Chapter Thirty-Four: Something Brave
“IS this going to be a problem for you?”
Nicolette turned away from the backseat passenger window at his question, pulling her gaze away from the night time landscape. She had been watching the lighted marquees and more distant suburban lights gradually shift to an urban lightscape as they approached the city, the lightless suburban terrain gradually eliding into industrial marquees and denser nets of lights cast over the crown of the hills. She struggled with her nervousness, knowing the Medical Examiner's office waited for them at the end of the drive. Tommy had casually informed Daniel of their destination once the truck began its long climb over the mountains. She had been unpleasantly surprised at this revelation, but felt trapped; she had already agreed to ‘do something brave’, and felt as though backing out now would leave her looking and feeling like a coward. But underneath the cold fear and trepidation ran a warm current of tense excitement, the conflicting emotions momentarily distracting her from her worries about Daniel. Tommy hadn’t added much aside from their intended destination, but the thought of maybe getting some answers -- or at least some clarity -- concerning recent events left her feeling giddy with hope that there might be some logical explanation for all the weirdness.
Hiding unacknowledged on the periphery of her thoughts was the specter of insanity -- that the rotting dead man she’d seen at Coffee Beach, the strange dreams, the monsters at the club and driving the car were all manifestations of her overwrought emotions and guilt. She had hoped she and Daniel might be able to put their heads together and work through the recent strangeness, perhaps finding reassurance that they weren’t alone with their fears.
But recent events had made that sharing...well...unlikely. So here she was, riding in Daniel's truck with Tommy leading them to God-knows-what at the Medical Examiner's office in the city in pursuit of answers. She struggled with her resentment toward Daniel, that if it weren’t for his...
His what, Nikki?, she thought, with self-directed vitriol. His ‘intolerance for thieves’? His unwillingness to ‘fraternize with violent ex-felons’? I am walking probable cause if we get pulled over, after all. Who in their right mind would willingly accept that into their life?
“Nikki?” he prompted as the silence drew out.
She shook her head in response to his question, then turned back to the window, unwilling to meet his eyes in the rearview mirror, her bitter resentment making a direct response nearly impossible. She knew he’d seen her shake her head, saw out of the corner of her eye as he directed his attention back to the road ahead, the muscles in his jaw tight. Feeling petty and childish, she forced herself to answer, “My parole lets me leave the county for a day or so without having to say anything to my P.O. I need permission to go more then 50 linear miles from Half Moon.” She couldn’t keep the challenging, defiant note from her voice.
I am what I am, she thought.
There was an uncomfortable silence as she studied her reflection in the darkened glass, seeing the tired circles under her eyes, the barely concealed sorrow pulling her expression down.
Man, I look so beaten. When did this happen to me? When did this expression became such a permanent part of me?
She was almost thankful when Tommy spoke, breaking into her thoughts, “Or what?”
Nicolette was momentarily confused, replaying the conversation.
“Or Garcia violates me and the Parole Board sends me back to prison for however long they think is fair. At least three months, more likely six.”
Daniel nodded absently; she could see from his reflection in the rear view mirror that he was troubled. She stared at his reflection in the mirror, silently daring him to say something disapproving or critical. She wasn’t sure what she would say, but she could feel her emotions coiling, ready to lash out. She was tired of being defensive, of feeling like she was cringing every time she opened her mouth. She had made mistakes and had paid for those mistakes; was still paying for them; likely would be paying for them for the rest of her life. Right now, at this moment, she hit the wall; she was tired of being punished.
We’ll see whatever it is that Tommy wants me to see; then I’ll just have to see what comes next.
She glared at Daniel in the mirror until he looked up and met her gaze. He sensed something of her mood, but decided there was nothing he could do about it right now. She was angry -- perhaps with some justification, he thought ruefully -- but there was nothing he could do about it; he wasn’t sure if he wanted to do anything about it, especially if they ended up going their separate ways after tonight.
Abruptly he snorted, shaking his head as he had a sudden memory Ryan smiling at him with his special condescending smile when he thought Daniel was being foolish, doubly so because he was letting his emotions make his decisions.
If you’re intending to let her go, he thought, transferring his mental snarl from his brother to himself, then what are you doing chauffeuring her at 11:30 in the evening to do God-only-knows-what, asshole? One text message, and here you are, common sense and prior self-determinations gone straight out the window.
Tommy swiveled his gaze away from the road, giving him a curious look, eyebrows raised in silent interrogative. Daniel shook his head, “It’s nothing. Just playing the fool.”
Tommy grunted with amusement, then turned back to the darkness rushing past the window, his smile fading.
That is the Tommy I’m used to, thought Nicolette -- laconic and ambiguous; she stubbornly refused to give him the gratification of labeling him ‘mysterious’. The silence was broken by the quiet clicking of the turn signal as Daniel exited the freeway, the road noise diminishing as he approached the end of the off ramp.
She found herself shaking; they were only minutes away from...something Tommy thought required bravery from Nicolette. From anybody else that might have been worrying; from Tommy it was terrifying.
Ten minutes later, they were walking through the somnolent streets in the shadow of the freeway just before it returned to ground-level, the traffic providing a constant backdrop of noise as it rushed past overhead, intermittently eclipsed by the roar of passing trucks. The Medical Examiner's office was nestled in the belly of the county government building, a huge glass and concrete structure tucked into a curve of the freeway. Tommy had guided Daniel to a public parking area a block away, buried in the odd space directly under the raised freeway superstructure. Nicolette struggled against her instinct to duck every time a truck roared past overhead. Daniel had grumbled at the inconvenience, but intuitively picked up some of Tommy’s caution. He wasn’t sure what Tommy had in mind, but decided to trust him a little bit further.
The sky over the city was completely fogged over, the air feeling damp and chilly on Nicolette’s exposed skin. She wished she’d brought jeans or had pressed Tommy to stop by her apartment so she could change. They walked down a narrow side street, the county building looming over them, its brutalistic concrete and glass architecture dark and imposing. As they approached the building, coming at it from a service entrance next to a small sunken driveway, Daniel began to feel nervous, feeling a rising tension shared by the three of them. He glanced at Nikki, walking between Tommy and himself in her summery dress with the incongruously matched pink puffy jacket, her gaze abstracted.
She’s nervous, he thought, though objectively he couldn’t have explained how he knew. Can you blame her? She’s being escorted into the ME's office. It’s not like there’s a huge range of things that Tommy is going to show us here.
He frowned, trying to remember if Animal Control shared space in the government building with the Medical Examiner's office.
They crossed a small parking area clearly marked with “Authorized Personnel Only” signs. Nicolette huddled more deeply into her jacket as a wicked nighttime breeze searched her jacket's seams for egress. She glanced nervously at Tommy, but he seemed unperturbed as they crossed to a recessed parking bay, walking around a nondescript white van. Th
ey approached a blank steel door, broken only by a card reader and a menacing black plastic bubble mounted above the door. Daniel hesitated, “Tommy, the security camera could be a problem if we’re not authorized to be here,” cutting his eyes toward Nikki and back.
Tommy grinned as he gestured with his head toward the camera, “S’busted.”
Daniel started to reply, but hesitated as Nikki deftly maneuvered between them and approached the door, her jacket whispering as it brushed his sleeve. She reached out to touch the door lightly with her fingertips, the cold grey steel almost painfully cold under her fingertips, then looked back at him quizzically. She half turned to Tommy, noting the faintest hint of a frown, though he was otherwise expressionless.
“You don’t see it?”
Tommy tilted his head slightly to the side, looking past her to the steel door where her fingertips lightly rested against its dull gray surface. After a long pause, he shook his head, “No. What...?” he gestured with his chin toward the door.
“It...it looks like a red circle,” her fingertips numbing as she traced a circle on the door, centered on a point almost at her eye level about 12 inches across, “painted with some kind of silvery red paint.” She turned back, looking at them, her puzzlement beginning a slow slide into fear, aware of the tension creeping in her voice, raising its pitch slightly, “You don’t see anything at all? Nothing?”
Tommy glanced at the door again, concentrating for 10 long seconds before shaking his head. She thought she caught the faintest hint of speculation in his gaze.
I’m standing probably less than thirty feet away from all the people that died in this city today, she thought with a shudder. I’m about to enter a government building illegally -- a trespass which could see my parole revoked and me back in jail; I’m still recovering from the failure of three quarters of the last two years worth of plans since Daniel...; I haven’t slept well in almost two weeks...it’s no wonder I’m seeing things that apparently only I can see.
Nicolette stepped out of the storage alcove, glancing nervously down into the dark loading bay recessed into the ground, turning her back on Daniel and Tommy while she got herself under control, embarrassed at the emotions she knew were clearly painted across her face. She shuddered as she realized what was likely loaded into and out of that particular loading bay, abruptly unnerved by the shadowed concrete depression, her imagination conjuring up memories of all the horror movies she regretted watching as a teenager.
What am I doing here?, she wondered, longing to be anywhere else. She felt conspicuous and exposed, standing in her mismatched evening wear, shivering in the cold San Francisco night. She desperately wanted answers -- something, anything that would offer some explanation for her hallucinations. Her shared hallucinations, based on some of the things that Daniel had said to her. She felt as though her sanity was hanging over a cliff, with only the smallest of saplings to grab onto in an effort to halt her accelerating slide into madness; the fact that her hallucinations were shared with Daniel, was that tiny, half dead sapling. Every second she stood here felt like a grinding weight, crushing her.
Daniel squinted at the door again; he could see a hint of what she described out of the corner of his eye, but if he looked at it directly, the faint metallic red flicker disappeared...but he could almost feel its presence, like something a hair’s breadth beyond his senses. For some reason, knowing the circle was there left him nervous and on edge. He tried to shake the feeling as Nicolette turned around, pulling her hands from the steel railing above the short drop into the loading bay.
“Nikki...I think I see it, too.” She raised her eyes, relief briefly visible in her expression before she schooled her face to stillness. He turned his head to the side, dimly able to see a red shimmer. He raised his hand, lightly touching his fingertips to the center of the circle. He drew his fingertips along the cold steel until they reached the inner edge of the ring, something more felt than seen as his fingertip began to tingle faintly. It left him feeling vaguely uneasy.
Their eyes met, his eyebrows rising in silent query. After a moment, she nodded reluctantly, but he thought he could detect a hint of relief again. With s slight nod of acknowledgement, he turned the same questioning expression toward Tommy.
Tommy frowned, the slightest hint of irritation in his voice, “Already said, ‘no’.”
Daniel nodded, then stepped aside as Tommy pulled a white plastic card from his jacket pocket and slid it through the card reader mounted next to the door. A second later, there was a heavy metallic clack as the lock disengaged, allowing Tommy to pull the door open, revealing a wide, white corridor with white industrial flooring stretching off to either side. Tommy leaned in, glanced left and right along the length of the brightly lit hallway, then gestured for them to step in.
Nikki hesitated, her heart accelerating. She couldn’t believe she was here, in the Medical Examiner's office in the middle of the night; she found herself shaking, the unreality settling over her while a part of her mind admitted this seemed like one more step in the logical progression of weirdness. Taking that step across the threshold suddenly magnified in importance in her mind; taking that step suddenly seemed like a willing surrender of the normal rules that mediated a rational, sane universe; she wondered what would happen if she stepped away -- if her willing retreat would end the weirdness before it could grow. But retreating was unthinkable! After pushing it this far, backing out now would be a tacit admission that her nerve had failed.
She was willing to accept many labels, but ‘coward’ wasn’t one.
Tommy watched her impassively as he held the door open, quietly letting her make her own decision.
Something brave...I can do this one thing, she thought, her giddiness briefly resurfacing.
With a deep breath, she stepped over the threshold into the surreal white corridor, brightly lit by long rows of white fluorescent lights recessed into the ceiling, covered by silver plastic rectangular grids. Tommy unhesitatingly led them to the right after easing the door closed, motioning with his head for them to follow. Their footsteps were magnified by the empty white hallway, the faint buzzing of the lights overhead the only counterpoint to the faint squeak of Daniel's boots on the white flooring. She started at the muted roar of a truck passing on the freeway adjacent to the building, its passage causing the floor to vibrate under her feet.
Like a minotaur, she thought, waking up somewhere in this white maze. What would a minotaur prowling the Halls of the Dead look like?, she wondered, shuddering at the mental image of the dead man at Coffee Beach, only expanded to fill the corridor, leaking fluid from decaying flesh as it squelched along. She forced the mental image from her mind as she felt a prickle of fear race down her spine, clammy sweat breaking out on the back of her neck.
Nikki...just be brave for a few more minutes. And stop scaring yourself with horror movie theatrics!, she chided.
Ahead of them, she saw two doorways, one halfway down the corridor, the other almost all the way at the end. Unconsciously she measured the distance -- they weren’t close enough should they need to duck out of sight. As they walked down the corridor, she felt a growing certainty that they weren’t alone, were being watched, though she didn’t see any other security cameras in the hallway.
She looked back over her shoulder as a prickling certainty stole over her that she would see some dark figure far down the hallway, the bright lights providing no comfort, instead creating a sense of distortion and unreality. She felt strangely disappointed at the empty corridor stretching behind them, her nervous energy finding no outlet, the empty corridor providing no ease of tension. Her breathing quickened until she was almost panting as they approached a wide security door midway down the length of the corridor. Her skin prickled as she glanced over her shoulder again; she realized she was poised to scream if something was there.
Tommy swiped his card; Nikki unconsciously tensed as he casually pushed through, gesturing for them to wait while he checked th
e room beyond. She fought the sudden urge to grab Daniel's sleeve and pull him back. A moment later, Tommy returned gesturing for them to follow him as he muttered, "We're in luck; it's empty. Probably don't have long."
Daniel followed Tommy, pausing long enough to hold the door open for her, revealing a long, rectangular room with four steel tables, side by side in one row. There was enough space to walk down the length of the room on either side -- enough to wheel a gurney, she realized, and to maneuver the gurney to transfer cadavers. At the head of each table was a scale, likely for weighing organs, she realized, unable to keep herself from checking to see if any of the scales might have...leftovers. She chuckled nervously at the idea of the Medical Examiner leaving something red and gory behind, the way someone might forget change from a soda machine.
Some of the tables are slanted, she realized. Does that mean the blood runs toward the feet or the head...? A cold prickle ran the length of her body, starting in her scalp. She looked away from the scales and tables, trying to force them and the grisly red imaginings out of her mind.
Her heart was pounding in her chest, trepidation making her feet slow. Daniel frowned, throwing a worried look her way -- she could sense his unease underneath his concern for her. Sweat prickled along her brow in unpleasant counterpoint to the clamminess of her skin as she paused by the table farthest from the door.
Tommy spoke over his shoulder as he casually walked toward a pair of wide swinging doors at the far end of the room, “‘Gotta get Mr. Doe.”
He glanced over his shoulder unconcernedly, then paused as he caught sight of Nikki’s expression and Daniel's worried frown. He glanced back and forth between them, his expression puzzled and assessing. Tommy returned from the swinging doors, surprising her when he took her hands, staring intently into her eyes. He spoke quietly, a hint of solemn reassurance in his voice, “Just a little longer and we can go.”
Nicolette nodded numbly, but said nothing. She realized she was shaking with fear.
They watched as he pushed through the swinging doors, intent on the task before him. Nicolette jumped as Daniel unconsciously sidled closer to her, gently pressing his hand into the middle of her back. She glanced at him curiously, but found his abstracted expression unreadable. Her first impulse was to step away, pointedly distancing herself. She hesitated as she realized he was unnerved and seeking comfort as much as offering it. She didn’t have long to contemplate as Tommy pushed a steel gurney through the swinging doors, seemingly unperturbed by the grisly passenger laid out in front of him. She wondered what he did here that he could be so blasé about handling the dead.
She felt her body break out into unpleasant goosebumps at the sight of a white-shrouded figure lying on the gurney, her breathing shortening. Nicolette had grown up in a sheltered, middle-class home, had never dealt directly with death or mortal remains. She was caught between her desire to fulfill her promise to Tommy and the desire to turn on her heel and run; run as fast as she could, fleeing back the way they came, back to the car, back to Half Moon, back to the safety of her apartment, dignity surrendered in service to her sanity.
What did she owe Tommy and Daniel, anyway? Tommy had never been particularly friendly or close; her heart still ached from Daniel’s parting words.
She watched as Tommy locked the wheels while he spoke, then turned, motioning her forward. Almost against her will, she stepped forward, walking numbly toward Tommy and the hideously suggestive contours underneath the white shroud. Daniel grabbed at her elbow, murmuring her name, but she yanked her arm out from his grip.
She swallowed hard as unpleasant tasting saliva flooded her mouth. Tommy quietly withdrew, standing behind the portion of the sheet tented under Mr. Doe's nose. As she approached, she saw a hand and wrist peeping out from underneath the sheet, palm down on the steel table. She felt cold horror, her nausea worsening as she noted the underside of his wrist was dark with lividity, looking like a long bruise. She swallowed again when she noticed the ragged edge of flesh around the pad of his thumb and index finger, dark red flesh visible through the waxy, pale skin. A tiny, wickedly coherent part of her mind protested the injustice of having to spend one’s last hours naked on a chilly steel table, but the thought was quickly subsumed by the storm of emotions and terror clouding her thoughts. She was poised to flinch, her throat locked against a scream as she half expected Tommy to whip the sheet off to reveal something horrible that she wouldn’t be able to unsee.
But he only stood, watching her expressionlessly, his hands resting lightly on the steel table above Mr. Doe's head.
Speaking through numb lips, feeling as though her speech must have been slurry and hard to understand, she asked, “Is this the brave thing you want me to do? What...” her voice died away as she realized she didn’t know what to ask.
Tommy nodded toward the exposed hand, “Check Mr. Doe's pulse. You know how to do that?”
Nikki looked down at the hand -- in fact had already been staring at it in grimly fascinated horror, sour saliva flooding her mouth as she noted the greenish tinge that suffused the dead flesh. She nodded dully, not wanting to touch the dead man’s skin, but feeling as though this was the only way through to the other side of this ordeal. She was aware of Daniel standing by her side, “Nikki, fuck this...”
His voice acted as a goad, momentarily giving her the impetus to continue. His voice dropped away as she reached out, steeling herself for the contact. She flinched when her fingers touched the top of his wrist, feeling his chilly flesh under her fingertips. That same wickedly coherent part of her mind whispered that this was how her mother’s hands always felt; cold and unyielding. The dead man’s flesh was supple and yet not; it felt like icy marble, but the texture of his skin confused her senses with expectations of supple warmth. She felt a part of her mind recoiling, wanting to separate from her, to create some kind of distance from her senses. She curled her hand around his unyielding wrist so she could lightly press her fingertips against the artery under his thumb, expecting to find stillness. She shuddered violently as she increased the pressure against the hard, cold flesh. She didn’t expect to find a pulse, and was subsequently unsurprised when she didn’t find one.
Still feeling as though she was trying to speak through numb and unyielding lips, she heard herself asking, “Is this supposed to be some kind of--“
The hand slipped off the table -- that was her first thought when she felt the wrist turning under her fingertips. Fingers wrapped around her wrist with a marble-cold, hard-flesh bloodless grip. Breathless vertigo swept through her as she felt all the air leave the room. She heard Daniel give a shout of surprise. Instinctively, Nicolette jerked back, trying to break the cadaver’s grip on her wrist. The corpse was jerked half upright, the sheet falling away, pooling around his waist. She found herself looking into the corpse’s strangely inanimate face, the eyes horribly clouded in death, the skin a disturbing mottled shade of greenish blue. She felt a rippling prickle around the edges of her face, felt it spread down her neck, climbing from her ankles. When the ripple of sensation met, her diaphragm painfully contracted.
Mr. Doe's throat was a torn, churned mass of dark red flesh, with bits of white and yellow tissue visible. The corpses’ jaw, gleaming white bone partly exposed on one side, flopped open as she jerked back harder, pulling him more upright, the raggedly torn flesh of his cheek exposing his teeth all the way to the gum line, giving the cadaver a lunatic half-grin. There was one bated moment where the tableau froze, then clearly they all heard the cadaver hiss through its torn throat and floppily connected jaw, “Vampire!”
Nicolette’s diaphragm contracted painfully as a scream of horror tore its way out of her throat, almost deafening in the echoey hard-surfaced room. She was distantly aware of the warm rush down the insides of her thighs as her bladder let go. The corpse hissed again, “Vampire!”
She screamed, feeling as though every muscle in her body was pushing air through her throat. It felt as though the flesh was tearing a
part. She began fighting in earnest, jerking backward again, half pulling the cadaver off the table, her free hand rising to slap at the prisoning hand, but unable to overcome her horror and actually touch it. As the corpse started to slip from the table, Daniel and Tommy were jerked from their stunned, terrified stasis. Daniel lunged forward, grabbing the cadaver’s wrist, barely even aware of Nicolette’s nails tearing into his wrist where she frantically ripped at the corpses’ hand as she tried to loosen its grip. Tommy grabbed the corpse’s shoulders, pulling back to keep it from tumbling to the floor.
“Vampire!” it hissed again, though Daniel was only peripherally aware of the third repetition, when Nicolette shrieked almost into his right ear, the sheer panic-driven volume leaving his right ear numb to sound for several hours afterward. Heart pounding, he heard the crackle of bone as he pulled back the cadaver’s thumb to an impossible angle, then again as he began working his way over the hand. The cadaver hissed into the silence between Nicolette’s screams one last time: “Archangel!”
Then Daniel finally shattered the corpse’s wrist bones with an adrenaline driven blow. Nicolette jerked free, stumbled backward, feeling the corner of one of the other steel tables slam into her spine, causing her to slip to the floor. Daniel caught her just before her head slammed into an adjacent table, straddling her awkwardly.
Then the room was silent, the silence broken only by harsh panting and a quiet oath from Tommy as he quickly arranged the corpse back on the table. He bent to unlock the wheels, “We have to go!”
Daniel, still supporting Nicolette’s head, spun on Tommy, his fear and horror turning to rage, “What the FUCK was that? Was this some kind of joke?” If he hadn’t been supporting Nicolette, he’d have lunged across the room and grabbed Tommy by the lapels of his leather jacket.
Tommy shook his head as he began wheeling the table back into the cold room, “A friend of mine suggested... I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life!”
Daniel was momentarily stunned into stillness. He’d never seen Tommy so unsettled. He was as close to losing his cool as Daniel had ever seen. Abruptly Tommy became aware of Daniel's inertia and swore, “Every security guy in the building is converging on this room -- we HAVE to get out of here!”
He pointed at Nicolette, “Get her up -- I’ll secure this guy.” Seeing Daniel’s hesitation, he added, “Yell at me later, asshole! Get your shit together now!”
He snarled at Tommy, briefly hating him for bringing this crazy situation down on their heads without any warning at all. He turned to Nikki, intending to help her to her feet...and froze. She was still lying on her back, but her body had a boneless, floppy quality that suggested she was unconscious. It wasn’t her unconsciousness that stopped him, it was the sightless, wide-eyed expression on her face that brought him up short.
He gently tapped her cheek with his palm, “Nikki?”
She didn’t react, just stared blankly up him, eyes opened as wide as they would go. He checked her pulse, fingertips pressing into her neck. Her pulse was still racing.
Daniel heard the creak of the heavy swinging doors. He was aware of Tommy standing over him.
“Carry her.”
Daniel nodded. His right arm already supporting her shoulders, he hooked her legs and lifted her into a cradle. He felt a moment of panic as her head flopped bonelessly back, her eyes rolling back in their sockets, reminding him of Mr. Doe's filmed over dead man’s eyes.
“C’mon, Nikki. Not like this,” he found himself pleading as he followed Tommy back into the anonymous white hallway.
“You’re stronger than you think you are...just...come back!” he pleaded.
He felt his eyes burning as he carried her lifeless -- unconscious, unconscious -- body to the back doorway overlooking the loading bays. Daniel carried Nikki into the chilly San Francisco night, hoping the slap of cold might jolt her back. He heard Tommy, just ahead of him, muttering about their good fortune as they hastened back to Daniel's truck.
Daniel had a hard time seeing anything good about their fortune at all.
The New Reality