A hush fell on the room like a dead weight. All eyes turned to Sienkiewicz, his expression uncomfortable like that of a man who’d just been caught taking a dump in public.
“Dead people, Officer Eisner?”
“Yeah. Dead people, Captain. Dead people who’re walking around—”
“That’s enough, Eisner!” Allred shouted, moving towards him.
“Please!” Sienkiewicz stressed. “Order. Sergeant, stay where you are.”
Allred halted.
“Dead people, Officer Eisner? What are you talking about?”
Nick notice a nervous tick pull at the corner of the captain’s left eye.
“People you shoot who’re already dead! People who don’t drop no matter how many times you shoot ‘em!”
The room exploded. Allred screamed for order. Sienkiewicz raised both hands.
“Gentlemen, please!” He beseeched. “Let me finish.”
The captain waited patiently for the noise to die down.
“The ‘dead people’ you refer to, Officer Eisner, are victims of a powerful, previously unknown drug. From what little we know, it’s a PCP-derivative that over-stimulates the adrenal system and sends people berserk. This drug’s on the streets and is the cause of the violence which has erupted in the last twenty-four hours.”
Every cop in the room started asking questions at once. Allred flushed red as he shouted at the top of his lungs for order.
“You’re saying this shit’s about drugs!” Eisner screamed. “I just lost my partner! The guy who killed him was dead!”
The volume in the room rose another notch. The men shifted restlessly.
Allred blew three long, shrill whistle shrieks.
Silence slowly returned.
“We know that perpetrators who are on this drug are extremely dangerous,” the captain continued, ignoring Eisner. “If you come into contact with anyone acting suspiciously, your orders are this. You warn them twice. If they do not respond, fire a warning shot. If they do not comply…” He hesitated.
“Shoot to kill.”
GEORGETOWN.
4:47 P.M.
His right leg was stripped to the bone but muscles remained on the left. Large patches of the blue carpet were rust-colored, stiff with dried blood.
Gregory Retek’s eyes widened, his thoughts contracting as the room spun around him with the vertigo of consciousness. He tried to remember, to recall what happened, his mind crying out to comprehend what was going on. It’s just a nightmare. Just a nightmare. There is no pain. Nothing was real strawberry fields forever…
Who sang that? The Beatles. Why was he—
For an instant he was back at a summer party thrown nearly twenty years before, a barbecue thrown by Sam Monteleone, his partner in their General Practice, a small affair attended by Monteleone’s younger brother who insisted on playing rock music on the stereo. Diane had been drunk. He had smoked some pot—
What—?
Sondra. Hot. Wet. Wanting him.
His erection pulsing with blood. Hard. Penetrating her softness.
Her kisses. Fervent. Moaning at approaching orgasm.
The image in the mirror distracting his attention. The image that couldn’t be real. A phantom projection of guilt, perhaps. But not real.
Diane.
A cold hand suddenly encircling his throat.
(just has his had done)
Stars. Pain. Incredible pain.
Sondra screaming.
Diane!
He looked around the room as if he had been there once before, not certain, nothing as it should be. A dream. No. Not a dream. A nightmare. Or something worse…yes, something worse.
Blood.
On the walls. The bed. The floor.
Broken glass. The shattered remains of the Chivas bottle. All over the floor, the bed. The bed—
The bed, God, the bed. From behind which poked a leg encased in torn stockings, a foot.
But they weren’t connected.
One leg. Two feet.
He looked at his own legs. His feet were attached, but his right leg…his leg was…torn!
It was no illusion. Most of his thigh muscle was gone to the knee, the calf beneath ripped open, tendons hanging like strings. The bones were rusted with blood.
Why did he feel no pain?
Because it wasn’t real. He couldn’t smell. He couldn’t
feel—
It’s not really happening—I’m dreaming—dreaming—
He started crawling towards the foot, not aware of the glass shards entering his arms, his belly, dragging the useless leg, struggling to heave his weight across the room.
Retek reached for the leg. He pulled it clear of the tangled, bloody sheets, surprised at its lightness. It was weightless because it was not attached to a body. The suddenness of his movement unbalanced him, the leg’s gore-encrusted thigh stump hitting his chest. He whimpered, throwing it to one side.
Not really happening—not really happening—not really happening—not really—
He pushed himself around the bed.
Intestines, lumps of torn subcutaneous tissue, something resembling a spleen, faced him.
“No!” The words wheezed from his throat.
What remained of Sondra’s torso lay beside the carnage, a severed breast partially covered by a pulped kidney.
He began to scream. It died in his throat.
“Gregory, darling.” The voice was lifeless, rasping.
He looked to the doorway.
Diane stood in the doorway, her lime pantsuit dotted with brown patches, the red-brown contrasting with the paleness of her face. She smiled from the shadow-strewn corner, her face a rictus, rivulets of red running from her mouth. She stepped forward, moving into the slash of light angling through the curtains. Sondra’s head, the neck torn raggedly as if hacked by a blunt knife, dragged along the floor, his wife dangling it by its long auburn locks.
“I’ve been waiting for you. So hungry…alone.”
She raised her left hand. The plump fingers held another trophy: his severed penis.
Retek screamed.
NEW YORK.
BETH ISREAL MEDICAL CENTER.
5:11 P.M.
Doctor Kaluta spoke to them in the visitors’ lounge.
“I’m sorry, there nothing more we can do.” He ran a hand over his beard. “The decision is yours.”
Sandy looked at Liz, who suddenly slumped down on the bench.
They had been preparing themselves for this moment for weeks, but now the time had arrived and with it a terrible responsibility.
“I know this is a painful moment for you, Mrs. Weldon. And for you, Mrs. Packard,” Kaluta said, targeting Sandy with his most sincere expression. Twenty years of dealing with grieving relatives had hardened his emotions like calluses on a workman’s hands. To Kaluta, death was just a formality, but, of course, to the relatives of the deceased it was one of the most trying times.
Tears welled in Liz’s eyes. “How long has she been in the coma?”
“Over two hours,” Kaluta replied.
Sandy felt a knot of anger pulling at her insides. It wasn’t fair! If they’d been able to get into the hospital that morning, they would have seen their mother conscious for one last time. And now, after waiting hours to be allowed in the building, Mom was lost in the twilight between life and death. They hadn’t been with her when she needed them most.
“It’s unlikely she’ll revive considering her weakened state,” the Doctor continued. “At best, she would have lasted another day. It’s better this way. She was in tremendous pain.” His soft voice sounded phony.
“We know that!” Sandy snapped.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t wish to sound patronizing,” he replied, his brown eyes feigning regret.
“If you give your permission to have the life-support system switched off, it will make things easier for you. There’s really no point putting yourselves through unnecessary pain. I realize the last few w
eeks having been terribly stressful.”
He sat beside Liz, the clipboard with the documentation that would authorize their mother’s official death in his hands.
Liz looked up at Sandy. “He’s right.”
Sandy knew it was true, but the thought was overwhelming.
“Can we look at her one last time?” Liz asked.
“Of course. Come with me.” Doctor Kaluta took her gently by the arm as he stood, helping Liz to her feet.
“This way.”
Sandy followed, her body numb with emotion.
THE WHITE HOUSE
6:00 P.M.
The day was steadily going from bad to worse, Del Valle thought as he looked around the White House conference room where he and the others were gathered for an emergency meeting of the Security Council Intelligence Committee. The group, numbering thirty men, including members of the National Security Council, the CIA, the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the NIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretaries of State and Defense. No one knew precisely why the President had called the meeting at such short notice, but whatever the reason it was highly important. The charged atmosphere in the room was powerful enough to illuminate a city block.
Del Valle had hardly slept for thirty-six hours since Monday had ended with two shocking surprises: Lang had surfaced and stated that Corvino was responsible for the deaths of Skolomowski and Harris. Corvino himself was now dead, shot by an unknown assailant, and had killed the two agents Hershman had sent to arrest him.
Del Valle, troubled and unable to rest when he’d arrived home on Monday night, had decided to talk to Corvino in an effort to dispel lingering doubts he had concerning his friend’s innocence. Aware that Hershman had Corvino under surveillance—and he suspected Corvino would have assumed as much—he’d called Dominic using a cloaking device, requesting a meeting at a location only they knew about—the park at the airport perimeter.
Del Valle arrived later than planned due to an accident blocking the eastbound lanes on the Columbia Pike. When he reached the rendezvous at 12:15 P.M. and saw a police cruiser parked alongside Corvino’s Mustang, he hesitated. Maybe Corvino had been speeding. Best wait until the patrolman left. An ambulance siren rent the night air, its flashing red lights painting the rest area the color of blood as it pulled in fast. When the medics dragged a gurney from the vehicle’s rear, he feared the worst and walked over to the patrolman and identified himself. His stomach ulcer flared with discomfort as one look at Corvino’s body confirmed that he was dead.
He refused to give a statement, citing national security. The patrolman argued until Del Valle persuaded him that any interference in official Government business would insure the cop beat duty in Anaconda or some other undesirable section of the city.
Once the ambulance had left the rest area, he drove to the nearest pay phone.
Hershman was livid , but not, it seemed, unduly surprised.
Del Valle was the one who was caught off-guard by the news of Lang’s reappearance.
The President and his aide entered the room, and the men around the conference table stood up. Del Valle followed suit. The questions plaguing him would have to wait.
“Gentlemen, thank you for attending at such short notice,” said the President. “Please be seated.”
Everyone did so and picked up their copies of Special National Intelligence Estimates—short, formal evaluations that had been compiled earlier that day.
“I had to call this meeting because we’re suddenly faced with a major crisis of unprecedented proportions,” the President stated, his gaze circling the table to insure that every eye was on him.
“It appears we have an epidemic on our hands.” He paused for effect. “An epidemic of irrational violence is sweeping the country. Normally law-abiding citizens are attacking their loved ones, their neighbors.”
A murmur of disbelief rippled around the room. The President raised his hands for silence. “Seemingly isolated incidents started to take place on Sunday. They began to escalate on Monday, and have reached a frightening level today. No less than one hundred twenty-seven reported murders have taken place in the D.C. area in the last seventy-two hours, nearly surpassing the total for the last five months. We’ve managed to compile statistics for New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami and Dallas, and you’ll see the same is true in every one of those cities.”
The committee members looked at the President in stony silence.
“We don’t know what’s triggered this plague of civil unrest,” he continued, “but intelligence reports indicate the situation is the same in every country in the Northern Hemisphere. Every location, in fact, that came into contact with the tail of Comet Saracen. All over Europe, in Russia and the Ukraine, the story is apparently the same—civil unrest. Civil unrest, gentlemen, that cannot be rationally explained, although one theory has been put forward.”
He hesitated. The theory was absurd, like the plot of some ridiculous science-fiction movie.
“Scientists here in Washington have suggested that these acts have been triggered as a direct result of some kind of radiation from the comet that passed close to the Earth two days ago. But at this point we have no conclusive evidence.”
“Incredible—preposterous,” the DCI said.
“I know, it’s beyond belief,” the President replied. “But I recommend we mobilize the National Guard this evening, and I suggest we put the armed forces on standby. We’re fast approaching at state of emergency.”
A wave of questions swept across the room. It took nearly five minutes to call the meeting to order. Then the President told them about the living dead, and the committee meeting exploded into a shouting match.
ALEXANDRIA.
11.00 P.M.
Nick slammed the front door behind him and ran to the ringing phone.
“Hello?”
“Where have you been? I’ve been calling for hours.” Sandy sounded tearful.
“On duty.” He unbuckled his bullet-proof vest as he spoke. “I had to work a double shift,” he explained, sitting down on the couch. He was exhausted.
“Why? What’s going on?”
“There’s been rioting in some of the black neighborhoods. They’ve called a state of emergency.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. How’re you doing.”
She was silent for a moment, and he thought he heard her stifle a sob. “Hon?”
“Not…not good. Mom’s dead.”
So it was over.
“When?”
“This afternoon.”
Sandy told him everything. About Mom going into a coma. The decision to switch off the life support. About not being able to see their mother that morning because of the police blockade.
“What happened at the hospital?” he asked.
The word going around the precinct was the crazy shit wasn’t just happening in Washington, that violence was on the increase everywhere.
She explained the hospital staff had said a patient had gone berserk, killing a nurse, but that she and Liz hadn’t really taken any notice because of Mom. He let the matter drop
“How’s Liz taking it?”
“Not very well,” she replied. “She collapsed when we got home, and now she’s coming down with a fever. I think it’s the stress. Roger says she hasn’t been sleeping properly for weeks. I know what that’s like. But she’s been pushing herself too hard. She seems like she’s coming down with flu.”
Sandy continued talking, words tumbling forth in a stuttering torrent as she cried. He mainly listened, periodically breaking in to reassure her.
She talked about the funeral arrangements. Mom was to be buried on Friday. Was there any chance he could come to New York? No. He explained all leave had been canceled until further notice. There was nothing he could do. Sandy was disappointed, worried. She wanted to know what was going on. Nick avoided details. Every man on the force had been ordered not to alarm their families any more
than necessary. The situation sucked.
Ten minutes became twenty. Sandy continued to talk, crying intermittently. He listened, tried to respond the best he could, feeling nothing. His mind was numb from the horrors of the day.
He needed a drink.
Twenty minutes became forty, and he knew he couldn’t last much longer. He had to get some sleep. He was due back on duty at 8 A.M., and the hands of the clock were nearing midnight.
He told her not to worry about him, to get some rest, that she wouldn’t feel so bad after a good night’s sleep. It was bullshit, but it was the best he could offer.
They finally said goodnight, and he promised to call her tomorrow at the first opportunity.
He hung up feeling shitty because he’d been plunged into a hell beyond imagining and he couldn’t be with her.
Nick went to the kitchen and poured himself a large shot of Jack. He downed it in one, then poured another.
He sat back on the couch, sipped his drink, then put the glass down, and laid his head on the back of the cushion.
He was asleep within seconds.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
STATE MORGUE.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 31.
4:33 A.M.
Pain.
Whitelightwhiteheat
what?
…
Corvino is dead.
Alive.
And like Lazarus coming back from the beyond, opening his eyes and staring with confusion into the face of Christ, Corvino is not aware of what is happening to him.
Forget the Resurrection and the Life. Dispel all notions of Heaven and Hell. Biblical metaphors for the human condition were two thousand years out of date. This was physical entropy and mental atrophy all rolled up into one mind-scream of secular purgatory. Jimmy Swaggart could howl all he wanted on TV about God smiting the wicked and sending cosmic wrath down to purge the planet of His Diseased Children, that space in the Heavenly Elevator had been reserved for The Elect. Bible bashing didn’t mean shit in the face of what was happening. The old ways were gone and a New Order coming, a Reich of rotting flesh—the New Flesh.
Wet Work: The Definitive Edition Page 14