Chapter 23

The following morning, Tom struggled out of bed at eleven. Limping his way to the bathroom, he looked with dismay at his reflection in the mirror. The lack of sleep and unusual levels of physical exertion were beginning to show; there were large, dark circles under his eyes, his skin had a rather unhealthy pallor and the lines around his eyes and mouth looked deeper than ever. Looking closer, he thought he could even see a little more grey in his hair than he remembered. All in all, he decided, he looked exactly how he felt, haggard and worn out.

They hadn't finished clearing the William Penn Hotel until barely a half hour before dawn. Although it would probably be more fair to say that Mia hadn't finished clearing it until then. Combined, his two groups of police officers had only taken down a total of three ferals after they had started their ascent of the hotel.

By the time they had finished, a crew led by Chief Jacobs himself was clearing the bodies from the lobby. After a few words, the Chief had released Tom and Mia to go home before the sun breached the horizon. The Chief had insisted, however, that Tom be in his office at noon.

Tom showered quickly and returned to his bedroom to dress and check on Mia. He couldn't help but worry about her; based on the state of her clothing at the end of the night, the ferals had given her quite a beating. After she had fallen dormant into his arms mere seconds after they had entered the apartment, he had stripped the rags from her body and wiped the dried and crusted blood and gore from her with a sponge. Her skin, of course, had shown no signs of damage, but the fact that she had not bothered to repair or clean her clothing spoke volumes about what the night had cost her. Her demeanor had been decidedly different, as well. As they exited the building and drove home, she had been subdued and withdrawn, staring down at the floor of the car in sullen silence. He decided that he would have to give Peter a call during the day to see if there would be an animal available tonight.

For all that the night had cost her, the returns had been so small. Out of more than a thousand guests and staff, only nine survivors had been recovered and one of those, found in the Presidential Suite, had been completely catatonic. Idly, he wondered if they should have just waited for the sun to do the work for them. But no, in that scenario there wouldn't have been anyone left alive in the hotel and even if nine was horrifyingly disappointing, it was still better than none.

After making certain that Mia was well covered, Tom drove to the station. When Tom arrived, Chief Jacobs was sitting at his desk with a cigarette dangling from his lips, tapping slowly at his keyboard with a single finger. His desk was littered with a badly stained, mostly empty coffee mug, a pizza delivery box and, despite the no smoking signs displayed prominently throughout the building, an overflowing ashtray. The Chief looked up from his computer monitor when Tom rapped softly on the door frame and, stubbing his latest butt out in the ashtray, motioned Tom in.

Without preamble, the Chief waved a remote control toward a small television and DVR that were precariously balanced on one of the chairs in the room and said, "This went out on every NBC affiliate first thing this morning."

The video showed a number of people racing down a hotel hallway towards whoever was holding the camera. As they drew near, the cameraman apparently realized the danger he was in. The picture shifted as the man rotated the camera to face behind him and then bounced violently as he started running for his life. The video was still clear enough to show his pursuers, their lips peeled back from long, sharp teeth, overtaking him. A grasping hand filled the screen and then the picture went black.

"That's all they showed on tv," the Chief commented, "but the unedited footage is all over the internet."

Chief Jacobs twisted his computer monitor around until it was facing Tom and pushed a few keys on the keyboard. The Chief had cued the clip so that the raw footage picked up where the broadcast version had cut off. The picture was chaotic as the camera spun down the hallway floor but grew steady as the camera settled on its side. The people, a prominent Fox News reporter among them, were holding the helpless cameraman to the floor, tearing at him with hands and teeth as their hips humped convulsively. They continued to bite into him over and over again even after his struggles had ceased. When the ferals finally rose and ran off screen, the time index in the bottom corner of the video sped up and, for a few seconds, the video showed only an occasional blur of legs running past. The time index then slowed to normal speed as a pair of very feminine legs appeared on the screen. The legs, which were moving inhumanly fast, slowed very slightly as they passed the cameraman's body and then bent as the figure drove a railing post through the body's heart. The post was torn free and the woman continued off screen. Tom was grateful that Mia hadn't stooped low enough for the camera to catch her face.

Turning again toward the television, the Chief pushed a few buttons on the remote as he said, "This went out on CNN and a number of associated channels."

Unlike the first, this clip had audio. It started with the cameraman complaining about all the noise and promising to show what reporters really did after hours. The picture shifted back and forth as the camera was carried at hip level out into the hallway. After a whispered, "What the fuck... ," the camera was lifted to a shoulder and showed several doors shuddering under thunderous blows from within. With a loud crack one of the doors burst outward in a shower of splinters. Two men and a woman, all three naked, leapt out into the hallway and one of the men threw back his head to scream with primal rage, an act which revealed his fangs. Tom couldn't recall the woman's name, but he recognized her from one of the morning news shows. The clip quickly came to an end very similar to that of the first.

The Chief leaned back and rubbed his temples with a sigh, "I suppose we're lucky that these were the only two cameramen who established a satellite uplink before they started filming. A number of other cameras were recovered from the building when we started to clean-up this morning. Their owners are clamoring for us to release their property, but I've been holding them off with claims that we need to retain all evidence of the crimes that occurred until the investigation is complete."

The Chief tilted his head up to look at Tom with grim, bloodshot eyes, "There's even worse news. All morning I've had a number of people at the hotel counting bodies and looking over hotel records. We're missing close to two hundred people. While I'm sure some of them just spent the night elsewhere, that certainly doesn't account for all of them. A lot of those fucking monsters got loose before we got the building sealed off. Once outside, they apparently acted pretty much the same way as they did in those video clips. Fortunately, the streets are pretty empty in the wee hours, but we've already had twenty-eight bodies show up, all pretty gruesomely..."

The Chief was interrupted by the ringing of the phone on his desk. He answered and listened for a few seconds before again waving the remote at the television. After the channel's "live, breaking news" preamble, a view of a hospital room filled the screen. Tom immediately recognized the catatonic woman they had found in the Presidential Suite. She was sitting semi- reclined in the hospital bed, covered to her hips with a blanket and wearing a hospital gown above. Her face, which bore not a hint of makeup, was pale and her hair was in wild disarray. Uncontrollable shivers wracked her body as she recounted what her attackers had done to her and her assistants and recited the message that she had been given. The more she spoke, the farther Tom's jaw dropped in shock.