John Saul - Creature

One of the attendants was sprawled on his back, his head in the center of a pool of blood, and another lay limply a few feet away. The third, his fingers still clawing spasmodically on the floor, was staring up toward the camera, his expression an agonized grimace of pure pain. Of the occupants of the cages, there was no sign at all.

Swearing out loud, Ames punched at the buttons on the telephone and a moment later heard Marge Jackson, her voice strained, come onto the line. "They're loose, Dr. Ames."

"I know that, damn it," Ames rasped. "Don't you think I can see? Where are they?"

"I-I don't know," Marge stammered. "I think they're still downstairs, but I can't find them on the monitors."

Ames cursed once more. He should have had the cameras mounted everywhere, leaving not so much as a square foot of the building unmonitored. But the cages were supposed to be escape-proof-strong enough to contain practically anything.

"I'll be right there," he said. "Get Harris on the phone and tell him what's happened. We're going to need help!"

He slammed the phone down and moved quickly to the laboratory door. It was on the main floor, and there were two locked doors sealing off the stairwell that led to the security area in the basement. With any luck, the creatures were contained in the bowels of the building. Still, he listened at the door to the lab for a moment, then opened the door a crack and listened again. But the racket of the alarm bells effectively drowned out anything else he might have heard, and finally he pulled the door wide and darted out into the corridor. He glanced both ways, then hurried down the hall toward his office. A moment later he found Marjorie Jackson, her face pale, standing behind his desk, speaking frantically into the phone. As Ames came in, closing and locking the door behind him, she finished her call, her hands trembling so badly that the receiver dropped to the desk when she tried to hang up.

"Mr. Harris says there are people on the way right now," she told him. "They were bringing Mr. Tanner overami -"

Ames cut her off. "What happened?" he demanded. "How did they get loose?"

Marge Jackson shook her head helplessly. "I-I don't know. I was just coming back to the office when I heard a scream, and when I looked at the monitor, they were already gone." Almost against her will, her eyes drifted to the TV screen, where the grim image of the cage room was still displayed, and she gasped as the attendant whose spine was crushed made another feeble attempt to drag himself toward the door. "My God," she breathed. "George is still alive. We've got to help him!" She started toward the door, but Marty Ames's hand closed on her arm like a vise.

"Are you out of your mind?" he asked. "They're still down there!"

Marge's eyes widened. "But we've got todo something ."

Ames's expression set grimly as he watched the screen for a few seconds, then flipped the switch to the other cameras scattered through the building. "There's nothing we can do for anyone until we get some help."

Suddenly there was a movement on the screen, and then they could see JeffLaConner, his eyes darting furtively as he moved slowly along the corridor toward the stairs.

"That door better be locked," Ames breathed as Jeff's enormous form filled the screen. He reached out and touched another control, and the camera swiveled around to track Jeff's progress as he moved closer to the stairwell door. As if sensing the eye of the camera watching him, Jeff turned back and for an instant looked directly into the lens.

For a split-second nothing happened, then Jeff's lips curled back, and though neither Ames nor Marjorie Jackson could possibly hear it, both of them shivered involuntarily at the snarl they could see escaping the twisted maw of the creature that Jeff had become. At last Jeff's enormous hand came up, and the camera was blocked by its mass.

The screen went blank, and Ames and his assistant knew Jeff had torn the camera from its bracket.

Jeff stared mutely at the camera in his hands for a moment, crushed it between his palms and dropped its twisted wreckage to the floor. Then he turned to face the closed door a few feet away. He reached out almost tentatively and grasped the knob with his gnarled fingers. He twisted it, and when he found it was locked, a snarl of anger bubbled in his throat. Then he grasped the knob more tightly and jerked hard. Like the camera that had been suspended in a metal bracket only moments before, the knob resisted slightly, then came loose. Hurling it at the wall, Jeff began poking at the mechanism of the door's latch, and after a few seconds it dropped away on the other side.

The latch slid free.

He pulled the door open, swinging it hard. The crash of the metal door against the tile wall of the corridor echoed loudly for a moment, then died away. Jeff, breathing hard, gazed at the stairs for a few seconds, then started up. He came to the top and pushed his way into the carpeted hallway that led past the various offices and on to the dining room.

Rage built inside him as he stared at the open door halfway down the corridor that led to the suite of offices he still remembered as belonging to Dr. Ames.

He could remember Dr. Ames very well.

Other things might have fogged in his mind as his brain had begun to crush itself within the confines of his skull, but an image of Ames still burned brightly.

It was Ames who had done this to him.

Ames, who had pretended to be his friend, pretended to like him.

Ames, who had turned him into the pain-ridden creature he had now become.

It was all Ames's fault, and as he began shuffling along the hall toward the suite of offices, he could smell the man, feel the man's scent filling his nostrils, fueling the fury inside him.

He lurched through the door into the outer office. Grunting, his breath coming in short, heavy rasps, he felt the anger within him building to the breaking point.

Grabbing Marjorie Jackson's desk, he upended it, lifted it off the floor, and flung it against the wall. The plaster shattered under the impact of the heavy, walnut desk, and behind the plaster there was a snapping sound as the laths themselves broke under the force of the blow.

Then, his eyes glowing beneath the deep ridge of his brows, he moved toward the closed door to the inner office.

"Get back," Marty Ames told Marjorie Jackson. Her face had paled as the crash in the outer office confirmed that the beasts were no longer confined to the basement. She was huddling close to the wall now, and as Ames spoke, she moved around behind the desk itself.

Marty Ames opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out the.38-caliber pistol he'd started keeping there when he first realized that some of the boys might become dangerous. But since he'd bought the gun, there hadn't been a single instance in which he felt he might have to use it, and after the first year he'd even given up the target practice he began the day he made the purchase. Now, as he fumbled with the safety and checked to see if there were bullets in the gun's cylinder, he prayed it was still in working order and that his aim would still be good enough to kill.

He had just slapped the cylinder back into the gun when there was a splintering sound. Then the door of his office, a single slab of solid walnut, was ripped off its hinges, falling across the floor in two immense pieces.

In the doorway, his deformed body hunched over so that his fingertips nearly touched the ground, his heavy jaw hanging slack as saliva dripped from his lower lip, was JeffLaConner.

Marjorie Jackson screamed out loud as she stared at the inhuman form, but her scream was quickly drowned out byJeffs own rising bellow of pure fury.

He lunged into the room, his long arms reaching out toward Marty Ames, his fingers already starting to close as he strained to reach his victim's neck.