Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(13)
The worst moment, the moment when he felt a gust of debilitating fear blow through him, was after they landed, after the plane skidded and braked along the runway and the river of blood came rushing down the aisle. They taxied a short distance and Patrick was certain that in these final moments the lycan would discover him, certain the police or military would grenade the plane, certain he wouldn’t make it—he couldn’t possibly make it. There had been too much death, too much to escape. In a way, he already felt like a corpse himself, unmoving, barely breathing, soaked in gore.
He couldn’t see them, but he could sense them, the huddle of squad cars, fire trucks, ambulances, all with their lights flashing. Then, over the loudspeakers, came the pilot’s voice: “You’re going down, you f*cking dog.” In response the lycan made a sound like sheets of metal being torn in half.
With the woman’s body draped over him, her arms wrapped around him in a limp hug and her chin resting sharply against the top of his head, Patrick could see nothing except her blood-splattered blouse and the patterned cloth of his seat cushion. He didn’t dare to reposition her, not even an inch, afraid of the noise he might make.
He could hear the thing moving up and down the aisle, its feet—or paws—or whatever they were—thudding into bodies and squelching through blood, so much blood, soaked into the thin carpeting, the foam cushions, his clothes, everything around Patrick tacky and sloshing with it. When the plane at last came to a rocking halt, he could hear its claws against the plastic, fumbling with the emergency door a few rows ahead of him. There was a sudden wind, a burst of sunlight, when the lycan tore it away.
Immediately the bullets came ripping through the opening—and into its body. Patrick could hear this too. The metal impacting meat. The yowling that gurgled over with blood. The thudding collapse of its body. The gunfire continued for another few seconds. Patrick startled enough at the noise to shove away the body, slide its flopping weight away from his face. Its head thudded against his thigh while one of its hands maintained a stubborn grip on his shoulder. From where he huddled he could see white sparks, an arc of orange flame, as the bullets tore through the plane’s interior, ringing off metal armrests, puncturing foam and plastic, clipping wires. The smell of smoke charred over the smell of blood.
There followed a silence long enough that he fell momentarily out of time and forgot that they had landed, that the lycan had been shot, that he was going to be all right. Then came a voice, a man’s voice hopped up with fear and anger. “Is there anybody alive in here?” it said. “Is there anybody in there?”
Patrick wanted to say yes. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t move either. Couldn’t kick away the body now draped across his lap, his hand tangled up in her hair. Couldn’t even lift an arm to signal his survival. It wasn’t until later—long after the men dressed in black Kevlar and toting assault rifles crashed down the aisle and yelled, “Clear!” after the pilots escaped through the cockpit emergency hatch—that the agents climbed on board.
They were dressed in plastic goggles, elastic breathing masks, milky plastic suits, latex gloves, booties. Two of them carried clipboards and one of them a long-nosed camera. After the cameraman had taken several photos of the lycan sprawled on the floor, the carcass was zippered into a bag and dragged away. The cameraman then climbed through the puzzle of bodies, making his way to the first-class cabin, where so many had gathered and tried to escape and met their end. He was in there for some time, the bursts of his flash shimmering through the plane’s interior, before he entered the main cabin again and walked row to row and snapped several photos, first of the seat number, then of the passengers in their final repose.
When he appeared at row 15, he looked at Patrick without really seeing him. It wasn’t until the flash went off that Patrick flinched and the man reared back. “Holy shit,” he said even as he snapped another photo, the flash blazing, melting through Patrick’s eyes and his memory of the next few minutes, as he was dragged from his hiding place. “Are you hurt?” the voices said. “What happened?” “What’s your name?” “Why are you alive?”
“No,” he kept saying. “No,” over and over again as if it were the only word he knew.
With his joints sour and aching, with his vision a white haze as if veiled by a cataract, he can only now remember feeling he had grown suddenly older, nearly dead and dragged from the grave.
Old Mountain High School is built into the side of a hill. Its walls are made of roughly hewn basalt bricks, and its roof, a red sloping steel. The parking lot is the size of a football field, and every spot seems filled as Patrick drives up and down its many rows, searching, his foot teasing the brake, depressing it frequently to make way for the students streaming toward the school, laughing and calling to each other, punching messages into their cell phones, turtling under the weight of their backpacks. The air is busy with their voices and with the country music that blasts from the rolled-down windows of jacked-up pickup trucks. The sun flashes across the hood of the Jeep, and when he blinks it away two too-tan girls—in short shorts and V-neck tops, their blond hair flattened and lustrous as though plaited from gold—appear in front of him. He stomps the brake and the Jeep shudders and creaks to a halt. The girls pause in their conversation to look at the car, and then at him, with distaste.
At the far end of the lot he finds a spot and hauls from the backseat his pack and slams shut the door. As he walks, the Jeep seems to walk with him and he realizes in a panic that it has begun to roll. He curses and tries to wrestle it to a stop with his hands and then jumps into the cab to engage the emergency brake, the only way to keep the vehicle in place.