The first one looked as if half his face had been gnawed off. The second one wasn’t so bad, but his skin was gray.”
“Give me details on the first one, if you can. What parts of his face were missing?”
He was humoring her. Either that or he was dead serious about wanting her to describe the makeup. But why would he bother to take notes on makeup when something like that could change with the swipe of a towel?
“Like I said, I only saw the first perp from a distance. By the time he was on top of me, the second one had me down on the ground and I lost the flashlight. It still gave off a dim glow, but it didn’t shine directly on them.” She suppressed a shudder, thinking back on how they’d looked and how it had felt to be helpless against them, her head swimming in pain, adrenaline spiking her fear and the weak flashlight beam making their theatrics seem all too real. The darkness made her unsure of what she’d really seen.
“Describe what you can of his wounds.”
“He was made up to look like the tip of his nose and lips were gone. One side of his face was hollowed out, as if his cheek were missing, and there were what looked like teeth marks all around the wounds. There were also brown stains on the edges of skin and on his clothes like dried blood. And he stank like rotting flesh.”
“But the second man had none of the disfigurement?” Xavier seemed very interested, almost clinical in his questioning.
“The second guy looked okay. All his features were intact, but he also had the brown stains around his mouth and down the front of his shirt. Like I said, his skin was gray, and it had a powdery sheen and he smelled as bad as the first guy. I don’t think either of them had bathed in weeks, but it was more than that. They must’ve augmented their natural stink with something else. It stank of death.”
“Which one bit you?”
“Both, actually. The first one had my feet and he chomped on my thigh. The second perp held my arms and bit me on the shoulder.” She raised the arm that wasn’t hooked to the IV and gestured toward her opposite shoulder.
She couldn’t see it, but she assumed there was a small bandage there, unless in the week she’d been out the bite had healed sufficiently for them to forego covering it. It didn’t feel sore when she moved, so maybe the bite hadn’t been as bad as she’d thought. She didn’t feel the tug of a bulky bandage, but it could be a small one she wouldn’t necessarily feel. The doctors had looked closely at her thigh, blocking her view as they unwrapped the dressing, then rewrapped it with a little less gauze. It didn’t really hurt.
In fact, she was starting to feel better the more she talked. The longer she was awake and alert, the more her head ceased to pound. That was weird. She would’ve expected the exact opposite, but she wasn’t a doctor, so what did she know?
“Now that I’ve given you what you wanted, how about telling me what this is all about?” She didn’t want to think about those men…creatures…anymore. She wanted some answers. “Were those jokers yours?”
“Yes and no.” He flipped his little notebook closed and stowed it in a pocket along with his pen. “First of all, you need to know that everything you saw was real. That wasn’t makeup or special effects.”
He paused, probably to let those startling words sink in.
“You’re kidding, right? No way was that real. I mean, it had me fooled at the time, but with a little perspective I can’t believe any of that was legit.”
“You should.” His eyes narrowed. “You are one of only a handful of people to have survived being infected with a contagion inadvertently developed by a team of military scientists. They were trying to do something good—creating a biological substance that would induce rapid healing of battlefield injuries—but something went wrong. Really wrong. The dead marines they were testing the substance on became reanimated and started attacking others. The brass thought they’d handled the problem and disbanded the team of scientists, but in the months since that first incident, there have been two known flare-ups. One at the army base where I was stationed until last week and here, on Long Island.”
“No way.” She had to stifle a