Lobster Johnson: The Satan Factory

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  “I know that area,” Jake said as the communication broke off. “Red O’Neill has a warehouse there.”

  Harry stood up from his chair, paper in hand. “I better let the boss know.”

  The Lobster appeared suddenly in the doorway, initiating a surprised gasp from the man.

  “I hate it when you do that,” Harry grumbled, handing the paper to the leather-clad figure.

  “This just came over the wire, seems that there’s something going down at—”

  “I know,” the Lobster said flatly. “I need the two of you to come with me.” And then he was gone.

  “No rest for the wicked,” Harry said wearily, slipping on his coat.

  “Now where’s the fun in that?” Hurley commented.

  The two of them shared a brief smile as they left the radio room together, following their master.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  —

  The warehouse reeked of death.

  Blending with the shadow so as not to be seen by the patrol car parked outside, the Lobster entered through a back door.

  They’d locked and chained the door, but when it came to the Lobster, they might as well have left it wide open, with a neon sign above that flashed Welcome.

  The stench of bloodshed hung in the air like a cloud. It was completely dark inside except for the light that managed to make it through the frosted windowpanes high above the warehouse floor.

  He raised a leather-gloved hand to the side of his helmet, gently depressing a sensitive button there. The technology built into the lenses of his goggles had been developed by the United States military. They amplified all ambient light, no matter how little. Through the goggles, the Lobster watched as the shroud of darkness was lifted and everything turned a ghostly emerald green. The scene of the crime was revealed in all its awful detail.

  The bodies had been removed, but the chalk outlines remained on the concrete floor.

  The Lobster approached the scene, his enhanced vision taking in every detail. Careful not to stand in the still-drying puddles of gore, he studied the backs of the transport trucks and the barrels of whiskey not yet unloaded. He imagined that the police would be back the next day to confiscate the liquor, perhaps even make a little profit from selling it to one of O’Neill’s competitors.

  He imagined the warehouse scene unfolding, the men doing their jobs as the attack began. The Lobster glanced up to the lights, certain that the power had been cut off, that the attack had come in darkness.

  The chalk outlines here were many, telling him that the attack had been swift, the men felled before they had a chance to run. The amount of blood that had been spilled, and the way that it sprayed, told him stories of the savagery of the attacks. Guns seemed not to be the primary weapons; knives perhaps, but without seeing the actual remains he couldn’t be sure.

  He had seen much in the ways of violence over the years since beginning his mission, but the brutality that was exhibited here told him much.

  This was not typical gang violence, rival crime families scrambling for turf.

  No, this was something more.

  Something primitive, savage, and evil.

  —

  Harry cut the lights as he navigated the Ford through the winding streets, bringing the vehicle to a stop behind the warehouse, out of the view of the police cruiser parked beneath the streetlight at its front entrance.

  The Lobster had slipped from the car half a block before their destination, preferring to go the rest of the way on his own. He’d instructed the two of them to investigate the building’s perimeter while he dealt with the interior.

  Hurley had no idea what was expected of him. This was the first time that he’d ever been asked along on an assignment with the Lobster and one of his crew, and he felt very self-conscious as he sat in the passenger seat across from Harry.

  “Now what?” Hurley asked.

  “You were a police officer,” Harry said, reaching over to the glove box to remove two flashlights.

  He handed one to Hurley. “We look for clues.”

  His hand trembled slightly as he took the flashlight. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. It had been years since he’d investigated anything more than the bottom of a liquor bottle. But Harry was already out of the car, giving Hurley no chance to protest.

  Hurley got out of the car, pointing the flashlight toward the ground as he turned it on. Harry was walking the outer perimeter of the building, shining his light around and looking for anything out of the ordinary. Going in the opposite direction, Hurley shined the beam of his torch out toward the windows that ran the length of the upper portions of the structure. The yellow beam reflected off of the frosted, pebbled glass until it was swallowed by a square of darkness.

  “What do we have here?” Hurley muttered beneath his breath as he looked up to see that one of the windows was pushed fully open. Dragging his beam down, he illuminated a tower of crates stacked beneath it.

  “Pssst!” he hissed at Harry, and gestured for the man to join him.

  “Find something?” Harry asked.

  “Have a look,” Hurley answered, shining his light beam on the open window, and then on the boxes beneath.

  He moved the light around on the boxes, finding spatters of red.

  “Is that blood?” Harry asked as he added his light to Hurley’s.

  “Yeah, I think it is.”

  Hurley moved the light down the boxes, following the crimson spatters. The trail led across the road, to an area completely enshrouded in darkness, the streetlight above burned out.

  The two of them followed the trail, illuminating the darkness with their flashlight beams.

  “Bingo,” Hurley said, his flashlight finding the remains of cigarettes littering the ground in a pile. He squatted down next to the butts, shining his light on them.

  “Someone was smoking while they waited,” he said, feeling a thrill that he’d not experienced since . . . since before he’d lost everything.

  He quickly stood, turning around and running his beam of light over the ground.

  “A truck,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” Harry asked, joining his flashlight beam to Hurley’s.

  There was mud on the side of the road, runoff from the torrential downpour of just a few hours ago, and in it was pressed the impression of a tire tread.

  “A truck was parked here,” Hurley said, imagining the vehicle’s placement in the darkness. “A driver and a passenger. The passenger smoked as they waited.”

  Harry smiled, nodding his head in agreement. “Sounds like you’ve got this all figured out.”

  It felt good to use his brain again, to use the thought muscle like he once had. Hurley had always intended to climb the ladder, eventually hoping to be promoted from beat cop to detective.

  It was a dream, but that too had been taken from him.

  “I’ve only got one question,” Harry said, moving his beam to the road again, and the dark spatters of blood there. “Who was bleeding?”

  “Perhaps one of the attackers was injured.”

  The Lobster’s voice startled them both and they turned, the beams of their flashlights illuminating his striking figure as it climbed down the stack of crates.

  He too was following the trail of blood, but he apparently did not need the light of a torch to see it.

  “The blood ends here,” Hurley said.

  “Hmmm,” the Lobster uttered to himself. “If only that were the case.”

  He turned abruptly and headed back toward where they’d parked the car.

  “Are we leaving, boss?” Harry asked, starting to follow.

  “I need to examine the bodies,” the Lobster said without turning around. He reached the car, opened the back door, and ducked inside.

  “Take me to the city morgue.”

  —

  Lester had been summoned.

  That’s what it was when the Lobster called, when out of the blue, day or night, you heard that voice.
>
  Tonight Lester had heard it over the telephone of a dame he’d just met.

  They’d been out dancing, and had just returned to her apartment with the potential for a little hanky-panky, when the phone had started to ring.

  He remembered the look on her face as they sat on her couch, wrapped in each other’s arms.

  “Who could be calling at this hour?” she’d asked, a mixture of surprise and annoyance in her voice.

  Lester had known exactly who it was, although he’d fervently hoped he was wrong.

  But he hadn’t been. She had held the receiver to her ear for a minute, and then handed it to him.

  “It’s for you.”

  Of course it was. He’d taken the phone from her delicate hand and held it to his own ear.

  The voice on the other end was cold. There was no greeting, no sorry to interrupt you, only orders, precisely given, telling exactly where he was to go and what he was to do. Lester had almost asked him, how the heck did you know where I was? But he thought better of it. He doubted he would have cared for the answer.

  Instead he hung up the phone and made his apologies to the girl—Kathy. Maybe he’d try to find her another time.

  Lester had closed the door on her protests; he didn’t have time for that.

  He’d been summoned.

  —

  Lester had been ordered to Bellevue Hospital, the Pathology Building on Twenty-ninth that housed New York County’s official morgue. He was supposed to get information on some warehouse murders from the attendant on duty.

  Simple enough, he thought as he headed around to the ambulance bay at the back of the building. Twenty thousand stiffs passed through these doors every year, eighty-five hundred never claimed.

  He’d read that in an article from the Post a few years back, and had never been able to forget it. He couldn’t help but wonder if one of those eighty-five hundred would be him some day. With the kind of life he led working for the Lobster and all, when it came time, would there be someone to claim him?

  There was a buzzer outside the locked doors and he leaned on it.

  It took the guy awhile, but eventually he came around the corner of a long, white hall. The guy was big and bald, dressed in the white uniform of a hospital orderly, and he didn’t look happy about answering the buzzer at this time of the night.

  Must’ve interrupted his beauty sleep, Lester thought as the man finally opened the door. Must’ve had his beauty sleep disturbed quite a bit, he mused as he got a closer look. He’d seen better faces on an iodine bottle.

  “What do you want?” the man growled, opening the door a crack.

  “Evening, Joe,” Lester said.

  “How do you know my name’s Joe?” the man asked, suspiciously, cocking his head to one side.

  “Let’s just say you look the part,” Lester responded with a smile.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m a reporter from the Times,” Lester lied, taking a pencil and the small pad of paper he always carried from his back pocket. “I was wondering if you’d have any interest in chatting with me about the bodies that were brought in from the massacre at the warehouse this morning.” He licked the tip of his pencil and held it over the pad, ready to write.

  The big man actually looked a little uncomfortable. “I got nothing to say,” he barked, and tried to close the door, but Lester had already blocked it with his foot.

  “Did I mention there’s a little scratch involved?” Lester added, slipping a hand into his pocket and bringing it out with a folded sawbuck . . . his last.

  Joe’s eyes widened at the sight of the money, his large paw reaching out through the open door to take the cash.

  Lester pulled it out of reach before he could claim it.

  “Do we got a deal, or do I take my curiosity elsewhere?”

  “Deal,” Joe, the morgue attendant, confirmed, as Lester allowed him to snatch away the last of his cash.

  —

  Lester had served his purpose. He’d lured the morgue attendant away from his post, providing the Lobster with an opportunity to examine the bodies of those murdered at the warehouse.

  The Lobster snuck in a side door unnoticed and entered the dingy white room. The ceiling lights hummed, a wordless dirge for the recently departed. The walls on either side of the long room were covered with metal doors, hiding the deceased until they were claimed by family. But the Lobster ignored them; what he was looking for wouldn’t be found there.

  Instead, he turned to the multiple wheeled tables in the center of the cold room—overflow, the most recent arrivals left upon the stretchers until they could be properly stored. He approached the first of the white cotton bags, stained a dark red, almost black. He reached down to the stretcher, prying apart the fabric, coldly studying the corpse inside.

  The man inside had a blood-spattered face, frozen in a grimace of terror. His clothing was shredded, the flesh beneath ripped in deep, bloody furrows—as if by the claws of some savage beast. And something even more disturbing—bite marks.

  From body to body he moved, finding the same level of savagery on each and every corpse. Something had torn these men apart, but what?

  The answer was elusive, until he reached the last of the body bags. He tore the material apart, expecting to find a corpse in the same condition as all the rest.

  But this body was different. The Lobster removed it from its casing for a better look. It appeared to be mostly human in shape, but it was deformed. Its limbs were mismatched, one arm much longer than the other, and the long, spindly fingers of each hand were decorated with a nasty set of black-nailed claws. He recalled the deep lacerations torn into the flesh of the other victims and realized that he had found the likely source of their wounds.

  The Lobster continued to examine the twisted corpse. Its skin was tough, leathery, like a reptile. On its forehead were two bony protrusions, as if horns had begun to grow. He pried apart the lips for a look at the teeth, and his eyes widened behind his goggles; it was like looking into the mouth of a shark. The creature’s gums were swollen with razor-sharp teeth of every conceivable size. He reached down, pressing on the gum line and watching with revulsion as a long, serrated tooth broke through the dead, pink flesh with a pop.

  A sound from the door interrupted the Lobster, and he quickly covered the monstrous corpse, ducking down behind the stretcher, a length of sheet hiding him from view.

  The door swung open, hitting the wall, and two figures shambled into the morgue, their misshapen limbs making their movements look more like those of some bizarre form of primate than anything remotely human.

  They were like the thing inside the cotton bag on the morgue table, only these two were very much alive.

  And as they approached the shrouded corpses, ripping open the cotton bags with a slash of their savagely clawed hands, the Lobster knew why they had come.

  They had come for the body of their brother.

  —

  The Lobster watched the monstrosities. They seemed to communicate with a series of grunts and growls as they lumbered from one stretcher to the next. One decided to help itself to a little snack and began gnawing on a stray hand, the bones crunching noisily in its powerful jaws, but the Lobster knew it was only a matter of time before they discovered him.

  Carefully, he reached down to one of the pouches hanging from his belt, quietly unsnapped the cover, and reached inside.

  They were less than a foot away from him when he made his move.

  The Lobster shot to his feet, tossing metal ball bearings at the exposed bulbs of the ceiling lights. They exploded, plunging the room into darkness. Wasting no time, he sprang from his hiding place, activating his goggles while drawing his sidearm from its holster. He aimed and fired the Colt.

  But the monsters dove beneath the first of his gunshots and sprang at him with guttural growls.

  The Lobster fired twice more, but still could not find his targets. The creatures were fast, seemingly at home in the
darkness of the morgue. They plowed into him, hurling him backward into one of the stretchers, spilling the contents of the body bag to the floor.

  Then the monsters were on him, slashing with their razor-sharp claws. If not for the heavily reinforced leather of his jacket, his flesh would have been torn to the bone.

  He struggled to bring up the Colt and aim, but again, one of the beasts was faster. It surged forward, its jaws clamping around his wrist with the intensity of a bear trap.

  The Lobster stifled his scream of agony, not wanting to give his adversaries the satisfaction, but he lost his grip on the firearm, dropping it to the floor.

  He would use this pain, a burning source of fuel, to power his rage. He lashed out with his foot, kicking one of the creatures away, and then turned his full attention to the one still hanging onto his arm by its mouth. The beast growled, shaking its shaggy head as if attempting to sever the hand from his wrist. Blood flowed freely and pain shot through his body like a bolt of electricity. With his free hand he dug into the beast’s face, his fingers gouging at its eyes.

  The creature opened its mouth to scream with a mixture of pain and fury, and the Lobster pulled his arm free.

  He attacked, a whirling dervish of anger unleashed upon his foes. But no matter how hard he fought, they came back at him twice as hard.

  They wrestled upon the floor, toppling wheeled stretchers, spilling the gory contents of body bags.

  Grabbing the long, tangled hair of one of the beasts, the Lobster drove its face into a refrigerator door in an explosion of blood and teeth. He spun to deal with the other, but he wasn’t fast enough. The monster man was there, swinging something at his face that slammed him backward to the floor.

  The Lobster struggled to recover, pushing away the veil of unconsciousness that threatened to drag him down.

  A human leg. He’d been struck with a human leg.

  Through a shimmering haze of pain, he watched the monster that had felled him discard its fleshy weapon and head for its injured brother. One beast helped the other to stand, and then both turned their baleful gazes to him.

  The Lobster forced himself to stand on shaky legs, trying to seem ready for whatever the twin monstrosities had left to throw at him.