EXODUS

— by Jeff Karamales

Chapter 14
Monster Slayers
 

Wyatt sped through the various camera feeds by using the touch sensitive screens that could access the security systems and looked frantically for Doctor Emily Lesko. She wasn’t in her labs, nor was she in the corridors that led to the private quarters of the staff. He did find one of the cameras that looked down the corridor he’d just come down and saw the still form of Todd Farbes. The puddle of red on the concrete beneath the man told the savannah cat all he needed to know about the human’s condition and he felt a lump begin to form. He’d only truly known Farbes for a few short hours, yet the man had sacrificed everything for Wyatt and the other prisoners. It took a moment before he could continue.

Other cameras showed that the isolation cells were empty, and the cat man felt his blood run cold. Halley Kane should’ve been in one of the eight isolation chambers, but the doors on all of them were open. Frantic worry began to eat at him and he cycled through the screenshots with a growing snarl of frustration that caused the one tech to again soil himself. Finally he caught sight of what he wanted.

Lesko was heading to the Group 1 chamber with Halley in tow, the old woman’s hand brandishing a pistol that she kept pressed to the back of the elfin girl’s head while the other was tangled tightly in Halley’s hair. At one point Lesko actually paused to look up at the camera that monitored that section of corridor and it was like she knew Wyatt was watching her. Her eyes bore nothing but the purest malice and hatred in the cold colored orbs and her mouth twisted into a grimace that at one point would have filled the savannah cat with fear. Instead of fear, the old woman caused him to feel a hot rage and rock solid resolve fill him.

Lesko had already caused more suffering than any person had leave to and he was going to stop her.

Unfortunately the search with the cameras had revealed that there were still a few of the Janissaries mercenaries about, though Wyatt was less afraid of them as well. He dropped the magazine of the first Vector and looked at the load. One round. He dropped the weapon and checked the one that Farbes had pressed into his paws and smiled grimly when he saw that it was full. Slapping it back into the well, he charged the weapon, the sound making both techs that huddled on the floor whimper and the savannah cat cast a look of disgust at them.

“Hell of a thing to live in fear, isn’t it?” he asked before unlocking the door and flinging it open. Wyatt didn’t even look to see if there was anyone waiting for him as he pelted out of the room, the pads on his feet enabling him to run virtually silent on the cold concrete floor.

Wyatt remained upright as he ran, the weapon cradled in both hands with his finger on the trigger. Not hearing him coming, one of the mercs stepped out from a side room and the savannah cat fired a burst that started low and climbed up the man’s back. Blood geysered from each impact and sprayed the hallway, but Wyatt’s nostrils were already full of the scent of cordite and death and he paid no more attention to the still falling body as he passed it by. When a second guard appeared a little further down, Wyatt didn’t even bother firing, the submachine gun lashing out to catch the man on the side of the head with all of the cat man’s strength and the inertia of his passing.

As he sped around the corner that would lead to the Group 1 chamber, Wyatt heard screams and yowls of anger, fear and terror from several hybrid throats and one human that chilled his blood accentuated by two gunshots but didn’t stop his run. Wyatt came around the corner in full stride before skidding to a stop as Lesko stood at the far side of the chamber, her arm around Halley’s throat with her pistol pointed at the young woman’s temple. The sliding stop was so severe that the thick skin on Wyatt’s pads tore and split, though the savannah cat ignored the pain that flared and the slickness that formed around his pads from his own blood. On the cold floor just to the side of the doorway was Perry Layton, still and eyes closed as blood trickled from a hole in his chest.

There was no need for words between Lesko and Wyatt as they both glared at each other with an animosity that was almost tangible and so thick it could be cut. The savannah cat saw the old woman’s knuckle whiten with the tension she applied to the trigger. It wasn’t Wyatt that screamed with white hot rage and defiance, though.

It was Julie Valance.

The other savannah cat leapt from where she was standing, mouth open with bared fangs, arms spread wide with fingers splayed and claws extended.

Time seemed to slow drastically from where Wyatt stood and he clearly saw the arc of Julie’s flight through the air and Lesko desperately trying to swing her gun around at the threat that hurtled towards her like the specter of death made incarnate. When the pistol went off it sounded hollow in the confines of the chamber when combined with Wyatt’s surreal perception of reality. He saw fur and a small drop of blood atomize in the air where the bullet struck Julie but did nothing to stop her inertia. Instead of plowing into Emily Lesko, the other savannah cat bowled into Halley, her body folding around the smaller girl as they tumbled to the floor and the far wall. As they came to a stop, Julie curled protectively over Halley.

It was all of the opening Wyatt needed and he was already in mid leap when the old woman turned back to him. His submachine gun clattered to the floor, the sound lost as Lesko screamed at having been duped and her one bargaining chip now lying a couple of yards away on the floor. The rage that boiled behind Lesko’s eyes melted away and became a pleading, almost begging look, but it was lost on Wyatt, the one who had suffered the most at her hands.

His paws closed on her shoulders, his claws piercing first cloth then thin parchment-like skin. His toe claws latched onto her bony hips in a macabre parody of a lovers’ joining as he rode her to the concrete floor, each felt and heard bone and joint that popped and broke filling him with dark satisfaction. He exulted in the feel of claws digging deep, the curving blades sinking further and further into aged flesh before their fall stopped and he hovered over Lesko, his breath coming out in hot gusts that washed over the Doctor’s face and neck.

“I told you I would kill you,” he said, though there was none of his humanity left in those words, just the pent up rage, terror and bile that the woman herself had poured into him. She opened her mouth to speak, wincing pitifully at the excruciating pain that wracked her frail body as her creation squeezed all of his claws deeper, but the time for words had passed as Wyatt lunged his head forward, his fangs sinking into the flesh of her head before cracking through bone made hard and brittle by age.

Wyatt savaged the geneticist’s head with his maw and her body with his claws before standing and flinging the sodden mess away and into the far side of the circular wall. As the bloody, broken body of Emily Lesko struck the wall and slowly slid to the floor, leaving smears of red on the concrete, the savannah cat stood and threw his arms out, head back and tensed every muscle as he let go a scream of rage, defiance, pain, loss and victory in a voice that had never before been heard on Earth. 

*** 

It seemed as if the death of Doctor Emily Lesko, PHD, had released the hold of terror on all of the test subjects from Group 1 all the way through Group 4. Those that had assisted the woman in her experiments and the torture of the former death row inmates had been put in the holding chambers that once held the prisoners, though a few of the technicians, Halley Kane among them, were allowed to move freely as they got the various hybrids situated into former staff quarters. At his direction, Wyatt ordered his own fellow Group 1 members to sweep the facility for all of the weapons and ammunition that they could find, up to and including utensils from the two mess halls that served the facility prior to releasing the others. It was then decided to keep the other Groups in their holding areas, not only for the protection of the remaining staff and technicians, but for the hybrids themselves. As Wyatt had demonstrated to those he trusted most, they weren’t just new species…

They were weapons in their own right.

As far as Wyatt was concerned, the pummeling of the hot water in Group 1’s shower would never wash him clean enough, never get the blood off his paws, or the taste of it out of his mouth.

He didn’t know how long he lay there letting the water blast him senseless when Ramad walked in, the snow leopard giving his friend a look of sympathy. He waited to see if the savannah cat would notice him and didn’t call the other’s name until he was positive that the hybrid was lost in his own thoughts.

“Wyatt? Wyatt. We’ve…we’ve found something that you need to see,” Ramad told the figure sitting huddled in the cloud of steam at the far side of the shower room.

“What’s that?” the savannah cat asked in a tired, worn sounding voice.

“Senator Bingham was found hiding in a janitorial closet. Tonya and Perry are watching him. As soon as I found out I came to get you.”

Wyatt lifted his head and stared without any sort of emotion at the snow leopard. “Why tell me?”

The former American-Arab snorted in amusement. “I hate to tell you this, my friend, but you are, for all intents and purposes, the one now in charge. All of us have agreed that any decisions that have to be made must go through you first.”

Wyatt fixed the other feline with a baleful glare. “I don’t want to be in charge. I didn’t ask for it and I don’t want it!”

“Then you should have thought about that before you swept through the bunker like the Hand of God. You are a leader, whether you wish to admit this or not. You are the one that has freed us, and you are the one the rest of us are going to follow. I’m sorry. I truly am, but you’ve brought this upon yourself.”

Despite feeling sorry for himself, Wyatt knew that the other hybrid was right and slowly stood. He got to his feet, sore as they were, and shut off the water before heading to the adjacent room and began to towel off. Once as dry as he felt he could get the savannah cat snagged a jumper and began to automatically shorten the arms and legs before ripping a hole just below the elastic waistband for his tail. He pulled the garment on when in truth all he wanted was to soak a little more, stuff himself with as much food as he could find and sleep for about a month and pray the nightmares he knew would descend upon him wouldn’t be as bad as he was dreading.

“Lead the way,” Wyatt told the other cat tiredly.

When he noticed how the savannah cat was limping due to the damage of his foot pads, the other feline helped shoulder some of Wyatt’s weigh. “You should have Halley look at that,” Ramad suggested. If nothing else she can wrap them for you so you aren’t getting dirt in the wounds.”

“I’ll be okay,” Wyatt said. “Maybe I can find a cane or something. They look worse than they really are. Like spending too much time in a pool and you get those little raw spots on your toes.”

Ramad looked at the other cat man dubiously before he took the other hybrid down the same corridor that led to the room of preserved remains but turned at an intersection before they had to enter the room. At the end of the short hallway a set of cast concrete steps led up to another level that Wyatt hadn’t seen before except on the security cameras. The number of rooms was limited and the layout looked as if the section would have been the living quarters for the First Family had the bunker actually been used as refuge during a nuclear exchange. Apart from a wide, low ceilinged salon there were four bedrooms, a dining area and kitchen along with two moderate sized chambers. All of the rooms had private showers and rather comfortable furnishings and it took the savannah cat a moment to realize that this had to have been the area that Lesko had occupied along with her guests Bingham and the men he’d brought along, of which the late Todd Farbes had been among. As he walked into the suite Wyatt could definitely pick up lingering scent traces of the Doctor, though that didn’t bother him as much as he expected.

At the dining table in the room just past the main salon sat Senator Bingham, his eyes wide as he waited, curious as to what the creatures surrounding him were going to do. There was also a defiant tilt to the man’s chin, something that was learned over decades of being one of the primary powerhouses in Louisiana, and then Federal politics. He watched Wyatt with rheumy eyes as the savannah cat took a seat opposite the man and fixed him with his feline eyes, though remained silent.

The Senator didn’t last past ninety seconds of silent scrutiny and gathered all of his bluster and aplomb and sat up straighter. If being in a rumpled, perspiration stained suit bothered the Senator, he didn’t show it. “I demand that you release me at once!” the man ordered Wyatt. “Do you know who I am?”

“Actually I do. You’re Senator Harold ‘Hap’ Bingham from Louisiana,” Wyatt began, his gaze unflinching. “I’m guessing you knew about all of this,” his words more of an accusation than a question.

“Are you telling me you think I’m a part of all this?” the Senator demanded, anger coloring his tone while his face reddened.

The savannah cat shrugged. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I’ve already seen files that implicate you in all of this. Not to mention you don’t seem too freaked out by what we look like, and you brought men to hunt myself and one of the other prisoners. You knew. You helped.”

“How dare you!” the old man screamed, standing up so fast his chair fell over.

Wyatt let his paw-like hands flex slightly so that his claws slipped out from the dusty gold fingers at the tips of his fingers so that they clicked on the table. The silent demonstration was enough to get the Senator to control his temper and he fumbled back into the chair. “No one has hurt you, Senator. No one will, either. You see, I want you to stay alive and right here until help arrives and the authorities can find out just how deep you are in all of this.”

The man blinked several times. “Help is coming?”

The savannah cat nodded, his eyes still staring at the aged politician. “Pretty soon, too. I figure we’ll let whatever authorities show up handle it and from there whoever they think should investigate will find out what happened. I mean, we’re all death row inmates. We had genetic experiments performed on us by a complete psycho job. I’m pretty sure there were some laws broken. Oh, and testimony of some of the technicians here.” Sweat began to flow from Bingham, but it wasn’t the scent of perspiration caused by a high ambient temperature but the sour smell of fear. Wyatt stood and looked pointedly at the man. “You’ll have a couple of guards up here with you to make sure no one messes with you. They’ll also make sure that you don’t try to get away before all of this gets sorted out. Don’t push it and I won’t make them tie you down, okay?”

Before the man could reply, Wyatt turned and left the room, heading back to the lower level of the bunker. His first stop was the medical section.  

*** 

Halley and a medic that she’d introduced as Veronica Harris finished checking the bandages on Todd Farbes, the man looking a little pale, but otherwise well as a bag of saline solution and red blood flowed into his arm through a series of tubes. Halley gave the savannah cat a frightened sideways glance before bagging up the stained bandages they’d just changed and went to check on the few other injuries, most from technicians and staffers that had tried to flee the onslaught of the elfin woman’s feline lover and the former Special Forces operator. As she departed Wyatt could smell fear-scent coming from her and it caused a pang in his chest that she was afraid of him.

“How are things holding up, Wyatt?” the man asked, his eyes slightly glazed from the pain medications and antibiotics he was on.

The cat man shrugged as he pushed his hurt aside. “Good as can be, I guess. We’ve got control of the facility and the Janissaries are all accounted for. Most of the techies are locked down in the holding chamber we used to be in. Well, those that aren’t in here. I’ve got all the guns locked up so no one else can get to them and there are people I trust watching the doors. Food and such will be delivered to the other Groups on schedule. I really hate leaving them locked up like that, though.”

Farbes shook his head. “They’re all unknown variables, Wyatt. The last thing you need is to release another Pinkerton or someone that’s got a grudge. Hold what you’ve got for now and don’t stress it. This is a win for you.” The man closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them he locked gazes with the savannah cat. “Hey. I heard what you did to Lesko.” He fidgeted with the edge of the sheet after looking away. “Want to talk about it?”

Wyatt bristled, the fur on his neck fluffing as his whiskers twitched into a frown and his ears pressed against his skull. “No. I don’t want to talk about it because you wouldn’t get where I’m coming from,” he replied sharply.

“You’re right,” Farbes said with a level look at the savannah cat. “I mean, I’ve only spent the past five years of my life getting sent to real cesspits and killing people, so I wouldn’t have any clue about what you might feel like.” The man looked away and cocked a wry eyebrow with a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Granted, I never bit one of the men I killed…”

Wyatt looked at the man then sagged in on himself. The savannah cat snagged a simple plastic chair before collapsing into it. “I want to throw up, Farbes,” Wyatt admitted in a sick voice, the odd thrum that had become a part of all the hybrids’ voices adding to the tone of misery that colored his words. “I…I didn’t like it when I ended my mom’s suffering, or those other people. I didn’t like it when I killed your friend-”

“Associate,” the man corrected good-naturedly.

“Fine. Associate. When…when it came to Pinkerton, I knew there really wasn’t any choice. I mean, he was eating parts of those other two guys. If…if the world finds out about us, what we are now, it’ll be hard enough without Pinkerton readily telling others what they taste like. That and he was a threat to everyone.

“Then there was Lesko,” Wyatt shook his head and closed his eyes as a shudder ran through him. “I have never hated anyone like I did…and still do…her. She…she was the most absolutely evil person I’ve ever met!” He looked up from regarding the tile floor, his yellow and brown flecked eyes full of misery. “The thing is I hate myself for all of the killing.”

Farbes reached out and put a hand on the savannah cat’s arm, his fingers squeezing in sympathy and support. “That’s because she stole almost everything from you. She took your security, your dignity, even your humanity. Wyatt? To be honest, that’s the way I feel about what I’ve done in my life. I’d be a little scared if you didn’t feel that way.” He sighed and picked up a cup of water and sipped it before continuing. “You know, most people react one of two ways when they kill another. They puke their guts out and never do it again, or they cope and move on, even knowing that every time they kill it will make them just as sick in the soul. Unfortunately there are a few out there like Pete and Pinkerton that throw off the average. Pete didn’t feel anything. He was a sociopath through and through. His emotions were normally emulated from those around him. It was like camouflage for the guy.”

“And Pinkerton?”

Farbes shook his head. “Pinkerton was one of those complete anomalies that crop up. Killing was a thrill, the victims a challenge. It was a way for him to validate his own existence by preying on others with a variety of triggers the caused him to select someone to die.”

“Were you a psychologist as well?” Wyatt asked with surprise.

The man chuckled before wincing at the pain the stress caused to his injury. “No. Not really. I dabbled. It helped to learn the ‘why’ of some of the people I’ve had to deal with over the years.”

Before the savannah cat could say any more, Tonya Dolens pelted into the room, her eyes wide while her tail thrashed in nervous excitement behind her. “Wyatt! Wyatt, there’s a boat approaching! I saw it on the cameras in the control room! There’s a really big ship sitting off the shore of the island and they’re sending a boat full of people!”

“That must be the crew from the SS Valkyrie,” the feline said as he stood.

Farbes frowned and looked at the savannah cat. “Valkyrie?A ship? Weren’t you able to get a hold of Hughs?”

Wyatt shook his head. “The phone had a lockout if the right code wasn’t put in and the system’s completely shutdown. I had to use the radio and the Valkyrie was the only one that answered my mayday. It’s a Swedish cargo ship.”

The man sat back and rubbed his stubbled chin. “That…that might be for the best. If things get bad, Sweden might be able to grant all of you asylum. In that regard they’re becoming more like Switzerland. Especially with the tensions between East and West over the past several decades. I guess they’re tired of being one of the countries stuck in the middle.” Farbes looked at Wyatt and nodded his approval. “Let me know what they say.”

— NEXT CHAPTER —

Unless otherwise noted, all material © Ted R. Blasingame. All rights reserved.