This Mortal Coil (9 page)

Willem’s magnificent, marvelous instrument raced wildly to the shrieking of the bone saw above him. He had been carefully exploring the extent to which he could make his muscles respond throughout Dr. Morgenstern’s unhinged monologue. Unfortunately, this was limited to little more than a twitching toe here, a flex of the finger there. Now he had only precious seconds before Dr. Morgenstern began unscrewing his skullcap.

It was, in the doctor’s own words,
a powerful external stimulus
.

A charge of current shot down Willem’s spine, reanimating the nerve-endings that flowed like tributaries throughout his body. All at once, the life flowed back into his extremities, powered by a torrent of adrenaline and a spark of the divine.

With the bone saw mere inches from contact with his forehead, his eyes snapped into sudden focus. Dr. Morgenstern froze, his jaw dropping to allow for a gasp that never came. Before he could cry out or protest, Willem seized a No. 10 scalpel from the instrument tray, thrusting up into his throat just beneath the chin. He put every ounce of muscle he could muster behind the strike, the blade passing easily through Morgenstern’s fleshy wattle and the thick mass of his tongue before lodging deep within the soft palate of the mouth. Dr. Morgenstern gurgled and clawed at his throat as he staggered backward. Absent his grip, the saw clattered loudly to the floor, skittering madly and squealing its disapproval as it set about scarring and otherwise pulverizing the room’s immaculate tiling.

In a vain attempt to sound the alarm, Dr. Morgenstern sidestepped the saw, taking three shuffling steps toward the intercom across the room. What exactly he intended to do with his mouth stuck shut, Willem couldn’t say. Not that it mattered. He barely made it halfway before he collapsed, coming to rest in the pool of blood streaming copiously from both his mouth and throat.

Willem took quick stock of the situation, coming to three immediate conclusions. The first was that he needed to shut off that fucking bone saw before it attracted unwanted attention. Second, he needed a weapon and something to cover himself. Any of the scalpels close at hand were sufficient to the task, so he contented himself with the longest-handled of them and moved to strip Dr. Morgenstern of his blood-soaked coat. Last, but certainly not least, he needed to find Theresa and the others.

Or what’s left of them,
he thought grimly.

Things came to a head quickly after he emerged from the room. Standing in the middle of a long corridor, he was unsure which way to proceed until a blood-curdling cry drew him to his left. Willem clutched at the bloodied lapels of his coat with one hand, holding the scalpel before him with the other. He had just taken a tentative step toward the source of the scream when Theresa barreled out of the room and into the hall beside him. She was breathing heavily and streaked with blood, naked as the day she was...

What
are
we exactly?
he wondered.
Born? Hatched? Grown in suspended animation in some luminescent ooze?

Whatever the case, the effect was shocking, to say the least.

“Oh, hey, Will,” she said, cocking her head and baring her teeth in a feral smile when she saw him standing there. They were stained crimson along with her lips, chin, and cheeks. She must have come to just in time to tear out the throat of whatever poor bastard had been assigned to examine her. “Hmm. That’s not a bad idea.” Before he could ask what she meant, she disappeared back into the room. She reemerged a moment later, wearing a coat that looked more like it belonged to an especially sloppy butcher than a doctor. In her hand, she clutched a scalpel of her own. “Alright, so what’s the plan?”

“The plan is we find the others and get the fuck out of here, that’s what.”

“That’s a good plan,” she agreed. “Let’s get to it.”

They decided to keep going left, Willem walking point while Theresa watched their backs. Nearing the end of the hall, they heard a sudden rush of footsteps coming their way. Willem tightened his grip on the long-handled scalpel, steeling himself to strike as the source of the steps rounded the corner. The sudden appearance of a familiar face brought him up just short of burying the scalpel in the young man’s neck.

“Lucas!”

Head whipping around, Lucas nearly jumped out of his skin at the sight of the scalpel. He breathed only slightly easier when he recognized Willem and Theresa behind it, though their gore-streaked coats and bodies remained cause for concern. “Holy
shit
, what happened to you guys?! Are you alright?”

“We’re fine. What’s going on?”

“When the pulse didn’t work on me they realized I wasn’t one of you. Something about the chips in your heads. They questioned me but I managed to convince them I was your hostage and just playing it cool, y’know, coyly leading you here, whatever. The point is, they left me unguarded in the operations centers, and when the guy turned his back on me, I clubbed him with a fire extinguisher. After that I managed to find a frequency out and send a distress call. That was a few minutes ago, so it shouldn’t be long now—”

Before Lucas could finish, a section of the wall he had just run past exploded, collapsing inwardly with a rain of vaporized concrete and dust. A chorus of klaxons sounded as a heavily armed team of commandos stormed through the breach. The commandos ordered the three of them to their knees as a second and third team fanned out to secure the facility. Several minutes later the klaxons ceased. They had taken the operations center.

With the facility secured, the lead man in charge stepped into the hall. Ringed by several large men in bulky armor with even larger weapons fanned in every direction, he introduced himself as Captain Bartholomew Swain. “So, which one of you called this mess in?”

Lucas raised his hand.

“Nice job, son,” Captain Swain said, clapping him on the shoulder. “We weren’t even aware this sector was still active after the Culling. You’re just lucky we had an extraction team nearby.” Looking from Lucas to Willem and Theresa, he added, “These the people you mentioned?”

Lucas nodded. “Yeah, they’re with me.”

“Alright, let’s get moving then! We’ve got a lot of debriefing ahead of us. And clothes. I expect you two will be wanting some clothes.” He eyed them warily, Theresa in particular.

Hustling out of the building under heavy guard, Willem, Theresa, Lucas, and Captain Swain were ushered aboard a waiting helicopter. Across the yard, Joseph, Dr. Valda, and several others were being taken into custody.

“What about the others?” Theresa asked the commando strapping her into her seat. “Are they still alive? What happened to them?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the commando said. As if on cue, several of his comrades emerged from the building in pairs, black body bags full of dead weight clutched between them. “We did everything in our power to revive them. They were just too far gone.”

As terrible as the news was, the sight of all those body bags was even worse. Crestfallen, Theresa sank into her seat. She couldn’t help thinking of the others who had been freed from this mortal coil with equal measures pity and envy. They were monsters, each and every one of them, the perverse product of the human condition run amok. How she and Willem were supposed to reconcile the fact that they alone had survived, only to have to endure the horrible shared truth of their existence, she simply didn’t know.

With the four of them secured, the commando stepped back, twirling his finger above his head. Soon they were airborne once again.

Watching Theresa stare out the window at the dwindling figures and tiny black specks below, Willem couldn’t help reflecting on that first night together in the alley, how hopelessly alone and confused he had felt. Already it seemed a lifetime ago. When she looked back from the window, he reached out, offering her his hand. She took it gratefully, lacing her bloodied fingers through his own. It didn’t make either of them feel any less like abominations against god and man, but it was a start.

AFTERWORD

Thank you for reading this story! I truly hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please consider reviewing it on Amazon. It doesn’t have to be long, just twenty words at the bare minimum. Reviews (even short ones!) are extremely important for independent authors such as myself, and also for readers deciding whether to invest time and money in a new story.
 

I have a special place in my heart for this story, mainly because it’s the first piece of long-form fiction I ever finished. I originally wrote it over the course of a few months in early 2012, during the difficult transition from writing nonfiction to fiction. I had already started and abandoned two novels midstream and was questioning whether I should keep on or cut my losses and go back to writing nonfiction, even though I no longer had the same passion for it.

I decided to give fiction one last shot, but with a novella instead of a full-blown novel. When I finished the first version of
This Mortal Coil
, I was happy just to have seen a project through to completion. I never gave any thought to publishing it anywhere but my own personal website, where maybe half a dozen very patient friends and family members read it before I eventually took it down and filed it away. It was only when I happened upon it several months ago and mentioned it on Twitter that a handful of author friends encouraged me to publish it. Several more deep edits and partial rewrites later, the end result is what you’ve just read. Once again, I hope you enjoyed it and will take a few minutes to let future readers know if you did. Thanks, and please keep supporting independent authors!

LTS

March 2014

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, thank you to everyone who reads this story for supporting independent authors. Without you, the act of writing isn’t exactly pointless, but it certainly loses a great deal of its charm. I love hearing from readers, so please, stop by my website at
loganthomassnyder.com
or have at me on Twitter at
twitter.com/Logantarian
.
 

Thanks, too, to Charles Brand, an early beta reader of this novella who offered many valuable insights.

Last but not least, thanks to Ann Christy and Will Swardstrom for encouraging me to revisit and publish this strange little story. Left to my own devices, I’m not sure it would have seen the light of day. Whether that’s good or bad remains to be seen, but I appreciate the nudge nonetheless.