Life Among the Dead (Book 4): The End

by Daniel Cotton

  Price leans back in the high swivel chair, rubbing his eyes to let them rest. “You never told anyone about us, did you?”

  “Is that what this is about?” she asks. “I was on a date! Trust me, I am so over you!”

  He believes her. The mafia man had to have found out some other way. “So, your date, he’s dead?”

  “Or dying…” she answers with a shrug, “he was old. So, to answer your question, no. I never told anyone about our, as you put it in your bullet-pointed break-up memo, ‘poorly timed indiscretion’—‘See you on Monday’.”

  “Ok.”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “No reason.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He has no response, and doesn’t look like he’ll be forthcoming with one anytime soon. He just returns to the microscope. Nina gives up “What are you looking for?”

  “Trends in the composition. Recurring elements. Foreign substances,” he tells her. “The PDR is no use.”

  “Well, no. They just print the same stuff we do: Mechanism not fully understood. Patient may experience; headache, upset stomach, purulent bowel discharge, and sometimes death. It’s a wonder people actually take this stuff.”

  “I was just thinking that,” he smiles, taking a sip from his long cold mug of coffee. He slides a cigarette from his cheap pack, happy to find one without a factory defect. Half of the cigarettes in the pack have a hole where the filter meets the rest, he’ll be able to take full drags without holding his finger over the breakage. There are many in the ashtray he had neglected to smoke, now just lines of ash.

  “I called you here tonight, hoping that since you actually have…” Price starts to say.

  “Experience with the Wilkes formulary,” she finishes his statement, knowing full well by now that is why she was summoned. “I wasn’t with Wilkes that long.”

  “Please, Nina, I need you.”

  “Yeah, for my mind,” she scoffs.

  “Will you help me?” he asks sounding pitiful.

  “Yes,” she surrenders.

  The man leaps up, elated. He hugs his assistant and takes her by the hand to another part of the lab. She carefully keeps up with him on her high heels all the way to the isolation room where dangerous materials are used and studied.

  Nina watches Price as he prepares an experiment within the room. Upon the table within he places a vile of some unknown green substance and clean instruments that they will need to examine the stuff once they open the glass tube under controlled conditions.

  “Where did you get this?” she asks.

  “I’d rather not say,” he answers. Price stands in the small room for a moment, making sure he has everything he will need since reopening the booth would not be a wise move once he gets started. Techs are usually on hand to anticipate his needs and enact any and all safety measures required. “Let’s just say, this may be what makes Wilkes Wonder drugs so wonderful.”

  “Or, it’s snot,” she counters.

  “Let’s try to be positive, shall we?” he asks, going back through the mental checklist of items in his head.

  “I’m just saying, you get what you pay for.”

  Price pauses in his tracks. He slowly turns to her and looks at her through the glass partition. “I never said I paid for this.”

  “I… I just assumed,” she stammers, giving herself away.

  “You?” the man looks at her, hurt. “You were working with the mob?”

  “Well…”

  “How long?” his hurt becomes anger.

  “Do you remember when I applied here?” she tries to use levity to diffuse the situation.

  “All of it!” he barks. “Everything? It was all leading to this?”

  “Not all of it was bad, right?” she says with sincerity. “The stuff between us was actually my idea. HE needed a way to get you to meet with him. I was, and still am, very fond of you.”

  “So, you know what this is?” Price asks, still staring daggers at her through the glass.

  “I had heard about it, seen it before. I wasn’t in on their use of it, but had an opportunity to snag some.”

  “How the fuck do you ‘snag’ something like this?” he incredulously inquires.

  “Right place at the right—er, more accurately, wrong time,” she tells him. “There was an accident six years ago, I was working on another project, but was close by when everyone started running to help.”

  Price turns, runs his fingers through his hair at a loss as to what else to do at the moment. His mind races without end, his emotions flare without meaning.

  Nina continues, “I had seen you speak at a symposium in Waterloo, I knew if anyone other than Wilkes could crack this it would be you… I really wanted to be with you when you did, a part of your eureka moment… I guess I won’t be getting any of the credit for this, huh?”

  “Oh, no, you are very fired,” Price laughs at the absurdity. “Don’t expect a reference from me, or any further money from the wiseguy you work for.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He’s dead,” Price reports. “I’ve got the money, the sample, and most importantly, I have a wife at home that loves me who isn’t a conniving cunt.”

  “You forgot vindictive,” Nina adds. She seals the isolation room with her former boss and lover inside.

  “What the hell are you doing?” instantly alarmed, he asks her through a speaker that makes his voice tiny.

  “Giving you what you paid for,” she tells him. Samples in the room can be handled using thick gloves that are attached to the glass partition, Nina quickly slips her hand into one of them and grabs the glass vile. Even with safe guards techs have to use extreme care when handling substances inside this room, the angry woman smashes the glass tube against the counter like and egg.

  The green ooze inside the vile begins to expand once air touches it. It grows exponentially to Price’s alarm, he beats on the glass to be let out. Nina watches for a moment, listening to the man’s pleas. She switches off the intercom, cutting his screams short. The doomed man thrashes futilely against the glass as Nina turns her back. She snatches his keys from the coffee flooded counter on her way out.

  Price’s car is a definite upgrade from the Impala she had left at home, the suitcase in the back is much larger than she expected when he told her he still has the money, it’s her favorite feature of the new ride. She is surprised to see a gun on the passenger seat and wonders if he had really driven all the way here with it out in the open, with all the police activity. “Idiot.”

  The woman wishes to open the suitcase behind her, feel the money, but she knows she can’t linger. She has to get out of here before someone sees her. She switches on her headlights revealing figures in the lot.

  “Shit!” she curses, she has been seen. Dozens of people are walking her way. It’s an eerie sight as they slowly converge. She had worried the moment she laid eyes on them, but realizes they can’t possibly know what has happened tonight. The folks surround the car, Nina reverses away from them.

  The slack faced figures are everywhere. The woman has to negotiate slowly around them in reverse for fear of striking one of them fatally, thus making an already bad situation worse. She’s effectively killed one man tonight, she doesn’t wish to add to the body count.

  Left with little recourse, Nina gently bumps the people out of her way. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she asks them as they recover from their meeting with the luxury car’s fenders. She assumes they are drunk by the way they stagger, focused on her. The inebriates slap their palms against the windows as if they are trying to get their hands on her.

  Her desperate need to escape the lot of Mercott & Price takes her full attention. She doesn’t hear the bag behind her move, or the teeth of its zipper coming apart.

  ###

  Price remains locked in the isolation room with the growing ooze. It has covered the counter and started spilling to the floor. He has backed as far as he could to get away from it, only prol
onging the inevitable. The substance he had acquired this very night will take up every last square inch of space within the booth, he will drown in his purchase, the thing that was supposed to take his company to new heights.

  He had tried to break the glass though he knew full well that it was a waste of his final moments. The partition was designed to withstand accidental combustive reactions, all he was able to accomplish was a thin fissure with the heavy base of the microscope. Even if he could get out in time, the building’s safe guards would lock the whole place down. All he can do is watch the sample grow.

  17

  After the excitement of the hotel fire, passing images of his romp with Rocky Roadkill, and butterflies over his impending meeting with his true love, Archie decided to take the full refund on his room once the staff declared the building safe. The fire department had not shown up, but the blaze was contained. According to the desk clerk a guest had fallen asleep with a cigarette.

  The refund will be credited to his nearly maxed out credit card, but it won’t show for a business day or two. If he is to get to Amber he needs money so he can gas up. Luckily, he has a ready supply of something valuable he can sell.

  The Breckinridge branch of Plasmacore is much larger than the one he donates at back home. This one is open twenty four hours a day, seven days a week due to the large volume of people in need, that being both donors and recipients. Even his smaller hometown plasma center allows him a chance to people watch, young and old alike come to subsidize their income and help, medicine is made from the plasma people give. Tonight, the place is nearly empty. The odd panic that has stricken the city is keeping away not only donors but staff as well. Only two tired looking ladies in lab coats man the center, Archie is the only donor they’ve seen for some time.

  The process had creeped him out at first, the idea that his blood would be taken out by a machine and then backwashed back into him gave him the willies. An apheresis device uses a centrifuge to separate the plasma from the red blood cells and then gives the cells back. He had no choice when he started, he needed a way to make more money, the fact that it helps people was a bonus.

  The cuff around his arm begins to squeeze telling him that it’s time to pump once more. He pictures Amber and runs through what he will say to her, his lips tingle as a side effect of the anticoagulant used in the process as he mouths the words to himself. Lying in the center’s U-shaped bed he could almost sleep, it’s very comfortable compared to the mattress back home that he’s used to. This leads him to worry, his idyllic fantasy of meeting Amber turns to a nightmare. He has nothing to offer her, he’s just a store clerk on a wait list for art school. He wishes to work in comics and here he is relying on ‘blood money’ to feed himself.

  The cold sensation in his arm as saline replaces his lost blood volume draws him out of his turmoil. The needle is extracted and his arm is wrapped tightly with a bright green elastic bandage. The phlebotomist barely talks to him, they hardly ever do aside from the practiced small talk and instructions, often the instructions are even truncated as they expect people to know the routine without prompting. She just takes the cylinder of plasma away.

  It had awed him the first time he saw just how much they take, the container of yellowish fluid is the size of a liter bottle of soda. He is free to go, his debit card will be credited for his contribution before he even hits the door.

  Still chilled from the introduction of saline, the night air is especially cold. This branch of Plasmacore is located on the cusp of Breckinridge’s industrial park, Archie can see the city is still bustling with emergency vehicles. Glares of red and blue rise from the city and illuminate the clouds and smoke.

  Entering the section of factories and offices was like muting the craziness of the city, there wasn’t much excitement going on here when he arrived. Now, just next door in the Mercott & Price parking lot he sees a crowd of people around a car. The vehicle keeps reversing and advancing, trying to find a clear path through.

  ####

  Nina has had no luck evading the maddening mob. She curses at them as she yet again tries to back away and go around. She decides to go for it, bully her way out. If they don’t move it’s their own fault, she contends.

  Three figures before her refuse to move as she slowly creeps forwards. Already uneasy on their feet, they just stagger backwards as a result to being pushed before toppling under the car’s front end. Nina cringes and hits her brakes, the feeling of their bodies being crushed under her wheels makes her shiver. This is enough of a pause for the group to surround her once more.

  They try to reach her through the glass, their hands thumping and slapping against the panes. Their bodies rock the car. Under the noise Nina hears the ragged metallic sound of a zipper being torn open behind her. She looks in her mirror as a moan rises from the back seat just as the man that set this in motion springs out of the bag, his arms flail like a Jack-in-the-box, out of control as if they have too many joints.

  The man that approached her with the opportunity to ‘have it all’ startles a scream from her throat. She reaches for the pistol she could have sworn was on the passenger side, it takes her a second to remember tossing it in the glove compartment. It’s a second too long, the mafia man is already trying to get into the front. “He said you were dead!”

  He wiggles and worms his way between the seats, his arms are useless to him though they flail wildly in his wake. The cool calm eyes she had looked into when they had met are vacant now, empty yet eager. He moans as he writhes closer to his accomplice.

  ####

  Even with the car’s windows closed, even at this distance, Archie heard the scream. His hand was on the handle of his own ride, now it’s frozen in place. It sounded like a woman, and she appears to him to need help. He looks toward the group that torments the black sedan, craning to see around the figures. Within the car he sees three quick flashes of light.

  “Hey!” he calls to the group. He approaches just enough to let them know someone is watching.

  The aggressive band turns to him where he stands his ground, slowly they start his way.

  “Oh shit!” the well-meaning hero exclaims. He has the urge to run but doesn’t like the thought of leaving whoever is in the car alone with them.

  Though the path is clear for the car to make its getaway, the person inside topples out instead. The dome light illuminates the interior and the other figure inside. The driver is on her feet at once clutching a satchel in one hand and a pistol in the other. She races around the people in the lot that had made her departure impossible, firing a silenced bullet into the closest one.

  “Over here!” Archie calls to her. He opens his passenger door and waits for her to arrive before running around to his own door and getting in.

  “Who are they?” he asks the lovely woman. She shivers, though she isn’t dressed for the chilly air, Archie knows that it is from fear.

  “I have no idea,” she answers.

  The engine is started and the car leaves the lot before the shambling people can get too close. Archie intends to continue on his quest to Amber but first he must attend to this damsel. “I’m going to take you to the police so you can report this.”

  “No cops,” she shakes her head.

  “But, you should…” he begins to say. The gun that she aims at his face silences him.

  “No cops,” she repeats.

  Archie’s eyes take in the weapon, trail up her arms along the lines of alchemy tattoos, then they meet her eyes. She’s serious, she’ll kill him without a second thought.

  “I need to get to Memorial Hospital in Waterloo,” she tells him. The gun stays trained on him though she relaxes into her seat.

  “Waterloo?” he questions. He can see her arm is bleeding, but doesn’t know why she would need to go to a hospital in another city. “I have somewhere I need to be. Can’t I just take you…?”

  “Look, kid, I’m not asking. If you don’t like it you can—Fuck!” The woman was inspecting t
he black bag she carried with her free hand, and doesn’t like what she finds inside. It’s just a shaving kit.

  “The money’s still in the car!”

  “What money?”

  “Go back,” she instructs him, ignoring his question.

  “Go back? No way!”

  The woman points the pistol at him. “Again, not asking.”

  He can see in the rearview, the people that tormented the girl are on the street now following them. Archie turns the car around and heads back to the parking lot of Mercott & Price, using a neighboring lot to circumvent the pedestrians. A heavyset man lies on the asphalt next to the black luxury car’s open driver’s side door. He writhes and thrashes like a fish on a dock since his arms and legs won’t cooperate.

  The woman gets out quickly, cautiously she steps over the man on the ground that refuses to die. He sees her and tries to turn himself by wiggling like a worm. He’s too slow, before he can maneuver his broken body she is in the car with the door closed. Archie waits for her to find the money she has left behind. The relief that visibly washes over her after an inspection of the glove compartment tells him she has found it. She sits back in her seat with a wide triumphant grin.

  The window of the luxury car comes down. Archie brings down the passenger side window to hear what she has to say as he creeps up alongside her.

  “Thanks for the rescue, hero,” she bids him farewell. “You’re really a nice guy.”

  With the eerily slow moving people returning the girl doesn’t wish to linger, or have to contend with them again. The last thing she wants is a witness. Killing two birds with one stone she fires her silenced gun at Archie’s tires.

  “But, you know what they say about nice guys?”

  18

  Killian and Hippo had decided to head for the bathroom together. They took turns using the toilet while the other kept his back turned. Killian, having a shyer bladder than his younger brother and a temporary problem with his aim, had to turn the faucet on to get himself started. Now feeling lighter the boys wait at the door, listening to noises coming from the floor below.