by Alex Myers
"In what capacity did they meet with him?"
“Hostage negotiations. The Apocs, Abaddon, had taken several police officers and members of the military hostage. He is holding them for ransom. The Apoc that calls himself Abaddon was doing the bargaining—or more appropriately making the demands."
"They want money?"
"No, equipment, I think they are going to try broadcasting something."
"The Apocs?"
"Yes."
"They sound a lot more organized than I, or for that matter, anyone gave them credit. That's just another reason to be careful. Why do you think they would help you?"
"It's just a feeling, and I'm not going to call it women's intuition either. They're loners, I think that might be part of the reason they got out of the military. And can they ever help! Lieutenant McCullough has every bit of information about the Apoc's situation on his computer database. He even has some of our classified files on it, some I don't even have."
"Impossible!"
"Remember Dr. Puck, McCullough has the full cooperation of every branch of the government at his disposal. I've looked at the files; I've read some of the electronic letters he's received. From what I can make out from them Admiral Prescott, the Secretary of Defense, and his father were old army buddies. Someone even said they were related, I do know he calls him 'uncle'. Anyway, his father had connections from Colin Powell to the First President Bush back in his CIA days, plus many members of the present ruling staff. Apparently they all think quite a bit of the Lieutenant and his friend too.”
“We can dispatch a team down there for you.”
“I would appreciate that no matter what, but I'm telling you these guys are tough. I've personally witnessed them eliminate two or three dozen Apocs. For whatever reason the little mind games the Apocs play, doesn't seem to have an effect on them." She wanted to tell him they reminded her of a couple of cowboys—riding, shooting, killing, and raising hell. Watching them excited her, in a primal sort of way. They were a different breed.
"Plus it goes without saying, Dr. Puck, how well they know this area."
"So when are you going to approach the lieutenant, Miss Porter?"
“I don’t think McCullough, I'll try Bell first."
"Good luck, and call me if there's anything to report."
"I will . . . and thank you Doctor Puck."
"Just out of curiosity Miss Porter, what kind of books does this Bell write? Technical manuals for the Military or something?"
"Children's books . . . "
CHAPTER 12
HENRY AND THE HOSPITAL
Henry tried to open his eyes, one at a time. It was a supreme effort; his face and neck muscles cried out in pain. This was also compounded by the fact that when he opened them he knew he wouldn't know where he was.
The inner and outer corners of his eyes were crusted shut. Trying to open them reminded him of trying to open those confounded Tupperware containers of Nattie's.
Nattie! Where was Nattie? The memory of what had happened began to flood his memory. It was like drawing pictures on the corners of a stack of paper. Each drawing was similar and yet slightly different. Then when you flipped the pages they gave the impression of movement.
His shift at the docks had ended at 4:30am that morning. He drove home in the daybreak gloom with a dark cloud riding as a noisy passenger in the seat beside him. He wanted to catch a light breakfast and try to get a few hours of sleep before he had to leave for work again. Time was running together for him.
"Nattie lost the flashlight Ray," the imaginary voice said. "Or she fell down the cellar."
Henry thought maybe the radio would quiet this uneasiness he felt.
"I can just see her now, Henry. She's dead. Lying at the bottom of the stairs, her head smashed-in on the corner of the furnace. Should have fixed that lose board in the steps, Henry."
The words in the song on the radio was about a guy losing his sweetheart, it was hitting too close to home. He turned the radio off so hard, the knob came off in his hand. He tossed the broken piece out his open window.
"Damn squawk‑box," he said aloud. It reminded him of his unwanted passenger, Mr. Gloom.
"Or maybe she didn't fall down the steps after all. Maybe the people from the mortgage company came and repossessed her, the house and all its contents."
No! he thought. Nattie's at home, everything is fine. He drove the rest of the way home knowing that it wasn't.
There's the house now, he thought, right where it should be. He was halfway expecting to see just the foundation and tracks where they had carted it off to the Southern Mortgage Company.
As he pulled into the driveway he noticed all the lights in the house were off. Nattie's usually up, he thought, with breakfast on and coffee brewing. Nothing to worry about, she hasn't been feeling well lately. But he didn't believe this and got out of the car on the run.
A cold sweat broke out on his weather‑worn, wrinkled forehead, as he fumbled with his keys trying to unlock the back door. The key would turn in the lock, yet it wouldn't open. He rapped on the door and called out for Nattie. He shook the door as he spun his key first one way, then the other.
Henry was a small short man, but extremely stocky. He was built like a gorilla, his buddies at work would kid him. He took a step back, his hand on the doorknob for support, and put his shoulder into the kitchen door. It flew open with enough force to fly out of his hand and slam into the stove. Nattie's collector edition dishes fell with repeated crashes to the linoleum floor. Elvis, Scarlet O'Hara and Ronald Regan lay in a thousand pieces under his feet.
"Nattie?" he screamed.
There was no answer. The basement door was open. He moved to the top of the steps, afraid of what he'd find when he looked down. There was nothing but the furnace barely visible on the outer edge of the falling light from the open kitchen doorway. He called out for her at the same time feeling very faint. He sprinted the ten feet to the living room. He moved amazingly fast for a man his age and size. The pre‑dawn light was fighting its way into the room from around the closed draperies. Henry still had enough light to see the chaos in the room. He tried the light switch . . . nothing. On the floor at his feet was the flashlight he warned Nattie not to let leave her side. He flicked it on and heard movement from the side of the house. As the Ray‑O‑Vac turned the shadows into wrecked pieces of his life, he heard movement again. Suddenly hope cursed through his veins.
"Honey . . . is that you?" he said pensively. He looked into the darkness.
Henry was caught unaware as a large object hit him on the head and back sending him to the ground. He knew, more than felt, that it was the overstuffed chair where Nattie did her needlepoint. He lay on the floor in a near panic, not knowingly which direction the chair had come from or who had thrown it. He was frozen as his heart pounded in his ears. He remembered a movie that had taunted him throughout his childhood. His father had taken him to see it at the Capital Theater and dropped him off. It was a caveman movie where dinosaurs chased and ate a good many of the people. The thing that had frightened him most were the giant flying things . . . what were they? Pterodactyls! That's it, pterodactyls he thought as he felt the chair holding him down sprout claws. The pterodactyl that ate the lady caveman, ripping her apart first with its giant talons, then with its razor‑sharp beak. The more he thought about the image burnt in his mind from his youth, the more the thing came to life pinning him down. The knife‑like claws started etching its way into his back. He felt the carrion stink of its breath warmly on his neck. He was ready for the beak to launch into the soft white of his belly.
Then he remembered Nattie, and the prehistoric creature again became a chair. He brought himself up on his hands and knees and shook it off himself. He quickly turned and saw a huge looming figure silhouetted against the white wall of the hallway, but before he could stand, a foul odor made him sit again.
It was not the actual smell that debilitated him, it was the memory it invoked. He
thought of his time in the army. He was a grunt in the infantry in Korea. The North Koreans has pushed his platoon against a rock wall. Reinforcements had finally come with supplies and food, but not soon enough.
The fighting had been very sporadic making things worse. It gave the young men time to speculate just how small and insignificant they really were. All the stuff about God may have been true; a heaven, angels and the rest of that crap. It's easy to think the world revolves around you and only you. Two weeks in the cold, wet, smelly jungle, one of those weeks without any food, people trying to kill you . . .. You realize pretty quick what a small speck on a frog's ass you really are.
If we . . . I was . . . was so damn important, why didn't this so‑called God put some food there for us. Like a TV show where the characters need to learn a lesson before they live happily ever after. If we were so important why couldn't he at least put a damn banana tree there for us? Just even one measly Chiquita?
We prayed . . . we first prayed to live and then we simply prayed to eat. Shoot me between the eyes, for just one of mom's apple pies.
On the seventh day just inside our east perimeter—conveniently, inside, where our sentries were sure to find it—they found a dead monkey. Trying to remember, not many of us had even seen a live monkey, and no one had ever seen a dead one. Things didn't sit around for long in the jungle.
"It's just too convenient," the dumb‑ass-college‑punk captain said.
Everyone thought it was his fault that we were caught there in the first place. To compound the lofty position he held on our shit‑list, he was a negative son of a bitch. How much water is in this glass captain? Oh it's half full. Thank you very much shitheel!
Any one of us could have snapped his neck and many wanted to, but we didn't. It was our pain to endure the Captain, and, of course, he pointed out the monkey might be poisoned.
At that point we still had two days left on our C‑Rations and weren't ready to start eating chimp-meat anyway. So the monkey just sat in the middle of the camp. We would walk by it and wonder if it came to eating monkey burgers, could we do it? On the fourth day without food and even further away from hope, chimp-chops were starting to sound like a sirloin from Golden Corral.
Now if we'd been smart, if someone would have been using their head, we would have gutted that ape. Because on the fourteenth day and seven days without food, we decided it was our only chance. When we sliced its open with a knife, the gases inside exploded like popping a birthday balloon. The stink of it made your eyes burn.
By the time the rescue patrol broke through two hours later, not one of us had moved. Even though most of the men still thought the meat was tainted, they were drawn to the spectacle. We were like people watching a public hanging. Our rescuers had to drag us, almost literally, away from it. We just sat there staring at the dead thing. No one ended up eating any of that meat, but every one of us remembered that smell. The smell that said, all hope is gone. God has deserted you, and it's time to face the music.
That same smell was in Henry's living room now, in the breath and on the body of his attacker.
Henry stood in a half-crouch using the overturned chair for support and spoke these words slowly and deliberately: "Where is Nattie my wife?"
"Nattie is gone," was the booming response. The walls shook from the reverberation of the mighty thing's voice. "And she's never coming back!"
A dark and formidable rage grew within Henry. His eyes were becoming more accustomed to the lack of light. He saw the small table that had once sat by the thrown chair. He flung it at the dark‑man hitting him square in the chest. The piece of furniture crashed and broke. The dark figure hadn't flinched, he hadn't even tried to dodge its trajectory.
The dark person moved in Henry's direction. Henry wanted to rip him apart for all things he possibly did to Nattie, but there was a little fear for himself mixed in. He stepped to his left and to his rear, trying to put a little distance between himself and his adversary. He bumped into something . . . it was Nattie's walker. He grabbed the aluminum structure with both hands and used it like a battering ram. The thing was within fifteen feet of him. Holding the walker chest high, he ran toward the thing. Henry's short, powerful legs were pumping like a locomotive. The thing stopped and stood its ground.
Henry hit the figure and his forward momentum came to a crashing halt. It was like hitting a brick wall. It was like being in a head-on collision in a car. Henry's head snapped forward and he bit down hard on his tongue.
"Who do you think you are to dare take me on?" the creature said. "I am Abaddon, leader of the 'Chosen'. You are but an old man," he said. He swept Henry across the face with his scalely hand.
The force of the blow sent Henry off like a mad top spinning helplessly across the room. He hit the far wall and collapsed to the floor. He made it up to his knees before the thing spoke again.
"By the way Mr. Pigott, Mrs. Pigott, Nattie, has become my lover and man what a lover she is. You taught her well.”
"If it's the last thing I do on this earth I swear I'm going to kill you," Henry said. He was trying to catch his breath. The thing had moved to him. It moved like liquid, fast and without effort. The thing that called himself Abaddon, looked into his eyes and Henry swooned. Abaddon grabbed both lapels of Henry's overalls and picked him up off the floor. His feet were trying to connect, but Abaddon held him at arm’s length. Henry was face-to-face with a beast that had eyes like a cat. The pupils were an elongated, dead yellow with a tinge of violet in the middle. The stink came off the creature in waves, hurting Henry every time he took a ragged breath. He couldn't remember, even in the army, feeling as small, helpless, and godless as he did then.
The thing opened what Henry thought must had been a double‑jointed jaw, exposing arrow sharp teeth. He thought for a minute that the thing might try to swallow him whole; like a boa‑constrictor swallowing a baby kitten. The thing held Henry's eyes like a vice, raping and violating his brain.
Abaddon tightened his grip on Henry, winding his fist into a ball of Henry's clothes. He held him in the air with one hand. Using his other hand, Abaddon pulled on the lapel tearing Henry's overalls and T-shirt underneath. His shoulders were bare, and the thing's attention went from Henry's eyes to the exposed flesh.
Abaddon closed his gaping mouth on Henry's trapezoid—the muscle that runs from the top of the shoulder connecting it to the back of the neck—sending rivulets of electric shock through him. He watched as his blood started to squirt out from the hole, only to be slurped up by the thing. Raw, exposed, living tissue caught and reflected the minute light entering the room. He placed his mouth over the wound and began to suck the life from the man.
Henry swung his head and smashed into Abaddon. He would later swear that a bit of that crusted‑over skull of the creature had fallen off. He thought his army days in the jungle were like a day at the beach compared to this. Henry felt faint—stars were swirling a macabre dance in front of his eyes. He knew he was suffering from shock. The physical pain wasn't as bad as the mental pain of having his flesh raped.
The constant swirling—like a leaf of a tree falling gently to earth—was creating a sensation of calm in him. It was the first real calm he had felt in years, and it was pulling him. He was being drawn into unconsciousness like a moth to a porch light. It felt so good, so right. SO RIGHT?
No! He wouldn't eat the monkey meat!
The creature named Abaddon was in rapture. He had drawn Henry even closer to his body. Henry swung his right foot hard and connected square between Abaddon's legs. Henry was glad the thing had balls—for it must have—because the death grip went suddenly slack. Henry felt himself falling backwards—not falling, but thrown. He passed rearward through the living room's bay window taking the drapes with him.
If he thought hard about it he could still see the look of pain and hear the piercing sound of Abaddon's scream. Henry thought it might have been from the kick, but decided that was not it. The harsh light of the morning sun p
oured into the room, searing the creature’s crocodile-like skin and causing it agony.
Henry now sat in his hospital bed staring at the ceiling and wondering where he was. He couldn't remember any other details of the struggle. It seemed so far away and dream-like to him now. He turned his head to the dripping sound to his right and he saw the I.V. bottle with its tube leading to his arm.
"Mr. Pigott, I see you finally decided to join us," a voice said. It sounded a little too cheerful in Henry's opinion.
He tried to turn to the left but his movement was halted. He wore a bandage from his shoulder, across his chest, and up to his neck. Trying to speak his words only came out as a grunt.
A straw was placed at his lips and he drank the water. He had no idea how parched his mouth was. The liquid was absorbed before it reached his throat. He took another giant gulp. Instead of turning just his neck, he turned his entire body to see the owner of the voice.
"I'm your very own nurse. Nurse Ryerson, Mr. Pigott, and it's my pleasure to serve you. Believe me, having your very own nurse in a time when the hospital is so short-handed is quite a luxury. You see, nothing is too good for you, you are a very special patient." She said this without sounding condescending, (perhaps a little quaint, but definitely not condescending.)
"In—the—house . . ." he tried to say, but it came out unintelligible.
"Hospital? Yes, you're in the hospital Mr Pigott. You've been through quite a lot I would say. That's why you're a bit of a celebrity around here. You have made—I guess you could say—quite a recovery. Anyway, it looks like the worst is over now. I'm going to leave this with you," she said. She demonstrated then handed him the pager. "Just buzz if you need me."
"What 'bout Nattie?" he barely got out.
"Naughty? Oh Nattie?" she said. She was flipping the pages of his large chart. "Ah yes, here it is. You mean your wife, Mr. Pigott? I'm sorry but we don't have any information on her, at least I don't in here. The police have been informed that she's missing . . .. We are to detain her for questioning if she happens to show up. Perhaps you can ask one of the doctors when they arrive. I do know that you had a visitor while you were out. I think he said that he was your brother?—ah—brother‑in‑law?"