A Vanilla Autopsy, part one

Cooper had lost any sense of time in the hospital. He was trapped in the small world between clinical white walls and floor tiles. His wife slept fitfully in a chair in the corner while he waited on the foldout couch that had been their bed off and on for the last month. The broken form of his daughter lay on a hospital bed at the center of a web of IV tubes, wires, and sensor leads.

Sometimes there was sound, like when he and Nicole spoke in quiet tones as if they feared waking five-year-old Steffy from a precarious slumber. Sometimes Steffy moaned and shifted restlessly as the sting of needles and chemicals penetrated her dreams. There were the kind words of the nurses, their meaning lost in Cooper’s grim speculation of what awaited his daughter. Above all was the constant hum of the hospital’s air filtration system—a mantra of white noise that stole away minutes, hours, days.

Only Cooper was awake, watching the numbers Steffy had been reduced to on the luminescent face of a monitor. Heart rate, oxygen, pulse—they all counted down slowly, day-by-day, to some half-imagined zero hour that haunted him with its inevitability.

His cell phone buzzed on his hip.

“Coop?”

“Yeah, hang on a minute,” he said quietly and slipped out into the hall.

“It’s Dawson. How you holding up?”

Cooper leaned against the wall outside his daughter’s hospital room. He watched the nurses and doctors go by and the other weary and worn parents in the children’s hospital. He watched babies wheeled to and fro, some smiling and kicking, some not moving much at all.

“Day-by-day,” he breathed.

“Uh.” An uncomfortable silence filtered from Dawson’s end.

“What are you doing?” Cooper asked just to break the static quiet.

“On my way to the morgue. Smith’s got a Jane Doe he wants me to see.”

“Sick.”

“No, seriously. He wants me to check something out. This one’s damn weird.”

“Pick me up.”

“What? Listen, Coop, you’re on leave. You need to be there with your kid, with Nicole.”

“Dawson, I’m going ape shit here. I need to get out, use my brain to focus on something else. Besides, I’m already at the hospital.”

“If the Captain finds out….”

“We’ll keep it quiet. Just a couple hours, man. Let me help you out on this one.”

“All right, buddy. I’ll be by in a few minutes.”

Cooper flipped his phone shut and peeked back into Steffy’s room. He stared at her for a moment, at Nicole, and then headed for the elevator to the ground floor.

***

Cooper leaned back in the passenger seat and sighed at the roof upholstery. Dawson shifted uneasily behind the wheel as he pulled away from the curb. A fine rain misted the windshield. Beyond the haze, the streetlights were coming on in the deepening gloom. Headlights played through the windows.

“So….” Dawson said.

Cooper looked over at him. He answered the invisible question. “Doctor says the chemo isn’t helping. Leukemia’s all through her blood, her lymph glands.”

Dawson simply shook his head.

“She’s got maybe a month,” Cooper went on.

“Jesus…I’m sorry, Coop. I know that’s not much, but I’m sorry.”

“I appreciate it anyway.”

“Anything you or Nicole need, just call me or Charlotte.”

“Thanks,” Cooper breathed. “So, tell me about this Jane Doe.”

“Weird, weird case,” Dawson mused. “Got to set this one up for you.”

“So it’s a case, now? That didn’t take long.” Cooper looked out the window into the darkening sky. No stars, he thought. No moon.

“Captain wants this one addressed ASAP. You’ll understand why in a minute. Let me tell you the deal. Last night a fifty-five-oh-one comes in. Patrol cars, SWAT, the whole damn show turns up. Only, there’s no gang war, it’s all over. There are bodies everywhere. A bunch of Aryan Sons and some other gang no one can ID. And get this, this other gang—they’re all naked, which probably explains why they came out on the shitty end.”

“Naked?” Cooper asked. “What were they on?”

“Don’t know yet. But check this: There’s a few of the Aryan Sons still alive…and they’re cutting the heads off the bodies of the naked gang.”

“What the hell?”

“No, wait. The dead Sons--they’re all ripped to shit like the naked gang was biting and clawing at them.”

Cooper rubbed his eyes. “Christ. So, if the Streeters and Las Umbras find out it’s open season, we could be having race riots again.”

“Which is why the Captain wants this locked down yesterday.”

Cooper nodded. “They get any of the Sons?”

“Just one, “Dawson said. “The rest bailed or went down shooting. I’ll be having a little talk with him tomorrow.”

“Should be interesting.”

Dawson navigated his way between bordering parking lots. The morgue was a low, gray building on the outskirts of the hospital grounds. Tall lights glared in the settled night as the sedan glided towards the row of parking stalls outside the morgue.

“This Jane Doe is the only one that got to keep her head. They hadn’t gotten to her when the heat came down,” Dawson said as they entered the building. A disinterested security guard waved them through the lobby. They walked to the back of the building where Cooper thumbed a button set next to two heavy faux-wood doors marked by biohazard symbols.

As they waited, Dawson waved at the camera mounted near the ceiling. “Rayburn’s got ten corpses down there, including Jane Doe,” he said. “According to him, the preliminaries all showed strange blood counts. Strange blood for that matter.” The doors buzzed open.

“Strange how?” Cooper asked.

“We’ll find out.” They entered the autopsy room.

“What the hell did your people bring me, Dawson?” The shout came from a short elderly man in purple scrubs. He stood in the center of the large room; Jane Doe sprawled out on a table before him. Florescent lights glared on stainless steel, and the stench of antiseptic and opened bodies clung to the air.

“Don’t ask me, Rayburn. Just passing through.” Dawson walked to the table. Rayburn pulled up his plastic face shield.

“Cooper,” he said with a note of surprise and nodded.

“Dan.” Cooper managed a smile. He saw understanding in Rayburn’s aged eyes. The wrinkles around them softened.

“Good to see you,” the old pathologist said. “Did Dawson bring you up to speed?” “Yeah. Sounds like the Sons had a wild night. What’s this about strange blood test results? These naked ones, they on some kind of drug?”

“Well,” Rayburn lowered his shield again and bent over the corpse. “I’m still waiting on the full results, but there’s something wrong with these people. Other than the obvious.”

“Like what?” Dawson picked up two face shields from a nearby tray and offered one to Cooper.

“Hemoglobin infection of some kind. It’s mutated the blood.”

“Shit!” Cooper stepped back. “Is it contagious?”

“Don’t worry.” Rayburn nodded to the girl on the table. “She’s not going to give you anything.” He bent over her and dug into a bullet wound in her throat with a pair of forceps.

Cooper took a look at her. She was blond, athletic. Probably pretty when she was alive. But now, laid out and opened up, her organs exposed to the sick glare of the overhead lights…Cooper suddenly imagined Steffy on that table. He looked away and gritted his teeth.

Dawson glanced over at him. “You all right?”

“Yeah.”

“They all had the infection?” Dawson asked.

“Yup. I’ve also pulled over fifty of these out them.” Rayburn extracted the forceps from the ragged hole in the girl’s throat. A small, bloody fragment glittered in the light.

“Bullet,” Cooper said.

“Yes, but look closer.”

“What is that?” Dawson squinted. “You got to be shitting me!”

Rayburn chuckled. Cooper shook his head. “What is it?”

“Silver, Cooper,” Rayburn said. “Or some kind of composite. That’s the last one out of her. She had four others.”

“Ah. That explains it,” Dawson grinned. “Fucking werewolves!”

Cooper shook his head. “Some kind of ritual killing? I mean, why else would the Sons cut off their heads? Shoot them up with silver bullets?”

Rayburn patted his arm. “I’m glad my job is just cutting up the bodies. If I had to figure out how and why they ended up here….”

Jane Doe began to tremble on the table. At first it was a just a slight tremor. The three men turned and watched as the shakes built into a violent seizure. The ragged edges of the girl’s Y-incision flopped obscenely, her exposed organs quivered. Her fingernails tapped out a staccato rhythm.

“What the…?”Rayburn stepped to the head of the table. Cooper could see his eyes widen behind the face shield. “Jesus! The gunshot wounds!”

Cooper dashed to the side of the gurney and peered over. Dawson backed towards the door. “Guys. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Look!” Rayburn pointed at the hole in her throat. As Cooper watched, the wound shrank, the edges knitting together leaving no sign of the injury. “Her body is healing!” Rayburn yelled at him. “Regenerating! Christ!”

They both turned to watch the Y-incision dragging itself back together with a wet slapping sound. The girl’s heels drummed on the metal tabletop.

Rayburn held two fingers to her throat. “She’s alive…impossible.”

“How?” Dawson asked from the far side of the room.

Cooper laughed. The months of stress and darkness cracked open with the reality he was witnessing.

The girl gasped. Cooper stepped to her side and looked down. She was still for a moment. Then, her eyes flashed open—inhuman eyes, yellow and glaring with rage. She opened her mouth, elongating canines erupting from her gums, and roared.

Her backhand betrayed her strength. Cooper flew across the room and crashed painfully against the sink on the far wall. His head rang and he thought his sternum must be cracked. He collapsed to his knees, his vision fading in and out. He shook his head to clear it and looked up.

The girl was gone. In her place crouched an immaculate nightmare. It was a wiry thing--lithe, feral, covered with golden fur. A fusion of beast and woman, it roared again. Rayburn fumbled for a scalpel on the table behind him. He raised it to strike.

The thing cocked its wolf head at him. Its arm flashed down in a vicious swipe that nearly severed Rayburn’s head from his body. He spun in a bloody arc and folded to the floor.

Gunshots thundered. Dawson backed towards the doors, unloading his automatic into the monster. “Run, Coop!” he screamed.

Cooper couldn’t move. He was frozen on his knees, his mind blasted by terror, awe, and possibilities.

Dawson’s shots thudded into the beast, drawing its attention. It leapt from the gurney, powerful muscles in its haunches propelling it the twenty feet to Dawson. As it landed in front of him, it swiped in opposite directions with its claws. Dawson’s chest exploded in a red rain. With a shout of agony, he toppled backwards.

Without a pause, the creature launched itself against the double doors. They shattered under the force. More gunfire sounded from the hall, the squeal of bending metal, and the alarm of the fire door.

Cooper’s legs were shaking. He crawled past the still form of Rayburn to the remains of his friend. Dawson stared sightlessly at the ceiling. Cooper reached down and closed the man’s eyes. His partner of ten years…dead.

He looked out into the hallway. The wide-eyed security guard from the lobby stood shaking. His smoking pistol was gripped in white knuckles. Cooper followed his stare to the wreckage of the fire door, twisted and torn from its frame.

Cooper saw these things, but they didn’t register. His mind was wrapping around an idea—one spawned from the sight of the girl’s body regenerating. He knew it was a bad idea. He knew it was his only choice.

***

The abandoned tenement building was a rotting monstrosity of grey concrete, broken glass, and rusting metal. It stood like a lone tombstone, surrounded by acres of urban renewal that had never made it past the demolition phase.

Cooper had left his car at the edge of the city, half a mile back. He stood amongst fallen walls and twisted girders, staring up at the ten floors of low-rent carcass.

Nothing lived here but bugs and rats. No squatters, no stray cats or dogs. It was a good sign that she was in there.

He had spent the better part of a week searching, staying awake with over-the-counter amphetamines and meth liberated from the evidence locker. He felt every pore in his body, the wind tickling against his skin. Even with the overcast sky, he had to shield his bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes behind a pair of sunglasses.

His heart hammered in his chest as he stalked closer to the building. He had given up his shirt and tie for a canvas jacket, cargo pants, and lightweight fabric and rubber hiking boots. He pulled a heavy .44 Magnum revolver from his jacket and made his way to the entrance.

Stepping quietly past the empty frames of the doors and across fallen plaster, he kept alert for any sound. Nothing.

On the third floor, he smelled her. It was the musky scent of an animal’s den, the tang of old blood and rot. He had to keep himself from racing between apartments, kicking in doors.

He found her in room three thirty two. Like most of the others, it was a small one-bedroom apartment. The smell was strongest there. Cooper slowly inched the worn door open. There was a kitchenette to his right, a short hall to the living room straight ahead. The dim, late-afternoon light filtered in through threadbare curtains. Old furniture sat rotting, bleeding out polyester batting, growing strange mold.

He stepped carefully down the hall. Another short passage stretched off to the left. At the end was a bathroom. To the right of it, a door was cracked just enough for him to see her lying on a decrepit mattress and box spring.

Her back was to him. Blonde hair cascaded in a tangle across her shoulders, flowing to the mattress beneath. Cooper moved closer and peered in. She wore a black tank top and long camouflage shorts. Her bare feet were dirty. She curled into herself.

He thought she must surely hear his heartbeat by now. He raised the Magnum to cover her and pushed open the door.

She sprang into a sitting position, her teeth bared at him. Already her eyes had begun to change. He cocked the hammer of the heavy revolver.

She paused, sniffing the air. Her eyes drained back to human, confused and scared. But then, her weakness was gone. Cooper saw tenacity in her face—she was biding her time.

“So, you smell that, huh?” He nodded at the Magnum.

“How did you know?” she asked, her voice husky and tired.

“They must have pulled four or five of them out of you before you…changed. Wasn’t too hard to get a gunsmith to copy the alloy, though he was curious what I’d want with silver bullets.”

“Big Lone Ranger fan?” she grated. “Didn’t smell you, though.”

“Scent killer,” Cooper said running his fingers along the jacket. “Hunters wash their clothes with it. You know they even make deodorant sticks out of that shit?”

“Clever,” she said. Her teeth ground around the word.

Cooper took a good look at her thin face. It was young, late twenties, alive. Not the flaccid mask he had seen in the morgue. Ice-blue eyes narrowed at him.

“Do it,” she said.

“What?”

“Put that magic bullet in my head and get it over with. Finish off the pack.”

Cooper barked out a short, nervous laugh. “I’ve gone through too much trouble to find you. I’m not going to kill you. I need your help.”

“You’re not one of Arvin’s skinheads,” she said incredulously.

“Aryan Sons? No. Just a man grasping at nightmares.”

“What kind of help?”

Cooper kept the magnum on her, watching for any sign of attack while he spoke. “My daughter is dying. No chance of recovery. I know what you are. I saw you heal yourself before you changed. I want you to make my daughter like you.”

She stared aghast at him. Then she laughed. It was a hard, mocking thing that faded into deadly silence.

“You’re out of your fucking mind! Better to let her die.”

“No!” Cooper thrust the barrel at her, emphasizing the outburst. “I’ve been watching her die for months. Any life, any, is better than what she’s going through. You’ll do it.”

“You’re going to make me? You can’t keep that gun on me forever.”

“I don’t need to. Remember the morgue? I’ve got your fingerprints, your DNA. I’ve got security camera footage of you turning into a monster and killing a pathologist and a homicide detective.”

The girl’s fingers ripped through the fabric of the box spring as she clutched at it.

“I’ve got three packages,” Cooper went on. “If I don’t text my contact by cell phone every five hours, those packages go out to the CIA, NSA, and the CDC. Now, you’re fast. Maybe you could kill me before I got a shot off. You’d have a good five-hour start. You might avoid them for a year, a decade, who knows? But, some day, someone will catch up with you. And the next bad man that finds you won’t be so nice. You’ll be carved up, distilled down, made into a cure for cancer. But they won’t let you die, and they’ll never, ever let you go free.”

He could tell by her eyes that she believed him. She was ready to tear him to shreds, but she believed him.

“That’s some homework you’ve done,” she said.

“I did a lot of ‘off-the-clock’ work. Called in a lot of favors.” He wiped the sweat from his eyes.

“So, if I do this….”

“You walk away when it’s done. Free and clear, the packages get burned.”

“Why should I believe you’d destroy them?”

“You don’t have a choice. You have my word as a cop.”

“Not encouraging.”

“As a father, then.”

He saw something in her face, a momentary struggle between human and beast. He had caught her off guard.

“Fair enough,” she said. “But there’s something else I want.”

“What’s that?”

“Payback. You want your daughter fixed? I want the bastards that wiped out my pack.”

“The Aryan Sons?” Cooper dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pill.

She nodded. “Dead and burned. Nothing but ashes and dust.”

Cooper crunched the speed down. “Sounds like fun. But it has to be quick.”

“Hell, officer….”

“Detective.”

“Right. Your people probably already know where they live. You’ve just been waiting for an excuse to move on them.”

Cooper lowered the Magnum slowly. The girl leaned back and smiled. It didn’t make him comfortable.

“We have a deal, then?” he asked.

She became serious again. “On the blood of my pack mates.”

He holstered the revolver and offered his hand. “Cooper.”

She took it and pulled herself off the bed. She stared into his eyes, searching. “Call me Jeanette.”

Check back soon for part two!