Matt Hults - Anything Can Be Dangerous

When Jacob looked up again, the monster was gone. Stars once again dappled the night.

He hauled himself off the snowmobile. Pain knotted his insides, but he limped to Kate and Sadie, dropping beside them and clutching them in his arms. Kate’s pants glimmered with blood, but her grip was strong when she hugged him.

Jacob’s rescuer stepped up beside him, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“We’re safe,” the man said. “The dead cannot pass the barrier.”

No, Jacob wanted to say, the dead can’t get through it, but the dying still can.

He looked down at his hand and moaned at the bony claws that had sprouted from where his fingers had been severed, watching as the muscle and tendons and skin reformed around the bite marks in his flesh.

The pain in his gut intensified. He could feel his bodily fluids turn to dust, his organs shrivel inside him. He gagged as his throat became a cracked desert and winced as sharp fangs burst from his gums.

He gazed at his rescuers and would have wept if he could.

They’d risked their lives to save his family.

Now he only hoped they’d be enough to sate the centuries-long hunger that was boiling inside him, at least long enough for Kate and Sadie to get away.

Through some ironic twist of fate, the phone call from the morgue came while Jim Cooley sat watching Frankenstein on one of the cable channels.

“It’s me,” Stuart said when Jimmy picked up the receiver. “I got one. How fast can you get down here?”

Jimmy straightened up in his seat, letting the half-eaten bag of Crispy Pork Bits fall to the trailer’s floor. “Hot damn, Stu, are you serious?” he asked. “When’d he come in? Where’d they find him—”

“I’ll fill you in on the goddamn details when you get here,” Stuart interrupted. “Harrington just went out to lunch, so we have less than an hour to do this.”

Jimmy grinned. “We’re really going through with it?”

“I guess so. Meet me at the back loading dock by twelve-thirty or the deal is off!”

He hung up.

Outside thunder rumbled across the sky like the footsteps of an angry god.

Jimmy continued to smile as he replaced the handset, then slapped his hands together with a jovial whoop of delight. “Hot shit!” he cheered. “The little bastard did it!” He jumped up from the couch and grabbed his jean jacket off the wall hook as he hurried out the door.

Three inches of rainwater sloshed along the gutters and burbled around the storm drains as Jimmy guided his rusty Mustang down the alley that serviced the back side of the Hewitt County Municipal Building. The parking area at this end of the lot boasted twenty spaces, but only two other vehicles currently occupied the asphalt; Stuart Wyllie’s dented red Honda and a 1988 Ford that made up the third unit in the HCPD’s trio of squad cars.

Jimmy parked next to the sunken driveway that gave access to the lower loading bay of the building and got out. The rain continued to come down like a busted water main, soaking his shoulders and hair as he ran to the back door.

He rapped on the steel. “Yo, Stu? Open up, man!”

He knocked again when no one answered, letting his gaze flick to the old squad car as he waited. A smile crept onto his face when he thought of when he’d etched his initials in the vinyl on the rear of the driver’s seat back when the car had been new.

The door clicked and flew open.

“What the hell?” Stuart asked. “I never told you to knock!”

The kid glanced around like a mouse in a cat kennel as Jimmy stepped past him, into a green-tiled hallway outside the morgue office.

“I’m due back at the hospital as soon as Doctor Harrington returns,” Stuart reminded him. “We don’t have much time!”

“Don’t shit yourself,” Jimmy told him. “Now, what do you got for me?”

Stuart eased the door into its frame before speaking, and when he did, he kept his voice low. “Mexican male, no ID. Sheriff Picket said a trucker found the body under the I-30 overpass around four o’clock yesterday morning. He’s guessing the guy’s an illegal thumbing his way north.”

“Kick ass!” Jimmy cheered.

“Keep your voice down!” Stuart whispered, glancing up and down the corridor.

“Yeah, yeah—what else?”

Stuart ushered him inside the empty office, toward a door across the room. “We got him fresh,” he said, snatching a manila folder off the desk as they passed it. “Harrington pronounced the cause of death as heart failure two hours after they brought him in, and we just got the toxicology and blood work reports back from HCMC: negative across the board; aside from being dead, he’s as healthy as a horse.”

“Ah, man, this is friggin’ perfect !” Jimmy agreed.

Stuart pushed through the door of the autopsy room and led the way past the central operating table and body hoist. Jimmy shivered as the first drops of adrenaline hit his veins. His neck hairs prickled on end the way they did in his childhood, when his mother would drag him to the doctor’s office with an ear infection or pneumonia. Cold sweat sheathed his palms as his eyes drifted over the various items in the room: the table, the scales, the shiny stainless steel containers. The drive over had been easy enough—even a bit exciting—but now his emotions sobered as the reality of what awaited him began to sink in.

Stuart unlocked another door, and they stepped into the cooler. Six stainless steel storage lockers took up the far wall, but only one displayed an information card in the holder on the exterior of the door.

“This him?” Jimmy asked.

Stuart gestured to the locker’s handle. “Be my guest.”

Jimmy reached for the handle but stopped short before his fingers touched the metal. He glanced to Stuart, to the purple latex gloves he wore, and with a smirk of self-admiration, he slipped the cuff of his jacket over his hand. “Can’t be too careful.”

He opened the door and rolled out the retractable table.

The corpse had already been packaged in a black body bag for its trip to the Hewitt County Medical Center, where it would await cremation if nothing came up on a fingerprint check, or if nobody claimed the body.

Still using his jacket cuff, Jimmy took hold of the zipper and opened the top third. With a final glance at Stuart, he reached up with both hands and parted the two halves of the bag to reveal a bloodless stump where the man’s head should’ve been.

“Holy Christ!” he yelled.

He snapped his hands back and leapt away.

“Son of a bitch!”

When Jimmy looked up, he saw that Stuart had cracked a grin for the first time since their meeting.

“Real hilarious, asshole! I thought you said his ticker crapped out?”

“It did,” Stuart laughed. “After he got hit by a truck.”

“Damn!”

“Hey, at least we don’t need to wait for the dental x-rays.”

Jimmy shook his head, still squirming from the surprise like a snake trying to work itself out of an old skin.

Stuart’s smile faded as he glanced at his watch, then to the door. “Okay, let’s get this over with. We’re pushing the limit here.”

He placed the manila folder he’d grabbed on the dead man’s chest, flipping it open. A second later, he produced an ink tray from the pocket of his lab coat.

Jimmy lingered at a distance for another moment, then moved forward again. He gave a fleeting glance to the shredded mess of torn muscle and broken bones in the bag—all that remained of the cadaver’s neck—then refocused his attention on Stuart as he held up the man’s right arm and dabbed his blue-gray fingers on the ink-soaked felt of the tray. The top form in the stack of papers Stuart had opened contained two rows of sequential square boxes, each labeled for the digits of the human hand. Starting with the row marked “Right,” he pressed the man’s fingers into the appropriate spaces one at a time, rolling them from side to side to transfer their impressions. He then repeated the procedure for the left hand, all except for the smallest finger.