The Death Agreement (15 page)

We passed two more dead in the
next room. Both bodies had been stripped naked. One of them looked
like the young desk guard from my building. His neck had been
slashed, and his hands were missing, severed at the forearm. A
woman lay next to him with the top half of her head hacked off. Her
brains spread across on the floor like someone had dropped a bowl
of oatmeal.

For a moment, I thought she was
Mary, then I noticed the dog tags around her neck and let out a
relieved sigh.

A scream came from the next room.
Yang followed the blood and approached the closed door cautiously.
I waved him back, tried the knob, and shook my head.

"Go in after me," I said. Yang
nodded, and I slammed my shoulder into the door. As it flew open, I
fell to the right, and Yang rushed forward, sweeping the room. A
man slumped on the floor, facing a shattered window. At first, I
thought it was another corpse and before my mind could register
what was happening, the man reached for to the window ledge and
tried to pull himself to his feet. Halfway standing, he screamed
and slid back down, fingernails tearing free from the
sill.

Yang turned and aimed his shotgun
at the back of the man's trembling head.

"Don't!" I screamed, and tried to
stand, but the strap for my prosthetic had loosened, so I quickly
crawled forward and grabbed at Yang's part leg. "Don't!"

Yang, with the barrel pressed
against the man's skull, kicked my hand away. "Get back. You're too
close."

"Don't shoot! I know
him!"

Though I had only seen the figure
from behind, the curly white hair and dark business suit had made
me nearly sure that it was Agent Rossenkants. The sleeves of his
jacket and shirt had been torn off, and his arms were much darker
than that of the face I remembered.

"No, Jon," Yang said. He kicked
the person in the ribs so hard that I heard them crack as the man
flipped over.

Rossenkants wasn't himself. Or
wasn't
all
himself. Instead of a pale, white grandfatherly face, I found
myself staring at the dark brown face of Agent Porter. From the
hairline to the top jaw, black blood dripped from the
transplantation lines where Rossenkants' face had been hacked off
and replaced with Porter's.

"Jesus chr—"

Porter's eyes snapped open and her
lips pulled back in a snarl. Arms shot forward, grabbing at my
chest with bloodied fingertips. I clawed backward, stabbing it in
the face with the shard of wood, but the Rossenkants/Porter thing
had a strong grip and pulled itself on top of me.

There was a loud bang, and the
back half of its head exploded into gory confetti. The rest of it
fell on top of me, followed by a light rain of atomized blood. The
dark arms twitched one final time before becoming still. I realized
they were the same shade of brown as Porter's face.

"This can't be happening,
Yang."

Yang held out his hand. "Now do
you see?"

"Yeah." I pulled myself to my
feet, looked Yang in the eye, and added, "I fucking
saw."

"Where do you think it was trying
to go?"

I ripped open Rossenkants's suit
jacket and reached for the holster. "Guess we need to find out," I
said, then grabbed the Glock and checked to make sure the clip was
full.

Yang stared out the window. I used
the gun to break away the remaining shards that were still stuck in
the fame. Once the glass was cleared away, I swung my legs over the
edge and dropped to the flower bed below.

"That's my car," Yang said,
pointing to a dim light up the street. I squinted at the white
Crown Victoria parked half in the grass and half on the sidewalk,
the driver's side door wide open and the interior light on. "Jesse
Taylor used it to escape the police station."

"Yang, it can't be Taylor. Even if
he had been one of those…things…his body is gone, cremated. I was
there."

"Did you see it
happen?"

"No," I admitted.

Yang climbed out of the window and
hopped down. "I saw his face. I'm not sure how this is possible,
but I know it's him."

"Listen, none of it matters right
now. We won't be able to explain any of this without them locking
us both away for life."

Yang said, "Let's just find the
bastard son-of-a-bitch. Then we'll call for help and deal with the
rest of the shit storm. How does that sound?"

I nodded, then followed Yang
toward his car, aiming the pistol at every dark shadow along the
way. We crept closer, Yang taking the passenger side door while I
went to the driver's side. Though I didn't expect we'd find anyone
in the car, I inched forward slowly, matching Yang's
pace.

The interior light still burned
bright. My mouth dropped open. It looked as if someone had thrown a
bucket of gore across the front seats. Blood dripped from the door
jamb into a large puddle and bloody, mismatched foot prints
continued on up the street.

Palm on the hood of the car, Yang
said, "Still warm."

"Then he's close."

"But where?"

I looked around, trying to get my
bearings. "I think—"

"Jon, get down," Yang kneeled and
motioned for me to come around to the back passenger side. "There's
more of them up there."

At least half a dozen figures
seemed to be huddled in a group outside a red brick building, and
suddenly, I knew where we were, and where the man had
gone.

"That's the building," I said.
"Taylor and I found the saw inside that ward. You can't get in from
the ground level. Those things must not know that."

Yang learned forward and put his
right hand above his eyes as if to block out a light that wasn't
there. "They don't seem to be moving."

"Think they're dead?"

"Maybe. Some of the bodies were
like the one in the headquarters building. They didn't attack like
your friend, only twitched. I followed another after it disabled a
transformer, hoping it would lead me back to Taylor, but it fell
down in the road as if it remembered how to be a corpse…I think
they run out of juice."

I bit my lip. "Would explain why
it couldn't make it through the window. What do you want to
do?"

"Make sure they're dead," he
said.

"You got enough shells in that
shotgun?"

"No, and save your bullets. I got
a better idea." Yang banged his fist against the broken trunk latch
and the lid popped open. "Unscrew the gas cap," he said, then
reached in and grabbed a red fuel container along with a clear
plastic hose. He handed me the hose and I snaked it into the car's
gas tank.

He put the other end of the hose
in his mouth, sucked in sharply, and gas filled the hose. Yang
turned his head, gagging as the amber fuel flowed out onto the
cement, so I quickly adjusted his aim into the refillable
tank.

Once the can had filled, we crept
through the shadows, avoiding the small glow of the outside
emergency lights above each door.

From twenty paces away, I saw
naked bodies, the sea-green colored scrubs of the nursing staff,
the thin patient robes, and camouflage uniforms. All of them looked
as if they had taken a bath in blood. Thick, black liquid oozed
from amputation points.

Over a dozen people huddled in
that mass of bodies. They weren't separate individuals any longer;
a tar-like substance stretched between the wounds of the missing
body parts.

Two of the men were orderlies who
had taken care of me when I had first arrived at Walter Reed. The
sides of their heads were pressed close, and gooey black strands
connected them where their ears and cheeks should have been, blood
dripping from the exposed portions of skull. Their arms and legs
had been severed as well, each stump connected to a missing portion
of someone else.

I began to feel as if I were about
to pass out until I realized that I had been holding my
breath.

Yang cleared his throat. The
stench was barely tolerable.

I looked for Mary in the pile.
"They aren't moving," I said, inching closer.

"Let's burn them," Yang
said.

I tucked the gun into my waistband
and opened the gas can. Yang covered me while I dumped half the
fuel on the mass. He lit a match and tossed it. I stepped back and
covered my eyes as the flames engulfed the bodies.

The mini mushroom cloud of roiling
fire rose, and the skin of the corpses blistered and charred. One
of them shrieked and tried to claw out of the pyre, but I shot it
in the face.

The rest burned quietly. Yang made
the sign of the cross, and after the fire died down, we left for
the entrance to the old, abandoned ward.

***

Yang and I did not speak as we
made our way through the quiet corridors of the hospital. Like the
command center, everything was cast in the red glow from the
emergency power system. We avoided several other dead, most in
hospital beds, life support machines whining. A corpses lay across
the stairway entrance, a man whose genitals and eyes had been
taken.

Yang pointed. "Up?"

"Yeah."

We climbed the stairs and exited
on the third floor.

"This way," I said, walkin toward
the window leading to the closed-off ward.

Yang put a hand on my shoulder.
"Wait." He stepped into the room first, shotgun raised. Something
snapped under his shoe.

"What was that?" I
asked.

"All clear."

I went into the room. Yang was
knelt down inspecting small, white, roundish objects that were
scattered on the floor. He held up a tiny sliver to his squinting
eyes. "Pistachio shells? I found these at the pond, too. Right
where Taylor's body was spread out under a maple tree." He dropped
the shell, wiped his hand on his shirt, and stepped through the
already-open window.

Before I made it through, a scream
pierced the silence and a blur ran past. "Look out!"

I dropped the gas can, leaned out
the window, and shot at the hulking figure running toward Yang. I
wanted to shoot again but didn't for fear of striking the
detective. He turned and fired his shotgun twice but the thing kept
coming and plowed into him. I pulled my way through the window and
ran to help. They were too far away and much too close to the
edge.

I advanced toward the two sparring
bodies. Yang's foot slipped backward off the edge, and he gripped
the thing by its t-shirt. Just then it dove forward, sending them
both cartwheeling over the edge.

"Yang!" The crash came a second
before I made it to where they had fallen over the side. It was too
dark to see the ground below. "Yang!"

The small door creaked open, and
two eyes shimmered in the dim light for a moment before fading back
into the darkness. I gritted my teeth and clenched the gun tight in
my fist.

"I'm coming for you,
motherfucker!" I charged for the door. From inside the ward,
someone whistled an old civil war tune, and the lyrics played in my
mind.

***

I went in as fast as I could,
catching a glimpse of a hooded figure turning the corner. I paused
for half a second, confused by the soft yellow glow coming from the
kerosene lamps hanging in the hallway. I gave chase and when I
turned the corner, my feet slipped on something wet, sending me
sliding into a pile of body parts that littered the floor. For
around the next corner, I heard a laugh fade into the
distance.

"Oh christ," I said, stunned by the
carnage in front of me. I went forward slowly, stepped over arms,
legs, torsos, and heads. I couldn't help but to step
on
them. The human
remains were laid out like cookie crumbs leading me deeper into
Hell. I followed the footprints, and by the time I made it down to
the basement, I was covered in so much blood and gore that I could
have easily laid down and fit in perfectly with all the discarded
pieces.

As I entered the room with the
false wall, someone whimpered. I placed my finger on the trigger,
muttered a quick prayer, and entered the room.

A wool blanket lay propped up
against the far corner in the shape of a person sitting on the
floor, legs crossed. It had moved slightly when I had approached.
Behind the huddled form, on the peeling plaster walls, was a
painting of tiny stick figures hanging from a massive maple
tree.

I slowly made my way over and
reached out with my free hand to pull away the wool, letting it
fall into a pile on their lap. The last of the cloth slipped away,
and a woman sat there hunched over, head down, long auburn hair
obscuring her eyes.

"Mary?" I touched her warm,
trembling skin. Her head rose slowly, and I raised the gun toward
her temple.

Her eyes met mine, confused and
terrified, but then her face softened. "Jon?"

I lowered the gun and let out a
breath. "Mary, thank god. I thought you were dead." The front
strands of her hair had turned bright white and stood in stark
contrast next to the rest of her auburn locks. "I'm going to get
you out of here, okay?"