All The Beautiful People (A Dread Novel Book 1) Page 5

  Rachelle turned to address Taylor for the first time. The way she started speaking was as if the two were longtime friends.

  “I tried to make Amber perfect too but she wouldn’t let me.” Tears were pooling at the corner of Rachelle’s eyes. “They locked me in here and my boyfriend freed me. He didn’t want to be perfect either.”

  Without lips the words coming from Rachelle were garbled and hard to understand. The one thing Taylor understood clearly was the utter madness in the girl’s eyes. It was the same wild-eyed expression James Jones had when he decided to attack.

  Something inside Taylor told her the only way this situation was going to be resolved was with violence. She shifted her stance, left leg forward, right leg back. She would deal with Rachelle like she had with James Jones. She’d keep her distance, put the target down, and secure her with whatever she could find. The support team would be there any time now.

  Even as Taylor’s plan formed she knew it wouldn’t work. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck when the boy on the ground behind her stirred. At the same time Rachelle twisted her face into what Taylor guessed was her new way of smiling.

  “My boyfriend will help make you perfect. I cut his hair to be prefect too.”

  “I’ve got him,” Jason said.

  Taylor felt a hand on her shoulder pulling her down. As soon as the hand grabbed hold of her jacket it released. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jason tackle the boy that was trying to drag her to the floor. All thought of helping Jason left when Rachelle lunged at her with the blade of glass.

  Subduing the high school girl would have been easy in an open area not slick with human blood. Rachelle swung the blade in a wide arc. Although Taylor moved out of the way with plenty of time and space to avoid being slashed by the blade, the wet floor held other plans for her future. As if the knife and floor were colluding against her, her boot lost traction on the tile and began to slip toward the arcing weapon.

  Taylor twisted her body in the opposite direction in time to see the glass flash in front of her eyes. For a brief second she saw her reflection in the passing piece of mirror, now turned weapon. It was a strange thought and no doubt this was neither the time nor place to think about her hair. Still her brain sent her a quick beauty tip.

  If you survive this psychopathic adolescent you really should stop wearing your hair in a ponytail every day.

  Then the second was over and Taylor was forced to react. She regained her balance and struck out with an elbow to the back of Rachelle’s neck. Rachelle didn’t have a chance, recovering from her wild swing. The blow connected with a tingling sensation that numbed Taylor’s arm. Rachelle’s knees gave way to noodle like strength and she collapsed.

  “I don’t remember being this strong when I was a teenager.” Jason was sitting on the back of a wiggling form. Even though Jason outweighed his opponent by sixty pounds he was struggling to control the squirming mass of blood and flesh beneath him.

  Heedless of the numbness spreading up and down her right elbow, Taylor raised her arms on either side of her body as she maneuvered through the Slip’N Slide of blood the bathroom had become. Reaching Jason and his captive she grabbed a handful of the boy’s hair. She raised his head above the floor. With as much force as she possessed she rammed his skull against the tile floor over and over.

  On the third strike his body reverted to the limp posture they found him when entering the bathroom. Taylor looked Jason up and down. It appeared as if he was spared from any harm. Though his hands were covered in blood, other than that he was no worse off.

  The principal stuck his head into the bathroom. He was beyond words.

  “Hurry,” Taylor said, filling the shocked silence. “I’ll need both your belts. They won’t be down long.”

  CHAPTER 10

  “You’re all they sent?”

  The field techs shrugged. “We were the only team available to assist when the call came through,” one of the lab coated technicians said as he finished administering the sedative to Rachelle.

  Taylor motioned to the two girls and the young boy that now sat in a drugged stupor in the rear of the unmarked Lazarus van.

  Jason was having a hard time accepting the fact that only one field support team was sent. “That’s impossible. At any given time we have an entire staff of security personnel, technicians, Cleaners, and employees on call.”

  “Hey man,” the tech said, “I wish I could tell you something else but you know how it is. They only tell us what we need to know. I can’t give you information I don’t have.”

  “We’ll follow you back to the office,” Taylor said. She turned to Jason, “We’ll look for answers there.”

  The field tech closed the rear doors of the van and whistled low under his breath. “Looks like you guys have some explaining to do.”

  Taylor followed his gaze to where the disheveled principal stalked across the lawn to the waiting vehicle. Though he was too far away to be heard when he started to talk, his body language was enough to tell Taylor he was scared. As he got closer, the words carried to her ears.

  “What am I supposed to tell the family? Is the area in the bathroom and on the field supposed to be secured? Isn’t it a crime scene? What’s going on? Are we or the other students in any danger?”

  Taylor had an answer ready for all his questions. Even as the white Lazarus van pulled away with the deranged students, Taylor was ready.

  “I’m sorry,” she said calmly, “I know this must be difficult for you.”

  The van pulled a U-turn and headed toward the freeway. It didn’t get far. From around a corner, an SUV hurtled toward the Lazarus vehicle and struck the van like a battering ram. The sound of wrenching metal was worse than the high-pitched noise of nails across a chalkboard.

  Smoke erupted from both automobiles. The Lazarus vehicle now lay on its passenger side, and a small fire was starting under the smashed hood of the dark blue SUV. The three stood in shock, their eyes taking in the scene faster than their brains could process.

  The accident had taken place only a block down the road. Jason and Taylor were the first to move. Both left the stunned principal and ran for the accident. Before they took their second step, the rear doors of the van exploded outward. All three Steel Hart High students dressed in their school uniforms ran from the rear of the van in a stupor. They headed for the front section of the Lazarus van.

  Taylor stopped short and grabbed Jason’s forearm. Jason looked down at her grip and tried to pull away.

  “We have to help them!” he screamed. “There’s only three of them, we can take them. Let me go!”

  Jason wasn’t seeing the entire picture. “No, Jason, there are more than three.”

  Jason looked at her confused and angry. Rather than heed her warning, he turned back to the scene of the accident.

  Doors of the dark blue SUV were opening and a family, a male, female, and two children, fell out. Even from this distance it was clear all three were deathly pale and covered in blood. The psychotic family wasted no time in joining the three high school students. Together, the bloodstained group smashed in the windows of the white Lazarus van. Cries for help echoed through the air as the two Lazarus techs were ripped from their seats.

  “We have to go,” Taylor said.

  “What?” Jason looked at her as if she were a stranger pulling him to the car. “No, they need our help. We can’t leave them there.”

  “Do you think I want to?” Taylor screamed. “Do you think I want to stand by and let people rip into each other? There is nothing we can do. They’re already dead. All we can do now is get back and find out what we’re dealing with and how to stop it.”

  Jason refused to go but Taylor felt his forward momentum fade. He wasn’t trying to pull his arm free from her grip anymore. He couldn’t turn back and get in the car, not yet.

  Taylor knew how he felt. Every fiber in her body told her to run to the aid of the men trapped in the Lazarus van. The only thing hold
ing her back was responsibility to her employer, and as silly as it sounded to Jason, she wasn’t going to get him killed his first day out.

  Taylor released Jason’s arm, and he stood looking on helplessly as the group of fiends tore away at the flesh and bones of their Lazarus co-workers.

  Taylor knew their time was short. They had a small window of opportunity to get back in their vehicle, the attention of the maniacal gathering of psychopaths would be on them soon.

  She had less time than she thought. The wailing silenced. The little girl from the SUV was the first to look their way. Her curled hair bobbed. Her pink ribbon shook on top of her perfectly woven braid as she locked eyes with Taylor and started to nod. The nodding turned into a shriek of glee. The little girl—blood and bits dripping down her lips like a messy lunch of spaghetti—ran for them.

  “In the car, now,” Taylor told Jason.

  Jason didn’t say a word but he moved. The girl was a block away, screaming like a child whose favorite TV show was about to be missed. Taylor turned toward her car and couldn’t believe her eyes. The school principal was on the front lawn were they had left him. He was in shock; Taylor witnessed it in his glazed eyes. The events of the day were too much for him to handle.

  “Get inside!” Taylor screamed. “Lock yourself in the school. Call for help. Go, now!”

  Either Taylor’s yelling or the young child dripping blood running down the street toward them was too much for the principal. The man turned and ran back to the school faster than Taylor thought he was capable of moving.

  The faint pitter-patter of bare feet on pavement reminded Taylor of her own dilemma. Jason was already at the car. In one motion he yanked the passenger side door open and jumped inside. Taylor did the same, and not a moment too soon. The second the driver side door was shut behind her, the little girl hit her window with the force of a baseball bat, rocking the entire car.

  She hammered on the window, over and over again. The little girl was growling, slapping her tiny hands on the car’s closed window. Taylor felt the girl’s frustration vibrating from the car door.

  She jammed the keys into the ignition, slammed the transmission in drive, and struck the gas pedal with her right foot harder than she intended. With a roar and a squeak of spinning ties, the car lurched to life.

  Taylor didn’t bother to see if her car’s back tires ran over the girl or not. One second their youthful attacker was banging on the car window with the wrath of a titan and the next she was gone.

  Adrenaline was flowing to every inch of Taylor’s body. Her hands tingled and vibrated, begging for action. Her heartbeat was so loud she could hear it over the car’s engine.

  With a quick flip of the steering wheel and a screech of rubber lost from the tires, Taylor pulled a sharp U-turn.

  “What are you doing?” Jason asked. It was the first thing he had said since they ran for the car.

  “The freeway is the fastest way back to the office. It’s this way.”

  Taylor and Jason both looked out the car’s wide windshield to the approaching group. All seven of the infected were running for their car. The wails from the little girl must have warned her comrades of other fresh targets in the vicinity.

  Taylor hunched over the steering wheel, her knuckles white as she gunned the engine.

  “What are you going to do?” Jason asked. “These are still people. They’re people, Taylor. People like you and me. There could be a cure.”

  The group was running down the street, closing the gap at a sprint. They would reach the car in seconds. Taylor considered Jason’s words. Somehow she knew they weren’t people anymore. The lack of humanity in their eyes, the blood sticky and fresh, running from their hands and mouths made Taylor to decide to hit the gas pedal again.

  The car rocketed forward from a standstill. The speedometer read a steady 40 miles per hour as she struck the first body. Lucky number one was Rachelle, the girl with no lips. Rachelle made no move to dive out of the way or avoid the impact. Like a mindless drone, she ran right at them. Her body made a loud crack as her spine snapped in half and her body folded in on itself. The blow from the car’s bumper sent her flying over the hood and roof of the car.

  Then the others followed. Bodies of many different sizes and shapes glanced off the car and went either over or under the vehicle. The scene in front of Taylor was so horrific her conscious begged for anything else to fixate on besides the events unfolding around her. Her mind immediately related the scene to bowling. Her car was nothing but a big bowling ball knocking down pins of people. If she were to give herself a score as the last person ricocheted off her windshield, it would be a strike.

  CHAPTER 11

  “Are you okay?”

  Jason’s mouth was so dry Taylor heard him try to swallow.

  “I…those people. We killed all those people.”

  “If it makes you feel better, I killed all of those people, not you. And if I’m right, whatever is happening to these people is making them able to withstand a substantial amount of physical damage. I don’t think any of them are dead.”

  Jason snapped out of his trance and turned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Rachelle tore off half her face. She lost gallons of blood but you saw her. She was out there running with the rest of them. After the collision between that blue SUV and the Lazarus van, all those infected people got out of the wrecked cars as mobile as ever.”

  Jason was silent. Taylor let him think it over. He needed to rationalize to himself as to how they hadn’t committed murder. He eventually would; the only other option was to call himself a killer. She knew he wouldn’t.

  The freeway was open and Taylor maneuvered around the midday traffic like a racecar driver. Even through a cracked windshield, she handled the car with ease. They were only a few minutes into their journey back to the office when Jason pulled out his cell phone.

  “I better call this in. They’ll need another cleanup crew. Maybe even get the police involved in this one.”

  He hit a number on his keypad, pressed the phone to his right ear, and sat there motionless for a few minutes, then Jason removed the phone from his ear and gaping at the screen’s display. “There was no answer.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It rang and then stopped ringing.”

  “Try again.”

  Jason obeyed but was met with the same result. “What do you think that means? They’ve always picked up.”

  “I guess today is a day of firsts,” Taylor said. “Today’s the first day I didn’t complete a cleaning assignment. I guess we’ll have to wait and see when we get ba—”

  An explosion tore apart the sky beside them. To their right, a gas station erupted in flames towering over the freeway. Red wisps of heat shimmered in the air as the fire fed off the large supply of gasoline. Black and every shade of gray smoke rose from the scene in large, angry clouds.

  Before either of them could form a coherent thought, a car on the opposite side of the freeway slammed into the center divider. Chunks of cement and rebar flew in every direction. Taylor jerked the wheel at the last minute to avoid being skewered by a metal bar. Cars all around her slammed their brakes and those too slow to react became targets for debris.

  Vehicles struck one another on both sides of the freeway. Taylor gritted her teeth and tried to calm her breathing. Maneuvering around the center of mayhem brought anxiety knocking on the door of her conscious.

  What if this is all related? What if this is just the beginning?

  Leaving the explosion and car accident in their wake did nothing to silence the voices of doom inside her.

  Jason massaged his temple with his left hand. “This can’t be happening. You don’t think that all of this is—I mean how widespread could this be?”

  Taylor was forced to consider the possibility that Vanidrum and the effects of the drug might already be at a point beyond containment.

  “Lazarus is a billion dollar company with worldwide distrib
ution,” she said.

  Without a word, Jason leaned over and tuned the radio to a local news station, 101.7 JLA. A woman’s strained voice confirmed the worst. Taylor pictured the woman in her mind’s eye. Anxious, sitting in her radio booth, all her training tested now as reporting a series of violent encounters was pushing her to the edge of panic. She’d call on her years of experience to calm her nerves and do her job. Taylor knew all these feelings well. She also knew that much like herself, the newswoman would be able to tell this was no coincidence.

  “We are receiving reports all over the city of Los Angeles and also from our sister networks in surrounding cities,” the newswoman’s voice broke for the briefest moment then came back composed. “Reports of maniacs running loose on the street. At first we thought it may be an isolated situation but more and more attacks are being called in by the hour. These incidents started last night and have continued to cause both physical and property damage to residents in nearly every Los Angeles city.

  “The police have not provided a statement regarding whether these attacks are connected but one has to assume this is not a coincidence. Reports ranging from stabbings, home invasions, and even arson are flooding the lines. What’s more disturbing are the individuals responsible for these brutal crimes. Witnesses say they are delusional, psychotic, and most of all, dangerous. Now we move to Jerry Oliver, our very own KRTC news correspondent. He’s with a witness claiming to have seen one of these mysterious attackers up close. Jerry?”

  “Thank you, Karen,” a strong male voice said. “I’m here in downtown Los Angeles with Latoya Williams, a business owner who had an interesting morning as she opened her shop. Latoya, in your own words can you tell us what happened?”

  Latoya’s voice came over the radio soft and distant, as if she were trying to recall events that happened to someone else. “I—I came to open my shop this morning, like I do every morning. I brought breakfast for Henry, he’s a homeless guy who wanders around but makes camp in the alley behind my store. It’s Friday,” her voice stumbled as she grabbed at the events that took place only hours previous but that her mind was already forcing her to forget.