The Changing (The Biergarten Series) Read Free

through Building Nine's subbasement corridors. It was, Tammy had once told a friend, like walking through the inside of a weird kind of cereal box. The walls were close enough to touch with both hands at once, the ceiling so low that it sparked claustrophobia, and the lighting dismal at best. She'd made the walk at least a hundred times since coming to Kodak Park, and each time she'd told herself that yes, at last she was getting used to it. And each time she knew it was a lie. That she'd never get used to it.
    Which, thanks to the thing walking the corridor with her that afternoon, was tragically correct.
    ~ * ~
    She had long ago begun talking to herself on her walks through Building Nine's subbasement corridors. She had a high-pitched but pleasant voice, and today, with thoughts of Burt Reynolds in her head, she said to herself, "Burt, baby, what I wouldn't do to you if I got you alone." She was going to say more, because she usually did—she usually lost herself in a string of amazing sexual daydreams—but the thing that was walking the corridor with her, several yards behind, let forth with a small half growl, half grunt that echoed loudly on the smooth walls. Tammy Levine stopped walking. She said, at a whisper, "Get away from me, okay?!" She had no idea what she was talking to, or even if it understood what she was saying; she had a vague idea that one of The Park's nighttime patrol dogs had gotten loose, although that was unlikely. The dogs were used only in Building Twelve, a high-security area, and were allowed out only for emergency trips to a veterinarian, or when Death paid them a visit.
    Death was paying Tammy Levine a visit that afternoon. She had a vague idea that it was true; something in the half grunt-half growl, something desperate and unreasoning, had told her it was true.
    "Get away from me," she said again, "and I mean it!" She thought she sounded pretty pathetic. She didn't want to sound pathetic, she wanted to sound like she was in control, even in charge. But the thing behind her in the cereal-box corridor let go with another half growl and grunt, but louder, and longer. And Tammy ran.
    She got ten feet before the thing caught up with her and tore most of her throat away. The last image that flashed across her consciousness was Burt Reynolds's face, which made her smile a little. She would keep that image forever.
    And Building Nine's subbasement corridor walls would, even after an extensive cleanup, hold traces of her blood for a very long time.

Chapter Three

    Ryerson H. Biergarten —his friends called him "Rye"—had the body of a long-distance runner, a face that was invariably described as "sexy," or "intriguing," or both, and he dressed in a way that the first of his two divorced wives called "poor man's preppy"—in faded, no-name jeans or corduroys, battered yellow or brown cardigan sweaters, argyle socks, penny loafers, and well-worn blue, cream-colored or green button-down shirts. ("It's clear, Rye," his first wife told him, "that you don't give a damn what you look like." He had readily agreed.) He had a full head of reddish-brown hair, usually in need of cutting or combing, and his gray-green eyes almost always had a spark of humor in them. He had also, in the past few weeks, taken to carting around a snorting Boston bull terrier pup he'd named Creosote. He called the dog Creosote because he'd found it in a smokehouse behind a two-hundred-year-old farmhouse in Vermont. Ryerson had been in the house looking for several of its previous tenants—a man in his nineties who did lots of cursing at odd hours and a young woman of twenty or twenty-one who had a fetching smile and wonderful green eyes; she liked to lounge on a huge, Victorian-style sofa in the parlor and say suggestive things to the house's male visitors. Both of these previous tenants were dead. The man in his nineties had died a hundred and ten years earlier, according to the county hall of records, and the woman had died, at