The Color of Dying

by Carlos Colon

  Continuing downward, Dominic did his best to avoid contact with the molded peeling walls, webs, and all of the foulness around him, but once he got to the door at the lower level, he had to reluctantly give in and reach for the knob.

  A hollow psychotic whale song echoed through the stairwell as Dominic opened the rusted door to an extensive cacophony of pipes on the other side. It was a utility area. A couple of yards away, a heavy iron door piqued his interest. Unnerved by the echo of his own footsteps, Dominic approached the door slowly, again brushing his germaphobia aside to turn the grimy latch.

  It took about two or three tries, but Dominic eventually pulled the rusted door open to find an endless brick tunnel with larger pipes running along its sides. He had heard about these before but had never actually seen one. It was a steam tunnel.

  During the years of the facility’s operation, it was used to deliver heat generated from the nearby power plant to the buildings on the hospital grounds. It made more logistical sense in those days by offering an economic advantage over heating each building individually.

  Below, on the surface of the tunnel, were pools of rusted water. Having already gone this far, Dominic forged ahead and sloshed through the scurrying rats on the tunnel floor, ruining his Oxfords and dampening the cuffs of his pants. After what seemed like a mile, he encountered another door. He had already covered some distance underneath the massive facility and he had had his fill of splashing through the muck. Dominic stepped through the door to see what was in the levels above. No longer in the shape of his prime, he cursed at the prospect of climbing more stairs.

  Figuring he was probably underneath another one of the buildings in the complex, Dominic wondered how far he was from his car. It was 4:05 p.m. There was less than an hour of daylight left.

  The first level was again the basement. This door was tougher to open than the ones in the utility room at the other building. After a few vigorous pulls, Dominic succeeded and climbed upstairs to the next level. A couple of puffs later, Dominic peered through the door on the first floor. His flashlight shone on some cheerful cartoon murals on the wall. It was the children’s treatment center. Dominic opened the door and stepped into the hallway. All the favorites were there on the wall; Mickey Mouse, Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob, Ninja Turtles... Considering the hideousness he had been witness to in recent days, the childhood images shook him. Aida, Penny, Jessie, and Davey are all grown now, but with the suffering they’ve been sharing since the loss of Stefanie, he felt the pangs of wanting to be around the kids. Enough of this shit, he decided, it was time to go home.

  It was too late.

  Dominic would never get to see his family again.

  35

  He froze. Dominic never freezes. He’s as cool as they come. But this time... he froze.

  A hideous, guttural shout thundered from the children’s therapy room. Dominic turned but couldn’t react quickly enough to the pale, ghostlike face with blackened eyes charging at him with a fireman’s axe.

  The third Goth kid!

  Barely dodging the weapon, Dominic threw himself to the floor, losing grip of his flashlight and gun. Seeing the overweight geezer in a prone position, the Goth kid dropped the axe and pounced, beating him with mallet-like blows.

  The description of the third Goth kid from the Missing Persons reports said that he was six-foot-four and 310 pounds—bigger, stronger, and over fifty years younger than Dominic. But the kid was so blinded by his mission to kill, he took no notice that Dominic’s gun was just a couple of feet away.

  The driven rage was unmistakable. This kid was definitely a Renfield. Simone had to be close by.

  Though barely conscious from the beating, Dominic was fully aware of the gun and was trying to reach it. The question was could he survive the attack long enough to get his hand on it.

  With both hands, the Goth kid grabbed Dominic’s head and started slamming it against the hallway floor, not realizing that his manhandling unintentionally brought Dominic within reach of the gun. With the hall so dark, in his barely operative state, Dominic couldn’t detect if the room was spinning around him, but had enough awareness of the Glock’s location to take hold and squeeze the trigger.

  The bullet ricocheted aimlessly off the wall striking no one, but it did get the attention of the kid who easily pried the gun away and started fumbling with it. The Goth kid’s inability to take proper hold of the gun served as enough of a distraction. Dominic pulled a stake out of his coat pocket, not because the kid was undead, but because it was the closest weapon within his reach. He thrust his arm upwards, driving the stake through the kid’s neck.

  With the pointed end lodged deeply in his esophagus, breathing became a priority for the Goth kid, enabling Dominic to reach for his gun, which had landed just beyond his fingertips. An inch of push was all Dominic needed to hook the gun into his palm with his forefinger, but he was so disoriented from the beating, he could only point the gun randomly upward and hope for the best.

  The shot boomed through the gutted hall of Greenwood State.

  Deafened by the reverberating bang and the subsequent ringing of the ears, Dominic was clueless to the results of his “Hail Mary” shot into the darkness. It was only when his attacker’s 300-pound carcass collapsed onto him that Dominic knew he had hit his target.

  His head still spinning, Dominic crawled from underneath the massive teen and spotted his still-lit Maglite a couple of feet away. He picked it up and pointed it at the Goth kid. The stake was still lodged in his throat, his face drenched with blood and no sign of any breathing.

  Clean hit.

  Dominic rose to his feet and pulled the stake from the kid’s throat. He would be needing it.

  The Maglite shone down the dark empty hall. She had to be around somewhere. The track of half-eaten rats littering the corridor attested to that. The Goth kid had been dutifully standing guard, feeding from the only available source of nourishment. There are no lunch breaks when you’re a Renfield. The uncompromising invasion of your cerebrum vacuums any sense of self away. You belong to the one you are protecting. All you care about is that no one gets to the coffin. That means no visits to the local Burger King. You feed from the local rodent population. Renfields cannot be let out on an unsuspecting public. Their twisted behavior would send up all kinds of red flags that could result in local authorities being notified and a coffin being discovered.

  Dominic checked his watch. It was only 4:08 p.m. That whole scuffle where he was almost beaten to death took only two minutes! Pitch black as it was in the halls, Dominic figured there was still at least forty minutes of daylight left outside.

  The haze in his head lightened just a tad, but it was enough. An essence of death began to envelope him. The MV12 was kicking in. The evil bitch was close. She was definitely in the building. Knocking out some boards on the windows to let some light in was a thought, but Dominic didn’t want to waste time. There were several rooms to check and he wanted to find the coffin fast so he could stake her and get the hell out.

  About ten feet past the stairway exit, some chewed-up vermin peppered the entrance to one of the rooms. To free a hand for the Maglite, Dominic put the bloodied stake back in his coat. With his gun in the other hand, Dominic slowly pushed the door open.

  His breath turned heavy.

  There it was!

  Three yards away, closed, undisturbed by the fracas that just occurred outside the room, lay Simone’s coffin. It was hardboard, the kind they use for cremations. For nomads like her, those are more practical, lighter in weight and easier to move around.

  Dominic holstered his gun and pulled out the stake. He had to raise the lid and stake her as fast as possible, allowing her no chance to react. Given a second of time, she could hypnotize him and stop him in his tracks before ripping him into a thousand unidentifiable pieces.

  Grabbing hold of the lid, Dominic raised his stake, ready to swing it down into her chest. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, whisperi
ng a prayer in Spanish. The prayer over, Dominic threw the lid open and furiously brought the stake down. The sharpened point plunged deeply into the soft cushioned bottom of a vacant casket. Startled by her absence, Dominic’s panicked mind wondered, if she wasn’t there, then where the hell was she? The answer came when two railroad spikes pierced through his neck, sending a harrowed shout into the halls of the forsaken institution.

  Simone growled with gluttonous delight as the excruciation drilled through Dominic’s spine, but she was so fixated on devouring her prey, that she failed to notice him pulling his gun out and pointing it at her face.

  The first shot sent her back with a scream, landing somewhere behind him. But to Dominic the room was now teetering like a capsizing ship in a tropical storm. He looked desperately for the Maglite, which had fallen from his grip when she attacked him. He knew that the shot would only slow her down for a few seconds before she’d spring back and finish him off, but with no other answer in sight, he decided to randomly take shots around the room, hoping he’d hit something. There was no logic behind it. He could have hit her with a hundred bullets and it still wouldn’t have stopped her. She might have had a lot of holes, but it still wouldn’t have stopped her. But when the sound of broken glass was followed by a lacerating scream, Dominic turned.

  He got her!

  Not with a bullet, but with the sun. A shot had shattered the window across the hall, putting a hole through the board that was covering it.

  Light had come in!

  Fading, late afternoon light!

  It wasn’t a tropical day in the Bahamas, but it was enough light to turn the once captivating seductress into a cowering demon, crawling back to her coffin.

  “Fuck that!” said Dominic.

  With a second wind, he aimed at the boarded window and fired multiple shots with each bullet hole scorching more of Simone’s dead flesh. But even with that, she was uncomfortably close to the protection of her coffin—a chance for her to put her mangled pieces back together.

  Not if Dominic could help it.

  He took whatever energy he had left and threw his considerable weight towards her, knocking her away like a linebacker. Unable to take any more of the burning, Simone speared out of the room, deep into the darkened hallway, shrieking in desperation.

  The smell of burning flesh was not unfamiliar to Dominic. He was one of the first responders after the September 11th attacks. It was a smell he had tried hard to forget. But this time there was satisfaction, although he couldn’t be sure the job was done since she ran off before he could see her go up in flames. Nonetheless, his part of the fight was over. He had done all he could as a human being. The rest would have to be done by something not human—something like her.

  The light coming in from the bullet-riddled window was dimming. Dominic crawled to the nearest wall and sat against it. Pain was ruthlessly charging through his neck and his shoulder. He wasn’t going to make it back to his car.

  He pulled out his cell phone. The time on it read 4:13 p.m. He tried dialing for help but each button that he pressed brought him closer to losing consciousness.

  #

  At 8:18 p.m. Dominic opened his eyes again. He had nodded off. The light from the full moon came in through the bullet holes in the boarded window, shining on his cell phone, which had fallen a few inches from his hand. It might as well have been a mile. He was powerless to reach it. The lit screen showed that he had just missed a call, but his vision was so blurred he couldn’t make out who it was. But he did see that there were multiple attempts.

  Outside the room, the body lying in the hallway began to twitch. Apparently, the Goth kid was not only Simone’s guard, but he was also a source of blood, meaning the undead venom was in him. Dominic, unaware of the kid’s rising, was focusing on the phone which was out of reach from his shaking hand. He threw his body down so he could extend his hand and tap it a little closer. Good idea, but the substantially sized figure in the doorway was not about to allow it.

  “Ah shit,” moaned Dominic, seeing the Goth kid standing at the doorway. Freshly thrown into the ranks of the undead, the teen hadn’t figured out how to activate his humanlike appearance yet, though in his case the difference would have hardly been distinguishable. But not activating his projection left the big hole in his neck and the blown off piece of forehead from his confrontation with Dominic in full view.

  That’s what you get for fuckin’ with Dominic, kid.

  Dominic dropped the phone and reached for the pewter crucifix in his jacket. The Goth kid was oddly still, thought Dominic, maybe he’d have time to pull out the cross and defend himself.

  He didn’t have to.

  The Goth kid collapsed face forward into the room, exposing another, more slender, silhouette behind him. The dark-figure held a wooden stake dripping with blood. It was his brother-in-law, or at least the thing that claimed to be him.

  36

  The missed calls were from me.

  It figures. The first night I decide to go back home so I could check on Veronica, this shit happens. I thought I’d start my night out checking in on her at ICU while keeping my cell phone handy in case Dominic tried to reach me. Rules say you’re not supposed to bring cell phones into ICU but obviously that doesn’t apply to me. Rules are for the living.

  Not that I ever made it over there. I was barely out of my coffin when I saw Dominic’s text. I rushed out, trying to make it over as soon as I could, but between the traffic on the Jersey Turnpike, the George Washington Bridge, the Cross Bronx, the Whitestone Bridge, and the Cross Island Parkway, fuck, I could have flown in from Hawaii and gotten there sooner.

  I arrived at the abandoned hospital about two and a half hours after I got the text. Once I crossed the iron gate, I smelt the death bleeding through the bullet holes Dominic blew out through the boarded window. When I got inside, the kid was probably still adapting to his new undead state, standing at the doorway with eyes on Dominic. He never saw or heard me coming.

  I stepped over the fallen Goth kid and knelt beside my brother-in-law, stroking what was left of his hair. “I have to take you to a hospital,” I said.

  Dominic shook his head. Logically, I knew he was right, but what was I going to do, just leave him there? I reached out to pick him up.

  “Don’t you put a fucking hand on me,” he lashed out.

  I insisted.

  “NICK!”

  It wasn’t a shout of anger. It was a shout of horror. What caused such a reaction? I didn’t know—not until I felt the axe, which nicked me between my neck and shoulder, sending me evasively scurrying across the room. Weakened from her exposure to the unfriendly rays of the late afternoon sun, the scorch-blackened figure struggled to maintain her balance as she attempted to raise the axe above her head. The charred skin on her face was sliding off her skull the way barbecued ribs come off the bone at Tony Roma’s. Me? I had a nice, carved space between my neck and shoulder to go along with the holes in my head, face and chest, courtesy of Roberto and Dominic. It was all out to see after the axe knocked away my more human-like projection.

  Simone’s capabilities were pretty much cooked away by her encounter with the late afternoon sun. She blindly swung with the axe in the darkness, hoping the blade would find me. The first swing got some undead skin. But caught off guard as I was, I knew I had to recover fast to dodge the erratic hacks that followed.

  This was not the controlled Scarlet Widow—the one that brought death and heartache with such predatory disregard. This was a frightened, cornered animal. She made a futile attempt to control my mind but all it did was help me sense her panic. The power wasn’t there. She couldn’t make me do what she wanted.

  She swung again, high and hard, like an undisciplined minor leaguer trying to impress a scout. I caught it. I caught it with both hands and easily yanked it from her grasp.

  I then sensed it! And saw it!

  Fear!

  Fear in the devil’s eyes!

  And then she saw
it.

  That’s right, bitch. Now I’m your fucking predator.

  The last time she was victimized by a predator had to be when she was sired, whenever that might have been. Allow me, you Satanic whore, to bring back the memories of being on the other side.

  I swung the ax towards her midsection. It was a nice, smooth level swing that would have made Mike Piazza proud. The force sent Simone to the floor close enough for Dominic to offer a labored kick to her head. Not satisfied that it was over, I followed my first swing with a series of ferocious hacks, sending pieces of Simone flying in every direction.

  For every life she ever took and every family she destroyed, I swung with a vigor built from every heart she had ever broken. There was no such thing as overkill in this case. I couldn’t destroy her enough.

  Incredibly, when I paused to see what was left of my hacks, I saw that her burnt eyelids were still fluttering, almost defiantly.

  What the fuck?

  The next series of hacks came down with such a tenacious fury that I didn’t stop until I severed off the top half of her head, dividing it at the cheekbone. Still not satisfied, I followed her fractured cranium, which had rolled a few feet away. I then picked it up by its singed red hair and proceeded to smash it against the wall repeatedly, cursing each time. Only when fragments of her skull, face and brains were hanging from her hair like ornaments on a Christmas tree, did I decide it might have been okay to stop.

  Dropping what was left of our redheaded tormentor, I looked back at Dominic. My projection had come back, making me look less like an extra from a George Romero movie. His head was off to the side; his eyes were closed. Damn it, Dominic, why couldn’t you have just let it go? You didn’t need to enter this world.

  He took a short breath and exhaled. “Is she dead?”

  I tried to hold back but I couldn’t. I burst out laughing. He smiled too, that son of a bitch.

  “Yeah, I think so,” I replied.