Selected Short Stories Featuring New Corpse Smell

by Nicolas Wilson

Maloney had opened up the old man’s throat, and the old man was trying vainly to hold it shut and breathe.

  I froze for a moment, as if by not opening the door, maybe the old man might not die, that by remaining in the hall, that second of time might stay unbroken, but he fell quietly onto his bed. I shoved the door open, and Maloney’s head snapped in my direction, and I put a bullet through it. In that moment, I didn’t think about it, but it hit dead center forehead, so we could harvest his eyes.

  There was some commotion in the house, but apparently gunfire was not an unusual occurrence, and after a few soothing words from the interpreter everybody went back to bed. It wasn’t until 2:00, Smithson’s turn on watch, that anyone came into the old man’s room. “You’re on duty,” I told him, “I’ll finish up here.” Smithson understood, looked at Maloney, then to the old man, and shook his head.

  At sunrise Smithson went out to scout the base; by then I’d finished harvesting the old man and Maloney, and had Smithson drop off the organs at the nearest hospital in the family’s name. He came back with a fairly substantial check, but some bad news. Apparently, the junta had used its powers to conscript several thousand of the village locals overnight- men who didn’t even know how to hold a rifle right, let alone aim it well.

  By then, the women of the house had begun making breakfast. The men wanted to stay to eat, until I told them what had happened. There wasn’t a one of them that would rather stay for what happened when the women found out one of our own had murdered their father, husband, or grandfather. So we set off on foot, hungry and pissy.

  None of us were looking forward to a firefight with civilians, but we hadn’t made it much past a fifth of a mile before we got the call in. Apparently, news of the conscription had gone out on the internet media, and the protests gained a lot of ground, up from one in four protesting to only one in four not.

  Our Company contact said the generals had pretty much no choice but to let the prisoners go, since many of the conscripts had left in the early morning hours; apparently Maloney’s bullshit at the barricade scared a bunch of them. That psycho inadvertently saved lives. Still, the only thing I regret about shooting him was not doing it sooner.

  Table of Contents

  Werehouse

  My cousin Amy has never been completely right. But she was always happy to see me, and in my family, that’s pretty special. So I never really asked what wasn’t right about her; we got along fine, so what did it matter?

  So I was out of the loop when she ended up on the streets. Another cousin, Ben, mentioned that he was going looking for her, and that was the first I heard. The next time was a couple months later, and Ben told me he’d found her and taken her home, and she just went back on the streets. She was legally an adult, so she couldn’t be forced to stay home.

  But her family was worried (or at least parts of the family were). There’d been a few deaths lately downtown, pretty violent, pretty gruesome. You know how they always say murders and suicides spike when there’s a full moon? Well, these were all happening when the moon was full.

  Local police had only managed to keep the feds out of it this long because the MO of the murders was so varied. The kinds of slashes, even the weapons and the aggressiveness, seemed to indicate completely different people. And the cops said they had unknown DNA from the scene that didn’t match the victims, and was different from scene to scene.

  And I maybe wouldn’t have ever got involved, except my mom ran into her at the farmer’s market, and they got into it; I guess she thought my mom was there to drag her home like Ben had. But it scared my mom, and she and Ben talked me into trying to sort it all out. They thought Amy might listen to me where she wouldn’t to other people; maybe because I’d never treated her like she was any different from the rest of us (and I admit that was mostly because I don’t know how different that might have been).

  I’d worked my way through school doing security work, and you’d be amazed how many eventual law enforcers start out there. I knew half a dozen people with ties to that community- mostly corrections, but enough that I got a few minutes with the detective leading the case.

  “We haven’t put it in the papers, yet- mostly because the moment we do, the feds will have to take the case from us, but the people who turned up dead got robbed. Not just muggings, I mean their cars go missing, and before the body’s found their homes get broken into, too. It’s scary how quick and clean it is. But our boss has political ambitions- and he’d like to be able to hand the feds a nice thick steak of a file instead of the pile of sliced bologna we have- his words. Personally, I think the man should worry less about running for office and more about a coronary bypass- but I’m just a lowly homicide detective- ain’t my job to save people, just to figure out what killed them.”

  I left enough of a pause to sound like I gave a crap about him or his boss, then said, “I know from the papers most of the victims have come from the park downtown. My cousin’s homeless, been hanging around down there during the days.”

  “You think he’s involved?”

  “No, no, and my cousin’s a she. No. She might smack somebody around if she thought they were getting in her face, but this, no.”

  “Well, you’ve got another week and a half, if this freak keeps to pattern. After that we’re probably going to have to hand it over to the feds, anyway. You could try looking into the Warehouse, though. That’s where most of the homeless down there sleep.”

  “The Warehouse?”

  “Yeah. Not an official name or anything, but it used to be a warehouse for, I don’t know, a couch company that went out of business or something, but it was renovated and turned into a homeless shelter. People call it the Warehouse, still, only,” he hesitated, but knew there wasn’t any turning away from it, “only now instead of housing furniture nobody wants it’s a place we store people nobody wants.”

  “Hmm.” I said, and after a moment I got up. He muttered an embarrassed goodbye, and I nodded as I left.

  It seemed at the time, and seems more so now, to be a crackpot idea, but I had literally nothing else I could think of. So I dressed in my crappiest clothes and got on a bus downtown.

  I’d expected something shabby, industrial and foreboding, but the Warehouse had as its entrance a large three-story home, perhaps originally corporate offices; its namesake had been attached at a later time to the backside of the property. I shambled nervously up the steps, and a man who I couldn’t be sure if he worked or lived there asked, “First time?”

  I was nervous, and couldn’t look him in the face. “Yes.”

  “I know that look. Looked the same way when I first got here. Come on.” He set down a wrench on the windowsill and waved for me to follow him. He took me into the building, past a secretary, who he called “Clarice,” and acknowledged with a nod, and led me down a hall to a staircase. He took me to the top and pointed down a thin hallway. “Last door at the end. Boss likes to meet new people, talk to them about the rules, get them settled.” Then he disappeared back down the stairs before I could realize I never got his name.

  I walked slowly to the door, and had finally gotten up the courage to knock when a voice from inside intoned, “Come in.” I did, and was immediately greeted by a man standing behind a desk. From his posture, he must have been looking past the warehouse towards the river through the window behind his chair. “I thought I heard Hector, and that usually means a new guest. Hector used to be a tenant here; now he takes care of the day to day. Caroline is technically in charge, but she’s more of what you might call a public relations person. But where are my manners. My name’s Howard.”

  He was a tall, thin man with a mildly receding hairline (masked somewhat by a short cut); he seemed to have an accent, though I couldn’t place it, and it only existed every few words, and only for a moment. He stretched out a bony hand for me to take, and I did.

  His hand was warm in the palm but cold at the fingertips. I stammered out, “I don’t wa
nt to be a burden. I have skills. I-I want to be useful- however that might work. Computers, communication, a little security work.”

  He sighed, and looked down towards the warehouse, where a dozen disheveled homeless people were milling about. Some were talking, and laughing, but a few were silent, staring at a world they could not touch.

  “Everyone has skills. But I won’t assume you meant to be patronizing; after all, you’ve only just fallen on hard times, and it’s not uncommon to assume that the homeless really are just a gaggle of shiftless layabouts.” He recognized, I think, that he had spoken too harshly, and his eyes softened noticeably. “I will take your offer under consideration, but I’d suggest, for your sake, that you put your abilities into looking for work. Allow yourself to entertain whatever prospects may come your way- many of the people here aren’t fortunate enough to have that option. If you would like you can speak to Caroline about any assistance she might need.”

  I turned to walk out, but suddenly his voice became higher pitched, before lowering again “Oh, in ten days time, you’ll be put out. I’m afraid we have festivities planned which cannot be made to accommodate you. I can see to it that you’re fed, and can have a word with another of the local shelters if you want for a bed for