by Hopkin, Ben
The officer in the lead came up to a sliding door, Trey right at this side. His partner glanced at the group, making sure everyone was keeping up. He then placed his hand on the latch holding the door shut.
“I think we’re about to find out.”
Trey positioned himself on one side of the door, and Darc mirrored him on the other side. Once in place, Darc nodded his head once. Trey counted down.
“Three, two, one.”
He pushed down the latch and pulled toward himself, hard. As the door dragged open with a piercing scream of metal on metal, out of the opening poured a wash of blood and body parts, splashing over the shoes and up onto the slacks of the officer that had foolishly chosen to be right in front. He looked down at the gushing horror around him, just as a mass of intestines washed up against his ankle.
“Oh…my…” Trey said, as he danced back.
And then there were nothing but gagging sounds as the lead officer began to retch. He turned and ran back out the door leading to the entrance of the building. Trey watched him leave, shaking his head.
“Lightweight.”
The remainder of their party moved through the human soup, doing everything they could to keep the viscera from getting on their clothing. That endeavor was a spectacular failure. One of the officers muttered gulped hard before he spoke.
“Is this…Are they…”
No one answered the man, Darc assumed because the answer was so obvious. It was an answer to the previous question. Where are all the employees? Apparently, they were underfoot. Which fit in with Darc’s calculations. Would any of them survive this slaughterhouse any better than the employees?
A sound from the far side of the room caused every gun to be jerked horizontal. Every eye was trained toward the opposite side of the darkness. Patches of light from the flashlights zigzagged across the empty space, seeking the source of the noise.
One of the uniforms gulped, the sound loud in the sudden stillness. His eyes darted from the room to Darc to Trey in rapid succession.
“We’re going in?”
Trey glanced at Darc, his eyes asking the question. In answer, Darc stepped over what looked to be a kidney and moved into the adjoining room. Darc heard Trey let out a long breath before answering.
“Yeah, we’re going in,” Trey muttered.
Moving through the doorway, Darc found himself in a large, empty room. Connected tracks snaked across the ceiling, finally leading up to, and apparently extending beyond, the next three doors. Sharp hooks hung from the tracks where animal carcasses would normally be hung. But from each of them drooped the sad remains of what had once more than likely been one of the employees.
This was the exsanguination room.
Their throats had been slit, and then two additional cuts made just underneath both the solar plexus and the abdomen. Blood and bits of flesh rained down from above, splashing into the pool below with a sound that would almost be pleasant if it weren’t for the horror of the scene.
The floor sloped down to the center of the space, where a large mass of something blocked what was almost certainly the drain. The smell of carnage threatened to nauseate even Darc. It was a scent of mixed metals and rotten meat, the heady mix enough to overpower lesser men. The sloshing of blood pulled at Darc’s legs with every step.
And on the walls, the symbols perched, waiting for him. They were messier and more smeared than they ever had been before, seemingly rushed or done with an inexpert hand. The symbols came forth reluctantly, fighting Darc every step of the way. They twisted and turned, eluding his grasp, refusing to fall into any recognizable pattern.
As the group continued across the open space, keeping to the sides, where the pool of gore was more shallow and there were fewer bodies overhead, Trey turned to one of the uniforms and pointed at his foot.
“Whoa there. Watch it, dude. You’re stepping on a”—he bent down, shining his flashlight to get a better look—”foot? And a hand. Oh, and a jaw.”
Body parts raining down from above. An exact duplicate of Blake’s painting from the museum. The fifth circle of hell.
At the other end of the room, the three doors crouched, a bloody symbol sketched on each. Trey glanced at the doors and then back to Darc, his flashlight flickering between the letters.
“Which way?”
But the symbols would not help. They evaded him, spinning out of the spaces where he tried to place them. None of this made sense. Darc glanced back toward the entrance, needing the input he could get only from the little girl. Trey noticed.
“Do you see what you’re standing in?” his partner asked. “There’s no way Doc’s letting Janey in here.”
His partner’s assessment was accurate, although having the girl present would save the lives of many of the policemen here within, very possibly including him and Trey. His partner stared into his eyes, seeming to read the expression he saw there.
“Darc?”
They could not stay here forever. The symbols were telling him nothing. He had to make a decision. Now.
Darc nodded at the center door. One of the policemen moved to check it. The handle moved without resistance. The door was unlocked.
Without speaking, the men arranged themselves around the door, ready to burst in as soon as it was open. No matter what they might think about Darc personally, it was clear they trusted his judgment and would follow him wherever he led. For the first time, he wished that were not the case.
Whatever was on the other side of that door could end up killing them all.
* * *
Eli was freaking out.
He had been a cop all of three weeks. Fresh out of the academy, Eli was the guy that got all the “newbie” jokes played on him. The last one had involved a cat, a stapler, and his brand-new jacket.
All that was sounding pretty sweet right about now. Instead of being razzed, he was here in the creepy, smelly possible lair of a crazed serial killer. He’d take practical jokes any day of the week.
And this group didn’t even know what they were doing. All the information was with Detectives Keane and Darcmel, and no one knew exactly where they were. So here they were, tromping around an apparently abandoned slaughterhouse in the dark.
Yeah, there was nothing scary about that.
His group burst through another door and into a room that was…clean. That was the first thing you had to notice. There was a scent of cheap pine cleanser in the air. Polished metal surfaces glimmered in the reflected rays of the flashlights. Where everything else had looked and smelled less than stellar, here, everything was pristine. Why did Eli find that disturbing?
Hannigan, one of the beat cops in the precinct, let out a huff of air.
“This is just stupid.”
Rossi, Hannigan’s right-hand man and partner in crime—at least, that was what Eli had heard—let out a bark of sarcastic laughter. “Another bona fide Darcmel wild fucking goose chase.”
Doing his best Darcmel impersonation, Hannigan dropped every ounce of expression and inflection in his voice. “To be exact, undomesticated, intercoursing northwestern Canadian goose chase.”
Okay, that was funny. Eli started to chuckle and then realized he couldn’t. Something was jerking him backward, tugging at his neck. He reached up to his throat, feeling a bar of metal that curved around the right side of his neck where his Adam’s apple should be. His fingers came away wet. Lifting his hand away from his throat, he held it up in front of his face. In the reflected gleam of his flashlight, his fingers were bright red with his own life’s blood.
He tried to scream, but nothing came out but a gush of blood and some bubbles of air. The cops in front of him continued forward, oblivious to his plight, as Eli fell to his knees, pulling at his throat. He traced the bar at his neck, fumbling to try to get it out. It was a meat hook. Someone had speared his throat with a meat hook.
Just as he felt a strong yank pull him across the floor, Eli passed into blissful oblivion.
* * *
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The group rushed through the door after having to push hard to open it up. Trey tried not to make it too obvious that he didn’t have any intention of being first. And then they were inside the next room, and all thoughts of who was first went clean out of his head.
The first thing he noticed was how cold it was. The temperature had dropped by at least forty degrees. His breath misted in the air in front of him, but, as he looked around, nothing seemed frozen. It was probably kept just above freezing. That was probably why it was so hard to get the door open. It had a seal to keep in the cold.
Trey was guessing that this must be the gutting room. He had no idea if that was what they called it, but that was what it looked like. If he ever took leave of his senses and decided to get a job at a slaughterhouse, “gutting room” was how he would refer to it.
Although “room” was maybe not quite so accurate. The space was enormous, like some gigantic cavern, except one made out of concrete and steel. And throughout the room, hanging by their back two hooves, was cow carcass after cow carcass. They stretched back as far as Trey could see.
The animals had been split straight down the center along the belly, from the jawbone down to the tail. It looked like everything had been scooped out from the inside. Well, almost everything. Guts hung and trailed below many of the animal corpses.
Glancing around to make sure the whole group was there, and accidentally blinding two of the cops with his flashlight, Trey shook his head.
“That’s it,” he sighed. “I am officially off meat.”
One of the uniforms, Officer James, nodded. “Yeah, you and me both.”
Straining his eyes to try to see the back wall of the room, Trey was starting to realize just how enormous the space was. There was no way they could search it all as one group. Great. Just great.
“Okay,” Trey conceded. “We can split up.” Then, before Darc could get too many ideas, Trey blurted, “A little. A little.”
Turning to the group, Trey started calling out the teams. No way he was letting anyone else pick. He wasn’t about to get picked last on this playground. “All right. Benti, you go with Darc. I’ll be taking the other two.”
And yet, even with that, Trey was pretty sure the teams still weren’t even.
* * *
The hanging animals swung on their hooks, tracing patterns on the floor that only Darc could see. These patterns meant nothing. The symbols created were not symbols. They were just random squiggles of bright light.
That was only to be expected from the random swaying of animal carcasses from the circulating of frigid air. All that could be found here were the fractals that existed everywhere in nature.
But nothing else made sense. The symbols on the doors seemed just as random as the paths traced by the swinging sides of beef.
Snaking his way through the room, Darc sensed the officer trailing along behind him, matching his every move. Darc’s preference would have been to work on his own, but at least in this moment he recognized the need to have someone there in case Darc failed. For the very first time, Darc felt he understood his partner’s incessant need to call for backup.
Today there was no glow illuminating the way. No gleaming trail to lead him forward. He felt cut off, blind, incapable of that which lay before him. The only light led back. Once more, he felt the need to return for the girl. She could help make sense of all this. Even knowing where the killing grounds were would help all the pieces fall together.
That way lay mists of grey that were to Darc incomprehensible. Both his partner and Mala were adamant that the girl not be involved. There was nothing of logic there, but when two people he trusted with his life demanded his compliance, it made him second-guess his analysis. That was unpleasant.
And then Darc remembered Trey’s rule twelve: “See it through the other guy’s eyes, dude.” This was a rule he had never fully comprehended. Perhaps it was time to attempt it.
The first order of business was that the “other” was a girl, not a guy. His partner used “guy” indiscriminately, for men, women, and children, so that was not an issue so far as Darc could tell. Although perhaps Darc did need to factor in gender. Maggie had constantly told him that the world was different for men and women. That had made no sense at the time, but perhaps it was important here.
What was the difference? Men were typically physically stronger. That could create a disparity when dealing with a male attacker, which the little girl obviously had experienced.
Emotional vulnerability? Certainly, his experience with Maggie indicated this could be a weakness, especially in moments that demanded full physical commitment.
Height? That could be another variable for which he should adjust his calculations. He recalibrated, imagining the space from three feet, two inches lower. In a space that had claimed the lives of those closest to you. Darc pictured Maggie and Trey dissected in front of him. He envisioned the little girl, hauled in for evisceration. His height diminished, his physical prowess gone. Nothing he could do.
The resultant sensation took him by surprise. In a rush of grey, Darc felt his balance sway.
He now understood what had so upset Trey and Mala. Not for the first time, he regretted taking his partner’s advice. This newfound sense born of seeing things from another perspective brought on a feeling of weight and responsibility for the girl. It was…inconvenient.
And then another face flashed in front of him, her body readied for slaughter.
Mala.
That was strange.
Once again, the grey betrayed him. He was no closer to the killer. Every step into the mist of emotion pulled him further away from his solution. Darc pushed the image and the unusual sensations away from him. Other than helping him see why going back for the girl was untenable, they did nothing for him.
It was time to break a killer’s code.
He went back to his searching, viewing the room from every imaginable angle, seeking patterns, lines of logic, elusive symbols that would light up the darkness.
All he found was death, swaying gently from metal hooks above.
* * *
The rain was letting up. Mala placed her cheek close to the car’s windowpane, peeking up at the sky. The clouds were as thick as ever, coating the sky in shades of white and grey.
In contrast with the surroundings here on the ground, however, the bleak, stormy sky was positively awash in color. Mala could not imagine having to come to this area to work every single day. What would it do to people’s psyche to see nothing but dingy brick, concrete, and corrugated metal everywhere they looked?
It wasn’t enough to explain the kind of psychotic break the killer must have experienced, but it could have been a contributing factor. Mala knew from professional and personal experience that the accumulation of seemingly small details could be as overwhelming as one significant trauma.
Janey shifted and squirmed in her seat in the back of the police cruiser, bringing Mala back to her immediate environs. Janey’s window was now one solid mass of detective’s badges, bleeding and blending into one another, creating some kind of abstract painting. It was actually kind of beautiful.
The sounds of movement intensified. Mala turned around to fully face Janey over the seat. The girl’s face was twisted up, and she pressed her legs together.
“What’s wrong?” Mala queried.
Janey crossed her legs and frowned at her. Ah. The universal sign. She had to go to the bathroom. Mala grimaced at her oversight. She had worked alongside children long enough to know better.
“Guess I should have told you to go before we left.”
Glancing up and down the street for a gas station or restaurant, Mala was confronted with warehouse after warehouse. No easy solution for the situation here.
She unlocked the doors of the car, stepping out to speak with the policeman stationed just outside the entrance to the abattoir. Janey stepped out of the backseat, falling into step with Mala.
Mala waved to get h
is attention. “Do you know where we might—”
But Janey’s need to go to the bathroom was apparently just a ruse. The little girl darted for a small vent on the side of the slaughterhouse.
“Janey, no!” Mala yelled, racing over to the side of the slaughterhouse. The cop was faster, getting both of his hands on Janey’s shoulders. But the girl was small, wiry, and more than a little clever. She slumped, as if she were about to fall down or pass out. When the policeman instinctively shifted to take her weight to keep her from falling, Janey wriggled out of his grasp, opened the vent, and disappeared into the shaft.
The vent was far too small to allow either adult—any adult—to follow, and by the time Mala got there, she was just in time to see Janey’s form vanish around a turn in the cramped tunnel.
Janey had gone to find her detective, and there was nothing Mala could do about it.
* * *
Darc walked with a steady pace, his assigned officer two steps behind him. Trey and his officers reached, making it past all of the hanging animal corpses without uncovering a single clue. There was nothing here but chilled meat and oppressive darkness. Darc stood side to side with Trey, staring at two doors that stood next to each other on the back wall.
There were no symbols on their surfaces.
The frustration Darc had experienced since entering the slaughterhouse intensified exponentially. In a case where nothing fit together, Darc was now in a locale where meaning eluded him. The killer was toying with him, always one step ahead. It was a foreign sensation for Darc. One that he found he had no desire to repeat.
The killer knew he had the girl. The killer also must know there was no way the girl would be allowed inside the building. This entire raid had been designed to do nothing more than mock Darc in his ineffectual state.