Dead Cell

by Chris Johnson

  Rachael turned back to the radio, looking at it, but it remained silent. The man tapped upon the window again, trying the door and opening it.

  "Damn," he exclaimed. "I don't know how you did that. The car doesn't even have a scratch. Lady, are you okay?"

  Rachael picked up the mobile phone, surprised when she realised it was in the console now, instead of the floor. How did that happen? She turned, facing the fifty-something-year-old man. "I'm fine, thanks. I need to call the police. Are you okay?"

  The man looked inside the vehicle. "I'm good, unhurt, but wow! I don't know how your car flitted through the air like that - seen nothing like it." He checked the back seat. "Hey, there, honey, are you okay?"

  HOW OFTEN DO YOU SEE the news happen right in front of your eyes?

  Sally Green brushed the long wind-blown honey-coloured hair from her face, positioning herself so that Drew, the television cameraman, could manage a better shot; the wind continued messing her hair. Drew repositioned the camera's tripod and turned the camera to a suitable angle, and lifted the boom microphone over her, before nodding towards her.

  Sally smiled into the camera lens then, changing her mind, adopted a solemn expression. "There has been another serious accident on the Statton motorway this morning with an orange Porsche crushed between a semi-trailer and a utility. Inbound traffic has all but slowed to a halt and outbound traffic is congested as well. Witnesses report the Mitsubishi utility jumped from the outbound lanes, across the traffic island, and rammed head-on with the Porsche. The semi-trailer ploughed through them from behind, crushing the woman inside the Porsche. The occupants from all three vehicles died on impact."

  Another camera shot showed the remains of the three-vehicle carnage. Police officers could be seen directing traffic around the scene.

  "More tragedy revealed itself with the discovery of another twenty-nine fatalities, all of them within fifty metres of the original accident scene. Some of the cars were passing the scene when the drivers appeared to expire on the spot. Authorities have not yet commented on the apparent cause."

  Looking into the camera, she concluded, "This is Sally Green from Channel 90 news."

  Sally waited a few seconds for Drew's signal and relaxed, letting her hand holding the microphone drop to her side as she looked around the scene. "Drew," she said, "I've seen nothing like this before, and I've seen some strange things over the past twenty years."

  Drew nodded, using the camera to take shots of the police directing traffic, inspecting the damage, and a few took photos of the victims. "That is one heavy death toll. I don't get it. Were they all using mobile phones and texting or something?"

  Sally shook her head. "I'll find out from my contact later, but this is the biggest thing I have seen since I worked for BGQ-8."

  Drew, still taking shots, remained silent a moment before replying. "BGQ-8? Wasn't that the Banksia Grove station in the 1990's?"

  "1987," Sally responded. "That was the year I met Predator. At least, that's the name we gave him."

  "That long ago?" Drew blurted then kicked himself for his tactlessness. Sally's was in her mid-fifties although she never admitted it and it didn't always show due to her fitness regime. "I was just a kid back then."

  Sally laughed. "I know, I'm getting older and no wiser." Something caught her attention, made her look at the outward-bound traffic. Call it instinct. Before knowing why, Sally jumped, narrowly avoiding a vehicle veering off the road and onto the traffic island before its crunching collision with a thick-trunked tree there.

  Picking herself up from the ground and untangling from Drew, Sally hurried to the crumpled vehicle. She thought she saw two people inside, but the tinted windows obscured the interior. Wrenching the driver's door open, she looked inside to see if she could help.

  Sally stopped, her heart jumped in her chest, and bile rose in her throat. She couldn't control it. Vomit rose, ejaculated, and landed on the boots of the policeman who had come running to help.

  That image would stay with her forever, looking into the horrific stare of a dead man.

  THE SPIRIT ASSASSIN floated unseen from his latest victim's car, watching the journalist throwing up on the policeman's shoes. Did the reporter see him? He remembered seeing her eyes connect with his through the car's tinted window. Could it be? A grin floated through his awareness for a moment before a tiny sense of accomplishment flickered through him.

  Maybe this time, people would take notice.

  Chapter 11

  Rachael tapped her foot, waiting for the police to arrive. Marty, the other driver involved, had said the police station told him a car would be out in twenty-to-thirty minutes; that was eight minutes ago. She didn't want to wait that long, needing to pick up her sister-in-law, in particular with Rebecca still in the car with her. She felt embarrassed and did not want to be waiting around. In a manner of speaking, there had been no accident. The car appeared to be in good working order, with no damage to it; the front lawn where the car landed could be a different story as the tyres left some muddy tracks where it gouged the grass. But Marty, the driver of the other car, insisted they should wait. He'd suffered no injuries, unless one counted the speeding heartbeat from watching a VW Golf flying through the air and landing safely on the other side of the road, and his car didn't have any damage either. Neither vehicle required towing.

  Rachael had tried to convince Marty of those very reasons for not needing the police. But he insisted.

  The previous events still played in her mind, creating an inner turmoil, and perhaps that is the real reason Marty insisted they wait. She must have appeared strange or lost, and why wouldn't she, after hearing the disembodied voice of her incapacitated husband coming through the radio, talking to her? Marty appeared to be in his seventies, maybe a widower; how would he feel if his dead wife spoke to him through the radio? She could bet he'd be distracted as well. But it wasn't really the voice alone that distracted her. She felt the shape of her phone through the cloth of her jacket's pocket, not daring to pick it out to look again, in case it reminded Marty. Rachael was unsure if he saw the mobile phone in her hand before the strange event, she couldn't call it an accident, and she didn't want to remind him. For now, it was best she kept that from his mind. If it had slipped his mind, it was best it stayed away; out of sight, out of mind.

  The ambulance arrived first, pulling up on the street next to Rachael's car, and its driver stepped out to walk around towards her. The other bearer moved to the back of the ambulance to retrieve a bag of first aid equipment. Smiling, the driver approached. "What's happened?"

  Marty started, piping in quickly with his old crony voice, his eyes bright. "This lady came through the crossing from over there," he pointed to the intersection, "and her car flew through the air, and plopped down on the lawn here."

  Rachael shrugged. "Things happened so quickly. I had a sneezing fit from my hay fever and something else distracted me." She said this in a lowered voice, not wanting to Marty to pick up on how she down-played it. This could work out to her benefit.

  The bearer arrived with the bag and the driver placed a stethoscope around his neck and put the ends in his ears, before checking on Rachael's vitals. The ambulance driver looked from Marty back to Rachael again, before asking, "How are you feeling now?"

  Rachael's hay fever claim was true, but she had taken something for it that morning; the worst of it was over, but she still had a red nose and slightly weepy eyes. "Still an itchy nose," she answered, "but that's all."

  "But the car flew through the air and landed here," Marty insisted. "See? How else could it get there?"

  The bearer looked at the ambulance driver. "She seems okay."

  By this time the police car finally arrived, having found its way through the back streets from a local station. The other cars were at the motorway still, trying to reach the other accident scene.

  A burly officer, chewing gum in his oversized mouth, stepped out of the police car and approached the scene at
the ambulance, looking at the VW Golf and Marty's Holden. "What's happened here?"

  Marty, feeling excited, stepped in, relating what he had seen. He told the officer all about how he was travelling along the main road, how Rachael's car had sped out across the intersection and somehow started flying through the air to avoid colliding with him, before landing on the lawn. The police officer looked at Marty, trying to mask his disbelief. "You're saying it flew through the air? How high?"

  The elderly man seemed rational enough, until he answered, "At least six feet in the air. I remember looking upwards as I drove under it."

  The silence that followed was so powerful, one could have heard crickets chirruping from the next suburb.

  "You drove under it?" The officer wrote this down in his notebook, scratching a few times as the ink didn't flow properly from his pen. "That sounds," he paused. "Pretty close. What happened then?"

  Marty pointed at where Rachael's car had come from and started answering, not noticing the officer subtly moving his eyes to the ambulance bearer who nodded. While Marty spoke, the bearer excused himself and started checking Marty's blood pressure as well. Everyone listening could see how convinced Marty felt while relating the story again. Rachael remained silent, listening and waiting, as she also noticed the expressions on the ambulance driver, bearer and police officer. They found his story too wild and the physical evidence, two undamaged cars, seemed to speak differently.

  The officer turned to Rachael. "How are you feeling, Mrs...?"

  "Denton," she replied. "I'm fine. As I mentioned before, I had a sneezing fit from my hay fever I guess I lost control of my foot on the brake, but as far as the car flying?" Rachael shrugged.

  Marty's attitude changed, when he heard her words, and he started shouting. "What?! How could you miss it? You flew over -"

  Rachael shook her head. "Things moved so fast but I am sure I would have noticed my car flying - what did you say again? - six or so feet above the ground!"

  Rachael hated lying but she felt it necessary; she felt the flying car had something to do with the message on her phone, from an unknown number but claiming to be her husband, and her husband's voice on the phone. Marty was doing a great job of appearing crazy by relating the story and she saw no need to join him. The burly cop, whose name she could not remember, looked at her, studying her expression and thinking to himself then looked at the old man who simply did not know when to be quiet. Rachael maintained control of her expressions, doing her best to not appear as though she was controlling them either, although she wanted to laugh so much.

  The policeman looked inside the VW Golf at Rebecca, and Rachael felt her heart beat faster. Please, don't say anything, Rachael wished to herself.

  "Hey there," he said to her, poking his head through the window. "How are you doing, little one?"

  Rebecca looked back at the policeman, shyly. "I'm good. Are we going to jail?"

  The policeman laughed, "No, honey, no one's going to jail," and turned around to the ambulance bearers. "Apart from the wild story, is everyone okay?"

  The ambulance driver shrugged. "As well as they can be. I'd probably recommend a hospital visit for possible shock but they seem otherwise fine."

  Rachael breathed a sigh of relief to herself. A hospital trip was closer to her original day's plans anyway.

  Marty continued his tale about the flying car, asking why Rachael wouldn't corroborate her story as she was there. The policeman looked like he was about to explode with laughter at the story, stepping between them and thinking what a funny story this would be to tell the others at the station.

  WHAT A CRAPPY WAY TO start a Friday morning!

  Cogan's original plan of visiting the morgue to talk to the police medical examiner, Dr Kroot, was a fizzle, thanks to a pile-up on the Statton motorway. She hadn't heard much about it yet but she had a feeling it was also related somehow to the other accidents she was investigating. As she drove her unmarked police car through the back streets, hoping to make up for some lost time from the motorway's obstruction, she wondered if their victims had bullet wounds or not. When the call went out, she contacted one of the constables, Grant Lennon, to collect as much information and pass it on to her while she attended the morgue for more information. Grant seemed happy enough to do it for Cogan, she thought, possibly because she had seen him checking her out a few times in the gym when he didn't think she was looking.

  Cogan turned off the car's ignition and stepped out into the sunlight, her foot just missing a puddle from the night's rain, before locking the car and walking towards the building's entrance. The receptionist, Penny, with large librarian glasses framing her young brunette features, looked up and smiled at her in greeting.

  "He's in there," Penny indicated towards a door Cogan recognised as the "operating room's" entrance. "He's been working on each of the three from yesterday but two more have come in."

  Cogan thanked her, adding, "You may have more through soon. There's been another pile-up on the motorway."

  Penny rolled her eyes, "Oh, great! What's happening here lately?"

  Cogan pushed entered the first doors before putting a gown over her clothes and pushing her way through the next doors to the autopsy room. Although she heard Frank Sinatra's smooth voice coming from inside, as Kroot often played music (either classical music, Italian opera, or whatever else took Kroot's fancy), her mouth dropped at the sight.

  Dr Kroot was singing along to Sinatra's "Come Fly With Me", serenading a fresh cadaver with his hands on the female body's shoulders; his face was close to its face as though he were about to kiss it, still unaware of Cogan's presence as he sang into a pair of bloody forceps like a microphone. His thinning brown hair hung partly over his spectacled eyes, covered by another pair of goggles over them, as he belted out a louder part of the song to the ceiling. Cogan knew Dr Kroot's eccentricities, but she still felt surprised every time she saw him acting out something new and weird from his mind, and she watched on. Dr Kroot, also affectionately known as the "mad doctor from South Africa", continued serenading the dead woman's body. He bent over her, singing in her ear before prodding into the corpse's right temple with the forceps.

  Cogan cleared her throat and Dr Kroot looked up. "Am I interrupting?"

  The doctor acknowledged Cogan's presence with a slight hand motion before he resumed his work, finally extracting a metallic object from the wound. It clinked in a kidney dish as he dropped it in as he delivered the final lyrics of Sinatra's song; he opened his arms out wide as he accepted the applause from the recorded concert.

  Kroot placed his forceps aside, removed his goggles and pulled his cloth mask aside to reveal a wide smile. "Detective Sergeant Cogan! How did I know you were coming today?"

  Cogan made an ironic smile, pointing at the cadaver on the table. "Did I leave you enough messages?"

  Kroot made a smoker's laugh, the rough sound catching in his throat as he found himself about to cough; he loved her sarcastic humour when she let it show. "Yes, you did that, but as always you expect me to explain them to you, right?"

  Cogan shrugged, looking closer at the wound and trying to ignore the smell of aging meat. "Pleasant, isn't it?" Kroot cracked, walking away with the kidney dish in hand. He placed it next to a lunch box, from which he picked up a large cream muffin; he casually bit into the muffin with relish. Kroot noticed Cogan watching him and said, "Would you like some?"

  Cogan felt a little green, shaking her head in refusal. "What have you managed to find on these new victims?"

  Kroot grinned, holding a finger up as he was trying to swallow before answering. "I'm glad these people came in," he responded. "They make a change from people with broken necks, although I found the ones with mashed brains, despite any entry marks, very fascinating."

  "What?" Cogan asked.

  "It was strange," Kroot told her, pausing to picture it as he described it. "It was as though someone stuck a spoon or something into their head, usually through the frontal lobe, and m
ashed the brains about the place. Have you ever heard of such a thing?" He licked some cream from his finger and pointed to the kidney dish. "This is something more tangible for me, not as exciting, but it's a relief to find something mundane. It's a bullet. See?"

  He grabbed another instrument, picking up the bullet with it to show her. It still had some bodily fluids sitting on its surface but it was definitely a bullet.

  "That looks like it came from a rifle," she said, recognising the shape of it.

  "Yes, it is from a rifle," he answered, "and I am betting it's been shot from a long distance. This lovely lady here (he motioned to the corpse on the examination table) is from last night, and I have a feeling it is the same type of bullet as those from yesterday."

  "I never saw the ones from yesterday's victims," she told him. "Has anything come back from ballistics?"

  Dr Kroot's eyes opened wider and his mouth opened slightly. "Ah! I haven't checked my email yet. Let me see."

  Turning quickly, humming the Sinatra song still, he strode towards his nearby laptop to punch a few keys. The screen, previously showing a screen-saver from Star Wars, changed and he scrolled through his emails. "Ah! Here we are," he exclaimed.

  Cogan stood behind him, trying to see the screen and felt mild surprise at Dr Kroot's next words.

  "You're not going to believe this!" Kroot ejaculated, excitedly. "It looks like the bullet may have been fired from an SR-98." He paused to think. "Isn't that -"

  "It's an Australian military weapon," she confirmed, stroking her chin and letting her gaze penetrate the screen.

  "Oh?" Dr Kroot enquired. "How do you know about that?"

  Cogan stood up from looking at the screen, casting her gaze towards the woman's body on the examination table. "I knew someone who used one when I worked in the Army years ago," her voice faded a little as she answered, eyes glazing a little as her words trailed.