From Oblivion's Ashes

by Nyman, Michael E. A.

  The next thing that caught T-Bone’ attention was the enormous bone saw. It was hung on a wall next to a gruesome array of other cutting tools above an immense freezer. The cleavers and machetes and hatchets gleamed menacingly in the faint light, and T-Bone’s mood took yet another dip.

  Okay, he thought. If I didn’t know it already, the verdict is in. This guy is fucking psycho. He wouldn’t even be taken to prison. They’d have him locked up in a crazy ward for the rest of his life to study with tweezers and long, pointed sticks.

  One of the bags landed next to him and spilled open to reveal a clattering of canned food, batteries, and other small, portable goods.

  Hmm. Planning on leaving us, Paul? Or just stashing contingency supplies in case you have to make a run for it? What other reason could there be for a secret stash?

  The second sack landed next to the first. This one had a different sound to it, like a contained apples or books, emitting a sort of clustered bumping as it landed.

  T-Bone wriggled around so that he could take in the rest of the dark room and found his view blocked by a six-foot tall, freestanding shelf that rose up behind him. It was mostly empty, with each shelf holding a series of huge jars, murky in the dim light, and T-Bone could vaguely see through it to a second shelf, which was also laden with more of the big jars. Behind that, the room became utterly invisible in the darkness, though he could see that it went back quite a distance.

  CLANK!

  Light flooded into the room, half-blinding T-Bone as it bounced off the hospital-like whiteness of the floors and walls. He squinted and turned his head to see that Paul had closed the door to the outer world, sealing them in. He was now standing before a large breaker box, having simultaneously throw open every switch.

  Paul turned, a curious expression of peace and adoration on his face.

  “Aren’t they beautiful?” he asked dreamily.

  Frowning with puzzlement, T-Bone turned to look where Paul appeared to be staring and saw…

  Oh. Bloody. Hell. Forgive us.

  The jars contained human heads. Perfectly preserved, alabaster white, female heads, their hair flaring out around them as if frozen in mid-toss on a windy day. Jesus. There had to be thirty or more, carefully spaced along their shelves like lovingly placed art exhibits. As his astonished gaze passed from bottle to bottle, he flinched as he spotted Amber’s blank, expressionless face.

  Then, as his gaze continued to wander, he choked with horror. There, on the second shelf from the top, third from the right, he saw a head that had undeniably once belonged to his sister, Bethany. She looked as perfect and as beautiful as that day he last saw her, when they had hugged on the back porch of their mother’s house in Halifax. He thought he’d never see her again, but here she was, a waking nightmare in white.

  He stiffened as something else caught his attention. He peered into the murk at the faces suspended there. The jars were spotless, well-dusted, gleaming under the bright lights, and the heads inside were… were…

  One of them blinked at him, and its mouth opened, slowly, like a fish trying to increase the flow of plankton.

  Paul came to stand beside him, his eyes shining.

  You brought us company, they all cried out to him in unison.

  Yes, Paul told himself. Yes, this had been worth it. Why hadn’t he done this before now?

  T-Bone! The head of Amber lit up with recognition. How the hell are you, man? Shit, it’s been weeks!

  “Hold off, Amber,” Paul told her. “There’s someone else who will be even more happy to see our guest.”

  Terry, Bethany cried out, sobbing with joy. My brother! Oh Paul, my glorious knight! How did you find him? You brought me my brother!

  “Now, now,” Paul told her, chuckling. “I still have to kill him. He knows our little secret, my love. He’ll tell the world, or what’s left of it, and they’re not ready to understand us yet.”

  Of course, my love, she answered. You know best. I’m sure if he knew, he’d understand why it was necessary.

  Are you bringing us our families too? Aimee asked hopefully.

  “No, my dear,” Paul said, reaching out to touch her jar. “I’m afraid that this opportunity came to me completely by chance. Most of your own loved ones will have passed on to the next world by now.

  The chorus of disappointed cries made Paul chuckle again.

  “Now, ladies,” he told them. “It’s not all bad, is it? You still have me to play with, don’t you? I’ve missed you so much. You’ve all been with me in spirit, but now that I’m actually here, we can enjoy some of our more intimate pleasures.”

  The chorus of seductive catcalls, salacious crooning, and sexual promise started Paul’s blood racing, and he found himself getting hard.

  Down on the floor, T-Bone listened to the one-sided conversation between Paul and the wall of bottled heads with greater and greater distress. He wanted to shout out at the man, to scream at him of his madness, but the sheer horror of it all kept him silent. Mother of God, the faces were moving! They were all moving! He collapsed onto the floor, pressing his forehead down onto the cold, white tiling, and prayed to a God he did not believe in that his sister’s soul was not trapped in that… that thing.

  A gentle hand on his shoulder pulled him upwards.

  “T-Bone,” Paul said, sounding confused. “What are you doing? You’re missing your chance. Didn’t you want to see your sister again? Well, here she is. She’s so glad to see you, T-Bone. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so happy.”

  “What have you done to them?” T-Bone demanded, the saliva dribbling from his lips. “Jesus Christ, Paul, they’re moving! I get it that you’re a sick fuck, but… Jesus Christ, man!”

  “Of course they’re alive,” Paul said, frowning. Then he smiled. “Oh! I know what you’re noticing! How lively they are. Well, they’re all excited to see you, of course. It’s not often that they get to welcome guests. Just remember,” he chuckled, “no hanky panky while you’re here, all right?”

  He leaned down to whisper in Paul’s ear.

  “Actually,” he added. “Just between you and me. They were looking drawn out and tired lately. The apocalypse really had an effect on them. They were starting to wonder if their lives held any purpose any more. So I visited Professor Scratchard’s research laboratory at the university and retrieved the remaining genetic samples of the organism. He couldn’t take them all, you see, on that day when we rescued them, so there was still plenty to choose from.”

  T-Bone just gaped at him, and Paul grinned.

  “You guessed it,” he added. “I gave them each a little sprinkle from Scratchard’s sample batches. And presto! The organism feeds off of residual fat cells and light energy, so it only took a couple days and the girls were more alive and buoyant and happy than they’ve been in years. It’s perfectly safe. The fluid acts like a buffer on their senses, keeping the organism from getting its bearings. And look at them! Only, keep it a secret, would you? They don’t know, and they believe their weight loss is natural. Let’s not spoil it for them. You know women, eh? Isn’t your sister looking great?”

  “You’re insane, Paul,” T-Bone said, clenching his eyes shut as if he never wanted to open them again, and sagging in the other man’s grip. “Honest to God, what is wrong with you?”

  For a second, Paul’s expression darkened and his head snapped up, as if hearing something from the back of the room.

  “Oh, well done,” he growled down at T-Bone. “You’ve gone and woken him up. And here I’d hoped he’d dried up and died while I was gone. Now, I’ll have to go and explain what I’ve been doing.”

  T-Bone lost his strength and sagged, dangling from Paul’s big fist. He didn’t want to look up and see his sister looking down on him.

  But then he heard it.

  “Get you’re womanly ass over here, boy! You got some fucking nerve, don’t you? Just what in the hell were you thinking?”

  T-Bone’s eyes shot open.

  It h
ad not been a hallucination. It had been another voice.

  Someone else was in the room!

  Marshal shouted into the microphone.

  “Hey! You! Zombie! Over here!”

  They watched the screen intently.

  “Why isn’t it responding?” Eric wondered out loud.

  “Perhaps it’s miffed at being called a zombie,” Scratchard suggested dryly.

  “Shouldn’t matter what we call it,” Marshal said, “or what words we use. It responds to the sound of a human voice, among other things. Look. It’s in Hunting Mode. See the sharpness to its movement?”

  “Yes,” Scratchard said, “but what could it be hunting?”

  Marshal punched the button to call up Kumar.

  “Kumar! Is there anyone reported missing? Is anyone not in their designated shelter?”

  “Yeah, boss. Lots. I mean, there’s everyone over at the gymnasium, the-”

  “Not them,” Marshal interrupted. “Did anyone who was supposed to be here at First Canadian not report in to shelter?”

  “Hold on.”

  Eric was on his feet in a flash and running out the door.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Scratchard demanded.

  Grabbing and putting on a communication headset, Marshal was hot on his heels.

  “Where are you going?” Scratchard said, looking startled.

  “Come on!” Marshal called back to him. “We don’t have much time.”

  Eyes lighting up with comprehension, Scratchard scrambled out of his chair and followed after as quick as he could.

  They caught up with Eric at the elevator, waiting for the doors to slide open.

  “Whoever it is,” Marshal said, “our only chance to rescue them is to use one of the Camoucarts to-”

  “Marshal?”

  “Talk to me, Kumar,” he said into the mouthpiece.

  “Bad news. We have a lot of people who didn’t make it to their shelters. Sophie Wyatt is freaking out. Randy Madison disappeared just before the alarm, and didn’t return. Angie and God went out looking for him, but neither of them reported back either. Krissy and Luca are out in one of the Camoucarts, and Paul isn’t answering either.”

  “Terrific,” Marshal said, as the doors opened. “How many Camoucarts do we still have downstairs?”

  “Just one.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Marshal muttered. “At least we can still-”

  “Yo! Marshal! It’s Luca!”

  “It’s good to hear you’re okay, Luca,” Marshal said. “Look, we’ll have to talk later. We have a bit of a situation at the moment-”

  “Yeah? Well, you’re not the only one. Me an’ Kris are chasing down Paul and T-Bone at the moment to fuck-knows-where. We had to get the GPS tracker from Kumar.”

  “Tracker?” Scratchard asked.

  “We had them installed after Shitbox was attacked,” Marshal explained. “It was Jerome’s idea, a way to make them easier to find in the future.”

  “T-Bone?” Captain Vandermeer said. “Can’t be. I locked him in myself.”

  “Yeah, you might want to check on that,” Luca said. “The lock’s been tampered with so that it stays unlocked on the inside. Professional job too. The kind of thing you’d expect an ex-con to know about.”

  “Even more interesting,” Krissy added, “is all the evidence we found hidden in his personal quarters, including a tablet with a ‘shutdown’ icon on the main screen. There’s also some indication that suggests he’d become obsessed with our two murder victims, Denise and Patty.”

  “Murder victims?” Vandermeer exclaimed.

  “So you’re convinced it’s murder, then?” Marshal asked.

  “Yes, Marshal,” Krissy replied grimly. “It’s murder. No doubt about it.”

  “I can’t believe it!” the Captain said, shaking his head.

  “So,” Marshal sighed, “T-Bone was our killer all along.”

  There was a pause on the other end.

  “Actually,” Krissy answered, “we’re pretty certain he isn’t, sir. There are… call them extenuating circumstances. Luca and I are in pursuit of the truth. We’ll fill you in when we know more.”

  “All right,” he said at last. “Keep in touch, and be careful.”

  “You too, Marshal. You too.”

  “So,” Luca said. “You do agree with me.”

  Krissy winced. “Much as it pains me… Yes, I think you’re right.”

  “Pains you? Now that just hurts. What did you say the reason was that Marshal told you to take me along on this little mission?”

  Krissy sighed. “He said you had an acute insight to the criminal mind.”

  “Fucking right, I do,” Luca said. “And if there’s one thing you can say about most criminals, it’s that we don’t trust cops. Like I told you before, to me, the police are just another type of organized racket. No offense, but I’ve known one or two crooked cops, I’ve know lazy cops, I’ve known hardass cops, and I’ve known fanatic cops. They’re a goddamn box of chocolates with guns, attitudes, and plenty of back up. Only stupid criminals ever trust them.”

  “No offense taken,” Krissy said. “I guess.”

  “Now, the cops themselves, on the other hand, that’s their blind spot. They don’t got the luxury to trust nobody else except cops. It’s not like I fucking blame them either. Every day is like bein’ in a foxhole, getting’ bombarded by the worst assholes the world can throw at them. Everybody - and I mean like everybody. The media, the judges, the politicians, the lawyers, and every fucking demographic from white to black to green to poor to rich to immigrant - shits on them and blames them for their problems. That doesn’t even take into account the criminals. You fucking know that we’re not trying to make their lives any easier. The only people who got their backs in the whole fucking world, the only ones on their side, are other cops, so it takes a lot to get them to turn on their own.”

  “That’s…” Krissy searched for words, “very understanding of you.”

  “Now, you’re a cop. And even though Paul wasn’t, once he joined your team, he became kind of a made man, if you know what I mean. It took someone like me, with a criminal perspective, to open your eyes.”

  “That’s probably at least a little bit true,” Krissy admitted.

  “It’s not like I’m saying you weren’t a good detective or nothing,” Luca added grudgingly. “That was pretty fucking cool, the way you saw right through all that so-called evidence we found. My first clue was when he said that he saw bloodstains where the murder victims were supposed to have been killed. Zombies don’t leave bloodstains. And it made no sense that anyone smart enough to sneak into Kumar’s system or murder two women without being caught would then be so stupid as to leave incriminating evidence just lying around in their room. But when you pointed out that that scratch damage to the lock still had the filings dangling from it - which they wouldn’t have been if they were weeks old, making it impossible for T-Bone to have free reign to kill Denise - that was fucking brilliant!”

  “Thank you,” Krissy said absently. “The nail in the coffin, however, was when we passed Henley in the hall, and he told us about the ‘disagreement’ between T-Bone and Paul, because he was worried that T-Bone would get pulled from butcher’s duty.”

  “Yeah, how’s that for a one-eighty?” Luca recalled. “I thought Henley hated T-Bone, and here he is sticking up for him.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Krissy said.

  She hesitated.

  “I... I knew T-Bone’s sister,” she said at last. “I only just remembered. It feels like so long ago, but back when I was masquerading as a hooker in vice, we became friends out on the street. We weren’t the ‘take-you-home-and-watch-Grey’s-Anatomy’ kind of friends, but for two weeks, we’d meet for coffee at this shitty little diner on Jarvis Street before going out to work our rounds. She was a prostitute, but I still considered her a friend. If she’d known I was a cop, she might have thought differently, but since
she thought I was a hooker too, she…”

  Krissy’s voice trailed off into silence.

  “Anyway, she disappeared,” she said finally. “I got really upset. At the time she was so happy, saying that her brother was coming into town, and that she was going to turn her life around. I started an investigation on my own time to look into her disappearance, and it unearthed that a serial killer had been working the streets. That’s what got me promoted to the drug squad.”

  “You never found out who he was?”

  “Nope. He was never caught. But when Henley told me that T-Bone had accused Paul of knowing his sister, Paul’s face suddenly came back to me. Out of the thousands of perverts and bystanders and shop owners, his face bubbled to the surface. I even remembered that he followed me around for a couple of days before he got spooked. We were hunting Johns, so at the time I just thought that he’d made me. Now, I’m not so sure.”

  “It explains why he’d kidnap T-Bone,” Luca said. “He’d want to keep that secret dead and buried. Or whatever.”

  He straightened up with a scowl. “But you couldn’t have done it without me.”

  Krissy nodded sadly. “That’s possibly true. Thank you, Luca.”

  Luca glared at her. “Then what’s all this ‘it-pains-me’ shit? We made a hell of a team today! You even got me thinking of a career in law enforcement, and – marone! – if Pop could hear me now, he’d be rolling over in his fucking grave!”

  “It’s not that, Luca,” Krissy said, looking sad. “It’s the fact that, if all this turns out to be true, then instead of capturing Bethany’s killer, I made him an officer in the New Toronto police department. And, in doing so, I enabled Paul in the murder of two more women. How’s that look for detective of the year?”

  Luca didn’t have an answer for that, and they drove on in silence.

  T-Bone was dragged deeper into the room, but left on the floor just beside the second, bottle-laden, freestanding shelf, which blotted his view of the back area. This was fine with him. Whatever else, he did not want to meet the owner of that other voice.