by Gareth Wood
"Amanda won't be joining us for breakfast," Shakey said, deadpan.
"Thanks for breakfast," Robyn smiled at the old man. "I'll clean it all up."
Shakey sat down and started eating the omelet he'd made for Amanda. There was no sense letting good food go to waste.
"Not a problem," he said between bites. "That girl needs to take better care of herself. What was the occasion you two were drinking for?"
"Uh. Nick, my salvage partner. He died yesterday."
"I'm sorry," he said gently, his eyes full of sympathy.
"It's okay, really."
Shakey got up to pour himself some coffee. Robyn took this opportunity to change the subject.
"Are you and Amanda related? You seem to know your way around here, is all," Robyn said.
"Oh no, we're just friends. I've known her for a few years, since she arrived."
Robyn filled a pot with water and set it to heat. She was definitely feeling much better than before. She cleaned dishes while Shakey got up again and went to the bathroom door. She could hear him speaking to Amanda through the door. She looked at him in concern when he came back.
"She'll be fine," he said, "but I doubt she thinks so."
Amanda surfaced a few minutes later, once the cleaning was nearly done. She looked less green, and sat down in the chair Robyn had vacated. Shakey handed her two pills and a glass of water.
"Are you alright?" Robyn asked.
"I was fine until this monster," and here she waved at Shakey, "tried to feed me that poison. Tried to kill me, he did!" She waved her fist in mock outrage.
"It was just eggs," he said, looking innocent. His expression turned more serious. "There's another reason I came by, actually."
Robyn leaned against the counter, looked at Amanda, who shrugged. They waited for Shakey to go on.
"When I saw you last night," he said, looking at Robyn, "I knew I'd have to tell you. Amanda knows that Jim Reilly is a friend of mine."
"The Sheriff? Tell me what?" Robyn asked.
"He comes to talk to me from time to time, about things that bother him,” Shakey said. “He came over the other day to talk about Jill Sinclair."
Both women nodded. They had heard about Jill's disappearance when the Sheriff's office had posted notices on the bulletin boards around town.
"So did they find her? Did a zombie get her?" Amanda asked.
"As far as I know she hasn't been found," he replied. "But that's not the reason I brought it up. Jill wasn't the first woman to vanish over the last few years. You two remember Kathy Durham?"
Amanda shook her head, but Robyn started nodding.
"Yeah, she vanished about eighteen months ago. I remember because I was standing next to a bulletin board talking to someone when the deputy came by to put up the notice."
"Jill and Kathy," Shakey said, holding up a hand and ticking off fingers. "Before them, Dorothy Tremaine, Simone Greene, and Karen Gilbert. None were ever found, none turned up undead, and none had any reason to leave the Safe Zone. All of them worked for the hospital, Essential Supplies, or as scavengers."
"But what does that have to do with me?" Robyn asked.
"All of them had long, straight dark hair, and were about your age," Shakey told her.
There was silence for nearly half a minute before Amanda threw her hands up and said, "Fuck! As if zombies weren't bad enough, now we've got a god-damned serial killer?"
Robyn looked at her sharply, not wanting to believe it. She turned back to Shakey.
"Are you sure?"
"Jim is convinced, and if he is, so am I. He even went to the Council with this today. I haven't heard from him how it went yet."
"Look," Robyn said, "I know I'm getting over a hangover, and we drank a lot of who knows what last night, but is it too early to start drinking?"
Amanda turned a little green again at the mention of alcohol. "Definitely too soon to start drinking again," she said.
"Then what do we do?"
"Oh, that's easy," Amanda replied. "We find the bastard who's doing this."
"Now hold on," Robyn said. "This is all circumstantial. There are no bodies or anything to point at."
"No, but there are five women with very similar physical appearances," Amanda told her, "even if there are no bodies."
"I didn't tell you this so you could go looking for a killer yourself," Shakey said, "but so you'd be aware that there may be things other than the dead that are dangerous out there. Aware and prepared is good. Because I'd hate to see either of you get hurt."
"I can't afford the time to go looking for a murderer," Robyn said, "but that brings us to something else. I have lots of work to do and not enough time or patience to go recruiting for a backup. So what do you think? Want to be my new partner?" She looked Amanda in the eye.
"I'm in," she said, without hesitation. Shakey laughed, and when they both looked at him he laughed a little harder.
"What?" Amanda asked.
"I've seen you shoot, Amanda, and I know what kind of ammunition Robyn uses. I actually feel sorry for the undead." He got up and walked to the front door, still laughing as he let himself out and walked home.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mission Safe Zone, September 6, 2013
The basement room was cold and lit only by a small oil lantern. Mirrors on the walls reflected the light, but it was still a place of shadows. The walls were white-painted wooden panels, hung with sheets of plastic poly. The floor was concrete, a grey slab with a rusting drain in the center of the room.
A single metal door was the only entrance, painted white and with a slot window set high in the center. Against the far wall of the room was a metal cart, laid out with gloves, a large bone handled knife, and several rags. In the center of the room, directly above the drain, was a stainless steel surgical table, the kind with blood channels and a raised rim all the way around. The naked woman lying on the table was twitching when Alexander Corrone walked into the room.
He paused for a moment before latching the door to survey his work so far. His guest was secured at the wrists and feet by padded leather cuffs. Another leather strap wrapped around her neck to hold her down, and she was gagged with a cotton rag. Her clothes had been cut away earlier this morning and disposed of, along with her identification and the pathetic bits of jewelry she had worn. The little revolver she had carried had gone into his safe upstairs, but he was probably going to dispose of that as well. Best that there be no evidence leading to him at all.
He turned away and secured the door. It was important not to be interrupted when he was working, and quiet was part of his ritual. It had to be silent, and the soundproof door enabled that. The door had been difficult to acquire, but well worth the expense and risk. Finding it had allowed him to begin his work, keeping both sounds from inside the room from escaping, and the hungry moans outside the room from intruding.
Alexander turned back to the table and walked along the side, looking down at the naked flesh of his guest. He was in no way sexually aroused. That would have required a different form of psychosis than that which afflicted Alexander. His need to kill came from another source. He was utterly indifferent to the goosebumps covering Jill Sinclair's flesh in the cold air, or her struggles as she slowly surfaced from the drugged state she had been in since he had taken her last night.
Alexander moved to the back wall and waited for the drug to wear off. He crouched by her feet and watched her slowly come to the awareness first that she was cold, then that she was tied and gagged. He saw the panic start, the struggles truly begin as she tried to free herself. She twisted her limbs and head this way and that, seeking something, anything to help. Of course, there was nothing.
He continued to wait, crouching at the foot of the table where she couldn't see him, watching her arch her back away from the cold table. The pounding of her own pulse in her ears would prevent her from hearing his calm breathing.
Sometimes, at this point, they would settle down, allowing
him to begin. This one kept struggling, trying to call out through the gag, coughing and crying. He waited, knowing from previous experience that she would calm down eventually, and then he could move forward with the ritual. Already she was shivering in the cold air, her body heat leached away by the table. He passed the time by counting the small moles and marks on her body, over and over again. Three on the left leg, one on the right. Two on her side, one on her right breast, one near the ear.
Finally she began to settle down. Her breathing slowed, her struggling ceased, and the attempts to call for help faded. She cried. She shivered in the cold and cried, whimpering into the rag in her mouth and the tears ran down the sides of her face.
Alexander reached out with both hands and grasped her foot.
After being so cold it probably felt like fire, he suspected. Alexander had a high metabolism, and was quite warm to the touch. His hands gave heat to her cold flesh even as she bucked and tried to scream. Awareness that there was someone else in the room with her set her off again, something Alexander had prepared himself for. Sometimes they calmed down when he touched them, almost as if they knew what was about to happen, and had surrendered to it. Not this one. She would take coaxing, like his first. Like Lindsay.
Alexander stood up, keeping his hands on her foot. She saw him and her eyes widened in recognition, panic and hope warring for supremacy. He moved his hands farther up her cold leg, almost to the knee, and gently held her. He leaned over her, towards her face, and said, "Shush now."
Two days ago Alexander had gone to City Hall to deliver the August reports to Councilor Graham, the nominal head of Essential Supplies. The Councilor was an incompetent who relied on Alexander to do his job, and the warehouse foreman in no way considered the Councilor to be his superior. Graham was weak and ineffectual and Alexander wanted to replace him badly with someone better suited to the task. Himself, for example. And that day was going to be soon. He had met Graham in his office, delivered the carefully doctored papers from Essential Supplies, that reflected what Alexander wanted the Councilor to believe was in the warehouse. Most of it was even true.
On his way out he had seen her. She was coming in, standing in the lobby looking at the directory while several other citizens swirled around her, dressed in a nurse’s uniform and with her hair down, long and black. He had stopped in his tracks, his pulse pounding in his head, staring at her in shock. She had looked just like Lindsay, the same hairstyle, the way she stood with one foot tapping the ground as she read the directory. Even her eyes were the same. He had felt the adrenaline building just looking at her. His vision had narrowed and his breathing came in rasps. Even ten years dead his sister still haunted him.
Alexander had struggled to regain control, to conceal his inner face, but it was too late. She had noticed him, gradually becoming aware that he had been staring at her. She had looked up into his face and recoiled from the look of sheer cold spite he had projected. The look of recognition in her eyes told him that she knew who he was. Shocked and panicked that he had let his control slip so far just from the surprise of seeing the woman, Alexander had turned and gone out another exit, knowing full well he would be seeing her again soon.
He moved his hands again, farther up her leg, onto her thigh above the knee. He pressed his warm hands into her chilled flesh, holding her down even while she struggled to move. She tried to talk to him through the gag, but he ignored her, instead moving his hands again, up to her stomach just below her belly button. He pressed gently again, and said, "Quiet, now."
She whimpered but ceased struggling, perhaps trying to draw whatever heat she could out of his hands. He moved again, clutching her other foot between his palms. He repeated the movement of his hands up her leg, each time admonishing her to be still. He moved on to her torso, pressing his hands between her breasts and then onto her shoulders, warming a small part of her each time. He moved his hands down her arms, grasping biceps and elbows, then forearms and finally each of her hands. She flinched a bit from his hands holding hers, despite the warmth she now craved. But she was still and breathing quietly when he was done. Her eyes never left his face.
It was almost time, he knew. She was almost ready, and so was he. He went to the cart and took the large knife, the one with the bone handle and the sharp heavy blade. His heart raced, knowing he was close to his revenge on Lindsay one more time.
Alexander was practical in most matters. When he had killed or removed most men and many of the women in his path, his urge to ritualise it had been suppressed easily by need and circumstance. Only a few had been special enough to warrant a ritual. Only a few had triggered his need. Only a very few had been like Lindsay.
Moving to stand beside her head he grasped a handful of her hair in his left fist. With the knife in his right hand he sawed it off close to her scalp, dropping the black fibres to the ground. Another handful of hair joined the first, this time taking a small bit of skin with it. Blood started to flow, dripping onto the table. Again and again he cut, the knife very sharp, until all that was left of her hair was stubble and ragged clumps, her scalp slick with the blood of several cuts. She cried and screamed through the gag again throughout, trying to talk, to beg, anything to get a reaction. She arched her back and writhed, but his grip on her hair had prevented her from struggling too much.
Now he moved back to her side, looking at his work. Satisfied that she no longer resembled Lindsay so much, he breathed deeply and stepped back. He waited for the calmness he sought to return, and in time when it did he stepped forward again.
Alexander lifted the knife high, held point down in both hands. He lowered it slowly until the tip touched her just over her heart, and turned it so the blade was parallel to her ribs. He didn't push, just let the tip rest there a moment. She had frozen still, hardly even daring to breathe. Only her eyes showed her terror. He watched as she tried to move her body out of the way of the blade, as if retracting into the table itself. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. They both knew it, and Alexander breathed deeply, raising the knife again. His pulse raced as he came so close to the end of the ritual.
Her eyes were leaking rivers of tears, enough to cloud her vision. Her breathing came in ragged gasps through her nose and around the gag, but she stayed still, terrified and spent as he loomed over her in the cold darkness.
With a quick exhalation, Alexander felt the absolute silence within matched by the silence of the room. The moment was right and he brought the knife down like the scythe of the reaper. Even as she screamed through the rag it plunged into her breast and between her ribs with a sharp crack, piercing her heart in one savage blow. Her scream cut off, blood welled up around the handle and pooled between her breasts, pouring down her body. Alexander left the knife there and backed away, watching the life rapidly fail in her eyes. It took moments. Only moments and she was gone, with no breath or pulse, no living heat to sustain her. He leaned forward to touch her stomach and feel her skin, how cold it was already. She's cold now, he thought, just like me. His fingers gently closed her eyes. He leaned down near her ear, kissed the side of her head and whispered, "Thank you, Lindsay. Thank you for showing me the way." The dead woman replied by voiding her bladder for the final time. Various bodily fluids ran down the channels in the table, flowed onto the floor, and descended the drain. Alexander would come back later with buckets of soapy water to clean everything.
He returned to the cart and wiped his hands with a rag. The ritual was over, and now he only had to move the body to the next room, but he had hours yet before that became an issue. It had been observed that not everyone who died returned as one of the living dead. No one knew why that was, but it was about four in ten who died without being bitten or mauled by a zombie, didn't come back. For the rest, those bitten or savagely clawed by the hungry dead, if they survived the initial attack they would return once they died, usually within a day, depending on the severity of the wounds. Since Jill Sinclair had died under his knife, that meant there w
as normally only a sixty percent chance of her returning as one of the undead. For Alexander this was absolutely unacceptable. His need was for one hundred percent certainty of reanimation. That was why he had mixed some blood from one of the undead with water and injected it into her arm a short while before she woke.
The original blood sample had been extremely difficult and dangerous to obtain, and he had initially had a very limited supply of it. He kept it in an icebox in the next room, several small vials of black or red corruption that only resembled living blood under a microscope when it was absolutely 'fresh' from a recently turned zombie. Now he had all he would ever need.
A small sound caught his attention, a quiet moan. He turned back to his guest and was stunned to see her moving already. He looked at his watch. It hadn't even been a full two minutes since the knife went in! It was still penetrating into her chest!
"What the fuck?" he whispered aloud, and she snapped her head toward him, restrained by the leather straps. She thrashed and twisted in ways a living woman never could have, repeatedly slamming her reanimated flesh against the table and trying to pull free of the straps on her wrists. She was so violent that Alexander began to be concerned that she might actually break free. Skin was tearing on her ankles, blood seeping without pressure from the shallow wounds.
"What the fuck?" he said again, louder this time.
This was impossible! She couldn't have reanimated this fast! And yet she had, and she was so aggressive. Alexander staggered back against the cart, his entire world upset. He stood there for too long, watching in disbelief as the dead woman struggled to free herself. To kill him. To kill him! That stirred him into action.
