Blood Harvest

by Michael Weinberger

  The figure behind the velvet rope was a spindly fellow. His skin was extremely pale as if he had been indoors too long. Actually, it appeared as though he had been locked in a dark room too long. Way too long. Running his hands through his greasy, unkempt black hair, the man closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, as if savoring the air as it filled his lungs. Reaching into a pocket of an oversized denim jacket he removed a metallic object which reflected in the lights of the club. Thinking it was a weapon, Eric was just about to call out a warning for the other bouncers and rush the man when he realized the object was a small digital camera.

  Breathing a sigh of relief Eric said, “What’s this? Candid Camera?”

  Slowly, methodically, the man raised the camera up to his right eye. Then, in a voice far deeper then would be expected for such a frail man, he said…almost hissed…

  “Smile….”

  It was at this point that the whole world went insane.

  * * *

  Phillip washed his face in the marble sink at the far end of the restroom. He relished the feeling of the cool water running over his face, which never failed to revitalize him in the early hours of the morning. He patted his face and hands dry with the expensive terry cloth towels embroidered with his initials in gold thread. Strange to love a restroom he thought, but he did love it. It was his sanctuary after all; he loathed leaving it, but there was work to be done. He had to make an appearance and case the joint. Pressing the flesh is paramount to the success of any business and this club was no exception.

  Turning the doorknob, he took in one last moment of quiet before exiting the washroom and re-entering his office. As he surveyed sparkling sinks and other décor of the washroom, he caught the briefest shimmering of white light from the corner of his eye. It was in his peripheral vision where he perceived a distorted flickering of shadows as if someone had turned on an overpowered strobe light. Following the pulsation, or whatever it was, Phillip felt momentarily dizzy, as if getting a head rush from a rollercoaster. The feeling passed almost as quickly as it had come over him. The moment Phillip opened the door the peaceful serenity of this sanctuary restroom was stripped away as the pumping bass of the music rushed in with its dissonant sound. Moving over to his desk, Phillip opened a small office refrigerator and removed and popped the top off one bottle of Blackened Voodoo beer. The small New Orleans brew was his favorite and the one thing he treated himself to on a nightly basis. The public could wait. He was feeling good and he felt he had earned this moment of relaxation. Lifting the beer to his lips Phillip anticipated the fizz, foam and flavor of his beer when the club fell completely and hauntingly silent.

  Phillip paused, the beer millimeters from his lips, and he looked up in wide-eyed confusion. Dropping his beer onto his desk, Phillip dashed to the window overlooking the club and gasped.

  The partygoers, all of whom were dancing and cavorting as usual mere seconds ago, were now strewn across the dance floors in every manner of disarray. Some lay as if dead, others were quivering as though in the middle of some sort of seizure.

  “What the hell?” Fear was quickly turning Phillip’s spine into jelly, but his mind went into action.

  “Figure out the cause and react to control the situation.” This was a mantra Phillip used in times when he had to keep his wits about him. It had always helped him concentrate in order to make the best of any bad situation.

  “Actually,” he thought as reality came crashing in, “the first thing I should do is get the hell out of here.”

  This wasn’t the first time the unexpected or unbelievable happened in Phillip’s career. Of course, he never envisioned anything like this. Who could ever expect anything like this? He turned to leave and nearly fell over the two security guards who were previously watching the scene on the main floor. The two men were lying on their backs with their eyes open. One was drooling from a corner of his mouth and the other had fouled himself. The odor was beginning to seep through the office making the bile in Phillip’s stomach rise into his throat.

  Turning away from the bodies, Phillip raced to the exit from his office to the first floor. As he ran down the stairs and through the doors the stench of sweat, urine and feces slammed into his nostrils like a slap across the face. He practically reeled backwards, but regained his composure and pressed forward.

  Stepping over bodies he raised the lapel of his shirt over his nose in an attempt to block out some of the smell. The scene was the same downstairs as in his office. People were lying on the floor, most had fouled themselves in some fashion and all had their eyes open and fixed on some far away place.

  Transfixed by the sea of bodies, Phillip forced himself to scramble through the club moving forward to the exit. His current position gave him a clear view of the soundstage where the DJ had evidently collapsed over his equipment. This, Phillip thought, was most likely the cause of the music system shorting out while leaving the club lighting intact. The animated lights still circled in kaleidoscopic patterns around the walls and floors. The black lights still illuminated bright colors in an electric fashion as if the music was still playing and nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  Phillip pressed the lapel of his shirt tighter across his face as the smell was becoming almost palpable. He continued to hurry across the floor to the exit. The doors were only about fifty feet away at this point and Phillip was desperate for a lungful of clean night air, free of the fetid stink enveloping his Eden. He moved faster toward the exit doors. Only thirty feet or so now before he was free of the one place in the world he had, only moments before, felt most liberated and at home. The irony was not lost on him. He felt the crushing pang of sorrow and regret as he moved; his drive to escape overwhelming his sentimentality.

  Suddenly, not ten feet from the exit doors, he noticed a familiar green glow to one side of the dance floor. He froze in place then slowly turned toward the glow as all thought left his conscious mind. Phillip lowered his hand from his face allowing the lapel of his shirt to dangle loosely to one side of his chest. As he moved away from the exit doors and headed toward the bright electric green glow on the floor he didn’t notice the smell anymore. His subconscious mind quickly erupted in fear, urging him to turn around and flee the scene, yet something drove him forward to that green glow on the floor.

  He stared…at her.

  It was the young woman he had seen from his office window in the fluorescent green spandex mini-dress. She didn’t look so alluring anymore. He was embarrassed at himself for having looked at her the way he had before. She looked so young now as she lay prone across another woman. He didn’t see her breasts anymore, or her body, or her dress. No, now all he could see was a little girl who had been the victim of some undetermined accident.

  Unable to restrain himself, Phillip knelt down and placed two fingers to her neck. He felt a very slow and shallow, but steady pulse. She was alive! He quickly stood up and glanced over all the people in the club. They were all alive! He was sure of it.

  The need to get help for all of these poor people sent him into motion. He stood, intending to sprint for the exit, and turned head on into another man who had been standing quietly behind him. The man was frail, but not short, and had a camera in his hands. Placing his index finger to his lips as if to “shush” him, the man turned from Phillip and glared down at the girl in the green mini-dress. Raising the camera up to his eye he began to take pictures of the girl like a photographer on a fashion shoot. Uncomfortable and confused, Phillip looked back down at the girl. Each flash exposed her flesh as her dress, which was not made to truly cover any of the more private areas of her body in the first place, completely revealed her to the man’s camera lens.

  Rage welled up in Phillip. He lunged for the man grabbing his shoulder and spinning him around. The force of the spin practically sent the frail man into the air, but Phillip caught him before he could fall away.

  “What the hell do you think you are doing?” Phillip screamed into the man’s face. The man s
howed no fear. Only mild amusement flickered in his eyes.

  “Now, where were you when the lights went out…or in this case, on?” the man chided in a deep guttural voice.

  “Who the fuck….”

  Phillip’s words caught in his throat as he frowned at the man, searching a face which he now felt he should recognize. The man looked somehow familiar, but he couldn’t place him.

  Unseen by Phillip, the man slipped his index finger over a small button on his camera switching the setting from “flash” to “red eye reduction.”

  “I know you, don’t I?” Phillip stammered.

  “Not really,” the man returned in that too-deep-for-his-frail-appearance voice. The inflection in those two words made him sound cocky and confident.

  Nothing made sense but somehow Phillip’s knees, which had been weak from fear the moment the sound turned off, were suddenly bolstered with strength born of anger and adrenaline.

  “Are you responsible for this you bastard!?!”

  “You want to know what happened?” the man calmly responded.

  “What have you done!?!”

  After a brief, yet incredibly uncomfortable pause the man said in a frighteningly deep hiss: “You’ll never know.”

  “What…?” Suddenly fear returned full force along with confusion as the man raised the camera up and into Phillip’s face. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Nothing…Smile.” The deep voice sang the word out in the same manner a grandmother would while taking pictures of her grandkids. The man quivered with what seemed to be orgasmic delight as the red eye reduction strobe illuminated Phillip’s face.

  Phillip saw the strobe and began to speak when he suddenly realized he couldn’t get any words out. He tried to protectively raise his arms, but his muscles failed him and they fell slack to his sides. He began to feel himself lose his balance; he couldn’t use his legs to catch himself as he began to drop. As he fell he was still able to control his eyes enough to look at the man who stood before him. He had lowered the camera from his face and was smiling with an ugly, wide-toothed grin. Phillip’s mind raced. All thoughts, words, memories, emotions flashed through his consciousness with such speed he couldn’t register or comprehend anything. His vision began to blur and fade to dark with the last sight he would ever see being that of the lanky figure with the wide-toothed grin.

  Chapter 6

  Los Angeles. 2:30 A.M.

  California weather never fails to disappoint in its ability to be spontaneous. The cool, dry night had developed into an unseasonable downpour three minutes earlier. By the time Steve Jacobs arrived on the scene at The Inferno the rain had stopped, leaving a clean but humid feeling to the surrounding area. Steve was not the first investigator from the LAPD to arrive. He may have, in fact, been the very last as the immediate surroundings were now at least two cars deep in rows of flashing red and blue siren lights. The accumulation of ambulances along with marked and unmarked police cars forced Steve to park his old (or as he liked to say “unpretentious”) Toyota Celica over a block away. At least this way he didn’t have to worry about any of the city vehicles scraping its faded but still good looking paint job.

  Steve parked in an alleyway perfumed with the garlic smell of the Korean restaurant whose back door was left open to the alley, not as an entrance for customers as much as a reprieve from the heat of the kitchen for the staff. Above the door a yellow electric sign cast a sulfurous glow.

  Steve ran his fingers through his wavy dark brown hair which hadn’t been combed since he got out of bed half an hour ago. He had received the call a couple of minutes before 2:00 A.M. and was shocked to hear the Captain call him personally. Despite enjoying a close, and more often than not, supportive relationship with his superior, the Captain had other experienced detectives who he communicated with in a more official manner. It was the strain and unease in the Captain’s voice that concerned Steve and which preempted any of his questions about the call. Without a second thought he raced from his desk and arrived at The Inferno on the Sunset Strip in a record 30 minutes.

  Exiting his car, Steve did a quick inventory of the detective gear he had so rapidly pushed into his pockets before rushing out the door. His firearm was securely in its holster attached to his belt at his side; his gold detective’s badge was clipped to the front of his belt so he wouldn’t have to constantly flash it from his pocket as every uniformed officer tried to block his entrance on the way into the scene. Not that he would blame them, of course, since he was dressed in the very civilian looking apparel so common to most Los Angelinos: denim pants, brown hiking boots, T-shirt inscribed with the artistic renderings of tribal tattoo patterns popular in today’s slacker-style fashionables. He felt the small Steno notepad in the right rear pocket of his pants, along with a small mechanical pencil he knew he needed to make notes on whatever important information he might come across.

  It was only when his left hand grazed against the hard rectangular object in his rear left pocket that he hesitated. The flask held slightly less than eight ounces of fluid, but it would be enough to get him through the evening in case his hands started shaking and he needed to calm his body in front of another bloody spectacle. Steve knew that in the years since he had joined the force his constitution had improved somewhat in the face of the gruesome and senseless violence committed on a regular basis in the city. Still, whipping out the flask while on duty made his fellow officers uncomfortable. It wasn’t as though they didn’t understand; God knows they all needed alcohol after witnessing the aftermath the city seemed so eager to produce. It was Steve’s blatant disregard for discretion that actually made them so ill at ease. Most of the policemen knew, or at least had heard, about Steve and were sympathetic enough to allow him this one rather major breech of protocol, as long as he didn’t get sloppy of course.

  Steve never got sloppy, or drunk, or even tired when he was doing his job.

  Ever.

  Steve looked from the alley to the cascade of flashing lights less than one hundred yards away, nodded and pulled the flask from his pocket. He unscrewed the top and sniffed the contents, which sent a shiver throughout his entire frame. One swallow would be all he needed; as the spiked concoction burned its way down his throat he felt his whole body release the tension that had built up since being summoned a little over half an hour ago.

  He replaced the top of the flask, shoved it back into his pocked then engaged the car alarm and walked toward the commotion of red and blue. Uniformed policemen circled the outskirts of a ring of paramedics who seemed to be continually wheeling bodies out of the club and into a row near multiple ambulances. The entire area was sectioned off with the yellow plastic “Police Line, Do Not Cross” ribbon while detectives and forensic specialists mulled over the victims and the surroundings at the entrance to the club.

  The closer Steve approached the more he began to detect an odor getting seemingly stronger. The odor was mild, but reminded him of his childhood visits to the zoo, specifically, his visits to the elephant enclosures. He stopped to allow his badge to be identified by the uniformed officers who let him pass under the police tape. He made his way toward the entrance to the club. As he passed through the castle-like double doors he froze in his tracks—the full weight of the scene came crashing down with his first clear view of the club.

  The special effects lights had been switched off and the general fluorescent lights switched on. Under normal lighting the mystique of the club vanished, leaving something akin to a school gymnasium with wet bars. Bodies turned the scene into a surreal war zone. Most, he guessed, had been moved onto makeshift triage cots while others had been neatly lined in side-by-side rows with attending medical personnel hovering over a few individuals. Clearly the number of victims was more than the current number of professionals could handle.

  “My God,” he thought. “What the hell could have happened here?” Unconsciously Steve began to reach for the flask in his rear pocket, but caught himself as a voice call
ed out to him.

  “Hey, Steve!”

  Steve knew the voice. It belonged to Chris Barnes, a longtime friend who worked for the LA County Coroner’s office.

  “Chris,” Steve said warmly as the two slapped hands together in a familiar handshake. “What, they got you out working nights now?”

  “Nope, still on days, but Peterson’s got the flu so I’m pulling a double for the next few days…and nights.”

  “I hate to say it, but you may be pulling a triple from the looks of things,” Steve said while scanning the area.

  “What’cha mean?” Chris laughed with a frown of confusion.

  Steve looked at Chris, now confused as well by the response his statement had received.

  “Well, with all of these bodies, you and your crew are going to have your hands full.”

  “What?!? They better not expect me to…” Chris paused, “Oh, you don’t know? Did you just get here?”

  Concerned, Steve acknowledged, “Just now and no I haven’t a clue what’s going on.”

  “Oh, well let me tell you. None of these poor souls will be meeting me in the basement anytime soon.”

  The “basement” Steve knew was Chris’ nickname for the Coroner’s office where he spent most of his working hours. Steve could tell by the excitement in Chris’ eyes that something extraordinary was going on. Chris wanted him to ask. He seemed almost giddy with the knowledge he was privy to information Steve didn’t have yet. Steve played along. He always liked Chris’ sense of humor and the two of them were fast friends. Steve often thought that spending all day and night with the dead made Chris…well…eccentric would be the polite way to put it. Chris seemed to stop breathing in anticipation of the question he knew Steve would ask; he appeared hardly able to contain himself.

  Steve let the silence drift a moment longer, wondering briefly if Chris was really holding his breath and if so, would he soon turn blue. Finally he guessed, “None of these poor souls will be seeing you because…they’re dead and can’t see?” Steve thought this might have been the punch line Chris was looking for.