents onto the floor. A few papers fell out, as well as a small plastic bag that held the cross her father had given her. She scooped the bag up and took the cross out, playing with it in her hand as she picked up the papers. It was some sort of medical form ordering her autopsy. She flipped through the papers and found one line that caught her attention. Time of death: 10:37 am.
She sat on the floor in shock, then looked around and for the first time realized where she was. A morgue. Feeling like she had been punched in the gut, Kelly put her head in her hands and screamed into them, then in a blind rage jumped up and pushed the steel autopsy table. The metal buckled under her hands and the bolts that held the table down ripped out of the floor. The table slid across the room leaving deep scratches in the tile before slamming into the opposite wall with a crash.
She heard footsteps coming quickly down the hall, she could tell they were still a ways away but she knew where they were heading. In a panic, she looked around for a way out of the room. All she saw was the small window that the fly was still bumping against in an effort to escape to the outdoors. The footsteps were almost there, Kelly looked from the closed door to the window, then once again following blind instinct she ran and jumped at it. To her surprise she jumped high enough to effortlessly grab hold of the window ledge and pull herself up. The window was not made to open so she put the fist that was still holding the cross through it, shattering the glass and climbing out, she felt the shards cut deeply into her body.
She fell out the other side and landed on a concrete walkway. From the corner of her eye she saw a deep gash on her upper arm and watched in horror as it healed itself before her eyes. The other cuts on her body were healing just as fast, the pain of them leaving even faster.
She quickly hung the cross around her neck and took off running, moving faster than she ever thought was possible. Not used to the speed she was moving, she barely managed to dodge trees and cars as she flew between buildings and parking lots. A car suddenly pulled off the road and into a parking lot just as she ran through it, cutting her off. Surprised, she moved too far off to the right in her panic and found herself running across a street where another car nearly hit her, its headlights blinding her temporarily. To avoid the collision, she cut too hard to her left and found herself tripping over railroad tracks and rolling down a hill. She came to a rough landing against a boulder at the bottom and lay there crying.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?”
She jumped up at the sound of the voice, turning to see a large, rough looking man in dirty clothes walking over to her from a small camp fire. Kelly held her hand up against the fire’s bright glare, barely able to make out the form of the man staggering over to her. He smelled like cheap whiskey and urine, and in his drunkenness nearly tripped before he could make it over to her. Kelly heard his heart beating through his clothes, speeding up in his chest as his bloodshot eyes moved up and down her body, taking her in greedily. Somehow she could feel his drunken desires for her as he stumbled over, his emotions almost overshadowing her own.
“Please… I just… please just leave me alone” she said in a small voice that was still choked with sobs. The smell of whiskey and urine became more intense as he staggered closer to her. The sound of his heart beating was like a drum.
His breathing became heavier as his eyes continued moving up and down her body, she got to her feet just as he stepped within reaching distance, her back against the boulder.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt ya…” he muttered drunkenly, all the while reaching into his coat pocket. “You just be a good little girl and everything will be all right…” he staggered forward again and put his left hand against the boulder, leaning his face in close to her. His teeth were almost rotted away, the few that remained poked through bleeding gums like gravestones.
“Please…” she said again, her words were cut off when she felt something cold and sharp against her throat. Her eyes looked down and saw the handle of an old kitchen knife in his hand, her eyes went wide.
“I said you just be a good little girl,” the hand not holding the knife slid down the rock. He stroked her hair and ran his fingers along her arm. She shuttered and recoiled from his touch, the man hissed and pressed the knife harder.
Fear suddenly turned to a strange mixture of anger and hunger. The faster his heart beat in his chest, the more she felt the same animal instinct from the hospital take over. She felt his hand touch the side of her breast as his face came closer to hers, and the second she felt his lips brush her cheek she grabbed hold of his left wrist and twisted.
The man screamed as the bones in his upper arm broke with two quick snaps, then she tightened her grip on his wrist and crushed the smaller bones, the fingers in his hand instantly going limp. He screamed louder and tried to get away, but Kelly pulled him closer and bit into his neck. Still screaming, he stabbed her repeatedly with the knife while she sucked the blood from his neck. Lost in her frenzy, Kelly was oblivious to the knife that continued to stab her.
After a few minutes, the man stopped struggling and dropped the knife to the ground, little more than a moan escaped his lips. She held him up and drank until there was nothing left in him, dropping him to the ground like a piece of garbage. She looked down at the body and stepped on his chest, feeling his rib cage give way under her foot.
“Bastard” she whispered.
Flipping him over like a rag doll, she tore the coat from his body and put it on, more to cover herself than as protection against the chill of the night. The stab wounds from the knife had already closed by the time she stood up to get her bearings.
No longer in a confused panic, she walked up the hill and over the train tracks she had tripped on. She knew where she was. There was an outlet mall about a mile down the road, she could make her way there to get some better clothes.
Reaching under the filthy coat she had taken from the drunk, she touched the cross hanging around her neck, taking comfort from the tiny item. Then, careful to stay in the shadows, she walked off towards the outlet mall, unsure of what she was going to do after that.