The Good Death Box Set: A Hard SciFi Science Fiction Series
Page 16
“Harrison, c’mon, man, you’re talking about like 50 years-worth of buried people here. These bodies are contaminated too. The bones of that one man we just dug up are laced in enough diluted acid he looks like a glazed donut. Come on, man. If we burn these people we’ll release stuff into the atmosphere that…” Jack hung his head. Harrison was studying his face.
“I know there are risks to it and the families will be mortified when they find out. But if we don’t, do you have any idea what she will do to them?” He looked down into the face of an unearthed teenager that had been killed by car accident injuries a few months ago. His casket had been clawed open in a frenetic scramble to get the drugs in him before the police combed by this neighborhood. He’d been stuffed so full of cocaine that it was coming up his throat and spilling onto his stained with decay suit like sand from the broken glass. Harrison swallowed, wondering who the young man had been. Could he have guaranteed him a restful eternity in the clawed alabaster casket if he’d just never married Leona Kelley? Never given her a share in his wealth that had financially enabled her to become who she had become?
Jack didn’t have words.
“I have a few ideas.” It was Dr. Joseph Kingsley’s voice. Harrison spun on his heel. There stood the old doctor with Dexter who carried a baseball bat and was panting in horror at the hundreds of caskets strewn about the cemetery on top of the soil.
“Joseph. You’ve come back?” Harrison dropped the gas drum back into his truck.
“Yeah. We’re not here on leave, granted. We broke loose. Came here to rendezvous with you about the daily activity of the former Mrs. Kelley. She’s taken Jane.” Joseph hung his head.
“She what?” Harrison’s knees threatened to buckle and he landed on the backs of his arms against the truck bed.
“You heard him, man.” Dexter was chewing his lip. Harrison nodded.
“You came here to rejoin the fight, try and trace her trail? Dude, this is the first place to lose the trail. You’ve walked into a warzone that mingles Normandy, Vietnam, the Russian Ballet and every drug skirmish that has ever darkened the Colombian sidewalk in a chaos blender that spews Exorcist pea soup all over any clear view of tomorrow.” Harrison shook his head, lips turning blue.
“C’mon, man, you gotta fill us in on what little you do know. If we can trace the insurgents spilling into Shreveport from the coast, we might be able to track Leona back to her private address.” Dexter was unwilling to let go of the tiny scrap of hope he’d latched onto.
Harrison nodded.
“Yeah, that’s a thought. This is the down low on the most I know for certain. Shreveport is the cesspool dump for all the contraband they can get their hands on. See, Leona isn’t just a mob lord. She happens to be a piracy ring mob lord. The whole coast is overrun. A private news crew tried to shoot live footage back to CNN on Tuesday and she single handedly took them out with a barber’s razor and impaled them along the beach. I heard some people saying she stuffed their gaping mouths full of Alka-Seltzer and LED watches so that they would glow, foam, and tick the hour at night, and when the seagulls came to peck at them they’d bloat and burst their bellies. That might be the only way you’d even get a chance of snapping a picture of her. She runs by that beach a lot stuffing gobs of Alka-Seltzer and candy into their wide, dead mouths and shooting Roman candles off from their eye sockets. She calls them her Jack-o-Lanterns. They’ve become a real crowd pleaser to the pirates anyway.” The last few weeks had not been kind to Harrison Kelley.
Joseph came and stood over the dead youth. He noticed that the air was balmy. That should have summoned a host of flies about the young man’s putrid flesh. The cocaine pouring out of him had scared the bugs away. There was a silver sheen on the rest of his skin, something more than rottenness. Something that had a harsh bleach-like smell to it. No pestilence would want to snack on something like that.
“We don’t have a choice. All of you better listen up. I hate to get preachy, but this is where it stands. If we don’t do something, if we don’t risk our own skin under Leona’s razor, we’re looking at something worse than annihilation. This crazy hag won’t let us die. That’s what makes her unique in comparison to all the other sick minds that have ever risen to the self-appointed Throne of Terror, yeah? No, we might reach clinical death several times over at her hands. Harrison knows all about it, don’t you?” Joseph turned to look at Harrison who had bowed over staring down at the boy. Dexter drew closer.
“He’s right. This kid… I knew him. We had classes together at the tech school. He was in my ICU for a few nights before he died from his car crash injuries… I forget his name. I’ll never forget his face, though. Not now.” Dexter paused studying the boy’s face.
“She didn’t feel compelled to smuggle her drugs here because she was worried about the police busting her on them. Leona’s too dramatic to be that sneaky. I think that she wanted us to find him like this. That this is a message. She will murder us. All of us. Men, women, children. Wives, brothers, parents… While we weep over our dead, she will have just begun tearing us apart. This kid’s mom is somewhere right now grieving for her son and when the word gets out that even in death he’s not safe? Can you imagine what that will do to her? I know I can. See, Jane is going to die. But not just die…” Dexter’s whole body bowed over.
Harrison watched his face.
“Jack. Get those road flares out of my glove box. What we’re doing is probably a death sentence, but we’ve got to light these bodies up. She has to see the fire. Hell, let them see it from space. We’ll clean these people away, save them by fire and ashes from her hands. When she sees the lengths we are willing to go for the people that we love, she will be enticed to come after us. Then, we’ll be ready. Not cowering here in Shreveport struggling to hang on to a City that is sinking like a blood-bathed Atlantis. We’re going to New Orleans, gentlemen. If she wants us, she’ll have to win us. In a fight like there has never been on Earth before. God help us. God help the people who come after us. They’ll be the ones left holding the bag, you know. Hopefully, the blood we shed will be enough to buy them a better world than the one we’ll leave behind.”
*****
Chapter 8
She felt herself sliding through hands and feet and severed flesh. This was a mudslide of the Dead, smearing on her like pencil lead ground onto the paper. She wept bitterly and crawled with the desperation of a frog in the desert sand. The Dolls’ knives whirred behind her, clinking together, sometimes fading out and then growing louder.
Jane looked up. There was only darkness to see, but she felt something. Like moist air, a breeze passing through her hair. She could almost see a light. Blue like bruises, gray like tears, almost imaginary, but still there. There was the scent of earth and decay and the sharp smell of electrical fire.
She dared not stop for a breath. It had been this way for hours. Crawling through the dead, trying to evade the sword. Her pursuers may have night vision, but their bodies were crippled. The passage had been constructed with the torsos and entrails of mutilated people. It was slippery with blood and natural fluids. This had been her saving grace, brutal as it was.
Her face began to burn and she choked back a strange bird-squalling sob and covered her face with her arms. There was something down here. Chemical. Burning without the warmth and light that made fire comforting. Now Jane Lewis knew what Hell was. That’s where she had gone.
There was a sound like a sack tearing open. The blue light became a pale gray, brighter now. She hadn’t been looking for an angel or an end. One with broken bleeding teeth and garbled speech was the last she’d have expected if she had. Strong hands reached down and plucked her free of the onslaught.
She rolled into the graveyard and the soaked clay. Her first reaction was to swing her right fist up and bust the chops of the person that had pulled her free of the Pit. There was no hope for deliverance when one faces an impossible Fate like that. Her soul was somewhere else. Somewhere hovering on memor
ies and fond smiles of loved ones. This death was a deeper kind, one her body still felt. She could see her arms died purple-black by rotten blood, wrists gashed and bruised by shards of broken bones. The rank smell made her reel and throw up all over a tombstone, highlighting a forgotten soul’s name in her refuse. Such was the memory of those who had consorted with Leona Kelley. There was no light at the end of this tunnel, not that Jane Lewis could see.
No retaliation made her wonder. Wouldn’t a hungry assailant have dived on her by now? Yet the woman that had plucked her free of the Deep stood halfway bowed over with a hand extended in a plea for parley. Her other hand clutched at her face, holding her jaws as she grimaced painfully. Now Jane could see the reason for her pain and the physician’s instinct took the place of her survival scramble.
“Oh God. Okay, here, I’m sorry, I thought you were attacking me. Let me have a look. I’m a nurse. It’s okay!” She came forward a shaking hand extended and lifted the woman up. She tilted her head back to the pale skylight. The rain fell in her gaping mouth and rinsed the blood away from her teeth. Jane groaned when she saw what had happened.
“It looks like… You somehow pulled the nerve endings at each tooth’s root up through small instrument caused tunnels in your teeth and out to the top of them. Then the pain caused you to instinctually crunch both rows together, and it bruised the nerve endings like grass stalks. That’s my best guess anyway. I’m not a dentist. I’ll have to try to stop the bleeding and see how I can maybe reinsert the nerve endings in their proper places.” Jane took the woman around the shoulders. She was sobbing and shaking her head. Jabbing a free hand, she pointed at her Electric Chair.
“Oh my God…” Jane understood better how this woman had caused herself such torment. There was still a peculiar set of electrified head gear dangling from the bristling wires. There had been a cap for each tooth that had a small metallic pin attached to the end. One that electromagnetically bonded the nerve endings to it. When she had torn free the magnets must have forced the guts of her teeth to their enamel. Her teeth had literally been pulled inside out with small pieces of the roots still stuck to the caps, pins, and even the wires.
“Did you get free of that horrible thing just to save me?” Jane felt tears wash her purpled face. The woman fell forward on her sucking her topsy-turvy teeth with strange animal noises. She nodded and finally took either side of Jane’s face in her hands.
“I-I-had to. I can’t let her do this anymore! I have to find a way to break loose…”She shivered.
“It’ll be okay. I don’t think you should talk. We should stop the bleeding.” Jane tried to lead the woman away.
“My name… My name is…” She bowed her head, tears breaking free. Against her better judgment, Jane let the woman finish what she was saying. They might not get the chance again.
“My name is Kiara.” She coughed and gnashed her teeth, her whole body flinching as she’d crushed the exposed nerves again. Jane caught her head, seeing the gash she’d put in her tongue as she’d bit down.
“Kiara… I’m Jane. It’s okay. I’m going to help you.”
“Leona… Leona is my sister.” Kiara sobbed and clung to the girl, whole body shaking.
“You… You’re the Andromeda. You stop her. It’s why I saved you.”
Jane nodded fervently.
“Yeah, I know. It’s my job. Don’t worry, I’m working on that. I talked the people in the government into letting me work on that. They just made me say a line of smack at a press conference to make them look good in the process. We can’t do anything until I’ve got you stabilized. C’mon, it’s okay. It’s all gonna be okay.” Jane led Kiara away from the gaping hole in the earth, out under the palms. Her heart was drilling. She had absolutely no idea how to help this woman, or even that her situation was medically possible.
Okay, Yahtzee. Time for you to roll up your sleeves. Her mind’s parroting of her dad’s voice washed over her like redemption. He had believed in her. That was enough.
*****
Chapter 9
The water rolled over what remained of his backside and sent his blood to blossoming like liquid roses across the linoleum.
Lucien Kingsley sobbed from pain and humiliation. He couldn’t move from the waist down and his upper body was raw and sliced (mostly by her voracious teeth and fingernails) as well. He grimaced, eyes bulging from the lingering scent of her perfume.
He was loathe to admit that Bleach had been right. Yet she had. Six hours of grueling sex torture and repeated violations later, he acknowledged that fact. Only in silence to himself and the cold water that hissed over him, like someone weeping in pity.
For the first time in his life, he actually felt a twinge of conviction. It had taken his complete unmaking to conjure it, but now he was truly repentant for all the things he’d done. For unleashing this serpent on the world. If Leona was the She-Devil, then he was Pandora Man, who had opened a whole new box of crazy on Planet Earth.
Ten minutes with her had been more brutality than he’d ever thought could possibly be exacted against the human body. Those six hours were an Eternity in her acclaimed Hell. She had lectured him the entire while. Told him that this was his punishment for his previous misdeeds. She saw it also as the favor she had promised him. For her, at least, it had been thoroughly enjoyable. So much so that she’d injured herself seriously. Bad enough to need to go to the house physician for stitches.
She would be incapacitated for a while, according to the maids that had brought him to this shower. Whenever she visited her house doctor, she had him place her on heavy -duty narcotics. She’d be lying in her bed in the nude, skull blown clean off high and snoring at least ‘til tomorrow morning.
If that was the case, then he’d have to get some control over his bloody, traumatically injured, sobbing wreck body and get to work.
There was only one course of action that made any sense. He would have to locate the Andromeda Extract. Steal it back from her and take it to his father for further research. Educated minds believe that for every action in the Universe, there is a reaction. So, for every harmful substance, there had to be a balancing cure.
Developing the cure for the common un-Death she was fabricating seemed like a righteous attempt at righting all the wrongs he’d done.
He wouldn’t be leaving here alone either.
He would need Bleach. She was his teacher and he felt that he still had a lot to learn from her.
Then, of course, there was Jane Lewis, the Federal scapegoat. She too would have to be plucked from the fire and redeemed to their higher purpose. It was her courage that made her indispensable to any attempts at rebellion. Walking before the Armies, legislative bodies, and the rest of power and influence, Jane had taken on the Devil alone. God only knew what kind of end that had meant.
Kingsley had been trained in the art of discipline for this bloody hour when his naivety would finally come to an end. He smiled through all his tears at Bleach’s wisdom and mercy. If he ever saw her again, he would kiss her.
It was strange how instruction alone had been his salvation. How absolute pain and dissection could lead him to finally understand his own heart.
For the first time in his life, Dr. Lucien Kingsley was in love.
It was startling that the woman he’d fallen for in the end had not been the seductive mistress that had led him straight to the Gates of Hell or any gentle beauty that could have made him a happy, peaceful man. Instead it was his angel of Death who had brought him this final solace.
He crawled from the shower, trailing blood behind him. His shame was deeper than the slashes that covered him, and now to rub salt in his wounds, the only thing he’d been provide to wear was a long white choir robe, a symbol of the sanctity that had been flayed from his body.
He crawled up the tile, leaving scarlet handprints and what looked like kiss marks from his bleeding mouth. Somehow he was standing. After all of his sins and the end of the world, he was standing.
Not Bleach. He remembered the handkerchief with the letter K stitched into it. He would have to learn what that letter stood for. Who she truly was.
He stumbled from the shower room and ambled down a watershed hallway, strewn about with broken statues of stone angels. They had their hands open and on each palm laid a human heart.
Kingsley felt himself fighting for every breath. He was in Hell, certainly. There was no tomorrow. Only the need to keep others from coming to this terrible place. The water that ran through here was rancid and oily. He looked down and regretted it instantly. There were many entrails floating like seaweed down this hallway.
He stumbled, sobbing, and choking on dry heaves. There was no discernable plan. This was a fairly hopeless endeavor anyway. Just keep moving. If he could find some clean air and a place to dress his wounds out, he might be able to come up with a plan.
It was by sheer happenstance then that the tunnel emptied into a drain that led to a decorative fountain in Leona’s beloved graveyard. There on a stone bench sat Bleach, mouth open as she wept. Jane Lewis stooped over her, packing her broken teeth with strips of cloth, using a leaf’s stem to carefully re-insert nerve ending, bone, and gum tissue into their places.
Jane looked up and Kingsley looked down. They both froze. This was the unlikeliest of reunions.
Kingsley expected and definitely merited her rage. Jane’s eyes fell tenderly on his broken body. He wasn’t aware that his robe wasn’t closed. She could see everything that had been done to him.
She eased herself up and smoothed out her shirt, greased with entrails and clinging to her body. With a curt nod, she swallowed.
“I guess you’ve lived and learned better, Lucien.” Her eyes flickered with pity. This was somehow worse than her rage. He nodded and realized he was still sobbing. Bleach stood up eyes wide with horror.