by L. L. Foster
Guilty or innocent, he wanted her alive.
In the distance, he heard the sirens of approaching cars. Almost at the same time, an awful stench, one he'd smelled before, choked him.
It was the smell of blood—and rotted flesh.
Something awful had happened here.
And somehow, Gaby was involved.
Expecting a monster of hideous proportions, Gaby instead witnessed the fearful limping of a wounded human, slumped against the wall, barely staying upright. Not a large, powerful man, but a woman.
A small woman.
Confusion kept Gaby immobile.
It didn't work like this. God showed her the heart of the demon, not the mortal body. The only time she'd ever seen beyond the haze of duty was… with Luther near her.
Oh God, oh God... Gaby looked behind her, but saw no one. If Luther did lurk nearby, she still had time.
Thank you, God.
Not yet daring to look into that room of torture, Gaby said to her victim, "You can't escape."
The woman turned her face, and all thought gelled.
Dr. Chiles.
The soft-spoken doctor. The defender of the indigent patients. The trusted one.
It suddenly made sense: The duplicity. The conniving. The ability to get close to Rose.
Only a slender woman would fit through the basement window of Morty's apartment building.
Dr. Chiles was both skilled enough to do deranged, sick, perverse experimentation on ailing cancer victims and inconspicuous enough with her gentle appearance to escape a brutal crime scene without drawing suspicion.
Furious with herself. Gaby cursed low. More than anyone else, she knew the unpredictability of evil. It didn't follow a pattern, didn't fit a profile.
She'd been sloppy. Unforgivable.
Ungluing her feet, Gaby tightened her hand on her knife and stepped away from the wall. "You deserve everything you get today."
"Freak!" the doctor railed at her, her voice barely audible above the commotion from the adjoining room. She pressed a hand hard to her side. "Look at what you've done, at all you've ruined! How will I continue my work? How will I find the cure?"
Her work. Teeth locked, Gaby glanced into the yawning space ahead. What she saw repulsed her.
Frankenstein's laboratory would look like a posh hotel in comparison to the makeshift lab the doctor had erected. Kerosene lanterns illuminated filthy glass jars overflowing with rotted flesh stacked on shelves, boxes, and crates.
Pilfered equipment, including instruments that could cut, saw, and clip, littered a section of sheet-covered floor.
Crawling with cockroaches, discarded food containers, blood-soaked rags, and soiled clothing cluttered each corner.
A half-dozen crude beds, made from cots, gurneys, and splintered boards, showed signs of unbelievable cruelty. Gaby made note of the thick straps, the raw rope and wires meant to restrain the bodies, and her skin crawled.
Only two of the beds were empty.
"You sick bitch."
Blood pulsed and gurgled from below the doctor's left breast, drenching the clichéd white coat, the pale blue scrubs, in sticky crimson. "How dare you insult me? Some day soon my work will produce a cure, and then the world will hail me."
Gaby shook her head. "You will never work again." Numb from her heart to her brain, she trailed after the doctor, metering her pace the same, stalking her. It wasn't easy, not with her perception of the desolated people around her, but she kept her focus on the doctor. "Tonight you die."
Doctor Chiles stumbled forward into the room and dragged herself between two rickety beds occupied by patients of indiscriminate age, in various stages of cancerous decay. At the intrusion, the wretched souls roused enough to lament their fates.
Their movements emphasized the doctor's debauched experiments. Exposed, bloody tumors riddled with pulsing veins, rough scabs, and blackened lesions, adhered loosely to sagging, puckered flesh. Faces, bodies, limbs—the cancer grew over all parts of the bodies.
Clutching her side in awful pain, Dr. Chiles demanded, "Look at them." As she spoke, she continued to inch away, keeping a distance between herself and Gaby. "They're the scourge of our earth, a waste of humanity. For years, they defiled their lives and the lives of those around them."
"I know." Gaby saw it all, the contaminated pasts and iniquitous souls. "Right here, right now, it doesn't matter."
"They're all alone," Dr. Chiles insisted. "No one cares what happens to them."
"I care."
Pain turned the doctor's lips white. "Damn you, I've given them purpose. Through me, their lives will have meaning."
Beside Gaby, a man with sunken eyes mostly hidden by great globules of cultivated growths gave a pitiful moan.
Gray, paper-thin skin lay over protruding bones. Without words, he pleaded.
He wouldn't live much longer, but every second brought him immeasurable agony.
At Gaby's other side, a hairless woman jerked and flailed in futile rage. With each movement, a monstrous sac on her midsection recoiled with a life of its own.
Turning a slow circle. Gaby saw more of the same—until her gaze landed on the pile in the corner.
Decomposing bodies, overrun with maggots.
Failed experiments.
Patients whose usefulness had run out.
Knowing she'd allowed this to happen, angry tears burned Gaby's eyes. She wanted to kill the doctor now, this instant.
But as she breathed in the stench of decay and desperation, absorbed the misery in the frantic auras, their anguish became her own. The insurmountable burden bowed her shoulders and wrenched her heart.
She needed to kill them. All of them.
But for the first time, God made sure she saw things clearly… even through her blurring tears. They were all evil, and all human—capable of great suffering.
Gaby sensed the doctor moving toward her, along with other bodies. She recognized the danger, felt the encompassing evil.
Ready to fulfill her duty, she poised herself—and a gunshot rang out. The misfired bullet hit the wall, sending out a spray of splintered wood and plaster dust.
Shaken from her discipline, Gaby spun around and there stood Morty, shoulders back, chin up, arms straight out with the gun gripped tightly.
He took aim again and Gaby glanced behind her to see the doctor advancing, her lip curled in rage, her eyes hot with hatred. In her blood-soaked hand, she hefted a long surgical blade as lethal as Gaby's own knife.
The room echoed with the blast of another resounding shot. The doctor's body jerked at the bullet's impact, then crumpled to the ground, felled by a gunshot wound to the side of the face. No longer recognizable, Dr. Chiles now resembled the monster Gaby had anticipated.
Morty crept up beside her. "Oh God, Gaby. She's dead, isn't she?"
"Looks like." In the gray ugliness of the room, a blue glow floated around Mort. On the outermost reaches of the aura, the blue was quiet and calm, but closest to Morty, nearest to his heart, it shone rich and deep, indicative of a man who'd found his work in life.
Gaby couldn't quite credit Mort's transformation.
"Oh God," he said again. Trembling, he lowered his hands and gazed around the room in horror. "I'm sorry, Gaby."
"For shooting her? Don't be." Gaby had no regrets there. But now for the rest of them…
"No, I meant…" He swallowed hard. "Luther's not far behind me. Right before I came in here, I heard him in the woods. He's not alone."
Gaby tried to order her thoughts, but it wasn't easy. She had to contend with her ability and duty, and her own human emotions.
"He must have followed me," Mort rushed to say, "and there's no way he didn't hear those shots. He'll be in here any second."
"Which is why I avoid guns." Drawing in stale, odorous air, she forced herself to think. Luther's proximity no doubt had much to do with her altered state. His singular effect on her threw off her balance, robbed her of a much-needed edge.
&nbs
p; She honestly didn't know if that was good or bad.
Either way, it was all too much, too discrepant from the bizarre reality to which she'd grown accustomed. Her stomach revolted and she clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from puking.
Mort's voice tottered with fear, further bewildering her. "Gaby!" Looking beyond her, he stumbled back.
She followed his line of vision and saw two of the poor creatures, armed with crude weaponry probably used by the doctor to inflict her experiments, now descending on them. Rubber tubing trailed from one stooped soul, while remnants of torture discolored the other.
They both had the same bulbous fingertips and toothless, slathering mouths she'd seen before.
The doctor must have cut them loose before she attacked.
Vociferating in excitement and panic, they lumbered forward, starting a frenzy with the others who didn't understand. The noise grew deafening.
Disheartening.
In that moment, Gaby made up her mind. They all needed to die. Thanks to the doctor, they were barely human anymore. Their black souls, now disoriented with sickness, frightened by chaos, and maddened from pain, made them dangerous—especially to Morty. Besides, anything other than death would only cause them more cruelty.
Grabbing up the surgical tool from the doctor's limp hand, Gaby handed it to Mort. "Cut them all free."
"But… !"
"Do it, Mort. But be careful. Stay out of reach." The order had barely left her mouth before the first monstrosity fell against her, awkwardly stabbing. Gaby sidestepped, turned, and sliced cleanly across the throat, cutting the carotid artery. She shoved the pitiable creature aside.
The other reached out, and Gaby sank her knife into its heart, twisted, and dragged it out again. The body dropped hard to the ground.
One by one, she dispatched the tormented souls.
Without God's intervention.
Without His purer vision.
She saw them all for what they were, and though she had a paladin's power, she acted out of her own conscience, not divine instruction.
One of the more weakened patients offered no more than garbled pleas—for a cessation of suffering.
Gaby made his death quick and painless by cutting off life support. She severed IV tubes and disconnected an oxygen tank.
"Luther will be here soon." She sensed it. But by the time he and his fellow officers ordered medical care, the bodies would be at peace.
"Go," Morty whispered to her, his voice barely audible over the now blaring sirens. "Find a back way out. If Luther catches you here…"
"He'll arrest me," Gaby finished for him. She had always understood that. "What about you?"
From a distance, Luther shouted, "Gaby! Where are you?"
"Go," Morty begged. He waved the gun at her. "There's a door at the back of the room. Go through there. Find a way out. I'll stall him."
Still she hesitated, unable to make the decision—unable to abandon him.
Morty hauled her close and gave her one bumbling kiss, startling her senseless. His aura burned bright with determination. "You're important to the world, Gaby. You have a purpose. You have to be free to do what you can." His crooked smile wavered. "And finally, I think I found my purpose. For once, I get to be the hero. Now go."
"Gaby!" Luther's voice echoed down the corridor. The beam of a bright flashlight hit the walls.
He was only a few yards away.
Gaby turned and fled. On her way across the room, she spotted a fresh corpse, unmarred with disease. Given the bright, suggestive clothing, it had to be the prostitute Rose.
Poor Bliss.
Gaby found the door and went through it with no idea where it led. She trusted God to see her safely outside. As the door shut behind her, impenetrable darkness closed in.
She crawled forward, feeling her way…
And that's when she heard the doctor speak. "You let her do this."
Gaby's heart dropped. Dr. Chiles wasn't dead!
Luther shouted, "No, Mort. Drop the gun. Now."
"I can't."
The doctor laughed.
And a final shot rang out.
Unable to bear it, Gaby turned back, frantically retracing her steps. If Luther wanted to apprehend her, she'd somehow talk him out of it. Or she'd find a way to evade him.
But she had to know if Morty was safe. He'd come to help her because he cared; she couldn't just abandon him.
Reaching the door she'd gone through, she opened it a mere crack and saw Luther bent over a supine body.
Morty.
He wasn't moving.
A scream crawled up her throat, but before Gaby could get the sound out, several things seemed to happen at once.
She saw the doctor drag herself upright against a rickety table, her mouth twisted in wicked delight. She held Mort's gun.
Luther pushed to his feet and faced her.
The badly wounded doctor stumbled, and a kerosene lantern crashed into one of the oxygen tanks.
An explosion rocked the building, shooting flames everywhere.
The door blasted shut on Gaby. She tried, but it wouldn't budge an inch. Something must have collapsed against it, blocking it. She listened hard, but all she heard was the snap and crackle of hungry flames devouring the carnage.
"No!" Gaby pounded her fists on the door, but it didn't matter. No one acknowledged her calls, and the door didn't dislodge. Smoke seeped into her darkened room, bringing with it the caustic scent of burning wood, cloth, and… flesh.
Gaby tried kicking the door with her feet, but the smoke grew thicker, burning her eyes and throat, reminding her that despite being a freak, she was still all too human. She finally had to move away.
Heart pounding hard, silent prayers running amok, Gaby crawled and crawled until she found a hole in an outer wall that led to the swamp.
She stumbled out, fell onto to her back in the prickly weeds, and gulped in great gasping breaths. When she could breathe again, she faced the destruction. The flames didn't seem to spread, but with how that room had exploded… could anyone make it out of there alive?
Gaby didn't realize she was crying until the sirens began winding down and she heard her own sobs. The weakness so enraged her that she shook a fist at God.
"This is why I can't be friends with people? This is it? Is this my fucking lesson?"
Her raw voice competed with the sounds of chaos, echoing in hollow dismay over the surface of the swamp, emphasizing the futility in all that she did, all that she'd dared to do.
More emergency personnel arrived. Police, firefighters, EMTs. More voices. Enough lights to brighten the woods and send eerie, dancing shadows everywhere.
Drawn to concealment against her will, Gaby got to her feet and moved out of the open, choosing a position behind a copse of trees where she could watch the busy swarm of police and medics, and still escape if anyone spotted her.
The hot tears continued to fall unheeded down her cheeks as she hunkered down, praying to see Luther or Mort in one of the bright emergency beams trained on the building. So much pain filled her that she wanted to curse and wail. She wanted to scream out her anger.
But doing so would accomplish nothing more than her capture. She'd screwed up enough already—no need to add to it.
Doing her best to tamp down emotion and heighten awareness. Gaby waited as professionals got the fire under control. Soon, the thick smoke subsided and only choking odor billowed out the windows and a busted door.
Please, she prayed.
Seconds later, her heart thumped in relief as a tall, familiar form emerged.
Fingers locked together at the back of his neck, Luther stepped away from the destruction. The female detective, Ann, stood close beside him.
"I don't fucking believe this," Luther cursed.
Appearing dazed, Ann put a hand to her stomach. "They're all dead, Luther. I don't… I don't even know what they are. Human?"
"Fucking experiments." Luther dropped his hands and punche
d the damaged door hard enough to break knuckles.
Glued to the sight of him, Gaby winced in sympathy for his pain, both physical and emotional.
Cuddled up to him, Ann pleaded, "Don't be a caveman, please. I'm too shook up to take it."
"Sorry." Luther flexed his hand. "It's just… I know the guy who killed them all."
Gaby's stomach hollowed out. Surely, Luther didn't believe that Morty had done the deed? That was too absurd.
As Gaby's thoughts tumbled, Ann hugged herself up to Luther. "Why do you suppose he did it?"
Slinging his arm around her and pulling her close, Luther said, "God only knows, Ann. God only knows."
Gaby turned her back on them and buried her face against her knees. Yeah, God knew. But He wasn't about to share with the likes of them.
If only she'd gotten that damn door open, if only she hadn't left Morty in the first place, then… Luther would have locked her up.
For the sake of humanity, it was better this way.
But then why the hell did it hurt so much?
With nothing else to do, she used a rough tree trunk to pull herself to her feet and, in the near silent way of wraiths, exited the woods. She had to disappear, and if she didn't hurry, Luther would catch her in the act of packing up the tools she used to write and illustrate her graphic novels.
Nothing else mattered. Not any more.
Feeling an awful twinge in his heart, Luther pressed a fist to his chest.
Ann grabbed him. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah." But he wasn't. It felt like someone had just ripped out his soul. He'd thought for sure that Gaby would be here, in the middle of the awful destruction.
But so far, there'd been no sign of her.
Duty demanded that he couldn't leave yet, but damn it, he needed to find her. He wasn't sure why, but it felt crucial.
As paramedics carried Mort out on a gurney, Luther had them pause. "One second."
"We need to move."
"Yeah, I know." Luther touched Mort's shoulder. "Mort, where's Gaby?"
Faint and rilled with pain, Morty whispered, "Luther?"
"Yeah, it's me. Was Gaby here with you? Is she hurt? Where is she?"