Лорел Гамильтон - Obsidian Butterfly

It reared back from the woman, its jaws trying to open around the gleam of the blade. It clawed at its mouth with the one free hand, letting the nurse fall back onto the bed. We got our first glimpse of the wound. There was a hole in the middle of her chest. Broken ribs jutted outward like the broken sides of a frame. The hole was just the size for a human face to shove deep. I stared down into that dark, wet hole, and half her heart was gone, eaten away.

"Oh, God!" Jakes said.

The thing in the bed had freed its other hand. It was tugging at the hilt of the blade, trying to pull it free. Jakes, Bernardo, and I exchanged a look between us. One look, no words, and we turned towards the rest of the room with one goal in mind: get to the door any way we could. There was nothing human in this room but us.

I looked up and found Ramirez and Jarman at the far door with the male nurse sagging between them. Great. I yelled, "Run!"

We tried. I sensed movement and turned in time for the corpse to hit me full on and send us both crashing to the floor. I stabbed for the jaw, trying to pin its teeth like I had the other one, but it moved and I only got the throat. Blood splashed across my face in a hot liquid rush. It blinded me for a second. I could feel it moving over my body, legs straddling my waist. I kept my hand pushed into raw shoulder, holding it back, while it strained over me. I wiped the blood out of my eyes with the back of my hand that held the knife. It snapped at me like a dog, and I screamed. I cut its cheek so deep the blade scraped on teeth. It screamed and sank its teeth into my hand. I screamed as it shook its head like a dog with a bone. My hand opened, and the knife fell.

It came at me, mouth open, pale blue eyes so impossibly wide. It went for my throat. There was no time to try for the last knife. I went for its eyes. I plunged my thumbs into its eyes, and its own momentum pushed them deeper than I could have gotten them. I felt the eyeballs rupture, exploding in warm fluid and thicker things.

It screamed, whipping its head back and forth, hands clawing at its face. Bernardo was suddenly there, pulling it backwards, throwing it one-armed across the room to skid into the wall. Amazing what you can do when you're terrified.

I was on my knees, drawing the last knife. Bernardo dragged me to my feet, and we were almost to the door. Rigby was there with an ax, hacking at the corpses. Hands and less identifiable bits littered the ground around him. Ramirez shoved his asp into one's mouth, so hard the dull tip showed through the back of its throat.

Jakes was dragging Jarman by his wrists, leaving a thick red trail behind him. Jarman's body was wedged in the door. Rigby's ax had chopped two of the corpses into enough pieces that they were down. Two of the corpses were still held to the bed with one last restraint. Ramirez was wrestling with the one that was trying to swallow his asp. A corpse threw itself at Rigby, and the ax sliced air.

I heard the scrambling behind me before Bernardo yelled, "Behind …»

I was on the way down to the floor with the thing riding my back, before I heard Bernardo yell, " … you."

I tucked my head, trying to protect my neck. Teeth bit through my shirt, drawing blood, but having trouble gnawing through the strap of the shoulder holster and spine sheath. It dug its teeth into my flesh, but the leather strap acted like a sort of armor. I drove the knife back into its thigh, once, twice. It didn't care.

Suddenly, there was a wash of air, and a heavy blow, blood spilled across my hair, shoulders, and back, in a scalding wash. I scrambled out from under the corpse and found it was headless.

Rigby stood over it with the bloody ax and a wild look in his eyes. "Go, get out. I'll cover your back." His voice was high-pitched, fear dripping from it, but he stood his ground and started moving us all towards the door.

One of the corpses was on Bernardo's back, but it wasn't trying to eat him. It pounded his head twice into the floor, hard. It looked up at me. There was something in its eyes that hadn't been in any of the others. It was afraid. Afraid of us. Afraid of being stopped. Afraid, just maybe, of dying.

It scrambled through the open glass doors and brushed past Jakes, as if it had somewhere to go and something else to do. And I knew it had to be stopped, knew if it escaped that it would be very bad. But I put a hand under Bernardo's arm and started dragging him for the door. Ramirez took his other arm and it was suddenly easy to drag him through that glass door.

There was a sudden rush in the room behind us. Rigby stumbled back against the button that closed the door. It slid closed with Ramirez beating on it. I saw Rigby swing the ax, then a corpse came in from both sides. Ramirez reached for the button to open the door, but either Rigby's weight had jammed it or something else had.

Ramirez screamed, "Rigby!"

There was a gigantic whoosh of air as if a giant had drawn a breath, and the room filled with fire. Flames licked the glass like orange-gold water through the glass of an aquarium. I could feel the heat beating against the glass. Fire alarms went off with a high-pitched scream. I threw myself to the floor on top of Bernardo, covering my face, waiting for that tremendous heat to crack the glass and spill over all of us.

But it wasn't heat that spilled over me. It was coolness, water. I raised my head to the sprinklers that were filling the room. The glass was blackened, and smoke and steam curled against the glass like fog as the water killed the fire.

Ramirez reached for the button, and the doors opened in a sound of rushing water. The alarm was louder now, and I realized that it was two different alarms now, mixing together in one nerve-jangling screech. Ramirez stepped into the room, and I heard his voice over the maddening noise. "Madre de Dios."

I stood with the water pounding me, soaking my hair, clothing. I didn't follow him into the room. Rigby was beyond any help I could give him. We still had one more corpse on the run. I laid my fingertips on Bernardo's neck just under the jaw. The screech of the fire alarms seemed to make it hard to feel his pulse, but it was there, strong and sure. He was down for the count, but he was alive. Jakes was kneeling beside Jarman, tears streaming down his face. He was trying to stop a wound in Jarman's neck with his bare hands. The pool of blood that had spilled to either side of Jarman's head was being washed away by the sprinklers. His eyes were fixed and staring, unblinking as the water poured down on him.

Shit. I should have grabbed Jakes and said, "He's dead. Jarman is dead." But I couldn't do it. I got to my feet. "Ramirez."

He was still staring into the room at whatever was left of Rigby.

"Ramirez!" I yelled it, and he turned, but his eyes were unfocused as if he wasn't really seeing me.

"We've got one more corpse to catch. We can't let it get away."

He stared at me with dull eyes. I needed some help here. I took those few steps to stand in the doorway by him, and I slapped him hard enough that my hand stung with the blow. Harder than I'd meant to hit him.

His head whipped back, and I braced for him to hit me back, but he didn't. He stood there, hands in tight fists, shaking with the urge, eyes blazing with a rage that was just looking for someone to rain all over. It wasn't me hitting him. It was everything.

When he didn't slap me back, I said, "The bad thing went that way." I pointed at the door. "We need to go after it."

He started to talk very rapidly in Spanish. I couldn't understand the majority of it, but the anger came through just fine. I caught one word that I did know. He called me a bruja. It meant witch.

"Fuck this," I opened the door, having to edge around Jarman's body. The sprinklers were on in the hallway, too. Evans was still sitting with his back to the wall. He'd pulled his mask down, as if he couldn't get enough air.