by Martin, Indi
Morgan watched her go, leaning against the SUV. He wanted to go, he did. She got within about ten feet of the rubble-strewn entrance before falling back down, gasping into the mud. He considered walking over, throwing her over his shoulder, tossing her into the SUV and driving the hell out of there. Morgan thought of Marcus, even Chaz, abandoned here to whatever they thought was in there, and couldn't do it. He stayed still.
Trying and failing to stand back up on her own, she began crawling through the rubble instead, moving forward a hand at a time. He had to hand it to her, she was determined. He turned and half-opened the driver's side door, wondering if he could hot-wire the SUV. Looking back, he saw her figure disappearing into the darkness, and he sighed, dropping back to the ground and closing the door. Shaking his head again, Morgan walked forward to help her inside.
⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼
Much of the roof had fallen in, revealing stars and clouds in the night sky above, but Marcus didn't pay attention to the heavens. He was too busy staring into hell.
In addition to the roof, most of the internal walls, the few there were, had burned; most had holes or sections missing, but the wall to the back room had fallen entirely away. There, flames still leapt at the base of an awful wall, split down the middle. Behind the split was darkness, an absolute, liquid-looking black that stretched and swayed and threatened to overcome Marcus' ability to think, to exist at all. White skulls lined the base, but to the left of the crack was an awful mound of newer, fresher bodies, still steaming. The firelight lit up the room, casting light and shadows onto matted and curling hair, charred rags, bones sticking out haphazardly, the white and yellow of connective tissues, the deep purple of muscles, blackened at the edges. Marcus forced himself to concentrate on where the fire was coming from, but he couldn't quite figure it out. It seemed to dance behind the skulls but in front of the wall, a liquid line of flame hovering in space. A hellishly clever piece of interior design. Marcus felt a grin tug at the edges of his mouth and held it at bay, wondering if the rest of his sanity would be swept away when the smile took form.
The blonde woman lie unconscious behind them. The Asian man had dragged her almost to the exit before she collapsed entirely. Marcus hoped she wasn't dead. She'd seemed nice, and very beautiful, which didn't hurt his estimation of her either.
Sighing, he forced his eyes to the main focal point of that terrible room, the thing he least wanted to do but could hardly avoid forever. He slumped slightly against the red-headed guy holding him up as he recognized the figure, and his mind worked overtime to try to make sense of the details. Jake crouched in the center of the room, amidst his own circle of almost-gaily-dancing flame-lets. That smile tugged at his mouth again, and again, Marcus forced it back down. Not yet, he said to himself. Not yet.
At least, it had been Jake, at some point. His oldest friend's skin was entirely blackened, and parts of it had peeled away to reveal equally charred strings of muscle and bubbling sections of fat underneath. His eyes were gone, exploded from the heat perhaps, and viscous gooey liquid dripped from the sockets. His features were pulled back in a skeletal grin, the lips cracked and torn. And incredibly to Marcus' eyes, he was alive.
Marcus tried to speak, but his voice was gone. The red-head was frozen, staring at the scene and providing little support. One of the FBI agents was unconscious, '...or dead,' he amended, and the other was tending to her behind him. No sight of the detectives, but Marcus wasn't surprised by their absence. After all, they hadn't come earlier, why should they come now? There was nothing between him and the Jake-like thing.
'Jake' cocked his head, as if listening. The movement was so familiar that for a moment, Marcus could believe that the thing in front of him was really his friend, badly in need of medical attention. He decided that maybe his sanity could chew on that thought for a while, before deciding to leave him permanently.
“Jake,” he said, his voice cracking. Grimacing, he tried again. “JAKE.” His voice was louder, stronger, and he felt accomplished by having done this small task, spoken this small word, with all the craziness surrounding him.
The thing cocked its head to the other side, looking startled.
“Jake, it's me, it's Marcus.”
Suddenly the Asian man was beside him, looping his other arm over his shoulder to provide more support than the now-limp red-head was giving. “Good, that's good,” he whispered into Marcus' ear, leaning up to do so. “Keep going.”
The thing twitched at the other man's voice, sending a chill down Marcus' spine. He concentrated on talking. “Dude, it's me, it's Marcus Owens. We drove out here in your Camry, the one without the heater, remember? It sucked.”
He felt lips near his ear again, and the man whispered so softly as to be barely audible. “Before all this, before the murders.”
Marcus furrowed his brow, wracking his memory for anything that happened before all this. “Remember our first band?” he started, searching for details. “Back when Matt was a shitty keyboardist, before he decided he needed to be a front-man? We were crap. I thought I could sing, dude, and I totally couldn't.” He chuckled in spite of himself. “Leopard Print Nightmare, who came up with that anyway? We did do a pretty good cover of Metallica, though, yeah? Remember that medley we'd do? Crazy.”
The man beside him was nodding emphatically at him to continue. Marcus heard scrabbling sounds next to him and saw the other detective whose name he always forgot carrying a mud-covered Detective Harwood inside, stopping a few feet to his right. “We only had one original song, but we thought we were the shit. Oh, jeez, how did it even go?” He started half-humming an almost-forgotten melody. “'We're watching you through slitted eyes, we ain't got time to synthesize, no truth until you realize...”
“The damned are watching,” finished the burning man in a low, echoing voice, following the melody.
“Yeah,” said Marcus, weakly. “Yeah, that's the one, Jake, right.”
“Help me,” it said, slowly.
The man at his side moved forward, pushing Marcus out in front of him. Marcus hobbled toward his friend, holding on with all his might to the fantasy that this really was Jake, and he needed to get to the hospital Right Now, and he'd be fine after extensive skin grafts. “You'll be the first eyeless guitarist, man,” he said, fighting a hysterical chuckle. “Double eyepatches and everything.”
“Help me,” it said again, more urgently.
The man pushed him further, moving more quickly now. The small flames in front of Jake's body stopped, and danced haphazardly out of their way, scattering in all directions.
“Ask him what to do,” whispered the man.
Marcus threw him a startled look. “You don't know?” he hissed back. The man looked away. “Jake, man, how do we help you? Help us help you,” he said, giggling slightly.
“I'm burning,” it said, apparently as an answer.
Marcus frowned. “Yeah, I know, man. I'll get you some water in a few, after we get you out of here. How do we help you?”
The thing twitched again as they approached in a decidedly un-Jake-like manner, and shadows seemed to provide an eerie outline to the body. “Burning,” it repeated, more quietly.
They were almost upon Jake now, and Marcus gagged at the slightly-sweet, metallic smell of burning flesh. “Dude, remember when I burned those pork chops I was grilling, because I was so fucking high? You smell like that,” he said, weakly.
“I'm sorry,” it said, Jake said, because it sounded just like him now, Marcus had time to realize, before his vision was engulfed in flames.
⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼ ⇼
“Charlie! Wake Charlie!” Hanagawa screamed, snatching his arm away from the sudden outburst of fire.
Morgan dropped Harwood, who landed on her feet before falling backwards on her ass on the concrete, and ran to the unconscious Parker. “Parker!” he yelled, then flinched as he felt rough hands push his lower legs away.
“Not you,” muttered Harwood, crawling quickly to the lying w
oman. “Me.” She lifted Parker's head and closed her eyes.
Morgan didn't have time to question his partner before Parker awoke with a start and a gasp. The blonde woman's hands shot up to her temples, and she cried out in pain, but then shakily rose to her feet and ran, blind, toward the intertwined and burning bodies.
Harwood fell back with a grimace. “What did you do?” gasped Morgan. “She was out cold!”
Waving his question away, she groaned and curled up into a ball, cupping her hands over her ears. “Catch her,” she commanded quietly.
Not understanding the order, but able to infer who Harwood meant by 'her' pretty easily, Morgan spun around and ran after Parker, recoiling from the heat of the flames. He saw her lips move, and then a deafening pop-hiss sound, so loud Morgan wondered that the walls didn't collapse around them. He clapped his hands to his ears and saw Hanagawa do the same, having fallen away and landed amidst the bleach-white skulls.
All at once, the flames disappeared, and both Parker and the two men fell limply to the ground. Morgan reached her just in time to keep her from cracking her head against the concrete, and he turned to see Chaz grimly holding Marcus' charred body near the floor.
Jake, or what was left of him after another encounter with fire, crumpled, lifeless, against the wall. There was no movement from the corpse.
Morgan snapped his head up and around, trying desperately to decide what to do next. The split in the wall which had so recently featured an awful black, swirling mass now only showed the trees of the forest behind it. A few flames still danced behind the skulls, but they seemed rooted to inflammable material now, not just floating in the air behind them as previously.
Hanagawa groaned to his left, and Morgan saw the man clutch at his arm, where the fabric of his shirt had partially melted into the skin.
“Hey!” yelped Chaz nervously. “He's still alive!”
Sure enough, Morgan saw Marcus exhale a thin finger of steam and cough feebly. “Not for long if we don't get him to help,” he responded, hoisting Parker over his shoulder and grabbing Hanagawa by his good arm. “You okay to walk?”
Hanagawa nodded. Chaz lifted Marcus carefully, grimacing at the task. The flames appeared to have been focused on his arms, under Jake's hands; there were two handprint-shaped holes in the skin with charred muscle beneath, and much of the exposed skin on his neck and face appeared to have suffered significant burns. Thankfully, Marcus did not appear to be conscious.
“Can you help Gina?” he asked Hanagawa. Again, the man nodded, walking grimly to where she was still clutching her head and groaning on the floor.
As quickly as they could, with so many injured, they piled back into the van. Morgan slipped into the driver's seat, but Hanagawa ordered him back out. “You don't know the way,” he explained, wincing. “Chaz, drive.”
Bristling, Morgan slid into the front passenger seat instead, and the SUV roared off down the trail, past the broken bodies of firefighters and police officers who had come to the wrong scene at the wrong time. “What do we do about them?” asked Morgan, feeling a sense of awe and horror at so many lost brothers and sisters of the law.
“Nothing yet,” answered Hanagawa, his head lolled back and still clutching at his arm, which twitched occasionally and, evidently, painfully. “Just... wait until we get there, okay?”
Morgan bit back his return question of where, exactly, 'there' was and let the sweating, nervous Chaz zoom down the highway. His glasses kept sliding down his nose, and he swerved slightly every time he took a hand away from the wheel to push them back up into place. 'Heading away from town again,' noted Morgan bitterly.
“Yeah, it's Yori,” he heard, and looked back to see Hanagawa on a cell phone. “We have two burn victims, one critical. Two additional cases of exhaustion. Chaz, what's our ETA?”
Chaz looked down at his speedometer and then back to the road. “Five minutes or so.”
“Five minutes.”
A pause. Then, “Yes, Parker and the new girl.” Pause. “No, the crit can't be in-house. Needs grafting, it's not pretty.” Another pause. “Thanks.” Hanagawa met Morgan's eyes, as if daring him to ask questions.
Morgan kept quiet and turned back to the front.
Seven minutes later, the SUV roared back into the barnyard, but this time the headlights illuminated a pair of EMTs waiting with a mobile hospital bed. Morgan frowned and looked around; there was no ambulance in sight.
The two ran up to the vehicle and carefully extracted Marcus; Morgan couldn't tell if he was still breathing or not from where he was, as he slid out of the car and ran around. He recognized the two EMTs as the other two lab-coats who had been down in the barn earlier – except now they were fully suited as paramedics. The one who had spoken to Gina wasn't in sight. They moved quickly and efficiently, one of them beginning an IV in mid-run as they rolled the cart into the barn and through the waiting elevator doors.
Morgan couldn't stand it anymore. “Where are they taking him?” he demanded.
Hanagawa ignored him, helping Harwood out of the car. Her eyes were still squeezed shut, but she allowed him to take some of her weight and together they walked into the barn as well. Chaz sighed. “You'll see in a second. They're taking him to the hospital.”
“Down there?”
He sighed again and started pulling Parker out of the car. “Some help?”
Morgan strode over and roughly tossed Parker over his shoulder, causing Chaz to back up a few feet in surprise.
“Look, man, I know some people don't handle all this shit well the first time, but don't take it out on me, okay? I've tried to be nice to you.” Chaz's face was working hard to keep itself together, and Morgan saw with surprise that he appeared to be on the verge of tears.
“Uh,” he started, unsure what to make of the kid. “You're right. I'm sorry, Chaz,” he said, forcing his voice to sound softer and more normal. “I'm sure you know there's a lot of stuff I don't get, and I'm just worried about Gina, and Marcus.”
Sniffling, Chaz nodded and wiped his nose.
Wide-eyed, Morgan turned around deftly with Parker draped over him, and followed the others into the barn, patiently waiting for the elevator to rise back up out of the nondescript concrete floor as though it were a daily occurrence. He said nothing as they crowded in and descended. Once the doors open, he caught sight of the 'paramedics' and Marcus, the IV now installed and an oxygen mask over his face. They looked grim. The trio were hovering near another set of elevator doors.
“Those lead to a hospital?” he stammered, unable to keep the bewildered question in.
“Go on, go with him,” muttered Hanagawa, making his way over to a metal table where the white-coated silver-eyed man was waiting for him. “Put Parker over there. We'll be here when you get back.” He sat on the table and closed his eyes, nodding.
Torn, Morgan looked over at Chaz, who ignored him and walked over to help Harwood up on another table. “Um, really?” he asked, lamely, lying the unconscious woman carefully down on the last table.
The two EMTs were watching him. “Hurry if you're coming,” called one. “We gotta go.”
Morgan pursed his lips and jogged over to the doors, glancing down at Marcus, who was taking labored breaths. “Alright, then,” he said, unsure of what to say or do.
The doors opened and the paramedics bustled in. Morgan squeezed himself in next to the bed, taking care not to hit the IV stand that rolled in beside it. He noticed the others were facing a pair of doors opposite the ones they entered, so he did the same.
The elevator did not noticeably descend or ascend, but when the rear doors opened, they opened to a bustling emergency room full of activity. Quickly, the 'paramedics' rushed out, calling out Marcus' condition to anyone who would listen. Blinking, Morgan followed and matched their speed, as a nurse orbited toward them and rushed them into an emergency room. She reached up and called for a Dr. Graham to come to number 21 over the speaker, which reverberated through the hallways. Morgan pr
essed against the wall, trying to stay out of the action. His eye caught a sign on the wall that read “Johns Hopkins Burn Center - Baltimore,” and he felt his eyebrows rise into his hairline. Baltimore was hours away. Hours.
Gaping, he watched the paramedics deliver the last of their information, then back out and let the doctors take over. Morgan followed them silently, panic rising in his chest. The one nearest to him fished a handful of paper out of his pocket and walked up to the billing receptionist down the hall. Morgan sidled closer to listen.
“...all here,” he was saying. “His insurance is excellent, I assure you. Here's a number to call if you need further information.”
The receptionist looked confused. “I need his identification and an insurance card, please.”
“Call the number,” ordered the man, leaning against the frosted glass and waiting patiently.
The woman, a severe-looking woman who looked accustomed to being angry, cradled the receiver and did as she was asked to do, glaring at the paramedic while she did so. Slowly, the glare melted into astonishment. “I'm so sorry,” she said primly, her cheeks turning red as she carefully placed the handset back on the phone. “We'll take excellent care of him.” She no longer met the man's eyes, and her blush had enveloped her entire face, turning it beet-red.
Morgan followed the men to a staff elevator in the corner, rolling their table and IV stand emptily along. One of the men turned to him, a heavy-set man with shocking blue eyes and a large nose. “You done here?”
Wordlessly, Morgan nodded.
The doors opened, and the three walked inside. Watching closely, Morgan did not see the two men press any buttons, or work any piece of equipment; the rear doors opened and they walked back into the underground station under the barn. Relieved, Morgan saw Parker and Harwood just as he left them. Chaz was sitting on a stool in the corner of the room, nearest the entrance elevator, watching their re-entry with interested eyes. The other lab-coat and Hanagawa were nowhere to be found.
