He wrapped her in the towel. "I'll see if I can find something a little more substantial for you to wear this time around."
He guided her into the bedroom and pulled out a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. "I know this will be a little large for you, but I think we can make it work."
He laid the clothes on one side of the bed and pulled straightened out the rumpled covers on the other side. "I'll let you rest. Get dressed before or after your nap, whatever makes you feel more comfortable."
She climbed into bed with the towel still wrapped around her body, and he pulled the sheets and blankets up around her.
"Sleep well," he said. "Try to forget everything for a few hours. If you need me, I'll be within shouting distance."
He remembered that he meant to give her some aspirin and a glass of water, but he didn't want to disturb her. So he brought her a cup of water and a bottle of aspirin, laying them silently on the bedside table where she'd be certain to see them if she woke up.
After one last look at his obviously infected houseguest, Father Matthew went into the other room to begin the process of cleaning blood and guts from the rectory floor.
Chapter Eight
When Officer Fitzpatrick looked down at his ankle, he saw a glassy-eyed woman with an open, drooling mouth and more visible wounds than he cared to count clinging onto his boot with one hand.
To him, it looked like she had been eviscerated. "Where the fuck did you come from?" He didn't expect her to answer.
She didn't.
The woman's belly had been torn open and all sorts of viscera that he couldn't identify were spilling from the hole. They looked like they had been partially eaten.
From the neck up, she reminded him of someone whom he would date; she was almost pretty. From the neck down, she looked like she had walked directly out of a horror movie that substitutes gratuitous violence for plot.
The cop swallowed hard to keep his last meal from making a surprise reappearance. In his years on the force, he had seen plenty of things, but never anything like this. That gaping maw of spoiled flesh tested the limits of his sanity, and he couldn't tear his eyes away from it.
The woman's cold, black heart was clearly visible through the opening in her chest cavity. It wasn't beating. Her lungs were both collapsed. She wasn't breathing. Yet she wouldn't release her grip on his ankle.
He lifted his foot and brought it down hard on her wrist, taking pleasure at the sound of snapping bones. He ground his boot against her flesh for good measure. "Don't ever fucking touch me again," he said. "You're a fucking freak."
Just to be sure he had made his point, he stomped on her other hand until he was certain every bone was broken. When she continued to reach for him with twisted fingers, he kicked her in the face like he was kicking a football for a field goal.
Her head flew backward, and her neck snapped, leaving her unable to move. She lay on the tiled floor, gnashing her teeth and rolling her eyes. The scent of urine and liquid feces filled the air.
"Not gonna waste a bullet on you, Princess," Officer Fitzpatrick said. He looked around. There was a red fire extinguisher mounted on the wall nearby beneath a sign that read, "For Emergencies Only."
"If this isn't an emergency, then I don't know what is," he said. "Looks like it's my lucky day." In four long strides, he reached the fire extinguisher and pulled it down. "Good thing there isn't a fire because I've got a different type of blaze that needs to be extinguished."
He laughed at his own joke.
He returned to the woman's body. Crouching down with bent knees, he swung the fire extinguisher up and over his shoulder before bringing it crashing down onto her head. It took two swings before her head broke open like a melon dropped from a second-story window.
"There you go, Sweetheart. All your problems are over. You're welcome." He dropped the fire extinguisher onto the small of her back, and it rolled to the floor with a clang. "Now where did that other bitch go." He headed down the hallway in the direction that the nurse had run.
When he reached the end of the corridor, he had two choices. "Left or right? Decisions. Decisions. Decisions." He went left, but he turned and looked over his shoulder just in case there was someone lurching about in the opposite direction that he needed to take care of.
There was nobody there.
It didn't even take a minute before he heard loud sobbing coming from behind a closed door. He turned the knob. It didn't open.
"Sandra, is that you? I'm sorry that I scared you. Open the door. I just want to help." He jiggled the knob. "Sandra?" Keeping his voice measured and even was proving difficult. He just wanted to scream.
The sobs stopped briefly before getting louder from behind the closed door.
Officer Fitzpatrick could feel himself beginning to lose his patience. He took a step back, raised his foot and broke the door down with a single well-placed front kick.
"I told you to open the door," he shouted. The cop stepped through the doorway and saw a woman cowering behind a piece of furniture. "Who the fuck are you?"
Inside the room, a pretty blonde with smudged makeup hid behind a table. "Who are you?" she countered.
"I asked you first." He walked toward her and pushed the table over to one side, exposing her trembling body. "Answer me. There isn't a lot of time. Trust me. I know what I'm talking about. Who are you?"
"My name is Robin. I work here." She had tears in her eyes, and her voice was hoarse from sobbing. "I work here. Please don't shout at me."
The cop looked around at the snack machines and espresso maker. "You work in the break room? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"
Robin shook her head. "I work here, in the hospital, human resources. This seemed like the safest place to hide in case I got stuck here for awhile, and there's food."
"Human resources, you say? Have you seen Sandra?" He glowered down at her and resisted tapping his foot with impatience.
Robin didn't look up at him. Fresh tears formed in her eyes and spilled down her mascara-streaked cheeks. "I don't remember."
"Let me see if I can help you remember," Officer Fitzpatrick said. "She's a nurse here. Stuck herself with a dirty needle from an even dirtier John Doe. That prick Dr. Kent told her to go see someone in your office, possibly yourself."
"I- I don't know," Robin said. "I- I haven't seen her." She crawled toward the overturned table. "Are you security?"
"I- I don't know." Officer Fitzpatrick mocked her stutter. "Do I look like fucking security?" He pulled out his gun and showed it to her. "Does hospital security carry one of these?"
"I … don't know," she said. "Can you- can you shut the door? I'm afraid of those things out there. I saw them tear the guts from a screaming woman's belly and eat it like it was sushi. You can't let the things inside this room."
"What things would that be?" Officer Fitzpatrick asked. "Tell me everything you know."
"People," she said. "Crazy people, dead people, people who used to be people and now they're just—."
"Not people?"
Robin nodded. "Yes," she said. "Not people. Can you kill them with that?" She pointed to his gun.
"Can and have." He smirked. "Can. And. Have."
"Can you stop pointing it at me then?" Robin asked.
Officer Fitzpatrick laughed, but he lowered his gun to his side. "Is that any better?"
"Yes." She nodded her head again. "Not much better," she mumbled under her breath.
"Can you help me find Sandra? It's really important to her health that I find her. I'm afraid she might have fallen ill and needs medical attention."
"You're not hospital security?"
He rolled his eyes and sighed heavily. "Can you read? I'm a police officer. It's embroidered right on my uniform." He sighed again. "Just help me find that nurse. Don't make me tell you again."
"I work in human resources," she replied.
"That doesn't matter. I heard you the first time. You know the hospital better than I do. I need y
our help. Do you know where the operating rooms are?"
She nodded her head. "Yes."
"Good. That's a start. How about the medical supplies like antibiotics and painkillers and the place where they keep surgical instruments like bone saws and scalpels?"
She nodded her head again. "What do you need antibiotics and painkillers for?"
"Nothing really. It's a preventative measure, just in case. If I promise to protect you, will you show me the way?"
Officer Fitzpatrick decided he was mere seconds away from escorting her into the hallway at gunpoint if she didn't agree to do what he wanted soon. He silently counted to ten.
"I guess so," Robin said. Her voice was no louder than the squeak of a mouse. "Why do you need a bone saw?"
"Stand up. Let's go," Officer Fitzpatrick ordered. "No more questions. The day isn't getting any younger, and it's not getting any better either."
"That's what I'm afraid of," Robin said. She rose to her feet and stood on unsteady legs, shaking so hard that her knees knocked together. "This way," she said.
She walked to the door and peered into the hallway. When she didn't see anyone coming from either direction, she left the room.
"Good girl," Officer Fitzpatrick said in the same tone that he typically reserved for his dog, or his wife when she was on her knees. "Show me the way. You can do it." He followed behind her with his gun in his hand.
They went back to the same place where the cop had been when he had decided to turn left instead of right.
"I guess I chose the wrong path," he said aloud.
"What was that?" Robin asked.
"It's nothing. Forget it. Don't stop moving. The faster we get there, the faster we should find Sandra."
"What is it you need her for?" Robin asked. "I think you forgot to mention."
"I definitely didn't forget," the cop said, stifling a laugh. "I told you she might need medical attention. She might be sick or injured. You wouldn't want anything to happen to her. Would you?"
"You're not a doctor though. How are you supposed to help her if she needs medical attention? I don't understand."
"Shut up and move your feet before you wind up dead," Officer Fitzpatrick said.
Robin fell silent except for the occasional sniffle and picked up the pace. "Almost there," she said. Her voice quivered.
She stopped when they reached a door that looked very much like all the other doors that lined the hallways. "This is the room where they keep all the medication." She tried the door. "It's locked. I should have known they keep it locked. Sorry."
"Do you have the key?" Officer Fitzpatrick asked. He held out his hand, palm upturned.
"No," Robin said. "I work in human resources. Why would I have a key to the dispensary?"
"I swear to God, if you tell me one more time that you work in human resources … It doesn't matter. I'll do it myself." Officer Fitzpatrick kicked the door right above the knob. The door shook, but it didn't open. "Maybe another good kick," he said, trying again.
The door seemed to move in its frame, and it developed a large dent in the spot where he kicked it, but it remained closed.
"I have a funny feeling that the third time is a charm," he said. This time, when his boot met the door, the lock snapped. The door swung inward to reveal shelves of various medications stacked neatly behind glass doors.
"Let me guess, those are locked, too."
Robin shrugged, "Don't know," she answered honestly. "Not part of my job."
The officer pushed her into the room ahead of him.
"It's even less of a problem than it was getting into the room itself. No worries." He held the gun by the barrel and used the handle to smash all the glass doors on the cabinets. "Easy as pie," he said. "Don't you worry your pretty little head about a thing."
He looked around the room. "Aren't there any bags that I can put this stuff in?"
"I don't know. This isn't my department."
"I know. I heard you the first time. You work in human resources. For fuck's sake." He sighed. "Take off your blouse."
"What?" She crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. "No."
"Take off your blouse. Don't make me repeat myself. I really don't like it."
She didn't respond; she just held her arms tighter to her chest.
"Here," the cop said. "Let me help you." He raised his weapon and aimed it at her head. "Take off your blouse, or I'm going to blow your brains all over the room."
Robin began sobbing again, but this time she pulled the blouse up over her head and dropped it to the floor. Even though she was wearing a bra, she covered her breasts with her hands and folded herself in half to hide her semi-nude upper body.
"You could at least have handed it to me. It's not like I bite." He laughed at his own joke while Robin cringed. "Don't go anywhere," he said. "If I see you leaving through that open door, I'll put a bullet in your back, wait for you to go south and then put a bullet in your brain."
He picked up the blouse and tied knots in the cuffs of both sleeves. Then he tied the bottom shut before filling the article of clothing with bottles and bottles of pills from the shelves.
He didn't bother to look at the names on the bottles; he just kept piling them into his makeshift bag.
When the tied-off blouse was full, he stuffed his pockets as much as he could. "Don't just stand there covering your tits with your arms, grab some bottles and stuff them into your pants pockets. We need to take as much of this as we can."
Shaking, Robin did as she was told, filling her pockets, her waistband and her bra with anything left on the shelves. She dropped a few bottles because her hands were shaking, and she hoped the cop didn't notice as they rolled beneath the shelves out of reach.
She had a feeling that he wasn't above making her crawl on her hands and knees in broken glass to retrieve them if he saw her drop them.
Officer Fitzpatrick looked at what was left. "Should have emptied out the bottles," he said. "Damn it. I'll have to come back later if I can." He turned to his shivering companion. "Next stop, operating room. Lead the way, or face the consequences."
Robin led the way.
Chapter Nine
Father Matthew entered the living room, expecting the worst. He'd already seen what had happened there.
It was clear to him that he'd be walking into a blood bath, and he wasn't looking forward to cleaning it, but what other choice did he have? He couldn't leave mounds of guts and rivers of blood to fester on the hardwood floors.
To his surprise, there were no mounds of guts, no rivers of blood and no dead and decapitated man lying on the living room floor. Instead, there were just piles and piles of black dust everywhere that he looked.
It covered every surface in the room with a fine layer of sable from the end tables and old record player to the television screen and ceiling. If it wasn't bone dry, he would have thought it was black mold.
He gingerly stepped into the center of the room, where a pile of human remains had found its final resting place not an hour earlier.
There was nothing save for that grotesque black dust, dry as desert sand and glittering like coal dust. The body had deteriorated into this mysterious substance in a matter of minutes.
The priest nudged a clump of dust with one bare foot. It crumbled and dispersed, settling to the floor with a puff of … whatever it was. The priest thought that the amorphous pile of dust had once been a man's head.
"What in God's name?" He looked down at his feet. They had been covered in blood. Now they were coated and caked in that same godforsaken black substance. "This can't be happening," he said. It was surreal.
Nonetheless, he decided it was still a better situation than having slick blood oozing through the cracks in the floorboards and dripping into the basement that was connected to the church by a corridor.
He went to the closet and brought out a broom, a dustpan and a large garbage bag.
"Ashes to ashes and dust to dust," he said absentminded
ly as he swept up what used to be a living human being, then a non-living ghoul, then a pile of ashes with no logical explanation that he could ascertain. Human or not, the remains went into the garbage bag.
Sweeping the ashes, filling the dustpan and then dumping the contents of the dustpan into the garbage bag was oddly soothing. Rather than obsessing over the things he had seen, he focused on the task at hand.
Sweep. Sweep. Sweep. Fill. Fill. Fill. Dump. Dump. Dump.
Several times, he choked on the clouds of dust that puffed into the air as he worked, but he didn't think about that either. He didn't think about anything.
Sweep. Sweep. Sweep.
When he was finished, he tied the garbage bag closed and set it near the front door as if it was a perfectly normal household chore. He planned to take the trash bag outside at the first earliest convenience. It wasn't something he wanted lying around his living quarters.
Task complete, he went into the bedroom to check on Audrey. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully on her back.
The towel had fallen off completely, and the blankets had pulled away from her naked body. Other than the large bandage that covered most of one thigh, she was magnificent.
He couldn't help himself from staring at her for just a little bit too long, knowing that it was wrong. After he had devoured her with his eyes for what he know was an inappropriate length of time, he stepped forward and gently covered her with the sheet and blanket.
His hand brushed up against her skin, and he thought that she still felt warm. He glanced at the cup of water and the bottle of aspirin.
She hadn't drunk any water or moved the cup that held it, and he felt bad for not reminding her to take aspirin before she fell asleep. He wasn't sure what good it would do her at this point, but he figured it couldn't hurt to try.
The priest figured he ought to wash up himself while Audrey was still sleeping peacefully.
Although the sticky dried blood on his feet and shins had already turned into dry black ash that fell off his skin as he walked, he still felt dirty and disgusting. It was time for a shower and a fresh set of clothes before deciding on his next move.
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