Time Clock Hero (5 page)

Phoenix placed the barrel of the gun against the forehead of his old friend and pulled the trigger. 

A single shot rang out, well-aimed and perfectly-timed, and the bullet slammed into Dr. Demachi’s head, right between his eyes.  He stumbled backwards, wobbled for a few seconds, and tumbled against the metal cabinets of his workstation, ending up right where he started.

A terrible and deep silence followed, which to Phoenix was worse than any noise he’d ever heard.  Hadn’t he just killed his friend Albin?  No time for that.  He stepped over Dr. Demachi’s body.  He found an evidence bag containing the needle, the same syringe found in the possession of June Buckner, sitting conveniently on top of the lab results report.  He put the bag into his pocket and slipped the folder into his waist band beneath his jacket.  He pulled out his Oblivium, shaking, and he took a long hit.  Then he moved away from the workstation just as Chief Cobb and the others returned.

Phoenix turned to Cobb and then shook his head at Alaia.  “Thanks for making me kill Albin, Princess Alaia!”

Tuning in to the sound of passing cars - they’d been speeding by him since he’d stepped out of his Ford Focus, though none of them loud enough to disrupt his thoughts – Phoenix Malone suddenly became aware of the sidewalk beneath his feet, the vertical urban forest around him, and the cold, morning air piercing his light jacket and stinging his ears. 

The city of Nashville was a dark city these days – dark in its soul, in its mind, in its spirit – and Phoenix walked through it determined to be untouched by it, keeping his head down, refusing to even look at the signs it wore – red lit signs, signs that might have been Satan’s calling cards designed to inspire desire and hunger.  Another gust, cold for March, whistled through the city, whipping the dust and garbage from the curb, sending it straight into his face. 

He rubbed his eyes and then put his hands in his pockets.  His hand felt the crinkling of paper.  It was a note.  He’d found it there thirty minutes earlier, just after putting Albin, or what was left of Albin, down.  How it got there he didn’t know, but it said:  YOUR WIFE IS MISSING.

Phoenix swung into action the moment he’d found the note, leaving Detective Alaia Jenkins to deal with the mess in the NPD lab, and he called the healthcare facility.  One of the nurses had assured him on the phone that, yes, Mrs. Tracy Malone was still in room 304 and that she hadn’t been moved.  But, the nurse had also said, a few complications had been discovered that morning.  She advised him to come in as soon as possible. 

Phoenix hesitated when he reached the front door of the healthcare facility.  He stood, motionless, on the old marble steps, assailed by his conscience for his recent marital indiscretions.  He stared at the tall mahogany doors, remembering that a week had passed since he’d last visited Tracy.  He’d told her he’d visit her every day – back when she was still alert and coherent – and he’d kept his word to her faithfully over the last few months. 

Still on the tail end of an Oblivium ride, but just barely, Phoenix thought he could still cope.  Intellectually, he knew he’d done her wrong.  Emotionally, he made it a point to not care; but his efforts at being indifferent only reinforced his depression.  He opened the door and stepped into the foyer with every intention of rushing straight to Tracy’s room.  But Dr. Elkins was standing in his way with a computer tablet in his hand.

“Glad to see you, Mr. Malone,” Dr. Elkins said in a calm, steady voice.  He motioned towards the bank of elevators off to the right and motioned for Phoenix to follow.  “It seems that, though Tracy’s body is very much alive, which is – wow, we don’t know why – she’s showing no brain activity at all.  It’s all a complete reversal of what she has been doing this last month.”

Phoenix’s countenance darkened, and the lines in his face, showing early for someone his age, seemed to increase.  The dim, overhead lights cast long shadows in the lobby and even blacker ones in his mind.  A seizure of despair seemed to squeeze him, and he felt his heart, or what was left of it, beating in every square inch of his body, from his temple to his feet.  And he felt the pain of Dr. Elkins’ news stab him like somebody using a hammer to drive a thirty-eight bullet casing into his skull right between his eyes.  “What do you mean when you say her body is … is very much alive but that – what did you say? – that she’s now brain dead?  How could that---?”

The elevator chimed, the doors opened, and Dr. Elkins put his hand on Phoenix’s shoulder and led him into the elevator.  “We’ve got some people coming to look at Tracy, and I’ve already done some preliminary tests.  It’s all very, very exciting.”  Dr. Elkins reached into the pocket of his white coat and pulled out a peppermint candy, the striped kind.  “Would you like one?”

Phoenix shook his head, temporarily disconnected from the unreality of having heard the doctor say “exciting” and having had a piece of candy offered to him.

“Now, what you’re about to see is – well, let me say that I am completely amazed,” Dr. Elkins said, clutching his tablet tightly against his chest.  “Tracy is starting to move in her bed.  Small jerky movements.”

Phoenix looked away from Dr. Elkins and then back, doing a double take.  “Jerky?”  Then he remembered June Buckner, and then Dr. Albin Demachi – how they’d done the same thing and how, for whatever reason, they’d actually attacked people, or tried to attack them.  June, he remembered, had bitten four people, sending them on ambulance rides to the hospital.  Albin he’d shot.

“How long has she … has Tracy been moving?”

“We’re not sure.  Our monitors, you know, the video feeds – all of them went down last night sometime after midnight.”

Phoenix slammed his hands against the elevator door in a fit of rage and sorrow.  He pulled away, putting his hands to his face, trying to hold back the tears, hoping he could get himself together before he saw Tracy. 

Tracy had always been around for him, no matter the day, the time, the problem.  Sure, she had her moments – who didn’t?  And every now and then she’d go out with the girls because she needed to get away.  That was okay.  And he loved her – didn’t he? – more and more with every passing day.  But no – he hadn’t, not lately.  He’d forgotten her – forgotten her so he could climb into the beds of other women for the fifteen seconds of joy he was entitled to.  And he’d only done it for a few nights, maybe five or six times, hadn’t he?  And it was all sex, plain and simple – nothing committed because he’d never be able to love another woman.  Ever.  He reached into his pocket, held his inhaler between his index finger and thumb, and rubbed it gently.

Phoenix was drawn out into the hall before the doors had completely opened.  Tracy’s room, a private one, was on this floor, and he started towards it.  There was no question he’d tell her everything, though she wouldn’t hear a word he’d say, but he’d do it anyway.  He put his head down as he walked, dreading the awful, deathly silence of the health care facility, but he looked up when he heard screams, high-pitched and terrible.  The cries took him by surprise, and he turned and looked back down the hall in the direction from which the cries had come.  He pulled out his inhaler and shot twice, holding each breath until he felt himself bursting.

His hands fidgeting, his forehead wrinkling like the peel of a dead orange, Dr. Elkins, with a look of horror in his eyes, froze in place. 

Phoenix grabbed the doctor’s arm and jerked him back down the hall towards the direction of the scream.  He pulled him along like a mother did a child, not stopping when the doctor’s tablet fell from his hand and shattered against the wall.

More screams, different than the first, became louder as Phoenix and Dr. Elkins ran down the hall.  Other nurses, most of them bewildered, stepped out of their patient’s rooms and into the hall.  They had their hands on their chests, and they looked to one another for some sort of explanation.  Phoenix waved them away, telling them to stay where they were.

“It’s coming from the bathing room,” Dr. Elkins said confidently, as he followed Phoenix.

Phoenix hurried forward at an astonishing rate of speed, leaving Dr. Elkins behind.  As he ran, he pulled out his revolver.  Several of the nurses in the hall, frightened when they saw the weapon, began to scream; and some of them reached for their cell phones.  Two brave nurses, both with their phones held up, followed Phoenix down the hall.

Phoenix shook his head apprehensively, fearing the worst.  For, up ahead, through an open doorway, he saw a nurse struggling to drag herself out into the hall, and she screamed as she came.  The right sleeve of her white nurse’s uniform, just like Dr. Albin Demachi’s an hour earlier, was soaked in blood. 

The woman’s cries ended just as Phoenix reached the door. He grabbed the back of the woman’s lab coat and, using all of his strength, dragged her across the hall where he set her up against the wall.  Her right leg, limp and bloodied below the knee, had the appearance of something freshly mauled.

Nurses, all of them in various states of frazzle, came running.  Not a one dared to step into the bathing room. 

Phoenix hadn’t looked into the room, hadn’t even taken a quick glance.  Instead, he kept his eyes down, and he yelled, “Tracy!”  But no one responded.  He pulled back the hammer on his thirty-eight.  He heard it click, and then he heard a shuffle and then another sound – a sound he recognized to be the voice of his wife.  No words of greeting, no words of reprimand, however much he may have deserved them, no words wishing for him to have a wonderful day, which he felt sure he would never have again.  All he heard was a soft, mindless sound, the sound of moaning, or maybe a kind of cry – just like he’d heard coming from June Buckner. 

The note in Phoenix’s pocket was right.  Tracy was missing.  Like June Buckner, and just like Dr. Albin Demachi, all that was left of Tracy was a body – and without her mind, her body was just that, a body and nothing more.

Phoenix looked up.  Tracy’s once long, blonde hair, past her waist when they first married, but recently cut short, would never grow out again.  He could barely see it now, matted as it was with thick, wet blood.  Her face, once heart-shaped, almost angelic, with eyes as bright blue as the deep sea, was not recognizable through the gore that covered it.  Her body, once thin and petite, now dressed in a soaked hospital gown, might have been the body of any woman.

Phoenix raised his pistol, aimed, and fired.  Tracy fell.

Nothing really changed for Phoenix when he pulled the trigger, thanks to his inhaler.  He knew that, because of his fidelity issues, he had already killed their marriage and, at the same time, had killed his wife.  Could she have come back from her coma?  Probably not.  Could they have reconciled if she had?  Yes.  He would’ve repented, and truly so.  But he’d done it – killed her – and he’d done it long before a fire-propelled piece of metal left the barrel of his gun and slammed into her lovely, precious face.

Phoenix didn’t know how many dead lay in the bathing room.  Right now, he didn’t care.  He’d walk away.  NPD, or at least Cobb, would understand.

Dr. Elkins, speechless, incoherently trying to piece together what exactly had happened, tried to make sense of the slaughter.  But he just stood there, looking first into the bathing room and then at Phoenix.  The nurses standing in the hall, all of them frightened into silence, tended the nurse Phoenix had dragged out of the room.

“Call NPD,” Phoenix said to the doctor.

The nurses, suddenly remembering their jobs, rushed into the bathing room.  One of the nurses who had followed Phoenix down the hall only moments before tried to shore up Dr. Ellis, who seemed to be teetering in shock.

“We called,” the nurse said.  “911 just put us on hold.”

Phoenix reloaded and then holstered his thirty-eight.  He walked back up the long, white hall of the facility towards the bank of elevators with his hand running along the wooden bumper on the wall.  Tracy was gone – she had been for some time.  Now, there was no chance she’d ever return.

She would have wanted him to do it, would’ve begged him to pull the trigger, or she herself would have done it had she known the end that awaited her.  In another few weeks, there’d have been a living will to deal with anyway, a will she’d drawn up less than a year ago.  Whether or not Phoenix agreed to go along with that will was beside the point. It was irrevocable.  She’d die anyway.

Tracy was dead.

And so was Phoenix, emotionally and spiritually, but not dead enough to know that someone had done something to Tracy, and that that someone needed to pay for what they’d done.

Phoenix, eager to set Chief Cobb straight about what needed to be done, whether or not he agreed to it, pulled out his phone and called him.

“Where are you, Phoenix?” Chief Cobb asked.

Phoenix called for the elevator.  “You know where I am.”

“We’ve got our hands full over in Tusculum – riots at an apartment complex is what they’re telling me.  We need you on the scene.  Homicide.”

“Let me guess – like Dr. Demachi, right?”

“How did you know---?”

“I just shot Tracy, DeAnte’.  She did just like Dr. Demachi – she got up and attacked people.  We’ve at least one dead here and another hurt.”

Chief Cobb went silent for a second, and then he said, “Can you cover it?  I might be able to get a squad car over there in an hour.  How do you feel?”

“I just killed my wife, DeAnte’, that’s how I feel,” Phoenix said.  “And thanks for playing like you didn’t know about me and June.  You know, I blew it – but I still loved Tracy, if that helps you understand how I feel.”

“I know you did, Phoenix – but all of this?  It’ll work out in the end.  Trust me.”

Like hell it will.

“So Tracy went Dr. Albin on you?  I mean, like she did a June Buckner thing – with all the---?”

“She – I mean, Tracy’s body – killed people over here at Centennial, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Phoenix walked back towards the elevator, listening as he went.  He stepped into the elevator and hit the button for the first floor and watched the doors close.

“Over in Tusculum,” Chief Cobb said, “we got a report stating that the guy June Buckner attacked at the theater just up and went – went June Buckner on everyone he saw on the street.  He just started attacking people – you know, biting and stuff.  But here’s something else – something new.  The people he attacked got treated and went home and, the next day,
they
started attacking people.”