by Alan Spencer
And right now, his skull was on fire.
Boyd tried to level with the driver, so he calmed down. “Would you just tell me where you're taking me? Please."
The driver didn’t reply. The young man kept staunching the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. The man's nerves were creeping up on him.
Why? What the fuck did he have to worry about, Boyd thought.
The man’s uniform was a military green, without stripes or camouflage. No badge or decorations either. Boyd couldn't figure out who the man worked for. It couldn't be for the state. So who, he wondered.
Two hours had passed before they made another turn. This time, they were traveling deep into dense woods. The terrain had changed from paved road to a rocky, jouncing dirt path. Three watchtowers appeared after minutes of passing the same backdrop of boring woods. Armed men surveyed the distance with sub-machine guns. The men stared down at the armored vehicle unaffected by its routine appearance. After another mile, the armored car hooked a left. They slowed to ten miles an hour, and soon reached a fence topped with thick barbed wire.
Another prison.
Boyd cursed under his breath.
Nothing had changed.
The driver pulled up beside a booth security checkpoint. He signed a waiver and gained approval to enter. The entrance parted and revealed another pair of gates laced with thicker barbed mesh. Closing in on that barbed barrier, the driver was now on high alert.
The gate opened by itself, being sensor-activated. They drove through it and were looking on at the perimeter of an unknown base. The concrete barrier walls were twenty or thirty feet high. Impossibly high, Boyd thought. Inescapable. Each side of the giant square spanned for many miles. It was like standing outside a baseball stadium. The seats and field were blocked from the view in the parking lot.
This wasn’t a prison, Boyd thought. It was something else, and whatever it was, it wouldn't work to his benefit.
The bus moved south of the base. They continued alongside the tall-standing concrete wall with no destination in sight. Excruciating minutes passed before the driver finally braked outside of a wrought-iron gate built into the concrete barrier.
The driver kept the engine running.
He turned to face Boyd. “This is it, Broman. Brace yourself.”
The driver walked back towards him and unlocked Boyd’s shackles. Training a Glock pistol at Boyd's back.
“You're going to follow my instructions. Don't try any dirty shit. Your types always do. You wouldn't be the first I had to blast. And they make me clean up the fucking mess. You ever clean brains with a sponge? It's not fun."
Boyd had no choice but to agree to the commands with the muzzle digging into his back. They walked out of the bus and to the gate together. He didn't try any dirty shit, even though Boyd imagined a dozen ways to overtake the young prick.
At the gate, the driver punched a code into the security panel.
The lock disengaged.
The door edged open with a disinviting crrrrrrrrick.
“In a way, you’re free. I wish you the best of luck. Play it smart from here on out, Broman. Don't try any of that machismo Rambo shit. Play it smart. You might survive long enough to enjoy a few more moments of life. That's how I'd look at it. Now get in there. There's nothing else you can do, so you might as well deal with it."
Gee, thanks. Asshole. “What’s inside? I’m not taking a Goddamn step until you tell me something that makes sense."
“I don’t know how to answer that question, and even if I could, I’m not supposed to do anything except make sure you get inside. Just walk straight and follow the concrete path. Keep it simple. You’ll spot an old brick station a quarter of a mile up ahead. You can't miss it. Hide inside. That’s all I can tell you." Under his breath, "That’s all they told me to tell you.”
Boyd was poked against the spine with the pistol. This time Boyd's resistance was answered by a swift kick behind the legs. He folded over, landing on his hands and knees like a dog. The driver horse-collared him, dragging him towards the door and tossing him across the threshold.
“Now get in there!”
Landing hard, Boyd was slow getting up. He attempted to charge the door, but it had already been closed.
“What the hell is this shit? Come back here and open this door!"
Boyd clutched the iron bars. The three weeks he slept in a prison cell was difficult, but that form of incarceration made sense, unlike this situation. He could be walking into an orchestrated trap here. Perhaps the government was testing a new weapon, and he was the guinea pig. Boyd imagined walking down the stairs and a giant laser beam searing through his midsection and cutting him in half. Then scientists in lab coats would take notes on their charts as his body spurted red and his insides kicked up hot steam.
“What’s behind that door at the bottom of the stairs? Please, tell me something, anything. You can't just leave me here."
“Turn around, Mr. Broman.”
Boyd didn’t move.
The gun was pressed to his temple through the gate. “Turn around, now.”
“You going to shoot me?”
“I could, but that means I'd have to clean up after myself. All they give you is a bucket and a sponge, like I said. I'm not in the mood to deal with brain clean up today."
“I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you. You’ve got a life, right? A wife, maybe a kid, and another on the way, but me, I’m stuck here. I should do as you say so you can go back to your happy existence, right?"
The driver's face softened.
“Look, this is a chance for you to reclaim your life. All I can do is point you in the right direction. The rest is up to you. Many men better than you have been turned down from this opportunity. Take full advantage of it. Go to the station in the courtyard. You'll be told more later. Survive. That's all you can do."
Boyd studied the concrete stairs that carried down for three flights. The stairs ended at the final gate between him and the inner facility. Leaves and piles of broken tree limbs littered the steps. Boyd suspected nobody came through to clean up. Ever.
The driver metamorphosed back into a government goon. “Mr. Broman, there’s nowhere for you to go. I suggest you do as I say, and head straight for the station. They pulled a lot of strings to get you in here. Start appreciating it."
The driver stomped back into the bus. The man sped down the road, denying Boyd any further exchanges.
Boyd studied the surveillance camera directly above him, and flipped it off.
On the ground, Boyd spied the Glock resting against the gate. He reached through and picked it up. The door at the bottom of the stairs automatically unlocked and swung open.
What waited for him?
The question promised doom for an answer.
Boyd squeezed the Glock. The wind kicked up a heap of leaves, the scrape of their dried bodies against concrete mincing to his ears. It was the only sound for miles. No footsteps or hushed voices, he was the only living person here, for all he knew.
And there’s no real way to know for sure until you walk inside.
He crept down the first series of steps, softly pressing his feet down so as not to make noise. He held his breath. His pulse was suddenly pounding. His instincts were telling him to run the other direction.
Boyd looked up at the sky. The sun hit him hard, delivering its blistery heat. Well, I guess I have no choice but to continue on. I'm good and fucked, one way or the other.
He completed the last set of stairs and waited at the threshold of the final door. He expected a million possibilities. What Boyd saw wasn't one of them.
A hill faced him, unmarked by any threat. Power lines hovered in the distance. A concrete path was crudely built into the crabgrass. Boyd gulped in some air and edged up the walk to catch a glimpse of where he’d been dumped.
A post office came first. The series of cars parked outside the building were fire-eaten. The strip of stores came next: Jones Prescripti
on Drugs, Cosmic Bowling, Carlson’s Shoe Repair, and Sun Market Grocery. Each structure was in the same decimated condition as the vehicles.
Boyd stayed on the concrete path as the driver had instructed. He was about to call out to someone, but he soon thought against it. He didn’t understand the situation. This wasn't the time to be careless.
He passed a flag pole around an island of grass adjacent to the post office.
The flag was upside down.
The tan brick station was positioned about a quarter of a mile from his standpoint. There was no sign marking the building. A road winded out of the courtyard drive to a series of houses, about three or four blocks of residential property. It was clear no one lived here anymore. The giant concrete walls that enclosed this land indicated this was anything other than civilian property.
Boyd stalked towards the station, while taking every universal precaution known to a cop. He clutched the Glock and surveyed his surroundings. Broken windows of the grocery store. The huddled shells of fire-ravaged vehicles. A statuesque water fountain in the center of the courtyard with a cherub on a perch. The inside of the fountain was colored with green algae and scummy-black water.
No sign of anybody yet.
Boyd inspected the ground and stopped walking.
He skipped a breath.
Every muscle in his body went rigid.
It can't be.
Why would this be here?
Sweet fucking hell.
A severed hand lay in the grass.
The stump had been severed clean from the wrist.
It twitched as if alerted by his presence. The fingers arched like a spider’s legs, and the hand pivoted its bulk towards him. The skin was a rotten blue-black. Sections of the bone were revealed between patches of broken tissue, wilted and puckered from the sun’s unforgiving heat. The fingernails were yellowed and blood crusted. The details rushed in at him when the hand vaulted after him.
Boyd wasted no time retreating from the strange living thing. Taking in the unbelievable sight, his sense of equilibrium was lost. The ground under his feet titled. He opened and closed his eyes to pull himself out of a nervous fit. He couldn't afford to weaken his defenses now.
He was strides from reaching the station. He moved faster now. The windows were boarded up from the inside, but the front door was wide open.
Before retreating inside, he caught a movement in his peripheral. A figure stood in the courtyard. It didn’t move. The person's gaze was fixed on him. A man. He was in tattered clothing. His face was a dirty smear.
“Hey! Hey you! Can you tell me what's going on here?"
The figure’s chest sucked in, then he grunted like an angry pig. “Graaaaaaaatch!”
The figure launched across the courtyard and closed the space between them with a knife clutched in each hand. Where did the bastard get knives, Boyd scrambled to think. In one hand, the blade was titled upwards to the sky; the other, the blade was pointed to the ground.
"Graaaaaatch!"
Storming at him faster, Boyd could now see the man's shirt was in rags. The man's pants were the same. The problem, Boyd's eyes hadn't registered the details correctly. He wasn't wearing clothes at all. Flesh dangled from the man’s body in jagged bolts. The outermost covering was fresh, but beneath the patchy surface, diagonal strips of decayed skin were sewn into place. Boyd had seen dead men at crime scenes before, and this man’s skin was more than weeks old. Beyond decay. The last things he noted were the eyes, and how they appeared fresh. The differing rates of decay, the man lived many contradictions.
Without warning, the figure hurled a knife at him. It landed between Boyd's feet. The figure arched its other hand to launch the next knife.
Boyd took aim, and with marksman’s speed, fired a round into his shoulder. The arm was rendered from the body in a crunch of bone and burst of blackened blood. The extremity bounced twice on the ground before remaining still.
Boyd didn’t waste time asking the man questions. He cleared the station's door, retreating into the brick building.
Outside the building, the dead man bent over to pick up the shot off arm. Shoving the tender meat through the clothes hangers shaped into hooks that jutted out of the stump, he locked the arm right back into place.
Answers and More Questions
Boyd peered out of the station’s windows. The aggressor had disappeared. Strange, he thought, how the decayed man moved at a living man’s speed. And why did the man try to knife him?
He went about securing the station. In the lobby, an American flag was wadded up on the floor in front of the check-in desk. A chalkboard was riddled with bullet holes. He counted five computers that were broken heaps on the ground, each suffering a brutal technological death. Multiple puddles of dried up blood colored the bare floor. There were no bodies, only shreds of clothing. The shreds were the same green fabric the driver had worn.
Finding nothing else of interest, Boyd checked the hallway and entered an office. The only window was obstructed by a large bookshelf. He read the titles strewn on the ground, mostly Encyclopedias and books on anatomy, anatomical design, and molecular biology.
This isn’t a police station.
He gave a start when a phone rang. The device was on the ground in the corner as if thrown aside during a moment of chaos. He rushed to pick it up. Boyd almost lost the phone, his hands were trembling so hard. Boyd refused to let go of his gun, or avert his eyes from the hallway in case the man outside managed to break in.
Boyd wasn't sure what else to say, so he said, “Hello?”
“Boyd Broman?”
“Yes, and who are you? And do you care to explain to me why a rotting man just attacked me?”
“You weren’t hurt,” the man answered coolly. “In fact, you handled yourself quite well. A lot better than many of our own. Very impressive. This is the deal, Mr. Broman, even though you’re not in a position to say no. It doesn’t matter what attacked you, and it doesn’t matter who they are. One person matters, and that’s Hayden Grubaugh.”
Boyd almost sank to his knees. A feverish weakness penetrated him. He experienced that tilting, sinking feeling again.
Hayden Grubaugh’s dead.
What does that madman have to do with anything?
“That cannibal was killed in prison," Boyd said. "Hayden died of a cranial hemorrhage. His cellmates slammed his head into the floor until he died. He was killed. It was all over the news. You're mistaken. Hayden Grubaugh is dead."
“Certainly any cannibal’s death would be on the news, Mr. Broman. But make no mistake. Your friend is alive. Hayden’s been in this complex since that fake news report, and he's very much alive. He never died. We thought he would’ve been, well, dispatched by now.”
“Wait. I'm so confused. What is this place? Why are there people wearing dead skin attacking me? We need to backtrack a little, asshole."
A pair of voices argued on the other line for a time. Finally, the speaker returned to the conversation. “Like I said, those people don’t matter. You defended yourself well out there. I have faith you can handle anything we have to throw at you here. Hayden’s our main concern. He’s been causing problems within the complex. Wreaking havoc. We can’t risk sending anyone after him that isn’t familiar with the kind of monster he is. You arrested him, Detective, and you’re the perfect man to bring him back to us.”
“You threw him in here, so why are you desperate to get him back?”
“Investigators have found more of his murdered victims, and we want to question him. Now that he’s dead on paper, we can use whatever tactics we choose to bleed the information from him. Most of what they found were the bodies Hayden stored in his uncle’s rental storage unit in Jefferson City, Missouri, in sealed plastic bags. Hayden’s uncle died two weeks ago, and the storage unit was opened, and the six bodies were uncovered with some of their parts missing. They suffered clean cuts on the fleshier parts of their bodies; Hayden must’ve eaten them like he did the others. I
t's sick what he did to them. Just, wretched."
Hayden Grubaugh was forever engrained in Boyd's memory. Boyd aided another fellow detective in apprehending the man who was later deemed the “Pittsburgh Alley Cannibal.” Hayden mostly attacked females, and they were of the hooker variety. He didn’t rape the women. Instead, he paid them to enter his Bronco truck. From there, Hayden fed them alcoholic beverages, namely red wine to sweeten their blood, and the sleeping narcotic Norzepam.
After rendering them unconscious, the cannibal injected an air bubble into their veins and killed them instantly. Hayden severed the body into pieces at his apartment with a hacksaw and cleaver, assorted the organs, and combined them with oregano, cilantro, paprika, bay leaves, garlic, diced onion, cumin, hot peppers, green tomatoes, and other ingredients, and boiled them at his brother’s Italian restaurant after hours.
The murderer grinded down the bones in the garbage disposal and hosed the kitchen floor of blood, and it wasn’t until there was a plumbing problem in the eatery, and a plumber discovered gobs of human hair, teeth, and broken bones wedged in the pipes, that Hayden was investigated.
So why was Hayden kept in this concrete fortress?
“You’ve got all this security, so why make me track him down? I’m sure it was the county’s worst nightmare filling out the paperwork to bust me out of that dirty clink.”
“We've arranged for your name to be cleared of your crime if you return Hayden to us, Mr. Broman. Your wife, your kids, your community, even your fellow officers will accept you again—and might I mention, your pension will be doubled. You can win back your father's pride from heaven. He didn’t get to see you graduate from the police academy because you were only six years old when he died. It’s a shame your ordeal had to happen, what landed you in prison. It was a tricky situation.”
Boyd ignored the last statements, and focused on one thing, “What do you know about my father?”