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“This isn’t a cookbook… Jim said it was a cookbook. I’m not sure what this is, but it’s definitely not a cookbook. Should I order it again? Maybe I hit the wrong button… Does it say that it’s a cookbook?”
--Grandma Gibson
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By Jim Gibson
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Jim Gibson
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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Prologue: (What a drama-queen)
Chapter 1: First Encounters (Just start the bloody story)
Chapter 2: Cops and Reporters (Hate ‘um already)
Chapter 3: In the Beginning (Is this a new version of the Bible or something?)
Chapter 4: …And It Just Keeps Getting Better (…No, it doesn’t)
Chapter 5: Diversification in the Bronze Age (Why is that again?)
Chapter 6: The Bigger They Are… (The more they shit?)
Chapter 7: The World Takes a Wrong Turn (That’s why I saved one bullet)
Chapter 8: Bad News for the Bad Guys (Well… duh!)
Chapter 9: A Candle in the Dark (Yeah, yeah, take a Prozac, already)
Chapter 10: Anticlimactic Revelations (Didn’t see that coming)
Chapter 11: Hope Realized… Sorta (What took ‘um so long?)
Chapter 12: Tamesis Gets Her Interview (Big surprise)
Chapter 13: Anger Management (I think I used to date her)
Chapter 14: That’s A Wrap! (It’s about damned time)
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“We’ve got fingerprint results on the bodies that you may find particularly interesting, Mike,” said the department’s forensics specialist. “It turns out that they have the same prints on them as the four bodies we found two years ago.”
The forensic specialist instantly had Detective Hendrix’s full attention. “So he’s back in business… This time he’s bound to make a mistake and when he does, I’ll personally…” his words trailed off as a realization landed with both feet on his show of determination. “Wait a sec, there were no fingerprints on the bodies back then… What are you trying to pull here, Jay?”
His colleague held up his hands in protest, “Nothing! You’re not getting what I said straight. There were fingerprints on those bodies. Four sets.. Well four partial sets anyways. Maybe I should have said the bodies have the same prints as the ones we found before.”
The detective eyed him openly skeptical and replied, “How is that possible. Do you mean you found the rest of the missing fingers?”
“Nope. Well one or two were new, but the rest were repeats from before.”
“Once again, how the hell is that possible?”
The fat man shrugged. “Got me, but it's true.”
The detective stepped closer and looked up at him. “If you’re messin’ with me Jay, I swear I will beat the brakes of your fat ass when I find out.”
Jay looked nervous as he eased back against his scarred steel desk. He made a mental note to henceforth; make a habit of breaking unsettling news while standing in the doorway. He outweighed detective Hendrix by a good hundred pounds, but he knew the man was more than capable of doing what he promised. “I’m just tellin’ you what the FBI analysis told me, Mike. If that’s wrong then I’ll have to ask you to beat the brakes of their collective ass first.”
The detective backed away a step. “Okay. But this doesn’t make a damned bit of sense. You got any ideas?”
The specialist visibly relaxed a little as he nodded towards the phone. “I don’t have a clue. I’ve had it rechecked twice now and called my contact there. We can’t think of anything that makes sense… But those are the same fingers that were down at the morgue that we cremated a few years ago.”
~
May 30, four years ago
Mitch Johnson woke with bright lights shining down on him from his left and right. The rest of the room was dark and he couldn’t see any walls. Something about the odd sounds he heard suggested they were there, though.
He tried to sit up. There was the slight rustle and squeak, almost like the sound of a child fondling a balloon, when he made the effort, but nothing else. He couldn’t move.
His mouth hurt almost as much as his head. It was full of something.
Cloth? Yeah, cloth, he thought, and it tastes… bloody?! He tried to rise again, but found something held him firmly in place.
“Ah, you’re finally awake, Mr. Johnson,” observed a disembodied voice. “I was just setting up the last of the props for our little show.”
A full length mirror suspended on some sort of mobile scaffold rolled over him and offered a view he already knew wouldn’t be good. He could see that he was nude and was being held to the table by what looked like plastic wrap and a metal collar with tubes sticking out of it. His eyes tracked down his static body and locked on a machine next to his feet. It looked like an industrial sized circular saw that had been mounted to a track that ran the length of the table.
“Well Mr. Johnson, here’s the deal: In a moment I’m going to take that rag out of your mouth. Then I’m going to ask you some questions and you’re going to answer them honestly and immediately. If you fail to do so or if you deviate from answering the question that I asked, things will get very… uncomfortable for you. Do you understand?”
Mitch bobbed his head yes to the extent the collar would allow.
“Good. I should also point out that the device you’ve no doubt observed around your neck is a rather handy little gadget that was designed specifically for this interview. You see, while you were unconscious, I separated the blood flow to and from your head from the rest of your body. There are lots of subtle ramifications to this fact Mr. Johnson, but the one that you should focus on is that I can keep your mind alive and awake regardless of what happens to your body. For that matter, I could give you a variety of psychotropic supplements or even adrenaline to, um, enhance the experience for you.”
A man stepped beside the head of the table and sat a tape recorder next to Mitch’s head and pressed record. He didn’t look like what Mitch would have expected for a psycho. He was average in every respect Mitch could see. A little stocky but not enough to make you scream steroids or anything. Maybe a bit on the short side too, but it was hard to tell how high the table was for comparison. Very clean cut, too. He pretty much looked like a textbook government agent if you ditched the suit and sunglasses before throwing in a lab coat.
The man pulled the cloth from Mitch’s mouth, and after spending most of his adult life either talking his way out of or into trouble, Mitch instinctively launched into a plea of mistaken identity.
“Look man, I-”
Before the third word passed his lips, the saw came to life and slowly began tracking across the table, shredding the plastic and removing a two millimeter layer of tissue from the bottoms of Mitch’s feet. Mitch screamed in pain as he watched the procession in the mirror. That red spray of gore, that speckled the mirror, but mostly flew into the darker recesses of the room, was him! He strained to pull away, but it was no use.
When the blade completed its pass it pulled its self back to the starting position and clicked as it ratcheted a barely visible two millimeters towards the head of the table. Mitch could see the gnawed, bloody plastic as well as his blood pooling on the bottom teeth of the saw before dripping on the floor. The rag was easily stuffed back into his shrieking mouth.
The Interrogator leaned down next to Mitch’s ear so that he could be heard over the muffled screams, “I’m going to have to guess you’re a bit of a slow learner Mr. Johnson. I just told you not to deviate from my questions. Or perhaps you thought there was room for negotiation? I’m sorry to disappoint you Mr. Johnson. All you have to bargain with is the information that I want. To put it simply, your balls are on the anvil and I’m holding the hammer, so you will play by my rules. When you think about it; a hammer would actually be an improvement over your rather precarious predicament. Now we will try this again, do you understand?”
Mitch clenched his eyes shut as tears of pain seeped from them. This couldn’t be happening to him. He always knew there was a possibility he’d end up murdered, but he’d assumed that it would be a bullet in the brain prompted by his questionable methods in dilution and weighing techniques for certain illegal substances, or neglecting to pony up prompt and full payment for the aforementioned substances. Being thin-sliced to death like a turkey in a supermarket deli certainly never crossed his mind.
An odd smell seeped into his consciousness. Instinctively, he realized it was the smell of ‘aerated Mitch’ and the conviction that this was in fact happening to him finally established a beachhead.
Now, for the first time in his life, he saw no possible avenue of escape, and he didn’t know what to do. So, he did what many of today’s naive youths would do in such a desperate situation: he wished it all away.
When no answer was forthcoming, the saw came to life again and began stripping away a second layer of his feet. Mitch abruptly came to the conclusion that he needed a dramatic change in tactics. And for the next four hours he cooperated in every detail to the best of his ability.
There were questions about his parents; about where and how he grew up; inquiries into his sex life and partners; about a few girls that he had strung out over the years that ended up dead; paper or plastic? There were questions about Mitch’s drug supplier and his customers. There were questions about their associates, friends and family; about the best place to buy latex paint. He was asked about the lingo of his trade and daily life; music preferences? He was grilled on both the normal and extreme amounts of a variety of drugs consumed by people in varying stages of addiction. He was even asked if light beer really was less filling.
The list went on and on, and Mitch answered everything as soon as he was asked as precisely as he knew how.
By the time the questions ended he was six millimeters shorter than when he first woke, but he had survived. The man told him to open his mouth and he complied without hesitation. The rag, now dry again, went back to its roost.
The man picked up the recorder and seemed to be lost in thought for a moment. “Thank you Mr. Johnson. Your cooperation has helped immeasurably in vindicating a great injustice. I will no longer require your services.”
Mitch felt relief wash over him until he remembered that in every movie he could think of, someone usually turned up dead when the words ‘I will no longer require your services’ were uttered. The man turned to go and the saw came to life yet again.
While it would probably seem like an eternity to have one’s body shredded two millimeters at a time. It actually only took a little over an hour for the saw to make the remaining 852 passes to reach the collar.
Mitch would never know how lucky he was when the saw slashed an exposed loop in one of the collar’s hoses.
He really didn’t have a last thought as he bled out. His sanity was in completely the wrong state to interject a lucid opinion or observation. Bearing that in mind, California seems as likely as any.
~~~
The information Mr. Johnson gave would indeed be put to very practical use. The Interrogator sets about making his plans and putting together a materials list for several facets of them. He estimated that he would be ready to act within six months.
He bought most of his supplies in the surrounding states and paid with cash. Always one type of item at a time and always implying an alternative to what they would actually be used for. He gathered surveillance equipment, building materials and a variety of power tools. Some of the items with more dubious and single minded applications were improvised.
He commandeered many items from construction sites late on weekend nights. It didn’t bother him to steal those items. After all they were his buildings and he had no intentions of collecting on the insurance.
He found a gold mine at a flea market in the form of a cache of electric motors ranging from 1/8 horsepower on up to five HP. He took the lot and paid in cash all while wearing sunglasses, a loose jacket and a ball cap. Everything was loaded into an old Silverado pickup that had bogus plates and magnetic signs on the doors indicating that it belonged to Big Al’s Appliances. At other times the truck sported signs proclaiming Sparky’s Electrical, Greasy Beaver Plumbing, Three Gringo’s Lawn and Garden or Inuit-Inferno Heating And Cooling.
Some of the more unusual items to be collected required trips out of the country, and late night border crossings, on roads that didn’t show up on most maps. Whatever it took to bring them home undetected.
A specialist was called in for certain portions of the pending work. The Interrogator had known him for a long time and knew his work was unimpeachable and confidential on the highest level.
A meticulous record was made from the ever increasing surveillance of the pray and his associates. Patterns were noted, friends and acquaintances logged, favorite restaurants, regular dry cleaner, exercise routines, preferred drinks, times and locations of illicit and legitimate business transactions, visits to mom, television viewing preferences, and even remote monitoring of fluctuations in electric, water and gas usage throughout the days and weeks were all annotated and evaluated.
He wrapped up his project two weeks ahead of schedule. It was time to open a gate to Hell directly in the path of his prey.
~
Tamesis Hanley pressed the record button, in her dining room, and rattled off the time, date, location and the premise of the interview with the “anonymous informant” title spackled in to protect her source. She then set the digital audio recorder on the table in front of her and appeared to relax in her chair with a legal pad on her well shaped, crossed legs and a pen poised to tick off items as she scanned her questions for the best place to start.
She pursed her moist lips and raised her eyes to meet the Mike’s. With a slight tilt of her head, she asked, “Officer, what can you tell us about your part in the investigation into the deaths of Mayor Benjamin Jackson, Mr. Timothy Jordan and Mr. Buford Simpson?”
Detective Mike Hendrix lit a cigarette to distract himself from the obviously strategically displayed physical flawlessness of the reporter. He was considerably older than his youthful appearance suggested, and had long ago reigned in his primal urges. But even a man on his deathbed would probably entertain a barrage of lurid thoughts in the company of Ms Hanley. There was something about her that demanded the attention of testosterone …estrogen, too, Mike suspected.
He leaned back in his chair. He tilted his head to match the angle used by Tamesis and puffed out a smoke ring then sent a stream of smoke through the center of it as he gathered his thoughts. “Well, for the record you left out one name. A major drug dealer named Leonard Mason also disappeared with the others and turned up just as dead. We just didn’t know they were linked to the same killer until much later.”
Tamesis jotted a note without looking down. “That would be ‘infamous crime boss’ Leo Mason, yes?”
Mike considered the cliché and nodded. “That’d be the one. It wasn’t until a very strange series of events occurred that we had no choice but to make the connection… A long and bloody series of events, really. The amazing thing is that we pretty much know who the killer is and can’t prove it. Every search we conducted for evidence came with the same results: Zip.
“The higher-ups have sent down orders to not release the name for fear of… well, a pack bloodthirsty lawyers when you get right down to it. That’s why I came to you, this way.”
Tamesis knew what the detective had at stake here and had suspected, before he even arrived, that she might have to coddle him a bit to get what she wanted. She leaned forward and lay a consoling hand on the table. “Please, start at the beginning then. If we can do something to vindicate these murders, we will.”
Mike set his jaw and looked down at his hands for a moment. Then he looked up at the reporter again. “Alright. But some of this is going to sound impossible or at the very least highly improbable.”
Mike’s memory zipped back to four years earlier on a chilly evening in mid-November.
~~~
-November 19, four years earlier
The Beast stirred in a cave. Its first conscious thought was of the hunger. Its body ached for relief like it never had before. Its enormous frame shook unsteadily as it rose.
Twilight claimed dominion beyond the entrance. A deep inhale brought in a survey of its surroundings. The musk of underground moisture mingled with the smell of animals recently departed from the area. Odd smells mingled; rotting vegetation mixed with a kind of smoke unlike any it had ever smelled in the wild. These smells were more chemical in nature. Nothing like the pleasant, if worrisome, wood smokes that waft from those rare human encampments and dwellings the Beast had encountered before. To the Beasts surprise, the smell of humans lay beneath the smoke. Lots of humans. The brute had never considered there were that many humans in the world.
On outward the Beast’s nose searched this new world.
Wait! There it was! The Beast was moving before it fully comprehended what it smelled. Bursting from the mouth of the cave faster than a gay Mennonite from a brothel, it intensified its olfactory investigation. In the open air, confirmation took hold instantly. It ran at full speed.
A late autumn breeze stirred long dead leaves and stripped away warmth from any source it could find. But it also carried the odors.
The Beast’s surroundings were alien. The trees were small scraggly affairs with far too much space from one to the next. The Beast was used to no trees but when it did happen across them, they grew in groves, or even forests, not spaced evenly beside strips of white or dark grey stone. Here too, were so many of the human dwellings, much larger than it had ever seen before but it was hard to mistake the straight lines and pointing corners. It was as if the world had become a rather disturbing dream.
It all looked wrong… Not that the Beast paid much heed to anything other than the smell. Nor was there any reason to worry about potential dangers on its quest. Anything it could run across would most likely piss itself anyway.
~~~
Chuck unlocked the bathroom door for the first time in almost three days. He had been convinced that everyone in the house wanted to tie him up and take the last of his stash. This didn’t really make sense, considering he had less than anyone there. But the paranoia had finally slipped from his drug ravished mind... Not to mention that he’d injected the last of his stash hours ago. As he wandered through the hallway and into the kitchen he saw the other five part-time residents crowded around the window over the sink, looking out into the night.
Probably think Five-O’s hyper-intelligent shadow-force monkey spies are in the trees to find the best angles for recon, raids and turd-hurling, again, he mused as he pulled up a chair and sat at the table. Junkies are a fun people to watch. He thought as he raised someone’s orange juice and took a sip. It wasn’t like the owner would notice, they were absolutely riveted to the window… could just be fireflies, too. Must be something pretty interesting to keep Kyle away from the VCR. Old electronics could frequently be found on the kitchen table along with a small tool kit. Tweekers could “work” on them for hours and never accomplish anything aside from successfully keeping a junkie occupied. No one missed the table space. It's not like anyone was going to be preparing a meal or anything. Chuck’s Thanksgiving dinner had been a snack size bag of Cheetos and a glass of grape Kool-Aid.
After about five minutes of mannequin-like concentration, someone spoke. “I know it's against your rules, but I think you should open the damned gun cabinet!” exclaimed Jessica.
Jessica always exclaimed… Even when she was whispering or talking in her sleep. She didn’t seem capable of any other mode of speech. “I don’t think a pack of wolves that all of us can see can be written off as hallucinations!”
Chuck’s head snapped up. What in the hell is that crazy bitch talking about.
~~~
Harold Miller’s dog Pinto woke him with a few yaps and a threatening growl.
Harold pulled the newspaper from his face and scanned the area for whatever might be spooking the unkempt Pomeranian. He could hear a police horse galloping over the grass towards his home/office/sharpie-monogrammed park bench. It wasn’t that putting his name on the bench had prevented any of the city’s countless homeless from trying to stake a claim on his bench, but at least he didn’t have to listen to childish clichés about the obvious validity of his own claim.
Damned police wouldn’t let a man catch a nap in peace.
He zeroed in on the direction of the sound and waited for them to divert around the long row of hedges. Maybe they’re after those damned dogs that were sniffing around here a few minutes ago.
The sound came onward.
As he propped himself on his elbow, he lay his hand protectively over the half empty bottle of peaches and cream flavored MD 20/20 in his dingy coat pocket.
A Volkswagen-sized hole in the eight and a half foot high hedges exploded towards him. A huge beast tore by only a foot or so from Harold and barreled away down an alley on the other side of the street.
Harold Miller had been Pinto’s master for several years, but he now found himself following Pinto’s lead.
He pissed himself.
~~~
Chuck watched in disbelief as Billy opened the oven, felt around the upper burner, and retrieved a key. He inserted it into a wall-mounted lock box by the refrigerator. He twisted it and pulled yet another key out. The new key was taken to a padlock attached to the handle of the large gun safe near to the back door which had a smaller lock trapped in its hinged shackle. The smaller lock’s shackle ran through the eye of still another key. After freeing it from the smaller lock, Billy inserted that key into the gun safe and opened the door. An array of ammunition, pistols, hunting rifles, shotguns and even an assault rifle hung inside. It's amazing how many stolen goodies you can collect if you’re a dealer willing to barter.
Chuck stood and rounded the table towards the back door. A room full of armed junkies was not that funny at all… unless they were armed with squirt guns loaded with petroleum jelly. This, on the other hand, looked like an ideal time to run to the store for smokes.
Chuck heard the click and pop of the AR15 clip being loaded and a round chambered as he reached for the door knob that would lead him out through the garage. As he opened the door he noticed with relief that the garage was open.
Then he heard the growl.
~~~
The Beast felt the fatigue of running all out for only a short time. If it were capable of abstract cognition it may have assumed it wasn’t a spring chicken anymore… Well, knowing just what the hell a spring chicken was would probably help, too. Much to its credit, the thought didn’t occur. Besides, more important things were taking precedence at the moment.
The smell was coming from just up ahead. The scent of the other animals, blood and panicked humans wafted beneath an odor of a new kind of smoke, as well. Only one smell mattered though.
The Beast accelerated.
~~~
For several moments, Oh, come on! Really? was all that seemed to want to register on Chuck’s head as he lay bleeding by the back door. Waves of determined wolves poured in the back door over him. Oddly, his most serious wounds were not from the two wolves chewing on his fugitive limbs. In fact his legs would still be tethered to his body were it not for a startled Billy amputating both of them with the assault rifle in response to the sudden appearance of the wolves in the house. With as many bullets that landed around him, it was a wonder that was all the damage Chuck sustained.
The pain hadn’t taken hold yet… Which was odd because he could still feel the linoleum against his hands. He’d walked across that floor thousands of times and never paid any attention to it. Now, its subtle ridges brought old memories of Hot Wheels cars being slung down slot car tracks hard enough to derail them. So much had happened to that little boy since he tucked the memory away that Chuck almost felt like he was borrowing someone else’s childhood. His current predicament tapped him on the shoulder and politely reminded him that if he wanted to keep making memories, he’d better find a way out of this mess.
Lying on his back, he looked around the room for help. Rolling his head up and to the right he could see Jessica lying face down and lifeless as a wolf tore at the side of her neck. The new girl (she called herself Lexis and Chuck never bothered to ask her real name, knowing full well that her novelty would soon wear off and she’d be out whoring for Billy to pay for her fix) had managed to climb into the sink. She was slashing wildly with a paring knife at anything that popped up over the edge of the counter. Rolling his head up farther and more and to his left Chuck could see thrashing body in the hall doorway. He couldn’t see a face but he knew it was Kyle from the unlaced combat boots that flopped about between stuttering kicks at air.
He couldn’t see Billy and Sam. He tilted his head back more to see down the near dark hallway. That particular light bulb had blown out long before Chuck ever set foot in the house.
Then he felt the teeth sink in his throat and the wolf’s head begin thrashing as it ripped away the flesh. He couldn’t even scream.
As fate would have it, his last thought was of what his parents would think when they found the ample collection of bondage porn between the mattress and box springs in his room at their house.
~~~
Billy backed away from the now locked basement door, bumping into the “lab table” he used for cooking methamphetamines. The door shook as Sam beat on the other side begging to be let in as he fired the last three shots from the Glock he managed to grab on his way out of the kitchen. It felt natural to Sam and if he’d had time to think about it, he’d have realized that it was the one that had been stolen from his house eighteen months before.
A scream heralded the end of Sam’s pleas and the beginning of the sounds of growls and ripping cloth and flesh. It was about then that Billy realized his error. He closed his eyes and hung his head. Sam was into him for at least a ten grand.
A crash above sent both dust showering from the basement ceiling and Lexis’ random squawks and squeals into a single, unwavering soprano note worthy of any opera. It lasted for about five seconds before drowning in a cacophonous roar of primal rage. Billy tried to suppress the shiver that radiated down his spine and out each of his extremities.
The ceiling groaned as something massive quickly moved across it.
Billy heard a loud thump and a crash on the other side of the kitchen. A sound like a 50 pound sack of potatoes hit the floor. The baby monitor Billy had hidden in the kitchen informed him Lexis was no longer making any sounds louder than the occasional gurgling.
Whatever was up there was now moving towards the door at the top of the stairs. Billy ran to the outside basement door and began twisting back the ten slide bolts, unhooking the dozens of hook locks and scrambling for the key to the three hasped padlocks arranged around the reinforced doorframe.
From the top of the stairs, another roar and Sam offered one last gurgling scream just before what sounded like a very moist crunch. The last lock fell to the ground. The door behind Billy exploded down the stairs.
Hearing the stairs creak behind him, Billy turned the handle and jerked the door. It didn’t move. An image of three padlocks on the outer side of the door appeared in Billy’s head. He had installed them to insure no one would try to sneak out this way with his product while he wasn’t looking. Another roar, this one impossibly louder than the first shook the room.
Billy turned to see. He did a double take.
That’s not possible. He thought.
The Beast charged. Billy grabbed the AR15 and raised it firing his last three shots before the firing pin clicked impotently devoid of a round to activate. All three shots were true, but the Beast seemed unfazed.
Billy discovered that almost three quarters of a ton traveling at twenty miles per hour could indeed break through his basement door with or without locks. Unfortunately, he happened to be standing in front of the door as the experiment reached it’s rather messy conclusion.
~~~
Detective Hendrix walked past a dented ‘98 Camero on the path leading to the torn screen door. It was open and the light from the six police cars lit up the scene in a blizzard of blue and red flashes. Inside he approached Sgt. Davidson who looked up with a haggard expression. The tell-tale chemical odor of methamphetamines lingered in the air.
“What’s goin’ on Will?” Hendrix asked.
The sergeant shook his head. “I reckon we got ourselves a bona fide ginormous dick blister an’ it’ll take a lot more than a shot of anybodics to get rid of it. I hain’t never seen the like, not even on the TV.” Not only was the sergeant’s drawl perfectly at home with words such as ain’t and reckon, it often added or deleted letters to and from words to smooth the transition from one to the next. In short, he was as rustic as a moon-shaped hole on an outhouse door. The upside was that, when the need arose, he could talk for hours without tiring. The down side was that he often had trouble with the definitions of the words like ‘when’ in conjunction with words like ‘the need arose’. In such cases, he simply assumed such words were not really that important anyway. The fact wasn’t lost on Mike when the sergeant said, “It’d be easier for you to see it than tryin’ to explain it.” He motioned for the detective to follow and turned toward the rear of the rundown, three bedroom, two and a half bath, ranch style house.
In the hall, Hendrix stopped in his tracks. “Is that a wolf?” he asked pointing.
“Close enough. As crazy as it sounds, the consensus is that that thar is in fact a meth-addicted timber wolf, but it gets even more… look, it's totally fubar, Mike. Somebody with a mind full of barbed wire came up with this shit. Squirrel actually called in a werewolf attack when he arrived. And I can’t say I’d’ve skipped that idea myself if I’d’ve gotten here first.
“My best guess is that some rival stayed up tweekin’ for a week straight, watched one too many horror movies and decided to start a drug war with a Jungle Book twist. When the animals got in, they must’ve smelled the shit all over the house, but the clothes these kids were wearin’ were saturated with the smell… At least the ones that had been in the lab.” He pointed first at the corpse by his feet, “We think that’s Kyle Mason,” then into the kitchen, “and that’s Charles Andrews and Jessica Randolph. You’ve probably ran across them before. They’ve all spent time in the county jail. We don’t know who the other girl is yet.”
Mike stepped around the wolf’s carcass and over a pile of chewed meat with cargo pants and combat boots that was presumably a man not long ago, lying in the kitchen doorway to see three other bodies. Two were torn up as badly as the one Mike had stepped over and the third appeared to be a girl of about sixteen or seventeen. Her head lolled at a dysfunctional angle with blood crusted around her mouth, nose and ears. The most notable wound was what appeared to be four deep slashes had all but removed her left shoulder.
The coroner would be thorough, but there was little doubt about cause of death. After a quick once over of the bodies for anything odd and not related to animals, Mike stood and surveyed the room. Three wolves lay dead around the room. A blood stained paring knife lay on the floor near the counter. 5.56 mm shell casings littered the floor around the door he had come in and bullet holes riddled the area around the door leading to the garage. A pile of about a dozen more wolves lay in and around the garage and doorway.
As he scanned higher up in the room, he saw the parallel gashes across what was left of the cabinet doors on either side of the sink. They were spaced about the same as the wound on the girl.
Only the lab would be able to tell which victim contributed blood to the multitude of splatters and puddles in the room. He suspected they’d find it was a team effort.
In the center of the room a near full glass of orange juice sat next to a mostly disassembled VCR on the table.
“What does the rest of the house look like?” Mike asked, eyes still roaming the room for anything he may have missed.
Sgt. Davidson grunted, “Ya hain’t seen the worst of it yet.” He motioned for Mike to follow and turned down a different branch of the hall. The drywall along the hallway was buckled in several places between about three and five feet off the floor. Mike followed until the sergeant stood aside at the top of a flight of stairs.
“That is probably Sam Green,” said Sgt Davidson gesturing to the heap of carnage that had either crawled or been dragged part of the way into a bedroom. Mike glanced just beyond the slain at the busted panel on the open door with blood spatters radiating out several feet from it. No, neither dragged nor crawled. Hurled seemed more accurate.
“Andrews was small-time, but the other three were pretty heavy hitters in the local drug trade.” Davidson pointed out.
“Three?” Mike queried.
“You’ll find the third down there… or at least parts of him. Watch your step.”
Remnant chunks of the basement door drooped on the hinges or lay scattered on the steps among enough splinters to bring a chaste termite to orgasm. He noticed what looked like the bristles from a paintbrush stuck in a piece of the wood. Pulling on a pair of latex gloves and removing a plastic bag from his pocket he plucked the fibers and held them up to the light. Something didn’t seem right about them.
“They’re… transparent,” he blurted in surprise.
“There’s plenty more where that came from,” Sgt. Davidson promised and gestured down the stairs.
Mike eased down into the basement, the smell of the crystal-meth lab becoming stronger as he descended. He bent over to see into the room and almost lost his footing.
A surreal scene revealed itself to the detective. The reinforced steel door leaned against a set of ascending concrete stairs on the outside of the house. It may have been white at sometime in the past but now it showed the orange signature of the iodine used in the preparation the methamphetamines as many light colored surfaces do in enclosed proximity to the drug while “cooking.” Moreover streaks and spatters of blood festooned the door in a style reminiscent of a Jackson Polluck painting. The lower half of a leg lay at the base of the door next to what appeared to be the upper half of a torso. The torn cloth with a lightning bolt and the letters DC wrapped around it were the big giveaway. Presumably the AC was around here somewhere.
But none of that had come into focus yet, as Mike’s eyes never made it past the bullet riddled polar bear lying on its side in the middle of the room.
“What the hell?” he muttered and completed the last few steps.
“Yeah, thank God Squirrel called for backup as soon as he got here. Do you have any idea how many bullets it takes to down a tweeker polar bear? It woulda been a real mother fucker if it hadn’t already lost a lot of blood. Still, it's amazing that thing didn’t get any of our boys before it went down. Jay’s up at the hospital now, though. I think he may have had another heart attack.
“But my question is; who the hell came up with this shit and how the fuck do you get damn near a ton of live polar bear down here and how did they keep it hid long enough to get it hooked on meth without anyone finding out?”
“That’s three questions Will. But the answers the same for all of them; beats the nine kinds of hell out of me.” Mike knelt beside the bear, “So this one is addicted too…
“Yeah, finding’ this ‘un wired on that shit is pretty much what tipped us off to check the other critters for drugs. We ran ‘um all on the field kits and damned if’n they weren’t all junkie mutts.” The sergeant turned his attention back to the chunks in the doorway, “Well anyways, the wallet on this’un says he’s William Harris. If it's the one I think it is, it's Baker Billy.” Mike nodded his familiarity with the name. “and if that’s the case, a lotta meth-heads are gonna be Jonesin’ real hard, real soon.”
Officer Simon “Super Squirrel” Jackson trotted down the stairs to just above the blood smeared steel door. “Sir, we found most of the gun!” He barked in his own peculiar style. If words were bullets, Officer Jackson’s mouth would be the equivalent of the Israeli made Oozi.
Sergeant Davidson nodded after allowing his brain a moment to catch up with his ears, “Good job. Where was it, Squirrel?”
“Well sir, it was, um,” Squirrel fidgeted, “it was kinda with his legs, sir.”
Mike looked up from his inspection of the scene on that note. “Kinda? What do you mean?”
“Ahh, it's um sort of um between them, sir, only farther up.” Squirrel’s nervous manner took on a spastic nature reminiscent of a prop-plane trying to stall in mid-flight any time he was getting close to a curse word… or a female… or any item typically used by women almost exclusively. “Pretty much all the way up, sir”
The Sergeant blinked.
“You mean the gun was literally up his--”
“Yes sir.” Squirrel cut in before Mike could finish his query, “I guess the bear held a grudge, sir. It's over by the kiddie-pool if you wanna see it, sir. I’ll just be getting back to the search for the rest of the body, sir.”
He turned and disappeared up and over the steps into the backyard.
Sergeant Davidson and Detective Hendrix looked at each other with raised brows.
“What did he mean by ‘grudge’,” Mike asked. “and what kind of gun?”
“Oh yeah, that. It seems that Mr. Harris managed to put a few rounds in the bear ‘fore he went down. I figure where all the holes around the door upstairs came from.”
Mike paused to consider, “But those are fairly large caliber holes… and there are a lot of them...”
“Well, we did find two empty magazines upstairs and three shell casings along with the butt of an AR15 down here.” The sergeant grimaced as he raked his fingernails across his five o’clock shadow, “I hope for Billy’s sake, he wudn’t alive for the bears critique of his marksmanship.”
~
The Keeper descended the spiral staircase to the central viewing room of his laboratory. Once there he scanned each of the adjoining rooms and proceeded to walked from room to room performing a quick inspection of each of his captives. Upon returning to the central room he flipped the switch marked “PA” and sat in his chair he spun it in a full circle to ensure everyone was paying attention.
“Good afternoon, all. I trust everyone is in high spirits?” he said and finally settled on a random victim to lock eyes with. He held the gaze for a moment, smiling at his own jibe, then chose his most recent addition to focus on. Hatred blazed in the reciprocated glare. “Ah yes, our final participant has now joined us and since I won’t have to repeat myself, I’ll elaborate on why all of you are here, not that there’s any shortage of reasons for any of you.”
Again, the Keeper spun in his chair, but when he came to a stop, he let his eyes lock on the glass this time. His eyes went out of focus as he thought and the reflection of himself seemed to blend with equipment in the juxtaposed room.
“Perhaps I could tell you a story containing certain relevant aspects that may circumvent some questions later on. The story is a rather long one but it should put you in the right frame of mind for seeing my motivations… though, I doubt any of you will ever approve of my methods. Well I’d better get started. It’s not as if we have all the time in the world.” The Keeper chuckled.
This is a very old story of thirteen villagers who inadvertently received a gift of proportions unbeknownst to mankind before or since.
~~~
It begins when a rather lethal virus swept through a small village called Bryke with its forty-eight inhabitants around the year prior to our lord 1856 BC. Those were the last years of Britain’s Neolithic Age when the common cure for a toothache was a well placed punch.
The Keeper shrugged, “Well, I did warn you that it was a very old story. It was a world that is really quite alien to today’s. The closest thing you’d be able to relate to it would probably be the world of the American Indians. Though physiologically pretty much like you, they had just crossed the cusp from being cavemen.”
Anyway, it should be pointed out that only six of the inhabitants were not infected and went on to lead relatively normal lives. Of the forty-two infected villagers, a tremendous toll was exacted. Some sixteen passed from their mortal coil within the span of just twelve days of the viral onset.
The Keeper contrived an air of concern and said, “Please, stop me if you’ve heard this one before.”
By that point, the village chief, a fellow by the unfortunate name of Moaplevarrinajipasito (emphasis on the second, sixth and ninth syllables), who was quite ill himself, called his youngest son Kym and said to him, “namak manupo Kym, geelada na ee bonuposha ee nyel. Shach!” which would translate loosely as: “Kym, this sucks hard. Go get some Nyquil and maybe some antibiotics from the pharmacy. Quickly!” or perhaps, “Kym, I’m fuckin’ nackered. Be a sport and pop round to the chemists for a bit of jollop… and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps!” (And now that the fallibility of rough translation has been established, English alone will suffice for the rest of this story.)
“As you wish, father. I shall not disappoint you.” Kym replied.
The Chief smiled and placed his hand on Kym’s shoulder, “Know this then; you have never disappointed me and I have always been proud to call you my son. But if you should fail, every time you lay with a woman, my spirit shall come back to whisper taunts about your shortcomings in her ear.”
So Kym departed to seek out the aide of the closest healer in a frantic state. She lived a day and a half’s travel away (Kym always got the crappy jobs, but his father thought it built character).
One may wonder why the village was so far from any healers. As it happened, Chief Moaplevarrinajipasito’s grandfather, Chief Mojoshet, had moved the village around fifty years earlier after the healer, who was already quite old and the same one Kym was now seeking, created a medicine to cure a toothache. It didn’t cure the toothache but she had inadvertently created the first, and possibly only, legitimate aphrodisiac for women. Unfortunately for Old Chief Mojoshet and the men of the village, the healer (widely assumed to most likely be a woman) found it was an excellent dressing for salads as well. Due to the fact that she ate like a rabbit (perhaps a ravenous, hundred and ten pound rabbit with revolting table manners is more accurate), two weeks later, the whole village “migrated” in the middle of the night, because living with a toothache was preferable to waking to find oneself being mounted by an eighty year old of indeterminate sex and a questionable state of mind.
Of course, that was why the village, as a general rule, shunned healers. They weren’t about to fall for it again.
The Keeper grunted, “From a financial perspective, it is unfortunate that no one has been able to duplicate that female aphrodisiac. Today, it would be more valuable than gold in almost any economy.
Kym found the healer was, by her appearance, easily a centenarian which astonished him in an age when the average lifespan was, if you managed to make it through your early teens, around 50 years. Upon hearing Chief Moaplevarrinajipasito dilemma, she agreed to help for a price. In return for the elixir, Chief Moaplevarrinajipasito or his descendants would render a great service to her at a time of her choosing. Kym agreed to the arrangement.
It took five days to prepare a drink which she believed would cure the afflicted. And because her appetite for salads hadn’t diminished over the years, Kym slept near the top of a Scotch fir tree for three nights and switched to a neighboring tree after the healer had almost managed to hack through the trunk of the first.
Much later, Kym mentioned there was another, much greater cost, but he never said what it was. However, he did scream himself awake during full moons for years afterwards and had an inexplicable habit of passing out in the presence of carrots… gourds, pinecones, walking staffs, smooth fist-sized stones, or freshly sheered sheep.
Woe awaited Kym upon his return to the village a week later, he found that another eleven villagers had passed away including his two sisters. He presented the elixir to the survivors and told of the village’s newfound debt.
The survivors each drank the black potion, though it tasted horrible (If memory serves, “shit” was the most common term used to describe it). The weaker victims were not able to keep down as much so the amount ingested varied from person to person. Chief Moaplevarrinajipasito and his eldest son Beth--
“Chief Moaplevarrinajipasito had always resented wielding such a cumbersome name and vowed to endow his own children with more manageable monikers. His three sons, Beth, Lisa and Kym and his daughters Rodd and Todd all considered themselves comparatively very fortunate. At the time, then names had no implied gender. For that matter they all sounded like little more than single syllable grunts to the rest of us.” The Keeper held up his hands defensively, “Trust me, I’m not trying to be funny here. It was just a really weird fluke.”
--were so physically devastated by the disease they drank only small amounts of the elixir as did Staffanemicollera the daughter of the Chief’s good friend, a friend who, sadly, had already perished.
The following two days saw all of them reduced to startlingly high fevers, hallucinations and the inability to consume anything but water. Those unaffected by the illness comforted them as best they knew how. By the second night, all of the thirteen recipients lay silent and still. Their breathing was so shallow that the unaffected were sure they would not last till morning so the healthy, knowing opportunity when they saw it, began debating over who got the good hut next to the local brook.
But they did recover. On the morning of the third day, Pork woke first. Pork was Lisa’s nickname since early childhood owing to an incident involving an amorous wild boar and an early morning bowel movement… let’s just say the pig never pissed quite the same again and Pork earned his nickname.
Soon after, a few more stirred and asked for food and water. By noon, seven were awake and able to talk and eat small portions. Two more woke that night.
One, a fellow named Jonnedee awoke and asked only for a beer. He held it up and toasted, “Hair of the dog that pissed in my last mug.” About thirty seconds after he drained the cup, he turned his head as it came right back up in a rather spectacular display. He wiped his mouth, rinsed with some water and observed, “Musta pissed in this one too.”
Only Chief Moaplevarrinajipasito, Beth and Staffanemicollera still lay unable to stir.
The deliberation over who would lay claim to the possessions of the final three was much less enthusiastic than the previous day’s debates. Conversely, hope for the remaining stricken was considerably higher. They did not stir for another day. Then Chief Moaplevarrinajipasito and Staffanemicollera woke early on the fourth morning.
Once Jonnedee’s niece, Soya, had enough strength to hold herself upright, she had sat the rest of the night with the Chief’s head in her lap and cooled his brow with a cloth worn soft with age and a large bowl of water. Pretty much everyone in the village had known about her feelings for him except for the Chief himself. Tribal law forbade anyone from intervening beyond giving hints on how to attract the attention of the other. Given some of the fiascos that led up to that law, it would be easy to see why it came to be.
Just after sunrise, the Chief awoke to see to the depths of Soya’s pale brown eyes staring back into his. A smile spread over her face as tears pooled and launched down her rosy cheeks. She whispered, “I feared I’d lost you before I ever had the chance to have you.”
He would always recall Soya’s joy as the most beautiful thing he’d ever witnessed. In that moment, Chief Moaplevarrinajipasito knew that he’d do anything to make her happy and had no intention of ever leaving her side.
After a sip of water, he rasped out, “You? I… Well then, I am yours to have; for better or worse. Though I doubt I’d survive much worse than I just have.”
“For better it is then… Unless you decide to criticize my cooking.” She said with a twinkle in her eyes.
He gave a weak smile, “Nix the carrots and you’ve got yourself a deal.”
Late that same night, the last of the thirteen woke to the cheers of the village and a new… ‘Stepmother’, for lack of a better term. Beth wasn’t entirely sure if he was more happy for being alive along with the others or for his father’s good fortune. After all, Soya was a kind and beautiful woman. He would know, they’d been friends from early childhood.
One might ask, if Beth found Soya to be so wonderful, why he didn’t make a play for her himself? The answer is simple; it was a very different time and a very different way of life. The younger women of a village were typically attracted to the security an older man could provide. Whereas, a young man was expected to go out into the world and win a woman for himself. Oddly, there was a method to the madness. It was both good for expanding the gene pool and a spectacular motive for gearing the young men up for fighting. Sufficed to say; if they sucked at fighting, the village would face some pretty dire straits, indeed.
The down side to all of this fell on the older women who naturally compensated by established themselves as the authorities on virtually every aspect of life beyond war. Quite sensibly, they opted to leave getting killed to the men. They left one other burden to the men, more specifically to one man. When it came right down to it, they knew how to shift blame, and having a Chief exonerated them from the repercussions of bad decisions.
Anyway, despite the devastating losses they’d suffered, the villagers knew they’d narrowly escaped a far worse fate. If the village had been reduced to the six uninfected villagers, it probably wouldn’t have survived another winter. So, the four days following the revival of the final survivor were little more than celebration, morning and sleep. Offerings of thanks and remorse were dedicated to the Gods and the fallen daily; beer flowed nonstop and most did their best to begin repopulating the village. With the sparing of those thirteen lives, the village had a chance to recover. Life would be tough, but it would go on in some semblance of normality.
Little did any of them know the devastation the disease had wrought throughout the rest of the island. And they were even more ignorant to what had really happened to the thirteen… But they would find out in time.
The Keeper was silent for a long moment lost in thought then he continued, “I’ll spoil the story a little and give you an idea of what actually took place all those millennia ago. It certainly isn’t the climax, anyway. Come to think of it, the details are very probably the most boring part of the story.
“I’m sure you are all relatively bright people to have come so far in life. Of course, you wouldn’t be here if you were all that bright. Well, hopefully you paid at least some attention in your science classes. But I digress.”
“It turns out that it was a combination of several factors that lead to the unique physiological change in those thirteen residents of the village of Bryke which lay within the confines of the area that would come to be known as Medeshamstede (or Medes’ homestead) some 2400 years later and is now known as the city of Peterborough in Britain. It could be said that any one of the factors in and of its self would have had no significant impact other than the probable death of most, or more likely, all of those concerned. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case or this story would have been little more than depressing, and I doubt any of you need any motivation in that area.
“The first factor was simply an overabundance of iron in the village water pool. The second dynamic was the virus. The elixir the healer provided was the third and final component for the transformation of those exceptional thirteen survivors of the disease and, ironically, the cure.
“As it happened, the potion contained small amounts of radium-226. This alone should have been lethal to all thirteen patients. It was analogous to treating a sinus infection with a dip in the cooling tanks at a nuclear reactor.
“But the unique virus provided an exception to the rule.
“Exposure to the radioactive properties of the radium triggered a peculiar defense mechanism in the virus. Instead of simply dying off like good little parasites, the virus actually fused with the host cells in an attempt to survive. In doing so, it caused several functional changes on the cellular level. The most notable feature was that the virus fused to the ends of the human genetic material, Deoxyribonucleic Acid (or DNA). In so doing, it provided the DNA strand with a method of replacing telomeres while still allowing the Ribonucleic acid (or RNA) to attach and replicate the genome.