The Blood Artists
- Автор: Хоган Чак
- Год: 1998
- Язык: английский
- Год: William Morrow
- ISBN: 978-0-688-15622-0
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «The Blood Artists». Краткое содержание книги:
A scream from the security area turned her around. Melanie left the burning cart and took off running in the direction of the sound, pushing through people knocking each other over to back away.
An airline representative lay on the floor before a row of metal detectors. Her eyes were wide with horror and there were red marks on her neck in the form of a strangling hand, and her mouth and nose were glistening with something. It was saliva, not her own.
The fire alarm went off. It began honking over the flight calls, and announcements came immediately in English and Spanish and Chinese, stating that the airport must be evacuated immediately.
The screaming had excited the crowd; now the alarm set them in motion. People who had already passed through the metal detectors turned and pushed back, and the jostling overwhelmed the remaining security force, whose nervous shouts in turn triggered a mass exodus. It wasn’t exactly what Melanie had planned, but it was movement, and away from the airplanes. Now all she needed was to stop the flights still boarding.
She burrowed through the fleeing crowd, sliding around the outer edge of an X-ray machine into the panicking concourse. Twin escalators dipped beyond, one coming up and one going down, and between them ran a wide, steep stairway. Zero was stumbling down as the frenetic crowd thrashed all around him. The stairs were not quite full, as people were trying to double-time it up the down escalators. He was away from the handrail, and she saw her chance to shove him down to the bottom. The homicidal urge emboldened her and she fought to the top step, heaving for breath, suitcases and flailing limbs battering her arms and sides. She would not make it without another hit off her inhaler. She brought it out, but before she could even get the cap off, an older man in a Hawaiian print shirt shoved past her and smacked her elbow.
The inhaler popped out of her hand. It fell to the steps and skittered away between tramping feet, out of her view.
She had no breath left to curse the man. She drew in what oxygen she could and fought her way against the tide to the far railing, battling the crush, searching for her inhaler while praying that no one had stepped on it. Wheezing, feeling faint, she managed to pull herself through the onslaught of bodies down to the bottom steps where she was bumped and shoved as she stumbled around searching. She felt something sliding down her neck. She reached up to fix her wig when all at once it disappeared entirely from her head.
“Melanie.”
She twisted back, but her lungs prevented her from running. Zero was right there beside her, holding her platinum blond wig.
“No,” she said, a small noise, a gasp.
She saw him through bursting stars. He might have been smiling beneath his mask. His eyes were terrible and sharp as he grasped her arm.
She tried to scream, but couldn’t get anything behind it.
The skin on his face was gray and spoiling. His pale blue mask sucked deeply before filling with each exhale. His hot red eyes examined her face, an inch or two away, and suddenly he suffered a spasm of some sort, his head shivering madly and the force of his grip increasing. Then he came back out of it, hazy.
She was still looking for her inhaler and saw the floor moving beneath her as he began to pull her away. It was like breathing through a swizzle stick, and all she could do was concentrate on getting air and remaining conscious. She never saw her inhaler. When she looked up again, she was facing a row of silver doors leading to the airport’s shuttle.
“Maryk,” Zero said, his voice gooey with phlegm. He slurred his words. “Thinks he’s clever.”
She worked on filling her lungs while trying not to breathe his air. A dull roar behind the doors, red lights coming on above them.
“Mel-a-nie,” he breathed. His cotton mask filled with her name, savoring it. She tried to kick him in the balls but couldn’t turn around right. She didn’t even know if it would have the desired effect.
He held her over her shirtsleeve. His gloved fingers were like claws around her arms. Eyes, mouth, bare hands: She had to protect them.
The red lights turned green, and the doors all opened. They hadn’t shut down the shuttle train yet. The few passengers on board rushed to get off, stopping when they saw Zero. He made a threatening gesture with his free arm and they all cleared away, to the sides and quickly out the doors on either end.
“Help me,” Melanie croaked, sinking beside him. “Help.”
No one did. They all fell over one another getting away.
He threw her sprawling inside. She hit the far wall, her shoulder and her hip, and the force of it knocked out what little air she had won.
“Welcome to Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport...” The voice on the train was female, stern. She tried to keep from sagging to her knees. She could not breathe at all.
“The jungle,” he said, entering, watching her, eyes glowing. “What did they do to me in the jungle?”
“Caution. Doors will not reopen.”
The doors closed. She staggered and almost went down as the train started forward.
“...A one-and-three-quarter-mile-long underground mall connects the terminal and concourses.”
She reached for a handrail and pulled herself straight, her chest small and empty. She could get nothing into it. She was suffocating.
Zero left his tablet on a seat and started toward her. She moved away blindly down the car, not breathing, like a diver in trouble, scrabbling toward the surface, until all at once something broke inside her chest, like a stuck valve coming free, and she groaned and tasted a gulp of air.
“He’ll kill me,” she choked. She saw stars again as he moved before her. “To get to you. Maryk. He doesn’t care.”
He fondled a pole as she struggled back toward the middle doors.
“Concourse B. Gates B1 through B36 Delta. Delta Crown Room.”
The train was slowing. She was nearing the doors. The train stopped again and the doors slid open and she turned to them, but awkwardly, as he moved in front of her, cutting off her escape route.
She shrank away, gasping. Behind him she saw the last of the travelers hurrying away through the concourse.
“Caution. Doors will not reopen.”
The doors closed again and the train jumped forward. “The girl in the jungle,” he said, insistently.
She retreated, using all her breath to stall him, telling him what Maryk had told her.
“Outbreak. Stephen Pearse tried to save her. But the girl was already sick. The serum was from Maryk’s blood.”
He was pacing her, step by step, pole by pole, back through the shuttle car. “How did you survive my virus in Plainville?”
“His blood. Maryk’s. He put me back together again.”
She moved past more poles, the shuttle rocking, the lights flashing, the overhead voice droning on and on.
Zero’s eyes flamed. “Then his blood runs through us both.”
She felt something solid behind her. It was the door to the next car. She had run out of space.
“Marries us,” he said.
She reached frantically back for the door handle but it did not turn at all. She looked back again and his eyes were lascivious over the breathing mask. She sank down as far as she could.
He reached with one hand behind his own head. She did not understand the gesture at first. Then she saw that he was untying his mask.
Melanie was making herself smaller and smaller against the door.
The mask came down off his face, and she saw his mouth. His lips were gone. The skin there was blackened and decayed. He had gnawed off his own lips and his teeth were rotted and his mouth inside was crimson red, like excited flesh, his tongue small and bright and swishing, the top coating having sloughed away. She could see clear to his tonsils, the soft parts of his mouth scarlet and writhing.