Fade to Grey (Book 2): Darkness Ascending (7 page)

Stopping at a sliding metal door, Walter reached into
his pocket and withdrew a diminutive flashlight, clamped it between his teeth
and illuminated a large ring of keys. Shifting through the jingling mass with
rapid-fire familiarity, he finally chose a burnished bronze key that fit the
disk lock on the door.

“What is this ‘surprise’ that you want me to see?”
Michelle asked to his back.

A few soft, metallic clangs sounded as the lock was
removed and the door slid to the left. Walter clicked a button on the small
flashlight several times, and the illumination doubled, and then tripled.
Handing the light to Michelle, he indicated for her to step inside the
building, accompanying her with three cryptic words.

“You tell me.”

The bluish-white beam from the tiny flashlight cut a
wide-angled swath through the darkness inside. Immediately obvious to Michelle
was the large tank of propane that occupied the front half of the building.
Various hoses and adapters were hanging on the wall next to the tank, and some
type of electrical pump system was mounted on an elevated shelf above the
adapters. Spaced evenly at ground level, a series of basketball-sized vent holes
had been cut through the wall, each of them covered with a metal lattice rodent
barrier. Shifting the light upwards, Michelle noted an identical series near
the roofline. Moving the flashlight down again brought the cement floor into
focus. An indeterminable hodgepodge of boot tracks carpeted every available
square inch, giving Michelle the impression that a muddy, midnight square dance
had recently been held in the building. The tracks, however, sheltered from the
weather as they were, could have been here for years. It was not the serrated,
lug-soled prints that kept her attention though, it was the flattened swell of
the bright blue tarp that crinkled ever so slightly with the breeze coming
through the vents. 

“What is it? What’s under the tarp?”

Walter stepped inside the building and slid toward the
wall on the right, making room for Amy to squeeze through behind him. Leaning
in the corner near the door was a five foot length of PVC water pipe. Walter
grabbed the narrow, white tube and approached the tarp. Flipping the first
layer of the plastic-like fabric up and over revealed another level of the blue
material. The thin shaft flexed into a weak ‘C’ shape as Walter uncovered the
second layer.

At first, Michelle wasn’t sure what she was looking
at. An oblong . . . ‘blot’ . . . of dirty grease mixed with semi-solid chunks
of . . . something else. She shifted her eyes briefly toward Walter, a
questioning look on her face. A silent nod of his head redirected her to take
another look at the substance on the tarp.

Angling the flashlight slightly to the left and down
brought a three dimensional cast to the object. Silent moments of edgy
curiosity surfaced as her brain tried to reconstruct the odd pattern into
something she could process.

Another space of tired, over-caffeinated indecision
flew by. Finally, Michelle stepped back and rubbed her eyes, shaking her head
slightly. “I don’t know, did somebody burn something, maybe plastic or
fiberglass . . . and then throw the ashes in the tarp?”

Walter shook his head. “Uh-uh, nobody burned nothin’.
Look again ‘Chelle, do you see it?”

Michelle shined the light towards the tarp again,
impatience beginning to settle on her face. Another scan up and down triggered
a vague spark of something, but no answers. She was just about to ask Walter
for the answer when Amy blurt out, “Is that a . . . body?”

With Amy’s words leading the charge, Michelle’s tired
eyes were able to complete the puzzle. The dark, chunky-thin blob of residue
now took on the hazy, indistinct outline of a human body. The not-distant-enough
memory of a search warrant her agency had served a few years ago sprang to
mind. They had come up empty in their investigation of the private hunting
preserve that had been implicated in the deaths, and subsequent resell of
protected raptors, but a further search of the grounds had revealed something
else—the burnt out husk of their confidential informant’s vehicle. Occupied. It
was her first, and so far, last, flame-blackened cadaver that she had seen.
Michelle could still recall the gaunt, open mouthed visage, seared charcoal
black and reclining in a permanent scream. But this was different. Before she
could comment, Walter stepped forward and used the pipe to flip the last fold
at the upper edge of the tarp.

“Kind of like opening a giant, blue burrito,” Walter
said with a cough.

“That’s disgusting.”

“Yeah, well . . . now for the ‘piece De resistance,’
which is French for ‘the stuff that will make you shoot the snails you just
swallowed out of your nose and back onto your plate.”

The final over-fold of the plastic sheeting revealed a
mass of platinum blond hair.

“It’s the bimbo that Bernice shot that first night
when all this started happening . . . just a few days ago, really.” Walter
voiced to no one in particular.

When no one volunteered an immediate answer, he
continued. “What happened to her? I mean, I’ve seen a lot of dead things, but
nothing I’ve ever seen ended up like this, at least not in such a short time
and without a lot of help from maggots and buzzards.”

Michelle, a strange suspicion beginning to form in the
back of her head, spoke, “Could anybody have gotten in here and tampered with
the body?”

“Don’t think so,” said Walter, “place has been locked
up since Andy and I moved her here. Besides, that gal may have been a looker
when she was a live stripper, but I can’t think of anybody who’d be sick enough
to want to mess with a dead body that’s had half of its head blown off.”

The suspicion transcended upwards and became a
slightly anxious flare of insight. “Let me see that pipe,” Michelle mumbled.

Walter silently passed it forward, making sure she
grasped the same end he had been holding.

Michelle scooted closer, disregarding the quiet words
of warning about getting too close from Walter. Prodding gently where her
mind’s eye had reconstructed the form revealed an oddly colored, slightly
curved item.

“Hmmm . . .”

“What is it?” Walter asked.

“Wait a minute, let me check something else,” Michelle
voiced as she crouch-walked forward, stopping near the upper-left side of the
tarp. Wielding the length of PVC like a lone, giant chopstick, she probed the
general area of her hypothesis, feeling for the evidence. Scraping aside the
loose, fragmented excess exposed several hard chunks. Thrusting the flashlight
as close as she could get without contacting the surrounding substance brought
the diminutive chunks into focus. They were teeth.

The long, lean muscles in her thighs flexed stubbornly
as she stood up, briefly reminding Michelle that she had skipped too many days
at the gym.

“Well?” Walter asked.

“When did you notice this?”

“I came down here today—this morning ‘bout an hour
before lunch—just to check and make sure everything was still secured. When I
opened the door, the first thing I noticed was that the tarp that we had put
the stripper in looked . . . flat.  Why? What are you thinking?”

“I’m not sure,” Michelle answered slowly, “but a
couple of things are coming to mind. As cold as it’s been outside—and with all
the vents it’s going to be the same temperature in here—there’s no way the body
should have decayed at the rate it has. It’s almost like it was submerged in a
vat of acid. But then, if there were some outside caustic force that was at
work here, why are we seeing hair? My first thought is that hair is one of the
hardest things to digest. That’s why you always find it when you examine animal
scat.” Michelle used the flashlight and pipe to indicate the tangle of
whitish-blond hair.

Walter and Amy craned their necks for an attempt at a
better view without approaching closer.

Michelle continued, “But look at the hair, it’s
practically untouched. As a matter of fact, it looks like it’s been freshly
washed. Walter, you and I both saw the body. Half of her head was blown away,
and her hair was soaked with blood and brains. When you and Andy carried her
down here, she was a pretty much in the same condition, right?”

“Yep.”

“So we’ve got a dead stripper who goes in to a tarp in
basically one piece, covered with blood. The body then gets stored in what, for
all intents and purposes in a meat locker. And yet, a few days later all we can
find,” Michelle used the pipe to indicate the first area she had looked at, “is
purple manicured toenails,” she moved the pointer upwards as she talked,
“pearly white teeth . . . and bleach blond hair that looks like it’s just been
shampooed.”

Walter looked back and forth between Amy, Michelle,
and the tarp. Shaking his head, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “You got
any ideas?”

Michelle mimicked his shrug. “Nothing firm, we’d have
to talk to Dr. Collins I’d imagine, but biologically speaking, hair, nails and
teeth all share one thing in common.”

When nobody spoke, Michelle finished, “It’s all dead
tissue. Even when you’re alive, the k
eratin, which is the basic structure of your hair and nails,
is nothing more than a dead protein. Your teeth,” she smiled and clicked her
own, “are covered in an extremely hard organic compound called enamel, which is
also dead. So whatever happened to the body somehow altered—chemically or
otherwise, I’m not sure—all of the tissue that had been living at the time of
her . . . death . . . if that makes sense.”

The three of them stood quietly for a
moment, pondering Michelle’s conclusion. When no one spoke, Michelle sighed and
turned towards Amy. “What are you thinking about, Amy?”

Amy let out a deep breath, and then slowly sank to her
knees, folding her calves underneath her as she sat on the cold, boot print
marked cement. “Honestly,” she began in a hollow, cheerless voice, “I’ve been
hearing the words ‘body, stripper, bimbo, blond’ . . .” she forced in a sniffle
as she stared at the remains scattered on the cheap, blue plastic, “but no
matter which way we cut the pie, and no matter which words we choose to say,
that girl there had a name . . . she was somebody’s daughter—maybe somebody’s
mother.”

Michelle thought back to the first night when they had
found the old van idling up at the store. The hippie stoner, what was his name
. . . Bruce something . . . he had told them her name when he was being
questioned. She closed her eyes and fought hard to remember.

“Celeste. Her name was Celeste.”

Amy looked up at Michelle questioningly.

Michelle squatted down on one knee and put her arm
around Amy. “It was Celeste, I’m sure of it.”

They closed and locked the propane building, and then
walked over to the Mule for the short journey to the store. From the outside, a
myriad of voices could be heard—mumbled talking, a few elevated shouts, and the
soft but unmistakable noise of sobbing.

Faint illumination was leaking through the black
plastic garbage bags that had been hastily stapled over the windows, and
Michelle watched as Walter studied the dim light with a slow tilt of his neck.

“Not perfect, but I guess it will have to do.” A
short, quick yawn escaped his lips as he pulled the radio off of his belt.

“
Sam, it’s Walter. We’re outside right now
.”

“
10-4. I’ll be there in the second
.”

True to the prediction, keys could be heard a scant
moment later, followed by a hard
click
as the security bolt was
withdrawn

Sam opened the door and they were immediately ambushed
with dozens of questions, some asked quietly . . . others with impatience,
anger, or tears.

It was, quite frankly Michelle thought, overwhelming.
Two steps inside and they were surrounded by people asking for, or demanding
help. As quick as a fox, Amy weaved through to the front of the crowd—ground
zero for their attention.

In a calm, even voice, Amy addressed a
“thirty-something” brunette who was loudly repeating “It’s about time,” over
and over again. Michelle couldn’t really make out Amy’s words, but a few
seconds later the brunette began directing her screeching voice toward the
crowd, asking for silence. Within the space of a few heartbeats, the clatter
had diminished to a low murmur, and a small ocean of faces were staring
expectantly towards them.

It was the first time Michelle had been back in the
store since the day they had boarded up the front door and put out the “no gas”
sign. The section she was standing in was the bottom of the “L” shape of the
building, and formerly contained shelves full of groceries and whatnot. It was
now radically different. Several eight foot serving tables were pushed against
the long wall, and the remainder of the floor was filled with a few folding
chairs, three-legged stools, and a mishmash of other furniture—lawn chairs and
un-split firewood included. The dividing line between the upper and lower
sections of the “L” were marked with another set of the homemade volleyball net
anchors. Someone had stretched a rope between the top of the poles, and a few
sheets had been hastily placed over the rope. A crude, but effective divider to
separate the sleeping area from the common area.

Walter stepped out into the room, directing his gaze
at the assembly. Before he could speak, Sam leaned over and whispered a few
sentences in his ear, to which Walter nodded slowly. Turning his attention back
to the crowd, Walter cleared his throat and began talking.

“Evenin’ . . . as most of you know, I’m Walter
Sheldon, owner and operator of Sheldon’s Marina. I’m not a man given to long
winded speeches, and quite frankly I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll do
what I can to fill you in on what we know.” Walter looked at his watch before
continuing, “It’s almost time for supper. What I suggest is this—let’s go ahead
and get everybody awake and ready to eat. I’m going to take a quick trip back
to the house and fetch the food. When I come back we’ll eat, and then after
that we’ll all sit down here and try and figure out what to do next.”

Before giving them a chance to object, Amy shot
forward again and raised her hand. “I need some volunteers to hand out plates
and napkins over here, and we’ll need some food servers over there . . .” The
rest was lost in the din as the assembly, their attention momentarily diverted
from its previous path, turned they’re interest towards her.

Michelle, Walter and Sam scooted outside, stopping
only to mime a “door locking” gesture to Amy, who nodded in acknowledgement.

Walter fired up the Mule at the same time he keyed his
radio. “
Mule calling driveway gate, do you copy
?”

A momentary space of dead air came through before Mike
replied. “
This is driveway gate, I hear you
.” His transmission, although
clear in pitch and tone, was broken up with multiple gaps.

“His batteries are almost gone,” Michelle noted.

Walter nodded his head toward Michelle as he spoke
into the radio. “
Mike, we need to borrow your muscle to help us deliver
supper, we’ll pick you up in about thirty seconds
.”

A short
blip
came across the radio in reply.

Michelle sent a curious, raised eyebrow look at Walter,
but said nothing as the little four wheel drive vehicle accelerated toward the
gate. This time it was Sam that hopped off and unlatched the chain, allowing
them to pass through before shutting it again. Mike was standing just ahead of
them, and managed to hop onto the coasting Mule with three seconds to spare
before Walter stomped on the gas.