Free Scarla by BC Furtney Page A

ran to a half-full container mounted on the chair’s side. He was barely fifty but looked seventy, with wispy grey hair, pallid skin, long trembly fingers. Something caught his eye on a monitor. The punk stood outside, rattling the knob. Locked. Glissberg scowled, pressed the intercom button.
    The correct door is behind you. You may enter.
    He watched the punk look around, thoroughly confused. He took a deep breath, hit the button again.
    The door you are trying is the wrong door. She’s in the room directly behind you.
    The punk nodded, moved to the fourth door. Glissberg eagerly watched Robert rise up from the floor, drenched in gore, ready to pounce. The punk took the doorknob and hesitated, listening. Silence. Knowing for certain she was inside, he couldn’t bring himself to open it, afraid of what he’d see. He had no way of knowing how true that feeling was.
    * * * *
    One guy stood perched atop a white-flecked aluminum ladder, spraying the upper corner. The other guy fiddled with a jam and gave his gun a smack, frustrated. Neither of them heard the front door open. The cleaning lady wheeled a supply cart inside, long black hair framing an obscured face, loose-fitting casual clothes hanging on a tight frame. She closed the door, pushed her cart across the foyer. She paused in the den’s doorway, eyed the painters. The guy on the ladder turned, saw her, went back to work. The other guy paid no attention. She lingered for a moment, then saw the elevator at the rear of the foyer for the first time, glass doors revealing its empty shaft. She reached into her cart and brought out a can of gasoline, moving to the stairs warily, unscrewing the cap. An ear-splitting scream stopped her, followed by the slamming and splintering of a door. She set the can down, pulled her .38 Super from her pants, leveled it at the top of the stairs. Footsteps ran her way. She heard gasping, whimpering, ripping sounds. Her finger tightened on the trigger, hands rock steady. The painters ran into the foyer, still masked. They saw her and froze. She glared at them, turning back in time to see the punk run full-force into the upstairs railing. A hideously-mutated Robert was right behind him, slashing his back to bloody ribbons with clawed fingers. Their weight splintered the delicate wooden balusters and they both careened off the second floor, sailing some twenty seven feet into the foyer.
    The punk face-planted on the marble floor, his skull exploding like a water balloon, body crumbling uselessly on top of it with a hollow splat, dead on impact. Robert landed on all fours, eyes rolled-back white. His ears, fingers, nails, calves and forearms were all elongated, animalistic. His teeth were coal-hued, jagged, gnashing, drooling. Deep blue veins coiled the shaft of his cock like surging electrical wires. He sniffed the painters’ bodies without looking and sprang at them, tearing both their throats out with one swipe of a huge clawed hand. The men fell before they could even scream, their white Hazmat suits flooding red. They were dead in seconds. Robert turned and snarled at the cleaning lady who stood within arm’s reach on the stairs, but she already had him in her sights. He’d just recognized her scent when she pumped thirteen rapid-fire hollow-point slugs into his chest, tapping the last one between his eyes. He tipped like a forest redwood, crashing face-down. She strode over, drilling four more shots into the back of his head and dropping the empty clip on his back.
Welcome to the food chain, motherfucker.
    * * * *
    Michael Glissberg stared in horror as the cleaning lady pulled off her wig and looked up into the foyer cam she knew he was watching. He recognized her instantly. The one who’d caused all the trouble. The one so impressive in her unwillingness to die.
Marla.
She stripped her baggy shirt to reveal a tank top, loaded a new clip, grabbed the gas can, started up the stairs. Glissberg drew a pearl-handled revolver from his desk