by Jobe, David
Nurse Lindell returned to his side, taking his bloodied hand in hers. “We need to go. Now! This is our best shot.”
Brian nodded, and they moved in unison toward the door. “How many more soldiers?”
“I don’t know. He was the only one I saw.”
Brian nodded, suspecting that there would be more. Maybe the Doctor decided to order a purge of all of the occupants of this facility. He glanced at the television as he left the room, the solitary figure frozen in a landscape of dark hallways that appeared painted in old blood. A shiver ran down his spine as he stepped into the corridor.
It remained empty for the moment, silent and smelling of gunpowder. They rushed down the hall and as Nurse Lindell moved to slip past a familiar corridor. Brian stopped. “We have to go get Shane.”
“Who?” Nurse Lindell asked, her eyes never resting on one spot.
“Mr. Tarot.”
She shook her head with such vigor the badge on her breast pocket danced a crazy jig. “No no. There isn’t time.”
Brian shook his head. “I have to.” He moved to head down the hallway, but her hand caught his arm. She held out goggles to him, the kind a role-player might wear to a steampunk convention. “What are these?”
She gave him a weak smile. “Bulletproof goggles. Protect your eyes. Plus, they have some tech in them. My own making.”
“You work with tech?” He slipped the goggles on, and for a moment everything was shrouded in darkness. Then the goggles seemed to activate, and the area lit to a comfortable level. Like in a video game, things in the corner of his vision flashed to life and seemed to have some meaning he didn’t understand.”
“I designed your entertainment system,” she said. “Come on, I’ll explain the goggles later. First, we need to get out of here.” She pulled him down the same hallway he had meant to go. “I don’t remember which room is his, to be honest. I tried to stay away from him. He gave me the creeps.”
Brian nodded. “Yeah, he freaks me out a bit too, but he sounds like the man to have at your side while making a daring escape from a secret government lab.”
Nurse Lindell stifled a nervous giggle. “Sure. I think it’s this one.” She punched in the code and stepped back, a hand going to her mouth.
Brian lunged in, expecting to find another gunman. He did, but the gunman was no longer a threat, his head severed from his neck. It was one of the other bodies in the room that caught his eye. Doctor Patton lay staring at the ceiling, a single bullet wound in his forehead. Blood pooled around the back of the doctor’s head, seeping into the cracks of the tile floor. “Looks like the doctor’s done with.”
Nurse Lindell eased in next to him, her eyes wide. “Oh no. As standard protocol, the Doctor had his Gauntlet set to Mr. Tarot’s ability. That way if anything went wrong down here, and it killed everyone, he would come back in three days.”
“Maybe we should just take his head off then? Or take his Gauntlet?” He stepped forward, but she held onto him with a tight grip.
“Are you prepared to do such a ghastly thing?” Her eyes looked at him with open fear.
Brian sighed and shook his head. “We can at least take his Gauntlet. Then he won’t come back.”
“Do you think it works that way? Or will he come back pissed off that he’s been robbed? How long before he figures out who stole his prized possession? What do you think will happen when he finds that person? No. Let’s just go and hope that the wrath he wakes up with will be aimed at whoever did this.”
It made sense. “You’re right. Let’s find Shane and get out of here.”
They found Shane moments later, a few doors down on the other side. He looked eerily similar to the doctor. A single bullet wound to the head, only his face held a wide grin.
“He’s dead.”
Brian looked at her. “You know he’ll come back too. Let’s find something to push him around with.” He marched over to a few more doors, finding more corpses with bullet wounds, a few with enough to restock a gun store. Some people here appeared to be harder to take down than the rest. He found a wheelchair in one room, a slick layer of goo on the seat, coating a set of clothes that looked to have belonged to a woman. Brian tried not to think too hard on it, throwing the discarded wet clothes onto the bed before wheeling the chair into Shane’s room. Once he had secured the dead man, he told Nurse Lindell to point the way but to stay behind him in case anyone came along. A corpse and a bulletproof man would work wonders at being a shield should they find another crazed soldier.
After more twists and turns than Brian could replay, they ended up at two double doors looming ominously before him. “The corridor is behind there, isn’t it?”
Behind him, Nurse Lindell gave a small noise but nodded. “I hate that place.”
Brian nodded, pushing the chair forward so he could lean over and enter the code. “Just hold onto my shirt and close your eyes. I’ll get us to the other side.” He felt her hand clasp tight to his waistband. As the door slid open, the Corridor began to light up in sections, the closest to them coming on first. To either side of them, large cylindrical vats sat on concrete perches. Behind them, on a second level was another set of vats, aligned so that as you walked down the wide lane of the corridor, you could see the open section of each. Clear glass faced the Corridor, displaying the bodies of various people. As Brian moved on, he could see all sorts of horrible deaths played out and on display before his eyes. Too many to count had disfigured faces from gunshot blasts at close range. Distorted faces with bits floating in the clear liquid that held them. Some appeared burnt down to the skeleton, while others had their ribcage opened to have what should stay inside floating like wayward balloons at a birthday party. At one point he passed the body of someone he knew. She was on the bus with him when it was attacked. Now she floated in a vat of her own, about halfway down the football field long corridor, her ruined eyes felt as if they were following him, one severed hand floating beside her like accessories beside a doll in the wrapper at some supermarket toy store. As they walked by, the motion of the liquid in the glass made it seem as if the hand waved at them in their passing. “This guy was sick.”
“Is,” Nurse Lindell corrected. “All the more reason to move faster.”
But Brian couldn’t. He looked at each ruined life on display as he walked by, shaking his head at each. He didn’t know enough about the Doctor’s part in this, but this trophy display of his looked more like pride than science. He could see why Shane thought that this parade of ruination might be built as an example to those who would cross him, but deep down, Brian suspected that this was here so the man himself could take midnight strolls through this monument to horrid death. The bodies displayed here crossed age lines, showcasing young kids to older people hunched over, and a large range in between. Race and color were well represented in this as well, cataloged by their violent death and their possible hidden power. There had to be over a hundred vats, lining the walls, each with a shattered life as an occupant. “I should have taken his head.”
“Later,” Nurse Lindell said. “First we find my daughter.”
That broke Brian from his amazement at the horror that surrounded him. Out there was another life that the Doctor wanted to steal and store in this twisted hallway. A life he had promised to try and save. He quickened his step, and they made for the double doors that waited at the other end. Beyond they found a waiting room with two elevator banks. They took the first one that opened, half expecting another soldier to pop out. When none did, they found the doors opening to a loading dock. In the dark of the dock, he could make out “Icarus Drinks” in bold blue letters on the loading dock doors. “I used to drink this stuff,” Brian said.
“And that’s why you are here. Let’s open this door and get out of here.”
Brian pushed Shane to the side, squatting down to pull on the bottom of the door. With a grunting yank, the door squealed as the lock fought and then broke. The door rolled up, revealing a tattered old flower
delivery van sitting idle with the doors wide open. “Fortune favors us.”
“We shall see.” Nurse Lindell jumped down and slid into the driver’s seat. “Leave him and let’s go. If they set a sentry, no way they didn’t hear the door.”
“We can’t leave him here. You just said there might be sentries.”
“And what do you think will happen if anyone pulls us over with a corpse in the back? Think I’ll be able to get to my daughter?”
“I’m not leaving him.” Brian crossed his arms.
For a moment, Nurse Lindell stared at him. “Thank you for your help.” He couldn’t tell if she was being genuine, or spiteful. Either way, she threw the van into reverse and pulled off, leaving him standing there with a corpse as a companion.
Brian sighed. “This just keeps getting better.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Potions and Portents
Grimm hesitated with his hand outstretched toward the morgue doors. For a moment they wavered there, caught in indecision. With a resigned sigh, he pushed through the doors into the cold, musty room beyond. Coroner Carrie Anne La Morte stood between two autopsy tables, each with a body on them. The body closest to Grimm appeared to be the larger of the two alien things that Lanton had put down in the police station’s basement.
Carrie Anne looked up from her work, a bloody scalpel held aloft in one slender gloved hand. “Can I help you, detective?” Her tone implied that she wanted to do no such thing. Over her eyes, she wore thick sunglasses that seemed more out of place than his sneakers and suit.
“Lanton sent me to see what you had so far. “He paused. “You okay?” He gestured to her glasses.
“Yes. Yes.” She set the scalpel down. “I have a headache, and the lights bother my eyes. Why didn’t Lanton come to see me himself?”
Grimm stepped into the room, one tentative footfall after the next. “He got called away to an emergency, but didn’t want you to think he was ignoring you.” Part of him believed Lanton was doing just that. Something about this woman made both of them uneasy. For Grimm, he chalked part of it up to her being unbelievably attractive. He had never been very successful with women in general, and the better they looked, the more he dropped the ball. “Are they aliens?”
Carrie Anne tilted her head to look at him. “You mean from another country?”
Grimm chuckled and shook his head. “No. From up there.” He pointed upward. “And not the second floor. I mean outer space.”
Carrie Anne placed both hands on the table, leaning into what Grimm imagined would have been a glare if not for the glasses. “I am unfamiliar with some of your terminology, sure, but I am not a moron, Detective. I understood that pointing up would indicate outer space and not the second floor. Get your head out of your ass.”
Grimm swallowed hard. “Yes, ma’am. My apologies.”
Carrie Anne nodded. She leaned back crossing her arms over her chest. “And no, these aren’t alien. I put their DNA into our database and immediately got a result. They are brothers from Texas that were executed awhile back.”
“Doesn’t look like it stuck.” He stepped closer to look down at the grayish skin and the off-color red blood that pooled around the wound. “So, two dead brothers show up here with powers looking like aliens from another world.”
“So far, what I can tell is that these two have been undergoing horrible experiments since their supposed death. Whoever did this was very skilled and a sadist.” She picked up the scalpel and peeled back a layer of skin, revealing something white that Grimm couldn’t identify. He could see black lines running over the white part in dizzying arrays. “This man’s bones were broken and then quickly mended in a new shape to distort his form. He also has the genetic markers of whatever Lanton discovered in that soda.”
“Right. The Pepsi can.” He took out his notebook.
Carrie Anne looked at him. “No. The Icarus can. That beverage that is canned just north of town. I’ve done some research on that too. I found two more cans with the stuff in it, and six without it. So, it isn’t in all of them, but I think it’s in enough to be worrying. There are likely hundreds of people out there afflicted, and dozens killing themselves because of the side effects.”
Grimm scribbled down the drinks name, deciding to stop by the gas station on the way north. “Side effects?”
“Lanton didn’t tell you?” She watched him now, scalpel held at the ready.
“Not about side effects.”
She sighed. “There is a chemical compound in the mix that has a high rate of causing suicidal tendency in patients without mental illness. The drug was pulled from the shelves years ago. I tracked the stockpile of remaining drugs to a warehouse in Cicero, but the place looks empty now.”
Grimm stopped writing. “That’s why you vanished, isn’t it? You were following your own leads.”
Carrie Anne shook her head. “No. I just happened to drive there on my way home.”
“You live on the south side.”
“How do you know where I live?” The hand around the scalpel appeared to hold it tighter.
Grimm sighed. “You really don’t remember? I gave you a ride to work one day when your Lexus was in the shop for a fender bender.” He shook his head. “You bought me coffee as thanks, and then told me a brown belt doesn’t go with black pants.”
She appeared to consider him for a moment. “I vaguely remember something like that.”
He gave another sigh. “I have that effect on people. Anyways. You went by the warehouse, and it was empty. Do you have the address?” She gave it to him. “Thank you. Anything else?”
She stared at him in silence for a second before continuing. “I’ve crafted up an antidote to the side effects. It’s over there.” She gestured with the knife to a table sans a corpse but with a steel suitcase on it. “See that Lanton gets it. I’m also working on a cure for the affliction.”
“Why on earth would you want to do that?”
She set the blade down. “If I had a power, I’d do everything to keep a hold of it, true. But, that being said, there are people who will use their powers for ill; who’ll set out to hurt people, and possibly a great number of them at once. Those people may need to have that power removed. Say for instance the guy who could tell people to do things like kill themselves and they would. You saw the kind of trouble Lanton had keeping that man held for under a week. Imagine how others like him would require cells with technology beyond our ability.”
Grimm found himself impressed with her reasoning. “That makes sense, but don’t you think it would be a civil rights violation to remove someone’s power from them?”
She shrugged. “No more than denying them their freedom. I’ll let the courts decide what to do with the criminals, in the meantime, I intend to be ready should another Altered come to steal corpses,” she paused. “Or something else.”
“Is that what happened with the whole burn hole in the door before you left? Someone came for you?” Grimm found he was now standing on the same side of the table as her. He coughed and stepped back.
“It’s not important. What is important is for you and Lanton to know that there is someone behind all of this, and I don’t think that person is done.”
Grimm leaned against the table, then thought better of it. “What do you mean?”
She stepped close enough to him that he could smell her perfume. “If you could devise something that would give powers, why would you slip it in drinks at random? Why would you add something that makes normal people commit suicide? Why would you have these,” she waved at the corpses on the table before her, “come and collect the bodies afterward?”
Grimm shrugged, “to cover up your mistakes?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. This stuff is too sophisticated to be handled by someone who makes those kinds of mistakes. I think he put them out in the world to collect as many test subjects as he could. Infect an entire city and start collecting when the bodies started piling up
. And now that Lanton has dispatched the collectors, what do you think this mysterious person will do now? Go back and lick their wounds?”
“Build more of these things?”
She shook her head. “They know Lanton can put the next ones down also. No. Whatever comes next, I think it will be big. Big and bloody, with corpses littering the ground. The streets of Indianapolis are about to be red with blood and the skies blackened with corpse flies by the thousands. Unless we can find this villain and stop them.”
