CHAPTER SIX

“All I know is she was some kind of freak,” Caleb told the female cop. “She called herself Drag Thing.”

“Drag Thing?” Teri’s eyes widened.

Caleb peered suspiciously at her. “Do you know her?” he asked.

“No. But there have been some funny stories circulating....” Teri’s thoughts flashed back to the drag queen those street punks had described to her the night before, and to the peculiar creature she and Jake had encountered dancing through the fog a few minutes ago. She had a feeling that they might have just crossed paths with the mysterious Drag Thing.

Her partner had the same idea. “Do you think...?” Jake started to say, but Teri interrupted him with a shake of her head. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she did not want to share that possibility with the man in front of her.

“So, what exactly were you and the lady doing when this Drag Thing came up?” she asked instead.

“We were just standing here outside the bar, talking,” Caleb said, his expression a picture of innocence. “You know, her place or mine, that sort of thing.”

She studied him with a vague sense of suspicion. Something about this guy rubbed her the wrong way. He was good looking, she supposed, if you liked the lounge lizard type, with too pale skin and too perfectly colored hair that ought to have shown at least a strand or two of gray to judge from the lines around his eyes. And there was that beak of a nose...I’ll bet he thinks it looks noble, she thought wryly.

His story didn’t seem quite right either. His face was freshly washed, his hair still damp where it lay glued too prettily to his brow. Did a man who was just mugged and woke up to discover his lady friend had been killed, rush to wash his face first thing, and arrange his hair? And there was a smear of red on his collar—not blood, but lipstick, she thought, or it might have been rouge.

He followed her glance and saw it too. “It was a very friendly conversation,” he said with a smarmy grin. She noticed that when he smiled, his lips forgot to inform his eyes. In her book, the guy was definitely a creepo.

“Then what happened?” she asked coldly.

“Then what happened will amaze you,” he said. “This thing, Drag Thing, she came up out of nowhere, I didn’t even see her approach, and without any warning or any provocation, she started swinging. She just swatted Melissa there like she was a tennis ball, must have knocked her ten feet before she landed. So, I started to try to help her, you know, like a guy is supposed to do. I said, ‘hey, you can’t slap a woman around like that,’ and the next thing I know I am waking up on the pavement. She must have hit me with a rock. Plus, she stole my money while I was out.”

They were interrupted by an abrupt squeal of rubber on pavement and a red Mustang slid to a stop at the curb. A tall, wild looking woman with spiky orange hair leaped out of the car and ran toward them. Before Teri could react, the woman had attacked Caleb Wald.

“You filthy scum,” Janet Jackle shrieked, clawing at his eyes, “You rotten piece of shit. What have you done to my Melissa?”

“Get her off me,” Caleb yelled, frantically trying to protect himself.

It was all Teri and Jake could do to get the two separated. “Who are you?” Teri demanded when they finally had them apart.

“Janet Jackle. I’m Melissa’s partner. She called me and said that he was....” For the first time she looked past them and saw the paramedic and the EMT kneeling over Melissa. She let out another scream. “Melissa! You’ve killed her!” She renewed her efforts to get at her nemesis.

“She’s not dead,” EMT Luis Cordero, said.

There was a sudden loud explosive noise, like a string of firecrackers going off, pop, pop, pop. Teri dropped into a defensive crouch, her hand going automatically to her gun.

“What the hell?” she said, looking around for their attacker.

After a second or two, Jake sniffed the air and grimaced. “Someone farted. I mean, really farted,” he said.

“Jesus, you aren’t kidding.” Teri wrinkled her nose in disgust at the noxious cloud enveloping them.

“She’s alive?” Wald asked in a tremulous voice, so alarmed by that news that he hardly even noticed Curly’s odiferous contribution to the scene.

“Just barely. She seems to be in a coma, though,” the paramedic said.

“You did this, you bastard,” Janet cried, struggling even more fervently to get at Caleb.

“No, not me.” Wald backed away even though Jake still held her firmly. “Like I just told the cop lady there, it was this giant drag queen that hit her. Drag Thing, she calls herself.”

“Liar!”

“It’s true,” a male voice said from nearby.

Teri looked in the direction of the voice and saw a man in a black suit—three men in identical black suits, actually. Two of them were enormous, bull-muscled characters who would have looked more at home in wrestling trunks. The one who stepped forward, though, the one who had spoken, was an Ichabod Crane look-alike, with thick glasses and a funny little mouth that reminded her of something, although she could not at the moment think what that was.

“What he says is true,” Sylvester said. “We saw it happen, my friends and I. We were driving by and we saw this man and the woman talking, all friendly like, and suddenly this enormous woman—well, she was dressed like a woman, anyway, but I daresay she did not really look like one, not like any woman I have ever seen—anyway, she came out of the fog without any warning and jumped all over them, swinging her pocketbook like a deadly weapon. I am surprised she didn’t kill them both. It was quite alarming, really.”

“What did you do when you saw this assault taking place?” Teri asked.

He shrugged. “We wanted to help, of course,” he said, “You know, good Samaritans, and all that. But by the time we found a place to park the car and came back, the woman was already unconscious and he was in the bar looking for help. And the drag queen had gone.”

“Where did she go?” Teri asked.

He shook his head. “It’s hard to say, with all this fog. She just disappeared, like a wisp of smoke,” he said.

Pop, pop, pop, just like before. Jake wrinkled his nose again. Jesus, what a stench, he thought. This guy had a serious problem.

“See, it’s just like I told you,” Caleb said. He was relieved that the government boys had stepped in to alibi him; but the news that Melissa was alive was a real downer. When she recovered, she would give the lie to his story.

If, he quickly amended. If she recovered. He’d just somehow have to make sure that didn’t happen.

Janet had stopped struggling with the two police officers but the look she gave Caleb was no less hate-filled. “What did you say she called herself?” she asked, “this attacker thing of yours?”

“Drag Thing,” Caleb said. “And, believe me, she is no thing of mine.”

The medics had managed to get Melissa onto a stretcher and they started with her toward the waiting ambulance.

“Let me go, I’m not going to hurt him. I could care less about him,” Janet said, struggling once again to free herself. “I’m going with her.”

Teri and Jake exchanged glances. After a moment’s hesitation, Teri nodded and Jake let go of her. Janet hurried after the two men with the stretcher but before she caught up with them she paused to look back and say, “And then I’m going to find this Drag Thing, the one who did this to her.”

“Look,” Teri said, “There’ll be no vigilante nonsense. Leave this to the police.”

“That’s our job,” Jake added.

“Take my word for it, I am going to make it my job. I am going to find Drag Thing and when I do, I swear I am going to kill him, whoever she or he is,” Janet said.

“Not if I beat you to it,” Caleb said.

Janet gave him a look of pure loathing. It was hard to imagine her and this bastard sharing a common goal. “No,” she said emphatically, “he’s mine.” Without waiting for a reply, she climbed into the ambulance after the stretcher. In a moment it was on its way, siren wailing, lights flashing.

“Whew,” Teri said, shaking her head. “What a screwy mess.”

“Who do you suppose this Drag Thing is?” Jake asked.

“Who—or what?”

“Oh, oh.” Jake looked over her shoulder as a van pulled up to the curb. “Channel 2 News, on the scene.”

“You deal with them,” Teri said, “I’m going to get some statements.”

When she turned toward the three men in the black suits, however, they were gone. Caleb Wald stood alone. “Where did they go?” she asked him.

He gave her a blank look. “They just vanished. Into the alley, maybe. Like that Drag Thing.”

* * * *

Every trace of Alley Thing had been destroyed: records, samples, slides, compact discs, even the hard drive from the computer. The laboratory counters and the floors were littered with broken glass and shredded paper. The sinks were filled with the ashes of burnt documents and journals. Blood samples, sera, everything liquid, had gone down the drains. The room positively reeked with the acrid stench of chemicals and smoke and electrical short circuits.

Janet did not know exactly what it was that Caleb had done that had so angered Melissa. The telephone connection had been broken before Melissa could tell her that. She did know, however, that it had been Melissa’s intention to destroy the project. That much Melissa had managed to tell her on the phone. “I’m going to destroy everything, every trace of Alley Thing,” she had said. “There must be no trace of our research left for Caleb to find. The formula will exist nowhere but in my mind, where he will never find it.”

Which told Janet as well that whatever Caleb had been up to, it must have been nefarious indeed, for Melissa to decide on anything so drastic as the destruction of her pet project.

The last thing Melissa had said, her very last word before the phone connection had been lost, was, “Warfare.”

Janet could not begin to comprehend what that meant. She could not see how their project was in any way connected to warfare. Nevertheless, on the ride to the hospital two hours earlier, she had vowed to an unconscious Melissa that she would carry out her wish.

She had done so with a vengeance. Two years of diligent, seemingly endless work, all those nights working late here in the lab, had been erased, destroyed completely. But it was worth it to Janet just to imagine when the loathsome Caleb Wald came here later, as she had no doubt he would do, and discovered what she had done.

“Take that, you bastard,” she muttered aloud. “You’ll reap no profits from my Melissa’s misery.”

Only two things were left for her to deal with: She Cat, watching with intense interest from her cage, and the vial with the last of their B test serum, the serum that had caused such startling changes in the creature.

She found a syringe in a drawer and carefully filled it with the remains of the serum. For just a moment she hesitated. She knew that she was taking an enormous risk, without any clue as to what the final consequences might be. The serum had never been tried on a human subject, and certainly, the results with She Cat were enough to give one pause. How a human would react to it was anyone’s guess.

To her way of thinking, however, she had no alternative. She had a job to do, and that job was going to require something more than her ordinary woman’s strength. She had made the unconscious Melissa another promise as well.

“I swear to you, I will get him,” she had vowed while she wept silently, holding her beloved’s hand. “I will find this Drag Thing, and I will make him pay for what he has done to you.”

Just thinking of her darling, lying helpless and unconscious in a hospital bed, made her heart ache with anguish. Was she in pain? Was she aware of her surroundings? Did she hear my vows?

“I must go to her,” she said aloud. “I must tell her that her wishes have been carried out.” As soon as she had finished here.

But first...she put the tip of the syringe against her arm. Her hand shook. She paused, contemplating in dread what she was about to do. There was no telling what would happen, no way of knowing what the serum might do to her, and no way of undoing her actions once they were done. They had never yet even thought of an antidote to the serum. She knew that Melissa would tell her she was being rash, reckless, even, courting unknown danger.

I must, she swore silently. It’s the only way. I must do this, she told herself yet again.

She gritted her teeth with determination and resolutely plunged the syringe into her arm. There was an immediate sensation of heat, starting at the injection site and spreading swiftly up her arm. It felt as if her veins were on fire, a blaze that shot up her arm and her shoulder in quick succession, and through her entire body.

Oddly, she welcomed the burn even as it flamed through her. Whatever happened to her, she was confident of one thing: she would be far stronger afterward than she had ever been before, stronger and more aggressive, and she would need that strength, and that disposition, to do what she had to do. Even as she thought that, she seemed to feel stronger already, physically more confident, as if she could tackle anything, anyone.

“Now then, Miss Drag Thing,” she said aloud, grinning fiercely, “Let me tell you something, bitch: you can swap your frocks and you can trim your tresses, but you can not hide from me. You are out there somewhere and I will find you, I swear it. I will make you pay for what you have done.”

There was one last thing still that she must do. She had put it off for as long as she could, but she could avoid it no longer. Tears welled up in her eyes as she turned to She Cat’s cage.

From within the cage, She Cat watched her warily. Oddly, for the first time in all these months, Janet regarded the animal with a sense of affection. The cat had been Melissa’s. In a sense, She Cat was the child of Melissa’s brilliant research. Destroying her seemed almost like a betrayal, and so cruel.

She could not leave the cat here, however, for Caleb Wald to find. He would only need to draw some blood and have it analyzed to have the Alley Thing formula at his disposal. At all costs, she must not allow that to happen. Whatever he was up to, and she had no doubt he was up to something nefarious, his schemes must be thwarted.

Looking at the cat, a vague memory stirred in her mind. What was that poem she had always liked as a child? She thought a moment, dredging her memory. A cat...a pussycat...pussy....

It came to her in a flash, and she recited in a loud voice, “The owl looked up to the stars above, and sang to a small guitar, O lovely pussy, O pussy my love, what a beautiful pussy you are, you are, what a beautiful pussy you are.”

Sudden inspiration struck her. No, she would not destroy the cat. She Cat had been Melissa’s child, her brilliant creation. Now she would be her creator’s avenger.

“You are going to help me find him,” she told the watching beast. She opened the door of the cage. Instead of attacking the way she usually did, She Cat sat unmoving, as if she had understood Janet’s words and was waiting to see what would happen next.

Janet reached inside with the vial and upturned it, and sprinkled the last few drops of the serum over the cat’s head.

“I christen thee Missy,” she intoned in a somber voice. “That was my darling’s suggestion, do you remember, Missy? From this moment forward, you will be Missy Hyde.”

Far from being annoyed by the drops that fell upon her, the newly named Missy Hyde seemed to understand and approve of what Janet was saying. She licked a droplet from one whisker and made a sound that might have been a purr or the distant rumble of a subway train.

On an impulse, Janet seized the cage from the counter and, hugging it to her bosom, spun around lightly. “What a beautiful pussy you are, you are, what a beautiful pussy you are,” she sang. Missy Hyde added an enthusiastic yowl to the chorus.

Janet paused to crush the now empty serum vial under her foot with a pop and took one final glance around. It felt to her like she had already grown taller. She seemed to be looking down on things from a different perspective, and the cage that had been heavy a moment before now felt as light as paper. Overflowing with new-found confidence, she strode briskly to the door.

“Ready or not, Drag Thing,” she said, flinging the door open with a violence that sent it crashing against the wall, “here come Dr. Jackle and Missy Hyde.”

But first, she must tell Melissa what she had done, and introduce her to Missy Hyde. She must go to Melissa—to the hospital.

* * * *

Gladys Kravitz—Nurse Kravitz here in her domain—came along the hospital corridor with a full bedpan in her hands and saw that the light was on in Room 812, a faint sliver of yellow showing under the door.

That is odd, she thought. That patient is in a coma, why would she have a light on in the wee small hours of the morning? Besides, she was sure the light had not been on when she had gone by just a few minutes earlier. The door had not been closed then, either, she realized, as it was now. As it should not be. A violation of hospital regulations, regulations it was her sworn duty to uphold.

She pushed the door open and stepped cautiously into the room. It was only the bedside light that was on, and its pale yellow glow left most of the room in shadow. At first, she did not see anyone. Then with a start she realized that there was a man in bed with the patient, cradling her in his arms. As she gaped in astonishment, he sobbed softly and whispered something to the unconscious woman.

“What are you doing?” Nurse Kravitz demanded angrily. She brooked no hanky-panky on her shift and it was well past visiting hours.

He half sat up. It was not a man after all, she realized belatedly, but a woman, an enormous woman—indeed, a devilish parody of womanhood in huge baggy overalls and a voluminous sweat shirt that for all their considerable size both nevertheless managed to look too small for her immense body. Her hair was a wiry tangle of copper, her angry eyes flashed in the dim light with green fire. Nurse Kravitz’s flesh crawled as those eyes fell upon her, and the bedpan sloshed in her hands.

“Get out,” the woman said. “Leave us alone.”

“I will not,” Nurse Kravitz replied stoutly, summoning her resolve. Years of nursing often-irascible patients had made her steadfast in the performance of her duty. She had weathered every possible type of crisis and she was not about to be intimidated, not even by this ferocious gargoyle.

“Don’t make me show you my pussy,” the woman on the bed said, her voice a raspy snarl.

Nurse Kravitz’s cheeks flamed. “Don’t be crude,” she snapped, but even as she said this, something stirred in the darkness by the bed. “What’s that?” she demanded. She sniffed the air. “Have you brought an animal into this room? Hospital regulations forbid....”

A chain clinked noisily and a shadow separated itself from the other shadows on the floor and slunk toward her. A cat, Nurse Kravitz thought—or some kind of feline, but it was far too large, she realized at a second glance, to be an ordinary house cat. It was the size of a small collie, its unkempt fur orange and white and black. And it smelled, it positively reeked, the ugly scent of wet, dirty hair and something else. The smell of blood—the unsettling thought jumped into her mind.

The animal advanced a step or two further in her direction. The chain that tethered the monstrous beast to the bed clinked again as it reached its full length. Nurse Kravitz stared, frozen in horror as the monster cat regarded her with eyes a malevolent yellow-green.

The woman on the bed sat up and grinned wickedly at her. “I warned you, you pestiferous old bitch,” she cried. “Here you are, Missy, go show the nurse lady what a beautiful pussy you are, you are, what a beautiful pussy you are.”

She, laughed, a witch’s cackle, and reached down to unclasp the chain. In happy anticipation, the cat curled her lips back to reveal teeth that would have done a shark proud and crouched, ready to leap.

With a shriek of terror, Nurse Kravitz dropped the bedpan she was holding and ran for her life. A mocking laugh and a beastly howl pursued her along the corridor.

* * * *

Peter laughed in bitter disappointment when he saw the devastation in the lab. His last hope was dashed.

They were gone. Everything was gone: women, cat, cages. The laboratory was a wreck. Burnt papers, gutted computers and broken vials were strewn everywhere, and the air was foul with the stink of smoke and spilled chemicals.

He stared around the room in dismay. Somehow when he had awakened once more at the apartment, his head splitting, a large part of the night missing from his memory, he had hoped against hope that he would find an answer here, a solution to the fantastic events that were happening to him.

Fragments of glass crunched under his foot as he stepped toward the empty counter where the cat’s cage had stood only the night before. What was he to do now? Where was he to turn? What must his next move be?

“Don’t move,” a voice said behind him.

He spun around to find a trio of dark-suited men filling the office doorway. The man to the forefront was tall and bone thin, while the two behind him were gorillas whose bulging muscles threatened the seams of their cheap suits. One of the gorillas had a gun trained on him, but it was the tall skinny one who appeared to be in charge.

“Who are you?” Peter asked of him. “What are you doing here?”

“That’s my line,” the tall one said. “Put your hands in the air.” Peter did as he was told. “That’s better. Now, who exactly are you, and what are you doing here?”

“I’m the janitor. I came to clean up.” Peter kept his hands obediently in the air, but he had an odd sense of something rising up within him, some elemental force that threatened to take him over.

Not now, he thought desperately, not here. He swallowed and tried to breathe deeply, to calm himself. The angry thing within him retreated watchfully.

“I would say it looks like you cleaned up, all right.” Sylvester glanced toward the hall doorway. “Do you know this guy?” The trio moved aside and a fourth man stepped into the room.

For a moment, Peter did not recognize him.

“He’s the janitor all right.” Caleb Wald nodded. He turned to Peter. “Who did this?” he demanded. “Where is she?”

“Who?” Peter asked. “You mean those women doctors? I haven’t seen them. I don’t understand what this is all about. I came in just a minute ago to clean as usual, and I found the place like this. There was no one here, no one that I saw, until you guys showed up. Can I put my hands down?”

Lawrence glanced at Sylvester, who nodded and motioned for Caleb to come the rest of the way into the room. Caleb’s nostrils flared angrily as he looked around at the destruction wrought in the laboratory.

“Alley Thing is destroyed, every bit of it,” he spat out. “That bitch! I should have knocked the bejesus out of her instead of the other one.” He picked up the cover of a notebook from the floor. Nothing. Every page had been ripped out, probably included in that smoldering pile of ashes in one sink. He flung the plastic binder aside with an angry oath and looked around, his gaze falling on Peter. He had all but forgotten him.

“Get out of here,” he ordered.

“I should clean things....”

“He said out,” Lawrence insisted and waved the gun menacingly.

“And don’t come back, either,” Caleb Wald added.

“Does this mean I’m out of a job?” Peter asked in dismay.

“You’re lucky you’re not out of this world,” Wald said. “And if you don’t get out of her pretty fast, you may be.”

Peter sidled carefully past him and into the hall, half expecting the goons to change their mind and shoot him. Not until he was in the elevator and the door closed did he begin to breathe easily again.

Only for a moment, however. Now that he was out of danger, his anger came to the fore, and with it, that looming sense of another presence inside him, a presence demanding to be released.

Alley Thing. The words sprang into his mind from nowhere. Drag Thing?

As if in answer, a voice inside his head seemed to say, Hello, Bunny.