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  Fatal Instinct

  ( Jessica Coran - 2 )

  Robert W. Walker

  Robert W. Walker

  Fatal Instinct

  One

  Each day that Gerald Ray Sims awoke in the Federal Penitentiary for the Criminally Insane, he was amazed at having survived another night locked up with Stainlype. Nor could he believe that the authorities, with such total control over him, could do nothing about Stainlype's comings and goings. Would they never understand the nature of the beast? That it was Stainlype and not he who brutally attacked and killed all those defenseless women?

  Each day Gerald spent in captivity gave Stainlype more reason to hate him, just as Matisak had said via prison communique. All of Stainlype's venom, once directed outward, was now cut off with no measure of release, so the anger twisted back on Gerald himself.

  Stainlype was feminine by nature, and when she spoke to Gerald, she called him Stainlype, a clever attempt to throw off the doctors, but the doctors couldn't be that dumb. Arnold and the lady doctor who visited from Washington, D.C., couldn't possibly believe that she-Stainlype-and he-Sims-were the same. No way…

  Gerald was convinced that Dr. Coran had to know the truth. She must understand that Stainlype remained so murderous and malevolent a force that Stainlype simply could not be denied her needs; that when she wanted human flesh to feed on, she would take whatever she craved, whatever was at hand, and currently this meant his flesh. The bite marks all over his body proved it, bites in places not even a contortionist could reach. This Dr. Arnold could not explain away with psychobabble and mumbo jumbo.

  The bites were steadily enlarging whole fleshy chunks ripped from him. The doctors couldn't possibly believe that he'd inflict such pain and torture upon himself, could they?

  “ But you did that with your own teeth, Gerald,” Dr. Arnold had countered.

  “ They're not my goddamned teeth anymore; they're her teeth, and she's using them on me! She hates it here and-”

  “ We provide for all your wants here, Gerald.”

  “ Inside me!” he'd shouted. “She hates being trapped inside me, inside this place, unable to feed.”

  How completely at her mercy he was when Stainlype claimed possession of his hands, his body, his mind and heart. When she used him, he had no power to stop her from cannibalizing those girls. Stainlype had an insatiable appetite for the young ones.

  Now he was locked away with her in cell number HI-32, deep inside the federal facility in Philadelphia. He shared the same cell block with an assortment of infamous serial killers, many of whom were being studied, watched, filmed and tested like so many rats in a laboratory.

  Alongside him was Dominick Jeffries, “the Collector,” and down from him was Mad Matthew Matisak, “Teach” to some, who had terrorized the Midwest with his wide-ranging, blood-draining kill spree in which his victims gave up every ounce to literally quench his thirst for blood. They called Matisak a vampire, a true-life Dracula. Gerald didn't belong here with such monsters; Stainlype did, but not him.

  The last time Dr. Coran had come around she had been nice to him, and she was so pretty, with fresh, smooth skin and soft eyes, a glistening moisture in them, and those lips that she frequently wet with her tongue, all very beautiful, framed as it was in her long, auburn hair, her hazel eyes like a final floral touch. Stainlype, who refused to talk to Dr. Coran or Dr. Arnold anymore, whispered to him that Jessica Coran looked tasty. Stainlype made his eyes bulge as she tried to get a good look at Dr. Coran through the 3-inch-thick glass casing.

  Dr. Coran told him that she liked seeing the recent progress Dr. Arnold and he had made. “Although it's far from a breakthrough,” she'd said, “it does appear that you are finally accepting responsibility for your own actions and that Stainlype has stopped or slowed in her efforts to harm you.”

  That had been a month before. He'd agreed with her, as Stainlype told him to. She was recording their conversation on camera, the lens just outside his glass cage, staring in at him like some ever-present evil eye. He'd forget that the camera was there, running twenty-four hours a day, until she came. Then it bothered him, made him nervous, fidgety.

  Now that Stainlype had been in hiding for a long time, Dr. Arnold had seen this as a sign of progress. Apparently so did Dr. Coran. But Stainlype was very much with him, biding her time, through with doctors and talk. What did the doctors really know? They couldn't feel Stainlype's slug trail inside his head, the leaden feeling when Stainlype invaded the pit of his stomach, twisting and turning through the coiled passageways of his intestines, squeezing at his heart and flitting shadowlike over the irises of his colorless eyes. No, Stainlype was not any weaker, just patiently waiting.

  Dr. Coran made Gerald review in detail what she had done to those women, what she'd done to their flesh, making his body mount them after they were dead, making him perform carnal acts on their corpses. Dr. Coran had a word for it: necrophilia. Knowing that there was a word for it helped just a little, the way a salve helps a sore. Dr. Coran made him tell her about how Stainlype had lured the women to their deaths, how she had struck them, the weapons used and what happened after, about the cannibalism, everything. Dr. Coran told him it was good for him to relive the events and that what she learned from him would help the FBI and law enforcement across the nation, and that his case would be written up in journals. He had wanted to forget, but she had made him remember, and it was only after she came that he learned that the demon within him was a woman.

  Dr. Arnold called that progress.

  Gerald had made it clear to them both that during the horrid attacks, he could see and hear what was going on around him, but that Stainlype had made off with his feelings of touch and taste, his motor capabilities, his powerful arms and legs, the hands used in killing, the mouth and teeth used in eating. Stainlype was now filled with frustration and rage, her anger directed more and more at him, as attested to by the new bites. He'd remained too afraid to tell Dr. Arnold that his worst fears seemed on the verge of coming true, because Arnold would have his guards strap him down again, further restricting Stainlype and adding to her now burning hatred of the body she'd possessed for all these years. Dr. Arnold would take away the few privileges he now enjoyed, a stack of comic books, the occasional newspaper, a deck of cards.

  Stainlype kept up a constant complaint over the fact Gerald had allowed himself to be locked away inside a mountain of mortar, but he felt like a free man by comparison to the Gerald Ray Sims who'd spent almost a year in a rubber-walled cell where he was constantly strapped down.

  “ Free man,” Stainlype scoffed. “What a joke.”

  Dr. Coran worked for the FBI and was at first talking only to Matisak down the way, but then she started coming to see Gerald. She'd told Gerald that she liked him. So where was she now? Quantico, Virginia, Arnold had said, and Arnold was no help, either. He just kept saying, “You get what you give, Gerald. You've got to cooperate with her if you want her to keep coming all the way back here to see you.”

  “ I told you,” he'd replied, “I can't tell her any more about where the bodies are buried. Stainlype warned me that if I told any more, she'll kill me!”

  “ But what can Stainlype do to you? And besides, why should she care, Gerald, what you tell us?”

  “ She cares… she cares plenty.”

  “ Why?”

  “ I don't know why! She just does.”

  Dr. Arnold had gotten up, saying he had more important matters to attend to.

  “ Stainlype will kill me!”

  “ Dr. Coran is not going to return here unless you are willing to talk seriously, Gerald.”

  “ Stainlype still hates her victims, still wants them to suffer, even in death, and wants t
he families to suffer. I know Dr. Coran wants to help people, but Stainlype could give a fuck.”

  That had been the reason he'd given Dr. Arnold, but there was another. Stainlype had told Gerald that she knew what the FBI woman really wanted, that Coran wanted Stainlype’s power for herself; wanted to trade places with Gerald Ray Sims; wanted to accept Stainlype into her life and body, to become one with Stainlype.

  Dr. Coran was going about gathering up as much power as she possibly could, Stainlype had told him. This was why Jessica Coran was interested in such men as Matisak. The good doctor's reasons were far from pure. She, like Stainlype, wanted to take power from men… and maybe Stainlype was right.

  “ How else could she have overpowered Matisak?” Stainlype had asked, hammering home the point. “It was she who put Matisak away.”

  “ She says that we-me and her-could do some good,” he had tried to explain to Stainlype. “That together, we could help stop killings in the future. That's power, Dr. Coran says, to alter what's going to happen.”

  Stainlype caused a milky white froth to bubble up from his stomach and over his lips, and she was shouting at the same time, “That mind-whore is looking for a mental fuck, Gerald. She is fucking your head, you stupid bastard.”

  Down the hall from Gerald's cell, a guard was on the phone with Dr. Gabriel Arnold, excitedly saying, “It's Sims, sir!.. Yes, yes, he's getting agitated again.”

  At the other end, Dr. Arnold leaned back into the folds of his high-backed, cushioned chair, sighed heavily and looked around the book-tiered room with its polished, modern milieu beating out a rhythm that spoke of comfort and longevity. He'd survived as head of psychiatric disciplines at the federal facility since it opened its doors in 1979, and now with a staff numbering seven and two part-time internists, not to mention his teaching duties at nearby Philadelphia University, he was dug in and in control.

  “ Talking to himself again, or rather to Stainlype, is he?” asked Dr. Arnold.

  “ More like cursing and shouting, sir.”

  “ Well, we've all seen that before.”

  “ Spitting up, too, sir.”

  “ Spitting up?”

  “ White stuff, sir, all over the glass.”

  “ Christ,” moaned Arnold. “Look, take two men and get in there. Restrain the bastard before he hurts himself.”

  “ Full restraints, sir?”

  “ Yes. Now go! I'll be right down.”

  “ Yes, sir, Dr. Arnold.”

  Arnold took a moment to clean his glasses with a handkerchief and then wiped excess grease from his forehead. He buzzed his secretary, telling her where he would be, and after a moment's hesitation over a file he'd been looking through before Lewis had called, he got up and went for the elevator that would carry him to lockup. When he got to level H, the doors opened and he stepped out, calling to a guard with keys to follow him. He had to pass through three security checks and locked doors. Disregarding any paperwork, as it was in the nature of an emergency, he was passed through without the usual sign-ins, which even he had to adhere to, under normal circumstances.

  Over the comlink, he could hear the commotion up ahead. Lewis was calling for backup and, thinking himself off the comlink, he added, “Shit, we got to jump through hoops every time one of these freaks goes off his bean.”

  Arnold had just reached one of the TV monitors when his attention was riveted by a strange sound like that of a huge kettledrum. Arnold stared in horror, seeing Sims repeatedly throw himself viciously against the glass, totally out of control, sending up a chorus of gong sounds.

  “ Lewis! Lewis!” Arnold began screaming through the comlink, and the entire cell block went into bedlam. Over the chorus of catcalls, Arnold clearly heard Matt Matisak's voice, shouting, “Do it, Gerald! Do it right! Do it, babe!”

  Sim's face was already a mask of red, his nose broken and blood covering his scalp, when Dr. Arnold stormed to the guards who stood transfixed and staring in at the sight of a man killing himself against the blood-streaked, smeared glass.

  The pooooooong, pooooooong, pooooooong beat was punctuated by a bone-crushing counterpoint-Sims' skull cracking. Any normal man would by now be sprawled out and unconscious, but some demonic force within kept hurtling the man's body-as if independent of him-into the killing wall of glass. With each crashing gong sound, the other inmates cheered. Matisak roared out, “Stainlype one, Gerald zip.” Hideous laughter filled the cell block.

  Then the pongs stopped abruptly and Gerald Ray Sims' bloodied form slid Jell-O-like down the face of the filthy glass and into a formless heap on the floor.

  “ Get the hell in there!” cried Arnold.

  Lewis had been fighting with the key in an uncontrollable hand, but now the cell door came open.

  “ Careful, Lewis!” shouted Matisak from two cells away. “Sims may be dead but Stainlype isn't!”

  “ Shut up, Matisak!” Arnold replied.

  “ You touch Sims and Stainlype's going to get you!” Matisak shouted, and laughed, causing a chain reaction of barking and laughter from the row of inmates.

  Arnold ordered the other two guards inside with Lewis. They must get Sims to the infirmary immediately. Lewis, without touching the body, replied, “He's dead, sir.”

  “ Check for a pulse!” shouted Arnold, pushing his way past the guards and doing it himself, getting Sims' blood all over his hands and white lab coat.

  “ Watch you don't get his blood on you, boys!” shouted Matisak, whose voice was ominously muffled here in Sims' cell. “One drop of it and you could be Stainlype. It's like AIDS, you know, what he has… contracted through the blood. If you want. Dr. Arnold, I'll drink it all up for you, so you don't have to worry.”

  Arnold was trying desperately to ignore Matisak. “He's dead, all right… Bloody fool killed himself.”

  “ Stainlype killed him!” Matisak shouted.

  “ Well, don't just stand about, you men!” said Arnold. “Get this… cleaned up.”

  The guards hesitated, not wanting to touch Sims. Hardened, seasoned men, they shied from any thought of touching him. They had all come to feel superstitious about this thing that had hold of Sims. Could it possibly be catching? Sims had said it, and now Matisak said it, and what they had seen also said it could be.

  “ Lewis?”

  Lewis, the senior man, crouched over the body and told Dr. Arnold it would be taken care of.

  “ There'll be papers to fill out, reports, no doubt an investigation into the man's death.”

  Lewis said to another of the guards, “Haines, get a stretcher from the infirmary. Malone, get what you need and clean this place up.”

  Both junior men looked relieved and neither man hesitated leaving. Dr. Arnold quietly and slowly left behind them, leaving Lewis alone with the devil at his feet. A creeping, eerie feeling began to invade Lewis' insides, moving outward from his abdomen, climbing up his spine one vertebra at a time as his skin began to prickle, sweat and cool. He felt an odd sensation verging on fear, an emotion he had never allowed a moment's sway with him in his life. He recalled Sims' left eye, just before he died, looking out at him as if he were the only man in the room. Lewis thought he had seen something there, a ghostly sliver of curling smoke wisping up and away from the raw, red cranium, like a lingering ring of smoke… something escaping.

  When they carried Sims' body out on the stretcher, his disfigured face was covered with a white sheet. A brownish purple stain rose and grew where the sheet clung to the sticky face. Carrying Sims out past the other madmen brought on a new wave of cheers, hoots, laughter and remarks.

  “ Did he shit his pants?”

  “ What're you going to do with him?”

  “ Dissect him, dummy. We're all going to have our heads cut open and studied at close range someday.”

  “ Is that true, Lewis? Lewis?”

  Matisak had the last word as they passed from the cell block. “You know Stainlype's got you now, don't you, Lewis?”?

  Two
/>   The heavyset man in the seat beside her kept staring, and his eyes played over Dr. Jessica Coran's inconvenient, pearl-handled cane. It was a gift from those who knew that her long recovery had been filled with anguish and that, at least physically, she meant to overcome the most awful mistake and setback of her life.

  She wrestled the cane back from below the seat where it rested no better than in her lap, now finding a place alongside her. The Boeing 707 was a lumbering pachyderm here on the taxi strip, and she still hadn't gotten her seat belt fastened. A wary flight attendant prompted her now to do so, and she tried to return the plastic smile.

  It would be a long short flight from D.C. to New York City. The big man beside her initiated a prolonged smoker's cough and afterward began pontificating on the “unconstitutionality of nonsmoking rules aboard aircraft.”

  She hated flying commercial and especially coach, even more so when she was working, preferring instead a military transport with seats as hard as a '57 Chevy's. Despite the so-called bennies of a modern jet-plush seats, films. Bach at fifty thousand feet and a cuisine slightly less appetizing than a Big Mac and fries-she'd take the gutted F-14 on the runway at Quantico any day. Any day it was available, that is.

  She did her level best not to meet the eyes of the stranger beside her or to encourage his smoking speech, tearing open her briefcase as a clear sign that she was occupied.

  The evening before, Chief Theresa O'Rourke had handed her everything the FBI had on the maniac who was now terrorizing New York, a horrid case of serial murder and cannibalism. The unknown predator stalking the city was, like Gerald Ray Sims, a flesh-eater, the kind of killer whose mind-set and M.O. were startlingly similar to Sims'. She ought to know. She had logged hour upon hour with Sims at his cell in Philadelphia, taping his various confessions, and in a rare instance or two, catching Stainlype's voice on the tape as well.

  She had become something of an expert on madness. It had become her metier, along with her expertise as a medical examiner for the FBI.