Title: The Genesis Strain
Author: furygrrl
Archive: Just ask first
Rating: R - for language, violence, and gore
Disclaimer: Nothing's mine - not Coca-Cola, not Ford, not the skate park 'Common Grounds', and especially not Evo. Pity...

Thank you reviewers! This is my first foray into horror, so your feedback means a lot.
Purity Black - As for your question, all I can say is... ::insert evil, maniacal laughter here:: :)


Chapter Four: And Then There Were Two

The Daniels' Residence
New York City
June 27th 7:10 a.m.

Evan Daniels felt a finger dig into his ribs.

"Dude, get up."

He groaned and rolled over, but the finger and the voice persisted.

"Dude, get up!"

"Lemme 'lone," Evan grumbled, pulling his blanket over his head. "Sleepin'."

"Yeah, well thanks to all those damn police sirens, I can't," the voice complained, tugging the blanket away. "So get your ass up!"

Evan grumbled something unintelligible, but refused to open his eyes.

"You asked for it, buddy," the voice sighed in amused resignation.

Something wet and decidedly cold splashed across Evan's upper body, shocking him to wakefulness. "Tucker!" he shouted, jumping out of bed, his fingers hurriedly wiping down his bare chest in an attempt to brush away the liquid. "What the hell's your problem?"

Jason Tucker just grinned at his friend, an empty - though still dripping - can of Coke in one hand.

"You better hope that shit doesn't stain," Evan warned, finally realizing what he'd been doused with, his angry eyes going to his spotted sheets. "My mom'll kill me if those don't come clean."

"Oh, chill out, Daniels," Tucker chided, flicking the can into the wastebasket with a snap of his wrist. "Your parents haven't even been gone one full day yet, and already you're worrying."

"Yeah, well if they come home and find this place trashed, my days as a house sitter are over. They'll never let me stay here alone again."

Tucker rolled his hazel eyes and reached for the T-shirt he'd left at the end of his sleeping bag. "You know what you need, man?" he challenged, voice muffled under folds of fabric.

"A new best friend?" Evan quipped sourly.

Tucker made a face. "Ha-ha. No, stupid - a good skate to help get rid of all that negativity." He stood up and grabbed the baggy jeans he'd left draped over Evan's desk. "We could take your parent's car, fly down to Common Grounds, skate the runs before anyone gets there, and then wait for some of the ladies to show up so we can impress 'em with our killer moves."

"Ladies like...Stacey?" Evan queried slyly, scrubbing a hand through his bleached hair.

Tucker shook his head in vehement denial, but wasn't able to hide his sudden blush. "No way man - Stacey Mitchell? Are you crazy?"

"Like a fox, bro. That's how I know you've got it bad for that girl."

"Do not!"

"Do too!"

"Do NOT!"

"You do too, man! You were checking out more than just her moves when she ran the course last night - don't deny it."

"Whatever," Tucker finally surrendered, his harassed expression morphing into curiosity as he looked towards the window. "Damn, another siren. Must have been an accident nearby or something..."

No longer listening now that the argument was won, Evan moved towards his closet and started to pull articles of clothing from their hangers, tossing the shirts that didn't meet with his approval onto his unmade bed. "Common Grounds sounds good, though," he said without looking back at Tucker, his eyes weighing two of his favourite basketball jerseys critically. "I'm just gonna take a shower and then we can -"

A loud pounding at the front door downstairs cut off the rest of his sentence.

"Tuck man, can you get that?"

"You should, dude, it's your house."

"Yeah, but I'm not dressed and you are."

Tucker sighed tragically, swinging Evan's bedroom door open, the pounding from the first story - now louder, more insistent - coming again. "Fine, but it better not be some salesman - or one of those damned religious freaks. Those assholes can never take a hint."

"No worries, bro. Just use my patented, never-fail method guaranteed to get rid of solicitors, telemarketers, and preachy whack-jobs," Evan said in a lecturing tone, a mischievous sparkle lightening his dark coffee-coloured eyes.

"Which is...?"

"Tell 'em you worship the devil, works like a charm."

Tucker choked out a laugh. "Unless a pact with Satan is what they're selling," he joked, his words ending off in a 'Hey!' of surprise when a set of car keys came flying at his face.

"So tell 'em to sign us up for the monthly newsletter," Evan teased, "and while you're at it, see about scoring us some grub."

"Breakfast Burritos - extra hot sauce?"

"Give the man a prize, he knows what I like." Evan crowed jovially, disappearing into the bathroom that adjoined his room as Tucker left.

He locked the door behind him out of habit, hit the play button on the CD stereo sitting on the counter, and dumped his clean clothes next to it. Loud music burst from the stereo's speakers and filled the room, replacing the sound of Tucker charging down the stairs, the rapid paced, contagiously up-beat song urging him to bob his head in time.

He moved towards the bathtub and twisted the taps, activating the showerhead when the water had warmed to a comfortable temperature. Then, stepping into the spray of liquid, his blue boxers left lying like a puddle on the fuzzy oval bathmat, he started washing away the tacky residue of dried soda from his skin.

His thoughts of how to spend another glorious day without responsibilities or parents drifted along with the deafening music, wrapping him in a pleasant haze of inattentiveness, preventing him from noticing the first heavy thumping at the bathroom door a few minutes later.

It wasn't until he started rinsing away the soap that slicked his torso, and the CD quieted to skip to the next track, that the booming noise registered in his ears.

"You back already, Tuck?" Evan hollered in surprise over the new song that blasted from the stereo. "Just gimme a sec - I'll be right out."

He reached for a bottle of shampoo, only to hear the thumping continue unabated.

With a sigh, Evan twitched the shower curtain back an inch and reached a dripping hand over to the stereo's pause button. When the music died, he tried again.

"I'll be right out, bro!"

There was no response; just the insistent pounding of fists slamming against the door's other side.

"Dude, are you deaf? I said I'm almost done!"

The door started to rattle on its hinges.

Muttering a curse under his breath, Evan snatched a towel from the nearby rack and climbed out of the tub, securing the swath of beige fabric around his hips. He stepped over to the door, clicked the lock off, and turned the knob.

"Alright, alright! But if you needed to go so bad, why didn't you just use the bathroom down -"

Evan had only started to open the door when it was pushed inward, the body slamming into his cutting off his words and sending him sprawling backwards. He met the floor, and pain exploded - from the elbow that struck the edge of the toilet, from the side of his head when it cracked against the lip of the bathtub, and from the gouging fingers already digging into his neck.

"Tucker! Get the fuck off me, man!" Evan cried, groping blindly for the hands clawing at his skin while his eyes tried to blink through a curtain of receding stars. " What the hell's gotten into you?"

Tucker, thickly garbled noises issuing from his mouth, pressed his attack. His fingernails raked furrows into Evan's chest, deep enough to draw blood and a shocked scream from the boy underneath him, a scream that sounded again - high pitched and pain-filled - when his teeth found, and bit into, the juncture between Evan's neck and shoulder.

"TUCK-ER!" Evan roared, both in agony and disbelief, as the teeth began gnawing furiously, worrying his flesh like a dog would a bone.

With panicked tears flooding his eyes, and a surge of survival-bred adrenaline shooting through his veins, Evan began fighting for all he was worth, grappling with his friend's hands, trying to push the other boy away, until some dark, inner instinct took hold of him.

Evan screamed, but this time it was a cry of rage.

Spikes made of bone suddenly erupted from every inch of his skin, as sharp as knives, and just as lethal. They burst out of him - and straight through Tucker's body.

Evan felt his childhood friend shudder against him, felt the teeth above his shoulder bite down weakly once more, and then Tucker's movements stilled completely.

For the space of many heartbeats too rapid to count, Evan simply lay under the dead boy, eyes wide and unseeing with shock, breaths coming in ragged gasps. When he realized that the warm wetness sliding over his skin was, in fact, Tucker's blood, he reabsorbed the bone blades and hastily rolled the limp body off of him, rising to his knees as hot tears coursed down his cheeks.

"Oh Tuck...I'm sorry," Evan whispered through trembling lips. "I'm sorry..."

Puncture wounds gaped like little red mouths down the length of Tucker's body, the blood oozing out of them already staining his jeans and brown T- shirt with dark spots. Spikes had also passed through face and skull, disfiguring both. Where there had once been laughing hazel eyes, only sockets of pink jelly remained, and an open mouth, gaping slackly in death, revealed blood-rimmed teeth and the stump of a tongue.

Evan's eyes narrowed through his tears, seeing the insides of his friend's ruined mouth.

That's not something I did... he thought, shocked enough for detachment.

And then something strange about the body clicked.

"Tucker wasn't wearing a brown shirt," he murmured to himself, noticing bits of green - the true colour of the garment - mixed among the darker shade. He stretched out a shaking hand and touched the shirt, his eyes squeezing shut against a rush of vertigo when he realized that the green had been over-saturated with the deeper colour of blood.

Needing to know what had happened to his friend forced his hand to move, and Evan peeled the shirt back fearfully, immediately wishing that he hadn't.

Tucker's stomach had been replaced by a large, raw hole; the flesh so deeply penetrated, so horribly stripped, that the pinkish-white gleam of lower ribs and the tightly packed coils of looping intestine below were visible.

Evan stared at the sight for a few seconds, and then calmly recovered the damage with the sopping fabric, violent shivers beginning to sweep over his near-naked skin. He sat that way for a few moments, until, without warning, he turned his head to one side and threw up. Not having eaten since the night before, the burning spasms were short-lived, and when they'd subsided, he shakily rose to his feet, taking the counter's edge in a death grip as the room began to spin dangerously.

The sound of running water broke through his stunned state, and he vaguely recalled that he hadn't turned the shower off. A glance in the partially steamed mirror hanging over the sink told him he should take advantage of the water; he looked as if he'd been dipped in blood.

With hands that still shook, Evan untied the gore-spattered towel from around his waist, and tossed it over Tucker's battered face, reentering the jet of gushing water once he was free of that sightless, accusing stare.

The red sluiced away in the company of tears hotter than the water as Evan cried, not able to understand what had just happened, not able to grasp the concept that his best friend since second grade was lying dead just beyond the curtain.

He turned the water off, then climbed from the tub, his movements jerky and robotic. A fresh towel somehow found its way into his hands, and he dried his body before pulling on the clothes that still sat, untouched, on the countertop, his insides as numb as his emotions were.

It was while he fumbled with the button-fly of his pants, absently wondering what he should tell the police when he called them, that he heard something crash downstairs, followed by a shrill howl that had his hackles up in an instant.

Evan shot a glance at his dead friend.

Someone messed him up before I did... his inner voice reminded him, filling him with equal parts rage and grief.

Heavy footsteps, sounding like thunder, echoed down the hall, getting closer by the second - but this time, Evan was ready.

As if channeling some measure of the far-distant Wolverine's ferocity, bone spikes, each a foot in length and sharper than razor blades, burst free from the knuckles of either hand, ready for launching.

"Come get some," Evan growled with deadly sincerity, boldly moving back into his room to meet whatever might charge through his open door.

He didn't have long to wait, as first one, then two, mangled and bloodied people burst over the threshold, the man in the lead shrieking with mindless hunger when Evan was spotted.

"Bite this!" the young mutant yelled, horrified by the sight of the maniacal things that had surely mutilated his friend.

A spike suddenly blossomed in the center of the first creature's head as Evan cast it, sending the man stumbling backwards and into the person behind him. The second thing didn't even seem to notice the threat Evan presented, and simply clambered over its fallen companion, gibbering madly.

"Mrs. Silvestri?" Evan croaked weakly, taken aback to see that his next opponent was the little, old, Italian lady he'd lived next door to all his life.

But the kindly wrinkled face that had always had a smile for him over the years was gone, replaced with something twisted and terrible, made all the more so by the blackened, blood-encrusted holes where her nose used to be.

Evan closed his eyes and fired.

There was the sound of a body thudding to the floor, and then nothing - nothing but the pulse pounding like drums in his ears, and the rasping breaths struggling to and from his lungs. He slumped next to his bed, heartsick, dazed, and utterly spent.

A floorboard in the hallway creaked.

"No more," he gasped brokenly, even as another bone dagger slid silently from his wrist. He looked up at his doorway.

There was hesitant movement, like someone creeping, and a flash of something red. It was enough.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" Evan screamed, flinging the spike viciously before burying his face in his hands, overwhelmed by the stench of blood and the sight of death.

There was a moment of silence, and then...

"Evan?"

A voice, soft and sweetly familiar, called to him, sliding like a silvery dart through the haze of grief that surrounded him, forcing him to look up. His eyes narrowed to suspicious slits, then widened in incredulity when the person standing nearby didn't vanish like some impossible dream.

"Jean?" he breathed, still disbelieving as he pushed himself to his feet.

Jean nodded and lowered her outstretched hand, releasing her telekinetic hold on the bone spike she'd caught in midair. "It's me," she said simply, taking a step towards him.

She didn't get any further, as Evan rushed to throw his arms around her, engulfing her in a tight hug, a gesture Jean returned with interest, holding him close. They stood that way for a few seconds, until Jean finally, regretfully, pulled away.

"What are you doing here?" Evan asked before she could speak - not really caring about the how or why, just grateful that she was.

Jean shook her head and grabbed for his hand, her voice urgent. "I'll tell you later, right now we don't have much time. More of them are coming."

"Them?" Evan asked before he realized what she meant. "No. No way," he protested, allowing her to lead him down the stairs. "Do not tell me more of those - those things are running around out there."

"I'm afraid so," Jean murmured, pausing in the foyer, watching for any signs of a threat beyond the smashed front door.

"What...what the hell are they?" Evan asked, feeling glass and splinters of wood prick his toes through the thick socks he wore. He scanned the floor around him, but couldn't see either of his shoes.

Jean glanced at him from over her shoulder, her green eyes dull with sorrow. "I don't know," she admitted softly, giving his hand a squeeze. "The only thing I do know," she continued, "is that we need to get to LaGuardia as quickly as possible."

Before he could question further, she crept out onto the wide cement steps that led to the sidewalk, Evan right behind her, and erected a teke shield around them both.

'Follow me...and don't let go of my hand.'

The telepathic words echoing inside his head, coupled with the sudden, savage tug on his arm, sent Evan into startled flight. He raced alongside his teammate, keeping a firm grip on the fingers interlaced with his own, and saw they were headed towards his parent's black Ford Explorer parked on the opposite side of the street.

Something jumped out from behind another car as they approached, screeching and waving arms that looked as if they'd gone through a meat grinder. It bounced harmlessly off of Jean's barrier before it got too close, but its cry attracted the interest of other lurking predators.

"I can keep them off of us for a few minutes, but not much longer," Jean said when they reached the car, motioning for Evan to unlock the door.

Evan nodded, dug into his pockets - and found them empty. "Oh shit," he moaned, looking back to his house. "The keys are in my bathroom, in Tucker's...in my dead friend's pocket."

"Well, we can't go back now - there are too many of them between us and the house. If I get the car open, can you get it going?"

"I'm - I'm not sure. When I screwed with Scott's car, I had those instructions Kurt downloaded."

Jean, already busy with keeping half a dozen creatures from penetrating her shield, simply gestured at the vehicle, popping the locks of the two doors nearest to them. "Give it a shot," she ordered, scrambling into the back seat.

Evan did as he was told. He climbed into the leather-upholstered interior and used a slender bone spike to pry open the molded plastic under the steering wheel, his fingers immediately digging through the nest of wires that bulged out.

"How's it coming?" Jean panted a minute later, beginning to feel the first stirrings of strain as the swelling number of monstrosities tested her strength.

"Another minute," Evan's muffled voice called back. "I hope," he added, too low for Jean to hear.

He'd found the wires he'd been looking for, stripped away their rubber casings, and was now trying to get them to show signs of life. "C'mon, spark, damn you," he commanded nervously, the wails and howls of the murderous crowd outside intensifying with every passing second.

Time ticked on, the circling maniacs ringed the car in rows three bodies deep, and the shield began to shrink ever smaller.

"Evan...hurry." Jean was gasping now, beads of sweat gathering on her upper lip as she tried to keep her thoughts together. "I can't hold..."

Like a miracle, a spark danced between the metal threads in Evan's hands, and the sound of an engine roaring to life directly after was so unexpected, it startled him. His body jerked, smacking his already sore head against the steering wheel, and sending a searing pain from his bit shoulder lancing through his chest.

But he ignored both. The Explorer was running!

He tied off the wires and sat up, looking to Jean, grimly triumphant.

"LaGuardia?" he asked her, taking the wheel in both hands.

Jean nodded and smiled weakly, turning her attention back to the mangled people still shrieking for their blood. Her eyes narrowed, and her fingertips flicked outward, toppling the heavily pressing crowd like a stack of dominoes.

Evan didn't need to be told twice. He floored the gas pedal, crunched the tires over the bodies too slow to get out of the car's way, and sped off down the street.

Jean sagged wearily into her seat, one hand clutching at her throbbing head. Her eyes were on the path ahead, though, and despite the discomfort, she maintained her connection with her telekinesis, prepared for anything that might present a danger.

"You thinking about stealing a plane?" Evan suddenly blurted into the new silence.

Jean blinked at the back of his head in confusion. "What?"

"At LaGuardia? That's why we're going there right? To get a plane or a helicopter or something?"

"That's not a bad idea," Jean murmured, waving a hand at a trio of creatures that had started running towards the moving vehicle, pushing them back from the road and through a store window. "But no," she continued, relieved to see no signs of pursuit. "That's not the reason."

Evan swerved around a flaming car wreck, and then another. "Then why?" he pressed, meeting Jean's eyes in the rear view mirror.

Her reply was as grimly determined as the look on her face.

"To find Kitty."