“Well, ma’am, the coroner’s already gone for the day,” he answered smiling. “In fact, he just finished filing a report on that lady.”
“Oh, my,” she said in a disappointed tone. “And I had so many questions to ask him. I have an online column due for tomorrow morning, and I was running so late today I swear I must have broken a hundred traffic laws just to get here.”
She laughed to make light of her situation, and the young man was more than willing to laugh with her. He said, “Maybe I can help answer some of them for you. I’d be more than happy to.”
“You’d be such a sweetheart if you did. Would you?” She started to dig through her purse for a pen and a pad of paper. Soon, she was ready. “I’m Crystal, by the way,” she said in a belated introduction, with her hand briskly extended.
“It’s a joy to meet you, Crystal. Just call me Russell,” he replied, as he shook her hand, not holding back any ounce of friendliness.
Crystal looked down and read from her notes. Then, she playfully glanced up at him and asked with a sly smile, “Could I see the body?”
The question caught Russell off guard, not expecting such a request from the beautiful woman. For a moment, he struggled to get out an answer. Trying to retain his smile, he said “…well…ma’am, Crystal, we’re not really…”
She attempted to convince him by sweetly pleading, “Oh, please, could you be a sweetheart and do that for me? I heard she had some strange markings on her that I was so much hoping to see.” She added, “I’d be so grateful.”
The assistant looked around. He knew that no one else was in the office, but he needed to make sure nonetheless. He gave in. “Alright, if it’ll make you happy, I can certainly oblige.” With his hand sweeping through the air to guide her to the back room, his smile returned, and he said, “This way, ma’am.”
She responded with glee, “Oh! Thank you so much, kind sir.”
He eyed her as her body swayed past him. Quickly thinking, he warned her, “It’s not an easy sight to behold. So, just be ready.”
A moment later, Russell opened the small, square, cold stainless steel door of the compartment holding the victim from the Stedham Motel. Carefully, he slid the body out from the darkness within. No sheet covered it; the body was bare.
As they stood across from each other, at either side of the stainless steel door, the body came to a stop in front of them.
Looking down at the victim, Crystal tried not to look disgusted. “Oh, my.”
“Well now, I told you to prepare yourself.”
She regained her composure, and then said, “So, where on her body are these markings?”
“They look pretty cool. I’d get some myself, if I were the type that liked that stuff,” he said jokingly. He put on a pair of latex gloves, and then turned the victim’s hands up to reveal the inside of both wrists.
“Voila,” he said, as he introduced them. He kept looking down for a brief moment to examine them himself. Then, he looked up to see Crystal’s reaction. He witnessed her gazing down upon them, with her eyes slightly closed.
She slowly breathed in deep and seemed to enjoy the scent coming from the wrists. Strangely, a grin began to form at the corners of her mouth.
Suddenly taken aback, Russell abruptly moved a half step away. His feet shifted underneath him. Then, quickly and uncomfortably, he shot his eyes away from her, attempting to hide his reaction. Stunned by Crystal’s unusual look of delight, he didn’t know what to think and didn’t know what to do next.
Later, the sun was down and the night grew dark and cold.
All the lights of the coroner’s office were off behind Russell, as he walked across the parking lot, with his tennis shoes scraping over the scattered dirt. The only light came from the two dim lampposts on either side of the building. His car was the only one there, but he didn’t yet notice.
As he reached his car, he pressed a button on his key chain to unlock it. Before he lowered himself into the vehicle, he paused to notice the complete silence of the night. Cautiously, he looked around. Then, quickly, as if caught by some sudden fear, he jumped into the driver’s seat and immediately locked the door.
Feeling a bit safer inside, he breathed in deep, and then slowly breathed out. Before starting the car, he quickly looked outside to his right, and then to his left. Seeing nothing, he felt even more at ease.
As he leaned over to insert the key into the ignition, an image appeared on his side window. It startled him and he jerked back. Frightened, he quickly looked to see what was beside the car.
It was the pretty young woman, Crystal, from the newspaper. She smiled and waved at him gleefully. He could hear her muffled voice from the other side of the window.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m sorry I startled you.”
He sighed and shook his head to calm himself down. Smiling, he opened the door and stood up. His heart was still pumping hard within his chest.
Crystal stood an arm’s length away. “I’m so sorry,” she said again apologetically, with her sweet southern accent, “But I had to come back to ask another question.”
He tried to smile but it was difficult. He was still trying to recover from his heightened heart-thumping state. With a quivering sigh, he said, “Well, it’s kinda late.”
Russell was also no longer interested in assisting the gorgeous young woman. Even though she was beautiful, her reaction to the dead body earlier that day had made him more than uncomfortable.
He turned his head to the side to look at the office, saying, “…and we’re already closed for the night. And I…” As he turned his head back around, he finally noticed there were no other cars in the parking lot. Before his eyes reached Crystal, a powerful heavy hand swiftly cut through the cold night air and pounded on the side of his head, shattering the bones of his face and jaw. Warm streaks of his red blood splattered on the cool car windows. From the opposite side, another powerful swing tore through his neck, breaking away his windpipe.
With a muffled sound, his limp body fell to the ground, over the blood-dampened dirt of the black asphalt.
In the cold, dark back room of the coroner’s office, faint light from the two lampposts outside filtered through the windows and reflected off the wall of the matrix of small, square, stainless steel doors. The door of the compartment holding the victim of the Stedham Motel was open. The body had been rolled out. One arm hung over the side, and its skin was torn open just above the markings at the inside of the wrist.
Something or someone in dark clothing knelt down on the floor by the body. Long, black, flowing hair covered its face, as its head bent down over the tear on the forearm. Its mouth ravenously gorged on the cold blood within.
The faint light revealed contours of dozens of raised, long, slender lines, just underneath the skin of the dead body, created by thin moving tentacles. Each line was no thicker than a blade of grass, but much longer than the length of the body they fed upon. They wriggled and stretched from within the creature’s agape mouth, and extended into the dead body’s arm, face, and torso, sweeping through every vein, muscle, and organ.
The young woman Crystal fed zealously on the blood meal. The rare nourishment within it caused all of her senses to heighten and tingle with life. It gave her power, and she could feel it grow within her. It was power she would later need in order to accomplish the one thing she was singly focused upon to complete. With her mouth swiftly moving in one direction then another, she could think of nothing else but to drown herself in the frenzy and excitement of her feeding.
Only the sound of her warm lips lapping over thick, cold, blue blood could be heard in the darkness.
In the shadows outside, someone stood. With his eyes hidden under the hood of his long, black coat, he watched Crystal through a window. With calculating thoughts, he said, There are others in my game, but Crystal and Sik are now the first two pieces - like a queen and a distant pawn - that I move to take actions as aggressors. As he assessed them, he saw them as two
with different goals, but whose unified movements he had designed to affect a lone piece standing at the opposite side of the board: the longhaired goateed man.
This man standing in the darkness was the one masterful player who positioned all the pieces of his game, carefully assessing their strengths, and strategically leveraging their weaknesses. Deciding to remain in the shadows, he took on the role of an obscure pawn within his own game - his epic game - in which he would attempt to direct and define the ultimate outcome.
He too would become an aggressor against the longhaired man, because soon something would open a tear in that man’s self-made cage of seclusion. But it would be the masterful player to completely slash it open and drag him out, in order to achieve a vital purpose. This player was the dark figure that would later stand atop the Golden Gate Bridge: the hooded man.
Chapter 2
PRESENT DAY
The autumn sky shimmers beautifully light green, completely enveloping the earth in an unnatural hue. It is as though a canopy of thin, shiny, light-green film has been spread across the sky, and then stretched very taut to a point at which the green is so much lighter. Then, as more of the sun breaks through, the glistening sky becomes so much brighter.
At the very top of the north suspension tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, a stolid, dark figure clothed in a thick, long, black coat stands upon the center of the tower’s highest crossbeam.
Directly overhead, askew to the right of the sun, the man sees a silver metallic destroyer burrowing down through the upper atmosphere and into the cold sky, burning the air with furious speed and energy.
To himself, the dark figure says silently, “A being is coming, more potent and deadly, more ablaze and unrelenting than the destroyer above. But I am indifferent to its arrival.”
As he shifts his gaze out over the ocean, the man speaks to a powerful being who is not willing to answer, but nevertheless he says to it, “Much time has passed through which history has not molded me, instead I have molded it.” Recalling how he has arrived at this moment, he adds, “But something has happened and now this is where I am. This is who I am. It has given me the ability to try to correct what I have become and to change the course of my path.” Then, as he asks a question, he almost dreads to hear the answer, “Do you see a change in me?”
He waits.
After several moments, there is no response except the wind carrying silence.
Not hearing anything, he asks himself, “Or am I just as deceptive? And now…am I merely deceiving myself? Have I changed enough to care to restore a pact I once held dear and to avert the devastation that will overcome us all?”
Becoming more earnest, he asks in a quiet plea, “Many years have past since I have heard your voice. These events I have set in motion, and the things that I do to make them happen, I do alone. There is no one with me. It is a cup from which I drink whose content is something I alone have chosen. But now I ask, will you guide me?”
A long silence reveals no return to his question.
Dismayed, the man lowers his eyes and becomes just as quiet as the whisper of his breath. A moment later, he dispels his emotions. Deciding a course of action, he says dispassionately in his thoughts, Then this I must do.
With a slow and measured turn of his head, he gazes over his shoulder. Under the shadow of the hood of his coat, his eyes follow a line of sight into the distance, directly to a hotel and into a room on the seventh floor.
Inside the room is a second man, a man whom the dark figure has expected to appear, a man whose actions the dark figure carefully maneuvers and strategically orchestrates.
The fists of the longhaired goateed man are clenched, as he stands firmly three steps in front of Sik. The heart of his slim body pumps with rage. Even though Sik’s muscular and solid body is ready to pounce and crush him, the man affirms with a growl, “I’m gonna kick your sorry little arse.”
Paige lies unconscious on the floor, behind the longhaired man, being protected by him. He continues his bravado and proclaims to Sik, “No tricks from me, big boy. This is mano a mano.”
Just behind Sik is a large mirror resting against the wall that reflects the images of both the sun and the Golden Gate Bridge. Readying his stance, Sik taunts, “Tricks or no tricks, I’ll still throw you out that window.”
Just as Sik finishes his statement, his opponent launches the force of his whole body through the air and pounds his shoulder into Sik’s gut. Sik is vigorously slammed into the wall.
The large mirror rattles from its rest, and the sun it reflects dances a jittery green-hued trail upon the furniture and the walls of the room.
From the corner of his eye, the longhaired man quickly notices the rattling mirror, and he receives a strange sensation - like a premonition. Taking notice, he quickly says in his thoughts, Why did I know that was going to happen? And it feels like I’ve seen that happen before.
In the tussle, even though Sik is the stronger, the longhaired man somehow overcomes him. But in his haste and his rashness to arrive to protect Paige, the man does not correctly time the arrival of the silver destroyer from above.
The fifteen-megaton nuclear bomb explodes.
Taken by complete surprise, the longhaired man has no time to react. He has no time to protect Paige and can only protect himself. Before he realizes it, Paige is gone; and the hotel, the buildings of the city, and its entire population are annihilated.
Later, far south of ground zero, the longhaired man lies sprawled out on the ground, on his back, motionless.
He is far away down the coast, in the city of Santa Cruz, on a white sand beach.
But at ground zero, everything on land, from one horizon to the other, is nothing, and the explosion leaves no remnant of the city.
As he lies unconscious, time passes - maybe hours, maybe days or maybe just a few indistinguishable minutes.
Then, finally, his head moves slightly from one side to the other. Soon, his eyes open, and the green in his eyes reflect the light-green sky. The image created on his pupils shows an empty, cloudless sky, but from the periphery, dust, dirt, and ash begin to invade.
As he gradually realizes what has happened, he whispers unbelieving, “No…no.” Then, quickly, he props himself up to his knees. With his mind now clear, he jerks his head side to side, looking for the devastation. What he sees are the ocean and an eerily empty beach. But at the north, a mushroom cloud - a black and gray simulacrum of desolation - rises to the height of over ten thousand miles. It is an amazing, unfathomable height. The base of the cloud is sprawling and dense, completely suffocating the city underneath.
As he turns, he closes his eyes and concentrates to sense and read the area at ground zero. Through the opaque cloud, a vision from just above the city of San Francisco forms in his mind, revealing complete destruction. There is a distinct delineation between the land and the ocean: the land is blackened with charred remains of razed buildings and melted vehicle frames, but the ocean is a seemingly unmolested, sparkling dark green-blue.
Disbelief, awe, and terror overcome him.
His eyes expose his pain, as he says to himself, “No…where else? Where else?” He concentrates to extend the vision of his mind. There are others. Within the country, more cities are in ruins.
He thought he would have enough time, after saving Paige, to stop the others. But his decision was rash and emotional. He didn’t reason; he didn’t seek guidance. There were clues to help him, but he didn’t consider them.
Thrusting his fists into the ground, he shouts into the earth his anguish and frustration, “NO!”
The sound reflects and propels into the heavens.
With the word trembling within his throat and lungs, tension quakes within his body. For a long time he is frozen in his posture, with his thoughts racing. But afterwards, the anger subsides, and his emotions swing the opposite direction; grief overcomes him. Now, he realizes that his rash decision has led to the deaths of millions of people, and he was warned n
ot to act this way. Guilt paralyzes his heart, and resignation breaks his spirit.
“This was an unforgivable mistake,” he says mournfully. “Unforgivable.”
As he slowly lifts his left hand to his eyes, he looks at the inside of his wrist. There, he sees an unfinished symbol. Its sharp, black lines burn deep through his flesh and sear down into his bone. It is to be in the form of a circle within a circle. It is to be an eternal name, and no other human-given name will matter. He was once told to cast his current name into oblivion, because this new name is one that God himself is writing on him, and one that God himself will call him.
But now, the symbol is incomplete. Realizing it will remain incomplete, he regretfully whispers, “I will never know what this will be. I will never know my name.”
So, he feels nameless.
He is nameless.
As disappointment and remorse overwhelm him, he lowers his head and lets his arms fall to his sides. In one slow, sorrowful movement, he droops over his knees and slowly falls down over the sand.
As the wind picks up, it blows his hair to cover his face. Then, particles of dust float over his body and into the creases of his clothes, and he hears them ping and strike the lobes of his ears.
With his thoughts directed back to the devastated city, he senses for miles that no human, no animal, nothing stirs. Yet the wind continues to blow over both land and sea. Only the wind seems to be alive.
“There is so much death,” he says silently, in deep anguish. “This is my fault.”
Later, as darkness consumes the day, no blacker is the night than the black sky enclosing a faraway, condemned, six-story building. Through the broken windows of the fifth floor, the hum and crackle of electricity breaks the heavy and eerie silence.
RB 01 Through Flesh & Bone Page 4