Love Lies Bleeding Read online

  “As in, it could kill me.”

  “Oh, no. It will kill you. It just depends on what kind of dead we’re talking about and whether or not you give us any information before you die.”

  “At this point, I’ll take any kind of dead.”

  “If you do die, you’d have Grady to thank,” Karli nastily spat. “He modified the formula he acquired from Doyle. Without him we wouldn’t have any control over the —”

  “Grady! Was! A! Medical! Officer!” Pamela shouted. Karli, her own anger barely held in check, slumped back into her seat, arms crossed and chin jutting. She’d known Pamela was going to be a problem. Thing was, some part of her just wasn’t willing to sacrifice her best friend — or, rather, her fake best friend. Relationships got very blurred for secret agents. Karli had always had a difficult time understanding boundaries.

  •••••••••

  In an examination room somewhere farther into the building, Mr. Doyle lay pale as death and strapped to an exam table. No marks betrayed the manner of his demise, but when the agency — or in this case, Dwayne – cleaned up, they made sure every last spot was wiped. Dwayne, or rather Karli after she’d gotten the okay to blow her cover, had decided that the information in Pamela’s head, and hard drive, was more important than the ongoing Doyle investigation.

  Dwayne wandered through the open door from the hall. The doctor, who’d been leaning over the exam table, turned away from Mr. Doyle and disposed of a hypodermic syringe.

  “Has he talked yet?” Dwayne asked, still completely pissed about his demoralizing rub and tug. Being unmanned, while an oddly frequent occurrence, was not something he relished. He blamed the fact that he’d been assigned a female partner. Karli fucked everything up for him while constantly refusing to actually fuck him.

  “If he talks. If he doesn’t just turn.” The doctor’s glum tone didn’t leave much room for hope.

  “Not much of a waste either way. Too bad Shep wasn’t in any condition to turn, he would have hated it.”

  “Beaten to a bloody dead pulp kind of puts you out of the approved test subject realm.”

  “You’re about to get a visit from the bitch that did that to him.”

  “You have another, so soon?” Disapproval wafted from the doctor, who hadn’t once made eye contact with Dwayne.

  Despite the fact that he was there on Karli’s orders, Dwayne didn’t appreciate being questioned or feeling like an underling. “What do you care?”

  “Well, the turn ratio is getting oddly high. The serum might be mutating. Without Agent Nolan’s notes, I don’t think we should continue —”

  “Grady was a cock-blocking asshole, but now, even if the serum has mutated, we’ll have our answers. One way or the other.”

  “A woman,“ the doctor didn’t bother to hide his distaste.

  “A killer.”

  Mr. Doyle’s eyes snapped open; his skin had turned oddly gray. He grimaced and ground his now nightmarish teeth together. Dwayne and the doctor had seen the rapid transformation a number of times before — even though not all the test subjects actually woke — Dwayne still couldn’t stop himself from flinching, though. He hated that flinch.

  “Shit. There’s your answer,” the doctor sighed. He removed his plastic gloves and tossed them in a garbage bin. The turn ratio weighed heavily on the doctor.

  “So? He was dead before. He’s sort of dead now. If he talked before he turned that would have just been a bonus. The bitch will be alive when you inject her, that’s made a difference before.”

  “Not always.” It was actually worse for the doctor when he injected a live subject, taking a vibrant life and turning it into walking death. He kept reminding himself he was just a hired hand.

  “I’ll let Karli know you’re ready for her.” Dwayne crossed back toward the exit, and as he passed, Zombie Doyle lunged for him. Heavy wrist restraints held the creature inches away from grabbing Dwayne.

  Dwayne sneered and flicked Zombie Doyle on the forehead with his finger. Zombie Doyle growled and pressed harder against the restraints, which slipped and suddenly the creature had a hold on Dwayne’s arm.

  The Doctor shouted and grabbed at Zombie Doyle’s shoulders in an attempt to pull him back into the chair. Dwayne fought, but Zombie Doyle, who was much stronger than Mr. Doyle had been while alive, managed to clamp his jaw down on Dwayne’s left forearm.

  Dwayne howled.

  The doctor released Zombie Doyle and scrambled back to the counter. He easily located and grabbed a bottle of some sort of drug, but repeatedly dropped the syringe he was trying to fill.

  Dwayne wrestled his gun out of the holster with his right hand while Zombie Doyle continued to chew painfully and viciously on his other arm.

  Raising his gun, he shot Zombie Doyle point blank through the forehead.

  Zombie Doyle slumped back, half on and half off the exam table. He was now truly dead.

  The doctor turned, full syringe in hand, and locked eyes with Dwayne. Blood from Dwayne’s wounded arm dripped over his hand and onto the tiled floor. He held his gun firmly in the other hand, his gaze not breaking from the doctor’s.

  The doctor swallowed, suddenly terrified.

  •••••••••

  Back in the office, Karli continued to contemplate Pamela, who also didn’t break her gaze. Finally, with a small, rather cruel smile, Karli interrupted the strained silence.

  “What if I told you that Grady is nearby and still walking the earth?”

  “I’d say you should have latex-cast his penis.”

  “A lesson for next time.”

  “So glad to be helpful.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Grady is still alive. Right.” Even when Pamela sneered, she did so prettily.

  “We got wind of the assassination attempt by Doyle’s organization and decided to use it as cover to pull Grady ourselves.”

  “The emails are not coded. I am not a secret agent. And I don’t believe you for one moment.”

  Karli anger was only barley suppressed, so that when the phone buzzed, she practically exploded from her seat. She slapped her hand down to answer it. “What?”

  Dwayne’s voice emanated from the small speaker. “Come to the lab. We’ve had a little trouble cleaning up the mess you left at the warehouse.”

  “Like you could have done any better,” Karli snapped, then she disengaged the speaker. Without speaking to Pamela, she crossed around the desk toward the hall door.

  Pamela seemed to be making Karli irate just by sitting primly cuffed to the chair. “Say hi to Grady for me,” she called after her.

  Karli slammed and then locked the door behind her as she left.

  Pamela, confused but still really angry, turned and stared after Karli through the hall windows as she passed from sight. Then she turned back to the desk. Even though one of her hands was still cuffed to the chair, she managed to turn the laptop around and toggle a few keys.

  The video from before began to play on screen. Grady leaned in to conspire with the camera. “Tonight is the night. Tonight I ask Pam to marry me. Val, mother-in-law to be, promise you’ll cut this all together one day for posterity?”

  “For you and Pamela, Grady? Anything. For the wedding.” Though Valerie couldn’t be seen on screen, her voice sounded very close to the microphone.

  “Yes! For the wedding. Now here’s the plan.” On screen, Grady fished a jewelry box out of his pocket and opened it to reveal an engagement ring — the same ring that had somehow stayed on Pamela’s left hand despite all that had happened today.

  Pamela, even more furious now, tapped the computer space bar and paused the DVD playback. Her cheeks rosy with suppressed anger, she looked more alive than she had all day.

  She stood with great determination, dragging the chair around the back of the desk. She would tear the room apart if she had to.

  First, she rooted through Karli’s desk a
nd found a letter opener in the middle drawer. Which was odd, because who actually used a letter opener these days? This one was engraved, but beyond seeing Karli’s name, Pamela wasn’t even remotely interested in reading it. She snapped the opener in two while jimmy the handcuffs.

  Next, Pamela crossed to the wardrobe, but only after she’d pulled out all the drawers of the desk and dumped their meager contents, mostly papers, on the floor. The wardrobe was full of nothing but lab coats and changes of impersonal clothing. Pamela, though not usually so catty, dragged the broken letter opener through two packages of brand new pantyhose.

  Finally, she tried the door beside the wardrobe. It was unlocked. The door swung open to reveal some sort of large storage area.

  •••••••••

  Pamela, still dragging the chair with her, wandered into the storeroom. Its multi-shelved walls held hundreds of white banker file boxes. The boxes ran alphabetically, each labeled with a name and reference number.

  Pamela scanned the row nearest her and quickly discovered her own name scrawled in thick black marker on a box. PAMELA ALEXANDER.

  Still hampered by the chair, she pulled the box down and placed it on the long metal table that sat in the middle of the room.

  She opened the box. It was stuffed full of her wedding dress. How someone had gotten the lid closed was a mystery to her. Her shoes were there as well. Without a breath of hesitation, Pamela pulled the dress out of the box and started to put it on.

  •••••••••

  Karli, her gun drawn, stepped into the examination room. “Dwayne?”

  Zombie Doyle’s body was still sprawled across the exam table.

  Karli moved deeper into the room, skirted the dead Doyle, and quickly discovered the body of the doctor. He was sprawled half propped up on the cabinets with a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. His eyes were glassy, but his skin had not taken on the gray of Doyle’s.

  “Fuck!” Karli tensely whispered under her breath. She eyed a second door across the room, which stood ajar and led to the doctor’s lab. The lights within were off, but the shadowy shapes of medical diagnostic equipment and long tables were clear. Karli, gun held ready, slid along the wall opposite the lab door and headed back the way she entered.

  Once facing the second door, she cautiously stepped forward. Her back was to the hall door.

  From the hall, Zombie Dwayne grabbed a handful of Karli’s luscious blonde hair and yanked her exposed neck to his nasty mouth. She shrieked and twisted from his grasp, just as his teeth scraped down her collar bone. He had her gun arm pinned to her side, too strong to easily shake off. She kneed him in the balls but it had no effect.

  As Zombie Dwayne leaned in for another neck bite, Karli dropped as if she’d suddenly fainted. This confused the creature, which took a moment to process that Karli was crawling toward the exit on her hands and knees. Zombie Dwayne, who’d kept ahold of Karli’s gun though he lost his grip on her, tossed the pistol away as he awkwardly flung himself through the door after Karli.

  She scrambled to her feet and ran.

  •••••••••

  In the storage room, Pamela struggled in vain to get a cap sleeve onto the arm still cuffed to the chair. In the end, she tucked the fabric under her arm instead, yanking on the back ties to tighten the bustier.

  Her box was now empty.

  Though covered in blood spatter, fir needles, dirt, and generally worse for wear, the outfit still pleased her. Pamela examined her wrists, and, with a knowing smile, she scratched off the latex that concealed her hardly healed suicide slash lines.

  Having finished restoring herself, Pamela crossed to the exit. Then she caught a glimpse of something in her peripheral vision and momentarily froze in disbelief.

  She pivoted slowly to face the opposite wall of boxes.

  A box labeled SPECIAL AGENT GRADY NOLAN AKA KEMP, with a reference number printed below, 8783-5683 C.A., sat on a middle shelf.

  Pamela seized Grady’s box and pulled it from the shelf. She turned, almost woodenly, and dropped the box on the table.

  Then she hesitated. She stared at the box. She reached a hand out but didn’t touch it. Then, with a sudden ferociousness, she ripped the lid off as if tearing off a Band-Aid.

  She pulled a dress shirt from the box and buried her face in it. It smelled like Grady. Then, for the first time since Grady’s death, Pamela cried.

  Sobbing, she pulled out and smelled more articles of clothing. In the back pocket of a pair of pants, she discovered a money clip. She remembered what Erwin had said. Clutching the clothing to her breast, she opened the clip and found the picture of herself.

  Still sobbing, Pamela began to smile. Hope spread across her face and throughout her body. Galvanized, she grabbed Grady’s box and dashed to the exit. She was still dragging the chair.

  •••••••••

  The DVD had begun to auto-play on the laptop. On the screen, Pamela, wearing a long skirt, twirled on a beach. Grady caught her by the wrists to join in her spin. Then he kissed her passionately.

  Pamela entered the office, crossed to the desk, slammed the laptop closed, and ripped it from its connection to the desk top computer. She shoved the laptop and the contents of Grady’s box into Karli’s bag, which was still hanging on the back of the chair.

  Turning to the main computer, Pamela opened a search window. Karli had signed in with her password when she’d attached the laptop to the desktop machine, which gave Pamela hope that she’d be able to find some very specific information.

  “Where have they got you, Grady?”

  Through the window to the corridor, a bloody and terrified Karli suddenly appeared at the office door. It was still locked. She banged on what turned out to be a sound proof window, and so didn’t manage to catch Pamela’s attention. Seemingly out of nowhere and incredibly quickly, Zombie Dwayne leaped on Karli and dragged her to the ground.

  Pamela looked up from the computer but saw nothing in the hall. She looked back at the computer and continued typing frantically.

  Karli twisted away from Dwayne, and in doing so, flailed a bloody handprint across the window. Dwayne grabbed for her again but slipped, in blood, as Karli fled.

  Pamela grabbed a random piece of paper from the desk. This happened to be an internal departmental memo with the subject line CEASE & DESIST UNAUTHORIZED EXPERIMENTAL TREATMENTS/INTERROGATIONS but Pamela didn’t bother to read it. She flipped the paper over and began to draw herself a map. It was an interior schematic of the building, copied from the map she’d pulled up on the computer screen.

  Once she was satisfied with her copy, she proceeded to attempt to rip the hard drive out of the main computer and add it to her bag. Except Karli’s computer tower thwarted all attempts to open it. Pamela, rather prettily pissed at this point, dragged the computer processor up onto her chair, and ripped out every cord attached to the back of the tower. No one was going to have copies of her and Grady’s love letters, not if she could somehow help it.

  She slung the satchel across her body, then, still dragging the chair and computer, headed for the door. She studied the map.

  Pausing as if just hit with a new thought, Pamela turned back to the wardrobe to check her appearance in the mirror. Oddly, if anything could be considered odd anymore given the events of the day, her makeup was still movie-star perfect. She ran a hand over her hair to smooth it. She didn’t have the time or the tools to replicate the French twist, but at least her hair was shiny clean.

  Then she turned back to the door. It was still locked.

  Pamela stepped back, set the computer on the ground, picked up the chair, and, averting her face, smashed it against the window. It bounced. She swung the chair again and again. The tempered glass spiderwebbed, and then shattered.

  Pamela placed the computer processor on the chair, wheeled the chair next to the window, and climbed onto it. Noticing the bloodstain on the nearby, still intact, w
indow, she glanced around the empty hallway with a frown.

  Satisfied she was in the clear, she carefully climbed through into the hall beyond. Then she reached back to pull the computer and the chair through. Glass crunched underneath her shoes as she walked, heading in the direction that her map told her was farther into the building.

  •••••••••

  As she made her way carefully along her chosen route, referencing the map only occasionally, Pamela noticed something odd almost at once.

  All along the corridor, the doors to the cells stood open.

  Nearing one cell, she carefully lifted the chair for a moment to keep it silenced. Pamela looked inside to see a Zombie Prisoner feasting on a dead guard. At least at first glance, it seemed like the zombie was dressed as a patient and that the dead man wore some sort of uniform.

  “Oh!” Pamela cried.

  The zombie, her face smeared with blood, looked up at Pamela with a grimace. She clacked her teeth.

  “Excuse me.” Pamela took a step back and politely closed the door to the cell. She was more than a little dismayed, but completely unsure of what she’d just interrupted.

  Inside, the zombie flung herself at the door with a wail of frustration. The creature twisted the handle futilely, pounding on the door.

  Pamela wandered farther down the hall, her attention now firmly focused on the map. Determination had cut through her pain and suffering. She checked door numbers as she passed. Her pace quickened as she anticipated her goal.

  There.

  Grady’s cell.

  Pamela flung open the door. The cell was empty. Her smile faded.

  She stepped back and contemplated the long hall she’d just traversed. Then she stuffed the map in her bag and continued onward.

  •••••••••

  Passing along yet another hall that looked exactly the same as each earlier hall, Pamela and her chair turned a corner. Unlike the earlier halls, this one wasn’t empty, however.

  Before she even registered his presence, Zombie Dwayne had pinned her against the rough concrete wall. His teeth gnashed toward her neck.