Joe Schreiber - Chasing the dead

There are two more flat cracking sounds. Gunshots, she realizes. The door shakes and falls still; the screaming, the pounding, go abruptly silent.

Sue doesn't move. There is one final gunshot, this one tearing straight through the lock, and she jumps so hard it hurts. From her side Sue sees the handle burst out of the door, then dangle crookedly like a broken crank on an old-time ice cream machine. She is slowly aware of the acrid smell of gunpowder seeping through the hole.

The entire planet holds its breath as nothing moves. Out there, Sue feels it waiting, knowing she's in here.

What's on the other side right now? What would I be looking at if that door weren't there? Dear God, what kind of gun-toting horror would I see staring back at me? Another fresh corpse, or the original one, the rotting scarecrow shape of the Engineer himself?

Slow, unhurried footsteps drag themselves down the hall, away from the room. Sue listens as they recede, growing softer, finally gone.

She touches the door.

It swings open about six inches, then stops, striking something. Sue looks down through the crack. The fluorescent lights in the hall seem marginally less bright than those in the room, but she has no difficulty making out the sliver of blue fabric, a police uniform stained darker, the white skin of a forearm against the blood gleaming from the pale wood floor.

She pushes harder but the door doesn't budge. The body of the cop remains tightly wedged against it.

With new resolve, Sue takes a step back and charges, driving her shoulder forward and putting both legs behind her, forcing the door open another six inches. There's a wet, rough sound, like a damp sandbag being dragged over gravel, as the body slides heavily backward and then abruptly rolls onto its side, one arm flopping over so the knuckles of its hands hit the wall, the clack of the Fraternal Order of Police ring striking against the plaster.

Sue recoils, ducking back into the room. The first thought in her head is Jeff Tatum's corpse pouncing on her outside of Babes. But the body on the floor rolled only because of the way the door was pushing it-although she can't see its face, which is turned to the opposite wall, she can tell the corpse isn't moving on its own.

Besides,she thinks,the body hasn't gone through the route. I mean, let's be logical here.

"Logical," she mumbles. "Sure, yeah, you bet."

Still, she has to step over it to get out.

Bracing herself on the door frame, she raises her right leg up over the dead cop and pivots her body sideways so she can slide her hips through the opening. Her eyes go down to the blood on the floor. Seems like more now than only a few seconds earlier. It would be just like her to slip and fall in it, to land right on top of the corpse. Leaning farther, still clinging onto the frame behind her for support, Sue half-hops over the body and plants one foot and then the other safely on the floor.

She gives one backward glance at the body. It's the young cop with the thin blond mustache. Above the bridge of his nose, both eye sockets have been reduced to a bloody mash. A garish bouquet of arterial blood is splattered across the wall behind him, layered so thickly that it has begun to drip down toward the baseboard heating.

She runs down the hall, through the open doorway to the booking desk. Rounding the corner she sees the body of the booking sergeant slumped over the desk, arms shot out sideways at ridiculous angles, head wrenched down and to the left so that one of his blown-out eye sockets is partially visible from where she stands. The American flag behind him is covered in his blood and flecked intermittently with the gray mattress stuffing of what must be brain matter.

Farther to her right, beyond the desk, next to a pair of vending machines, another dead cop is sprawled on his stomach, a partially unwrapped Mars Bar clutched in his hand. Sue turns to the exit. There's yet another body between two potted ferns by the front door, lying next to an overturned table in a spray of old magazines and safety pamphlets. As she walks toward it Sue realizes that she's looking at Yates, both eyes blasted through the back of his skull, his beard transformed into a sodden mop of deep scarlet. His mouth is slightly open so she can see his tongue inside, blood on his teeth.

She strides toward the glass doors, toward the darkness beyond them, thinking that she's never been so relieved to see so little daylight in the sky, and that's when she hears the noise behind her. At first she doesn't recognize it because of the way it's being filtered, through a tinny speaker, like a pair of headphones cranked up to maximum volume. When she does figure it out, she realizes it's the sound of laughter and cheering, applause, and rhythmic music playing in the background.

Sue turns back toward the booking desk. The TV that was showing the old Clint Eastwood movie when she came in is still on. But the tape has been changed. Now the image on the screen-she can see it clearly from here-is of a naked woman onstage, running her hands over her stomach and breasts while the men in the crowd howl rabidly.

Sue frowns, looking closer, and just when she sees that the naked body onstage belongs to her, the taped footage breaks off.

There's an instant of snow.

Then a new image fills the screen.

Sue gazes at the TV monitor, unblinking. Onscreen, the child strapped into the car seat is asleep, her head tucked to her chest. Sue sees at once that it's Veda.

The child doesn't appear hurt, just totally exhausted, sleeping deeply enough that the harsh glare of the video camera's light shining in her face doesn't even make her flinch. The camera holds its position and Sue notices that the time code streaming across the bottom of the screen reads 04:09A.M., less than an hour earlier.

He taped that footage and he left it here.

She sees a hand enter the frame from the right, gently grasping Veda's head underneath her jaw and lifting it slightly upward to expose the soft white flesh of her throat.

For a moment Veda tenses, still asleep, trying to pull her head away, but then she just sighs and falls still again. Sue stares at the screen as another hand enters the picture, this time from the left side. It is holding a long, serrated knife.

"Oh God, no," Sue hears herself say, in a voice that doesn't sound like it belongs to her at all. "Don't you dare, you son of a bitch."

The hand holds the tip of the knife to Veda's neck, so close that it's impossible to discern whether the tip is touching her skin or not. All it has to do is push the blade upward, or let Veda's sleeping head drop down. But it holds the tableau, child and knife, for that breathless span of seconds.

"You promised," Sue says. "Youpromised. "

Nothing on the screen moves. A moment later the image erupts in static. Sue is aware that she's leaning so far forward that she's in danger of falling over the desk. There's a sharp chirping sound on the counter next to her. She looks down.

It's her cell phone, the one that came with her new clothes. She grabs it, hitsTALK. "You promised you wouldn't hurt her."

"You're letting your imagination run away with you, Susan," the voice says. "I always keep my promises. You know that by now, don't you?"

"I'll do whatever you want."

"I know you will. That's why I cleared the way for you." The voice chuckles, but there's no humor in it. "Even the Engineer needed a little guidance from time to time, Susan."

She looks at the bodies sprawled around the police station.That's why I cleared the way for you.

"You'll find your car in the impound lot behind the station. But you need to hurry. You've got a long way to go before sunrise."

She nods, grunting, and heads for the door. She's getting that vibe again, the feeling that the voice is waiting there on the other end even though it isn't saying anything. What's it waiting for, she wonders, a thank-you? Or is it waiting to see if she'll remember something she's forgotten?