Karl Webber made his way through the corridors of the hospital feeling totally relaxed and secure. He knew where he was going, although he had to try and avoid anyone he knew along the way. The chances of meeting someone who could recognize him at three o'clock in the morning were slim, but the risk of that happening at this time was kept to a minimum. He would be just another male nurse in white pants and tunic wearing the typical white clinical clogs.
Everything looked exactly as he remembered it. He thought he'd feel a sense of nostalgia but there was none, he was now sure he had overcome all his traumas, both physical and mental, and they would never bother him again.
Karl passed rooms where people he knew would be sleeping and wondered about their state of health; they would not be so lucky. Their lives hung in a balance between life and death, as did his, but now his life had changed completely.
Karl went down the stairs and into another corridor.
A familiar white sign on the wall caught his eye. It had an arrow which pointed to the right and read; morgue. He stopped in front of the double white doors that usually opened out. But unlike the regular corridor doors in the hospital these did not open automatically.
He peered in through the small window. The room, with its dim lights, seemed sterile and unwelcoming. There were no bodies lying on the stainless steel tables, but he knew where to find what he was looking for.
Gently he pushed the door and entered. It was cold, clinical, and an intense smell of hospital disinfectant hung in the air. The sound of a ventilation fan whirred in the background, exactly as he remembered it. Karl turned left and at the end of a small passage came up against a large steel door. This closed off a separate section where bodies were kept. He pulled on the door handle - locked. No problem, he knew exactly where to look for the keys.
The first time he was down here was when Jeff, one of his friends on the same ward, committed suicide. Although he could still move with difficulty, his illness was terminal. He could have arranged euthanasia through his doctor if he wanted to, but Jeff felt that was the easy way out. He had been a fighter all his life, and at one stage had aspirations to go into army life. But when his illness was diagnosed it seemed to mark him, making work, relationships and general getting about impossible. Of course, there were electric wheelchairs and all the modern gadgets and apparatus to help him, but he avoided them. The fighter in him would not give up so easy. After four years of fighting the system and what the system tried to do for him, he finally gave in.
Jeff spent two months in the hospital before deciding to end it all himself, with no doctors or nurses around to interfere. The only help he got was from Karl, who supplied extra sleeping pills to speed up the process. He also helped him work out the dosage and timing. When the night shift came on they both toasted with Dutch Jenever to life and life beyond, then Jeff swallowed the capsules.
A half hour later he fell into a deep sleep. Karl tucked him in as best he could and arranged everything as if he was just sleeping. When the night nurse came in, Karl was awake, pretending to read a book. The nurse went directly over to Jeff.
"Don't wake him up," he said in near panic. "He hasn't slept for days." The nurse slowed to a stop and looked at him from a distance of a few meters.
"Is he ok?"
"He's just exhausted," he said, trying to sound relaxed.
The controversy around Jeff's death quickly subsided, but within six months Karl found himself awaiting the same fate, only now he was alone.
The keys were as usual, in the second drawer of the pathologist's desk in the adjoining office. The door to this was also shut, but Karl knew they kept an emergency key in a steel flask on the top shelf next to the office. When he unlocked the door to the cold mortuary, he found what he was looking for. Karl pulled four bodies out of the individual refrigerator compartments.
Conver had as usual, done a very thorough job, although judging by the fact the bodies were not yet stitched up, he was not finished. Looking at the open chests and organs it was easy to take anything, small or large, and it would never show up on the radar. But he had his instructions and had to carry them out.
Karl took out four small containers and placed them at the foot of the bodies. He then reached behind his back, and took out a large hunting knife hidden in a sheath, stuck down the inside of his white medical trousers.
He took some towel paper from the dispenser on the wall and placed it on top of Carola Munk's right leg. He lifted the leg up about ten centimeters, then ran the blade horizontally down the lower calf. With a small swab he wiped the edge of the knife, placed it in the container and sealed it.
After wiping the edge of the blade with the paper towel, he repeated the procedure with the remaining three bodies. A sheet covering something large in the corner of the room caught his eye. Karl lifted it to reveal the bath containing Raemon Dort; he laughed.?
"Wow, cool," he whispered. He took out his knife and cut off a lock of Raemon Dort's hair. After putting it into a container he scraped off some of the solidified face. When finished he carefully replaced the sheet.
Everything took no more than twenty minutes. After replacing the keys in Conver's office, he stopped to look around at the bare stainless steel tables, and the cold sterile surroundings. He should have ended up here, just like Jeff. He missed his company.
The only thing left to do was deliver the containers and get back to his little hideaway before daylight.
Chapter Sixteen
The Amsterdam Chronicles: Def-Con City Trilogy Part 1 Page 21
