Wolf Running Read Free Page B

unfamiliar reflection. The woman in the silvered glass had a short crop of heavy, matte-black hair that lay close to the skull and thick brows over wide-spaced amber eyes. A thin, sharp nose over lips that were almost the same color as her skin, a light reddish-brown. A splattering of dark freckles arched across the bridge of the nose. High shelves of bone over sunken cheeks completed the facial features. There were dark smudges under her eyes and flecks of dried blood along her forehead. She puzzled over that for a moment. She hadn’t seen any scrapes or cuts on her body when she’d changed out of the hospital gown. There had been a black smear on the inside of her right arm, something that had wiped away easily, but that was all. She was tall, the top of her head nearly meeting the top of the mirror, and under her gown her body looked slightly starved, with ribs and hips precisely delineated under her skin.
    She turned on the tap and splashed cold water on her face, then took a drink from the spigot. Dressed and more awake now, she also felt more confident. The fear and confusion from just a few minutes ago didn’t seem as important as finding out what was going on.
    She turned away from the mirror and crossed to the exit door. Pressing her ear against the wood, she listened. Still nothing from the outside. She drew in a deep breath and turned the handle. The door opened inward faster than she expected, helped along by the two bodies slumped against it. She crouched down to look closer at them.
    One of the bodies was that of the older man she had seen earlier. On his back, his head tipped to the side, the ragged hole where his throat should be was glaringly obvious. His blue scrub top had been torn away, exposing a gory slash in his rounded abdomen. Mangled coils of intestines intruded from the wound and drying blood was splashed on his face and chest in vertiginous swirls. A laminated ID on a lanyard gave the dead man’s name as Dr. Carlton Stover. She leaned in for a closer look at his face, and her stomach turned. Oh, god, he’s missing an eye.
    The other body was face-down on the cold floor. Cautiously she turned the body over to see a young woman, probably in her mid-teens. Beneath a fringe of light-brown hair her faded blue eyes stared unseeingly at the ceiling. She was wearing a pink tank-top over shorts, and her mouth was smeared with blood and glittery lipstick. Her feet were bare and dirty, although the purple nail polish on her toes was still shiny. In one half-curled hand was cradled an eyeball.
    She gulped back the rising bile in her throat and examined the teen-ager. There was a hot-pink phone protruding from the front pocket of the dead girl’s khaki shorts. She pulled it free and turned it over in her hands. Shimmery sequins on the back of the phone were interspersed with small gold-colored stickers. She pushed buttons at random and managed to get the screen to light up. It showed one new message. She slid the phone back into the shorts pocket.
    She rose from her crouch and stepped back from the dead bodies. All the strangeness she had seen since she had been woken by the screams had been disturbing but distant, kept separate by walls and windows. Now it was here and real, sprawled on the floor in front of her. The coppery tang of blood floated on the air, and when she inhaled it she felt the last vestige of fear disappear. A tingling like a mild electric shock coursed through her body, and, strangely, she felt hungry.
    She shoved this thought aside and concentrated on what was at hand. Were there more people like this out there, victims and victors? Or was this an isolated incident? Something told her that it wasn’t.
    She stepped over the bodies and looked out into the hall. The dichotomy between the bright lights and the disarray around her was startling. To the right she saw chairs and small tables from a waiting area further down the hall strewn about. A metal cart was upended, towels and sheets