The Livormortis Womb (Part Fifteen)
Tags: Fiction, Crime, America, War, Novel

Leon draws back in revulsion and fear. “I don’t want to be anywhere close to a dead man. Why can’t I stay in the cell where you put me in the first place?”

“Because we still have to protect you,” answers Keogh. “They can take shots at the window and have a bullet come straight into that cell. You’re better protected in the giant’s cell.”

“Why can’t you move the corpse out of his cell and into the other one so I don’t have ta be ‘round him?”

“Have you tried moving a dead four-hundred-pound giant? It’ll take more time that we have. While you and Reno were outside, we put him in a body-bag and it took a hell of a long time to get him into it. It was a hell of a tight fit. He’s going to stay in there and there’s nothing we can do about it until this thing’s over with. You’re going to have to be with him or get shot. It’s your choice.”

Leon doesn’t need much time to think about it.

“All right — all right,” he says.

“He’s inna body-bag anyways,” says Benteen. “He ain’t gonna jump out at you. Be thankful that y’er not in it with him. While we confront that mob outside, you getta relax on a comfy slab and keep your head down.”

Leon turns and hobbles towards the giant’s cell.

“And while y’er at it,” says Benteen, “pray to Jesus that we don’t all get snuffed.”

“Sure.”

6:35 am

An orange-blue light flickers through the small, rectangular plexiglass next to the entrance. Then, a hollow, deafening thud jounces the closed door leading to the hallway.

BOOM!

The thud shakes the computers and copiers in the processing room. Hard drives, monitors, printers, pens and pencils, microwave and chairs shudder.

“RPGs?” Keogh shouts to Leon. “Did you say they have RPGs?”

“Bazookas,” Leon answers, facing Keogh just outside the giant’s cell. “I said bazookas. I saw one of ’em carry something that looked like a grey pipe. He stood right next to the guy with the beret who talked with your colleague.”

“How many did you see?”

“Just one.”

Keogh turns to Benteen.

“I think we can withstand an attack from one RPG, but not more than that. Maybe your idea about surrender might be worth a try if we hear another bang like that.”

“Maybe,” says Benteen as he spits tobacco flecks caught between his lips.

“What I’m scared about is whether they’ll accept surrender once we resist. They might have fired into our building just to scare us. That could be their only round.”

“It’s a gamble,” says Benteen.

“You can’t surrender,” says Leon.

Benteen smirks, a smarmy grin that telegraphs that he thinks Leon’s life is shit anyway; he matters for nothing and his death would improve the world.

“If they take this place,” Leon says, “they’ll kill me.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” says Keogh, “but — ”

“They’ll kill me for being Semiahmoo. They’ll shoot me for not being white. I heard them call your colleague a spik. Someone yelled it at him. They wanted to kill him because he was a Mexican.”

“Maybe,” says Benteen.

“Maybe?!” Leon says, his large eyes exposing white sclera, near-mad with fear. Suddenly, his face is sallow. He forgets the agony radiating from his shoulders and hand.

He fights the temptation to faint, but his peripheral vision becomes dim. Twinkles flash in his retinas. He collapses. The back of his head bounces once off the hard-tiled floor. His eyes roll back. His arms sprawl wide like the beams of a crucifix. His mouth opens and he gurgles.

“I ain’t draggin his ass,” says Benteen. “I’m too worn out from shovin’ that nigger in the body-bag.”

7:00 am

To Leon, it seems like he’d been on the floor for just a short time. Spots of light flash under his eyelids. As he opens his eyes and sits up, a shock shoots from the base of his skull to the crown of his head. In combination with the renewed pain-waves from his shoulder and his hand, it is more than he can bear. They not only throb but pulse, growing more acute with every beat of his heart. His body works with the fury of an army to deliver needed red and white blood cells to combat the microbes infesting his wounds.

They’re gone. They left me alone.

At first, he’s angry.

Why the hell didn’t they help me? Those bastards! They left me to die!

The prospect of armed militants surging into the processing room forces Leon to rise from the floor.

He gets onto his knees, crouching below the lower edge of the rectangular plexiglass window, making sure that no one on the other side can see him. He moves to the concrete wall next to the frame. He peeks above the pane and sees nothing but the gloom of an unlit hallway. Clouds of smoke billow outside the processing room like an evil, amorphous spirit. A thin layer of soot coats the glass, obscuring his view.

The electricity’s out.

He hears Keogh and Benteen. The glass mutes their words, but something in his mind tells him to resist the temptation to call out for them.

They could be the crazies, thinks Leon. I’ve got to block the door.

Leon’s brain knows that stuffing objects and sliding office furniture to stifle the door’s opening would delay the militants’ entry by mere moments, but his adrenaline-addled brain fails to conjure a better solution.

He climbs upon his aching feet and stumbles behind the desk closest to him — the one supporting a fax machine, computer monitor, keyboard and hard drive. Because his shoulder and hand hurt still, he decides to use the muscles of his legs and buttocks as leverage.

Leon takes deep breaths, knowing that to move it even a few inches would require superhuman effort.

You got to do this or you’ll die! he thinks.

Leon pushes against the heavy desk’s edge but fails to move it. The soles of his tennis shoes slip on the linoleum and give way, squealing.

“Damn it,” he says.

He tries to budge it again but can’t; it’s hopeless. The desk is too heavy.

They’re coming to kill me. When they see me, they’ll shoot me through the glass.

Tears well in the canthuses of his eyes. Leon feels as if God Himself designed this moment, as if He authored all the bad that happened to him this day — that He sent the agents to discover his whereabouts, arrest, interrogate and injure him — only to be murdered by a group of power-crazed vigilantes.

“I’m dead,” he says, the words tinged with fatalism rather than despair.

The tears begin to flow. Then, he weeps. His sniffles are soft, almost asthmatic.

“Shit,” he says. “I’m going to die.”

Will they shoot me like they did the agent outside? Will they stab me? Burn me? Bury me alive? Will they make me dig my own grave? Torture me?

Will I beg for my life?

I will. I will get down on my knees and beg them for mercy — tell them that I have nothing to do with their war — tell them that I’m Canadian.

Leon thinks better of that, believing that it will give them more cause to put a bullet into his head.

Suddenly, the urge to pray comes to Leon’s distressed mind. He puts his hands together and rests them against his lips. He whispers: What do I do, God? What do I do?

A thought comes to mind that is not his own, like that of someone transmitting words through an invisible microphone implanted in his head. He feels the words rather than hears them: Hide.

Leon pauses for a moment, wondering if he was going crazy.

Hide, the voice in his head says again. This time, he feels the words not only in his head, but also in the muscles and sinews of his stomach.

Hide.

“Where?” Leon whispers.

Hiiide. Craaawl.

“Where?” Leon asks again. “Under the desk? A coat? In a closet?”

Crawl. Warm. Warm. Safe and warm.

“I don’t understand,” he whispers. He rubs his temples, as if fighting to keep a toehold on sanity.

Warm. Warm. Safe and warm. Warm. Warm. Safe and warm.

Looking around in the darkened room, Leon sees the shape of the heavy desk — the immovable, beautiful slab of polished wood — and thinks better of it.

That’s the first place they’ll check, he thinks.

Leon scans to his left and sees a row of lockers screwed to the concrete wall.

They’ll rummage through those.

Leon turns to his direct right. Both cell doors remain open. Neither Benteen nor Keogh closed them before leaving.

That’d be my tomb, he thinks. The giant and me.

Crawl inside. Crawl inside. Warm. Warm. Safe and warm.

“In there?” Leon murmurs.

Warm. Safe.

Leon gazes into the dark cell where the agents placed the dead giant and it all becomes clear to him. He can’t see the giant lying on the concrete floor because of the lack of light, but he knows he’s there.

Safe. Warm.

Leon crawls to the cell’s entrance on his knees. His eyes adjust to the sinister darkness and he focuses on the large, silver body-bag. To Leon, the bag seems like an enormous metallic whale’s tongue. There is a bulge in the middle of the bag in the shape of a mountain top.

That must be his stomach, thinks Leon.

He imagines how difficult it must have been for the agents to tuck and push the giant’s huge frame into such a confined space. The agents bent and shoved the giant’s knees and elbows until he fit. Zipping it up must have been a delicate task. The giant’s girth could have split the vinyl fibers holding the zipper.

Warm. Warm. Safe and warm.

Then, the voice in Leon’s mind ceases repeating the mantra. The sense of calm disappears with it. His wounded hand begins to tremble again.

It’s early morning and the street lamps are still on. Through the windows, their lights cast a soft, yellow glow. The militants cast shadows that run on the walls.

His acclimated, sensitive ears pick up angry voices yelling down the hallway: “Cover the fuckin’ sides! I’m almost in!”

Firecracker reports resound throughout the corridor outside.

POP! POP! POP! — POP! POP! POP!

Bullets hit the room’s steel door, producing a non-metrical series of pings like the sound like hail pelting a tin roof.

Then . . . BOOM!

An explosion shakes floor. The blast sucks some of the air out the processing room and Leon’s lungs. An intense flash of orange and blue light through the hallway window blinds him. It hurts his retinas; stars splash across his vision.

Benteen screams: “They got me! They got me!”

“Keep up the fire!” shouts Keogh. “I need cover, damn it or this thing won’t work!”

“I can’t see! I can’t see a fucking thing!”

Leon trembles with fear. This doesn’t sound promising.

He springs to the desk, dizzy and anxious. His good hand gropes the desk’s surface for something — anything to protect him from the militants. Instinct tells him that the two agents won’t last for much longer.

He has only moments to come up with a plan to save himself.

Keogh continues to bark commands: “Keep ’em back, you fuck!”

Leon doesn’t hear Benteen answer.

Leon hears more gun reports.

POP! POP! POP!

Leon gropes for objects, anything that he could use to defend himself.

I’ll use a pen if I have to.

He grips a stapler and tosses it aside. Then, he feels the sharp tip of a familiar tool that pricks his index finger. It doesn’t jolt him. The throbbing pain in his hand and shoulder dulls his nerves. His probing fingers feel a steel loop at its end.

He grips it and brings it close to his face so he could confirm what it is: Scissors!

He grips them and looks up and around, scanning the dim light to see if there are any approaching shadows. Nothing comes, but he hears someone screaming orders. It’s not Keogh’s voice, but that of the bereted man, Commander Spencer: “Cover him while they go inside!”

Automatic weapons fire sprays lead down the hallway.

POP! POP! POP! — POP! POP! POP!

Light flickers through the window and underneath the processing room’s door, illuminating the scissors that flash like silver cobra’s teeth.

What do I do now?

Leon wants the inner voice to return. He needs instruction, but it doesn’t come.

“Safe and warm?” he asks in a tremulous tone.

No answer comes.

Moments later, the sparkles in his eyes diminish and he is able to make out the dark silhouettes inside the processing room — the lifeless grey computer monitors, desks, keyboards and opened detention cell doors. There is nothing better, sharper or heavier than the scissors. He stares into the obscurity of the cell where the dead giant lies. Leon wonders if the body is in full rigor. He doesn’t know much about the anatomy of death. He ponders if the giant’s eyes remain open, whether its mouth is agape or if it stinks.

His stomach protests at the thought. His mouth waters, preparing to vomit.

Leon crawls his way back to the giant’s cell. His good hand gropes the cold, rigid doorframe. The giant’s body lies just a few feet away. He shimmies the scissors, tips down, between his belt and the lip of his grimy jeans. Gathering his bearings from the doorframe, Leon creeps to the body-bag. He steadies himself like a three-legged dog.

Keep it together! Leon thinks. Don’t get scared. Everybody dies. It’s natural. It happens to everybody and it’ll happen to you someday.

The last thought causes Leon’s heart of skip a beat. He swallows a nervous gob of spit.

But not today.

Leon’s attempt at self-reassurance works and he feels a little better.

“Crawl inside,” he says.

Leon takes a deep breath before allowing his trembling hand to grace the cold polyurethane fabric. His fingers glide over the taut mound to find the zipper.

Leon presses down on the lower part of the bag where he knows the giant’s feet are. Leon feels the firm camber of his massive legs.

“It’s only a shell,” he repeats. “It’s only a shell. It’s only a shell.”

Still, he’s unable to find the zipper.

“Damn it,” he whispers. “Where are you?”

Leon pets the opposite side of the bag, towards the top and discovers an inch-long aluminum lip. It jangles as his fingers nudge it. He pinches it and pulls it down towards the middle of the giant’s torso. It resists a quarter of the way down, catching vinyl fibers in its metal teeth. He tugs harder and it gives way, protesting with a whine until stopping at the zenith of the giant’s belly.

He doesn’t remember the giant’s abdomen being so fat when he was alive. He was more muscular than corpulent.

It’s gas building up in his guts, he thinks.

He reaches underneath the vinyl folds and touches the cotton fibers of the dead giant’s shirt. It is stretched tight around the buttons. Leon taps his stomach with his finger. It emits a dull, hollow thud that sounds like a tom-tom drum.

PUMB-PUMB!

It sickens him.

From the booms and the increasing clatter of the machine guns outside, Leon knows that Keogh and Benteen won’t be able to hold out much longer.

Time is short.

Leon tugs on the zipper until it reaches the giant’s knees. He places his right foot inside the bag, where the giant’s thighs part slightly. He sees that there isn’t sufficient space for him.

He tries nonetheless.

He succeeds in getting most of his lower right leg within the bag. The toe of his shoe meets the sole of the giant’s boot. He presses against it, but it will not move because the giant’s feet stretch the body-bag’s fabric to the point of rupture.

“No,” he says.

To steady himself, Leon hand palms the giant’s stomach; he’s surprised that the body radiates warmth still. He balances while attempting to wheedle his right leg into the bag. The press of Leon’s hand against the giant’s stomach forces it to expel noxious gas through the mouth and nostrils. Leon hears a groan emitting from the giant’s lips: “Uuuuhhhhh.”

It startles Leon; he jumps back.

The giant isn’t moving, but Leon smells something horrid. An acidic stink floats up from the giant’s mouth. It is the rotting, undigested remains of the giant’s last meal. It smells like the dead squirrels that he’d play with as a child.

Leon wants to puke, but dry heaves instead. He’s thankful that he’s had nothing to eat. He takes a deep breath and holds it, not wanting to smell anymore of the acrid reek.

Then, he inserts his right leg into the bag again. His calves press against those of the giant. There is no give. There is no room. Out of frustration, he jams his leg in, wanting to force a fit, but the effort fails.

“Shit!”

He wrests his leg out of the body-bag and notices that he still has his shoes on. He curses himself and pries off both shoes, tossing them towards the toilet. They land behind it with a bang. Then, he tries to fit once more — and again, he fails.

He fights to maintain control of his demeanor as his breathing becomes shallow.

Wha’d am I gonna do? How the hell am I going to get inside?

Ricocheting bullets ping against the processing room door. One punches through the reinforced glass of the window. The noise sends Leon sprawling for cover behind the toilet’s partition. Minute crystals scatter about the floor like leaping diamonds.

The blasts outside are thunderous. Nothing muffles them.

BOOM! — BOOM! — BOOM!

They’ll be here in within minutes. I can’t crawl inside the bag! I can’t! I can’t! There’s no room!

Frustration gives way to despair. He punches his legs over and over again, driving his knuckles into his thighs. He begins to cry, but not aloud.

Mulling over what the inner voice said previously gives him pause.

“Crawl inside?” he asks himself in a dejected voice.

Crawl inside, says the voice within Leon’s head, calm and comforting.

“How?” says Leon. “I don’t know what to do.”

Crawl inside, says the voice again.

“How?”

Crrraaawwwlll Iiinnnsssiiiddde.

Leon stares into a grey void before him, past the giant’s body. His heart thrashes inside his chest. Spots flash before his eyes. His hands are shambling mits.

He dips a hesitant toe into the colorless abyss-pool of insanity. From within his fevered mind, he knows now what he must do. It makes him freeze, as if in a trance.

Leon doesn’t mean to imagine what comes to his mind. It’s as if an invisible force inside his brain is rewiring his synapses, showing him crude still life pictures tinged yellow like slides through an antique projector.

Leon begins to hallucinate.

A Matryoshka doll stands before him.

At first, the doll’s form is nebulous and black. His mind’s vision clears up and it’s the dead giant smiling at him. The grin is not evil, but soothing — reassuring.

Leon is not afraid.

The giant’s massive arms rest at his sides. Placing both hands over his belly, he begins to rub in a circular motion. Then, his fingers morph into tiger’s claws. He tears into the cotton of his blue shirt, exposing skin like polished ebony.

(to be continued . . .)