“Where is your men’s room, please? I have to piss like a donkey,” he asked, adding his crass remark to make himself seem more unstable.
“I’ll take him, Sonya,” the woman’s partner butted in, looking just as convincing as she was. “And then we have to get going, alright?”
“Absolutely,” she agreed and gave the reception clerk a tap on the hand to assert her role. “I’ll wait here,” she said, looking right at Sam, grasping the object under her jacket, “with this kind lady until you both come back.”
It was a message Sam got loud and clear, but he honestly did not want to take responsibility for the safety of the staff as well. Unlike his usual protectiveness and sacrifice, Sam felt that this time would be the last time if he did not start looking out for himself. His plan was simple. In the men’s restroom, he would overpower the hitman and escape. How, he did not know yet.
“Come on, then,” he complained with a sneer. “I haven’t got all goddamn day.”
Approaching the sterile white stench of the restrooms with the eager assassin breathing down his neck, the doctor’s words came to Sam at once. Sewer leakage! And now it made sense. Just to the right of the toilet cubicles a door was cordoned off with plastic hazard tape, accompanied by a small printed sign, roughly typed out by one of the administration staff members.
No Entry.
Plumbing repairs.
Apologies for the inconvenience
Sam made sure that his malignant guard did not see him scrutinizing the parameters of the room, measuring the distance to the off-limits door.
“Smart move, Cleave,” the man told Sam in a heavy accent Sam could not place at all. “But you’ve already wasted too much of our time this morning.”
As predicted, he tugged at the sidearm at his short rib, giving Sam the green light to strike. The scarred and muscled journalist was surprisingly tough opponent for the trained combatant, but ultimately Sam did not have the training and precision of the meticulous killer. At the sight of the man’s weapon Sam instinctively did what Purdue’s former bodyguard, Calisto, taught him once. He did not try to take the gun from his assailant, but instead he delivered a hefty jab to the man’s gun-wielding forearm, fracturing his radius effectively.
“Jesus!” the man cried as his hand opened up to inadvertently let go of the gun. With his other hand, he grabbed at his forearm, a reflex he came to regret. In momentary response to his injury, he bent forward where Sam’s right knee came up under his chin. As the assassin staggered back, Sam grabbed his firearm and went straight for the door. But the attacker was upon him before he could reach the doorknob, striking Sam hard with a fist to the spine. With a yelp, Sam hit the floor, unable to move his left leg from the nerve damage sustained on impact. This man was not someone Sam could fight hand to hand, he realized.
The firearm was like nothing he had ever used, or even seen, before. It had no safety catch and no trigger.
“What the fu…?” Sam groaned.
“Don’t play with toys you can’t handle, Cleave,” the attacker growled as he drew a small device from his pocket. Sam had no idea what the deal with the gun was, only that an inscription on its butt spelled out Baphomet X in what looked like crude ivory. That was all Sam could see before the item exploded in his hand, plummeting him into a tumultuous hell of heat and oblivion.
13
Mysteries in the Mist
At the personal cost of Dr. Hooper and Dr. Victor, Nina took an early flight the next day to London. The two colleagues asked the historian not to disclose any information they had given her, including the reasons for her trip — at least not until they’d ascertained what, or whom, they were dealing with.
Nina was glad of the distraction, because she felt things dwindling unnecessarily between her and Sam since he was apparently refusing to switch on his phone. After receiving numerous notifications of missed calls from him, Nina had tried to call back to make peace. Finding that his number was unavailable left her somewhere between angry and sad, but played bewilderment right down the middle.
Such a small vexation between them was now becoming the foundation for mind games, it appeared, since Sam’s erratic reactions caused her to doubt their closeness. Why would he call her so many times, knowing that she couldn’t answer while traveling? Surely he wouldn’t be childish enough to see her non-responsiveness as a line in the ground, opting for war?
He was more intelligent, more logically minded, than that. But she figured not having his phone on gave her some hint of their crumbling relationship. At least a day or two working in England, away from Sam, would divert her emotions from the inexplicable change in her friend’s demeanor. Nina took a taxi to Upney Lane, but it did not save her from getting her dark locks wet in the persistent drizzle that hazed over the buildings and cars. From the window of the taxi, the entire world looked like a ghost town and pedestrians moving along the pavement looked like lost souls, wandering.
Nina wondered what the two medical examiners could have come upon that merited her attention and expertise, especially the request to be most discreet. What she did not look forward to, however, was seeing cadavers, especially after the medical examiner on the phone had disclosed their cause of death.
I don’t know if I could handle mangled corpses. Not today. That is the very word he used. Mangled. Christ! she thought as her taxi stopped in front of the state of the art public morgue. Through the white misty veil, she could read the name — Nirvana Public Morgue. “Nirvana. That’s a laugh,” she muttered as she passed the driver his fee in a thinly rolled note. “Thank you.” Nina stepped out of the car, hardly able to see a few meters ahead of her. Straining her eyes to watch where she was going, Nina had no idea what her surroundings looked like, save for a barbwire gate fixed with a rusty sign that designated a parking area to her right.
In her fertile imagination, she envisioned the stumbling frames of walking dead people emerging from the mist all about her. Her pace quickened toward the main entrance at the thought. Aye, and you are walking toward the dead people, did you know? she teased herself.
From nowhere a thunderous screech of metal on metal assaulted her ears. It radiated out of white obscurity, crashing through the peaceful environment with a harsh clacking that frightened Nina to near death.
“Jesus Christ!” she squealed in terror, her knees buckling at the terrible sound that seemed to come from all directions. She teetered sideways in her physical reaction to the fright, spraining her ankle between the concrete slab of the walkway and the well-kept lawn adjacent to it. A loud crack affirmed her pain as she fell to the wet grass.
Hands came from the whiteness, grabbing at her and Nina felt her heart explode with fear as dark shapes emerged around her. Mute with terror, she soon realized that it was not a gang of London zombies trying to tear her limb from limb, but staff from the morgue trying to help her up.
“Don’t step on that foot, Miss,” a young man advised as he propped her up against his body. A female assistant was picking up Nina’s travel bag and another man, older and more distinguished, gently took hold of her other arm to alleviate the weight on her ankle.
“I am so sorry, Dr. Gould,” he apologized as they helped Nina inside. “I’m afraid you fell victim to old Eighty-Eight Black, a freight train carrying coal on the line behind the building here. Makes a right racket.” He sighed laboriously, looking at the lawn. “The cement is wet and a bit elevated. Always causes problems for visitors who don’t know the place, and the mist always makes things even worse.”