Abomination (4 page)

With his team behind him and time running out before
things were going to get loud, Ryan quietly opened the door. A staircase was
revealed leading down to the basement. As he placed his foot on the first step,
the light intensified as if a lantern were turned up to maximum brightness. All
four agents reached up and slid their NVGs to the top of their helmets. They
were nearing the bottom of the stairwell when they heard a woman’s voice.

“I’ll do anything you want me to do,” she said,
surprisingly calm. “I promise. Anything. Please just don’t kill me. I won’t
tell anyone.”

“I wish I could stop myself,” said Arrington, in a
surprisingly emotional voice. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“What’s happening to your face?” asked the bound woman.
“Oh, my God!”

Ryan hit the last step and raised his weapon towards the
voices. In the far corner about twenty yards across the expanse of a wide open
room, Arrington was leaning over the victim who was lying in a bed, bound to
the posts. At first glance, it looked to Ryan as if he was kissing her cheek.
But she began screaming in agony.

“FBI! Show me your hands!” yelled Ryan, moving in
closer. The scene was confusing to the agents. The woman was screaming, but the
Marine’s hands were visible and he wasn’t holding a weapon; he wasn’t choking
her; he wasn’t hitting her. At that distance, it still only looked like he was
kissing the side of her face.

“Arrington! Back away from her and show me your
fucking…”

The instant Ryan saw the blood erupt from the side of
her neck he fired three rounds into Arrington’s ribcage. The killer’s face was
too close to the girl for a clean headshot. The Marine tensed his body as the
bullets drilled through skin and bone. Dallas also fired a three-round burst
into Arrington’s back.

In an inhumanly fast and fluid motion, the monster
nearly decapitated his victim with what could only be described as claws on a
grossly disfigured hand. With his other hand he easily hurled the large
king-sized bed at the agents with the victim still tied to the posts. Each dove
in a different direction as the bed slammed into the wall behind them. Before
they could regain their senses, Arrington was flying up the stairs.

Bravo team had already made entry and was moving through
the upstairs hall from the front door when all hell broke loose in the
basement. Arrington’s momentum propelled him into the wall at the top of the
stairs. The lead agent on Bravo team immediately opened fire drilling more
bullets into his body. He turned away from the intense gunfire and exploded
through the back door and right into Charlie team’s advance.

Arrington ran over the first agent; he was the lucky
one. The Marine lashed out and tore through the second agent’s throat with his
clawed hand. A geyser of blood sprayed several feet from the cavernous wound.
The doomed man spun several times like a rag doll before dropping dead on the
ground. The third in line was powerless to stop the thrust of Arrington’s hand
punching deep into his abdominal cavity. He was propelled nearly 15 feet before
stopping and bleeding out in seconds. The fourth agent stood his ground and
continuously fired his weapon into the monster who quickly turned away from the
determined shooter.

The dozens of bullets already inside Arrington managed
to slow him down to normal human speed, but he was still able to run towards
the open field. One of the countless bullets Charlie and Bravo teams were
firing at the killer finally severed his spinal cord. The monster dropped only
twenty feet from the cornfield that may have offered him an escape. He pushed
himself up with his arms and tried to crawl away from his pursuers. As the lead
agent on Bravo team approached, Arrington’s head exploded like a watermelon
being smashed with a sledgehammer. The impact was so violent that it caused the
agents in pursuit to hit the deck; a sniper would be claiming the kill shot.

Ryan and Dallas bolted through the back door seconds
after Arrington fell. Tom and Michelle, who were trained medics, stayed with
the victim in the basement. A few agents were still on the ground after the
sniper shot. Ryan and Dallas kept their weapons aimed at the headless corpse as
they approached.

“Bravo and Charlie, do not approach the target,” ordered
Ryan. “Check on the downed agents. I don’t want you to re-enter the house
either. We’ll clear the rest of the rooms.”

Nobody spoke as Ryan gave instructions. They were all
baffled on how the Marine took dozens of rounds and stayed on his feet. They
were also baffled on how he managed to nearly decapitate one agent and punch a
fist-sized hole in the abdomen of another; it was obvious they both died
instantly. Ryan and Dallas knelt beside Arrington’s body after they were
convinced he was truly dead.

“Look at his hands,” said Dallas, observing the long
fingers with two-inch nails resembling claws.

“I knew there was going to be some deformity, but I
think it was slightly understated in the briefing,” responded Ryan.

“Slightly understated? Did you see his fucking face in
the basement?” asked Dallas. “He was pale as a ghost. Look at the skin around
his neck. He looks like a zombie.”

“There wasn’t much light down there, but I agree,” said
Ryan. “You definitely don’t see that every day. Could just be blood loss.”

“I guess,” acknowledged Dallas. “But still.”

“I know, Dallas,” said Ryan. “I have a few questions
myself. Stay here with him until I come back. Nobody gets close. Understand?”

“I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” said Dallas,
looking over at the agents huddled around their two downed men.

As ordered earlier, Ryan slid a battery in his cell
phone and immediately called the deputy director. He informed him Arrington was
dead and the scientists were cleared to enter the property. He returned to the
basement to check on Michelle and Tom.

“Is the freak dead?” asked Tom.

“Very,” replied Ryan. “Sniper literally took his head
off. But he killed two of ours before he went down.”

“Damn it,” said Tom. “I really thought we had the drop
on him. It was like he didn’t even know we were there until you interrupted
him.”

“This poor girl was probably dead before she hit the
wall,” said Michelle, kneeling over the victim. “She’s nearly decapitated. Did
he have a hatchet or a knife?”

“Not that I saw,” said Ryan. “But his fingernails are
about two inches long. When he rose up, I just saw blood pumping out of her
neck.”

“They weren’t joking about his speed and strength,” said
Michelle.

“No, they weren’t,” said Ryan. “We need to assemble
outside and wait for the forensic team. There’s nothing we can do for her now.”

“Boss?”

“Yeah, Tom.”

“Take a quick look down here before you go up. I cleared
the other rooms when you and Dallas were upstairs. You’re going to want to see
what’s in there.”

“Not a word to anyone else about what we saw, Tom,” said
Ryan, in a commanding tone. “You either, Michelle. This stays with us for now,
okay?”

“Got it,” responded both as they left the basement.

Ryan stood alone next to the woman still bound to the
broken bed. Her lifeless eyes were only half closed. He clenched his teeth and
thought if they had entered the house one minute earlier, she may have
survived. There was a sense of guilt for not advancing on Arrington as soon as
he stepped out of the Jeep.

He turned away from the woman to take a closer look at
the monster’s torture chamber. The only light source in the basement was an oil
lamp on a nightstand. Ryan’s mind briefly wandered to the file folders
containing photos from Arrington’s first murder scene in New York. He expected
to see a table covered with the tools he would’ve used to rape and disembowel
his prize. He imagined pools of blood on the floor and organs sitting like trophies
in glass jars lining the shelves. 

Arrington’s first victim was discovered in the furnace
room of a steel mill that went out of business years ago. The beautiful
23-year-old medical student from Syracuse University died on a filthy floor
after experiencing what could only be described as unimaginable pain. He kept
her alive for two days as he repeatedly raped and tortured her. The autopsy
revealed he started IVs and gave her fluids to combat shock and keep her aware.
There were only trace amounts of painkillers and anesthetics. His intent wasn’t
to relieve her agony. It was for her to see and feel as much as possible
without passing out.

Forensics also proved he curled up beside her and held
the victim close in the final moments of her young, promising life. Those final
moments came after she received a deep cut starting at her breastbone and
ending below her navel; the mattress was soaked in her blood. The report stated
not all of her organs were recovered from the scene. Ryan fully expected to
discover them somewhere near where he was standing.

 He removed the high-powered flashlight from the end of
his weapon. As he lit up the large room, the reality of Arrington’s torture
chamber was completely different from the photos in the case files. It was
meticulously clean and in order.

Ryan deducted he must have moved the entire contents of
one of the upstairs bedrooms down to the basement. Each piece of furniture was
carefully cleaned and restored to its original condition. There were no
medieval tools lined up on top of the dressers and no jars containing the
organs of past victims. He turned to look at the bed Arrington used as a
weapon. Other than the blood from the victim’s neck wound, the sheets were
pristine. He looked down at his feet and noticed the lack of dirt on the old
farmhouse’s concrete basement floor. He turned his light upward and couldn’t
find one cobweb attached to any corner of the room. There was no dust on any of
the flat surfaces. Had he been anywhere else, Ryan would’ve thought of the room
as cozy and comfortable. The exact opposite of anything he expected to see.

He noticed a door at the far end of the room. As he
opened it, he was hit with a slight breeze of stale air. It was a large
unfinished space with a dirt floor. His light illuminated tall stacks of old
wooden produce crates lined up against the walls. Ryan noticed a gap between
two stacks. As he approached, he observed an opening had recently been created
through the wall. When he lit up the darkness on the other side, he saw four
graves. Three were covered with mounds of settling dirt. The fourth was still
open.

Anyone walking through that hole in the wall would’ve
instantly recognized the mounds as graves. Not because of the shape or recently
disturbed earth, but because each was marked with a wooden cross bearing a
name. The first cross had the name Laura Ackerman and the date she was murdered.
The same woman Sheriff Bill Parker mentioned during the brief the previous
morning.

Against the specific orders of the deputy director, Ryan
used the camera on his phone to take several pictures of the gruesome cemetery.
He took several more of the adjoining rooms before he heard the rotors of
approaching helicopters. He left the crime scene and regrouped with the agents
outside. The two aircraft landed as flashing blue strobes and headlights from
several fast moving vehicles were visible approaching the farmhouse.

Three black SUVs with tinted windows stopped only a few
feet from Arrington’s headless body. The doors opened quickly on the first two,
spilling out nearly a dozen heavily armed security personnel forming a
perimeter around the corpse. Ryan noticed more security personnel deploying
from helicopters in a field next to the house.

One of the new arrivals approached Arrington with his
weapon ready and reached down to check for a pulse. It seemed a little odd
since he was missing his head, but after what they just experienced, Ryan
understood the caution. The trooper squeezed the talk button on his radio and
announced the target was indeed dead. The doors on the third SUV opened and
four men in black coveralls carrying large tackle boxes walked up to Ryan and
his team.

“I need to speak with Special Agent Ryan Pearson,” said
the first set of coveralls.

“That would be me.”

“Agent Pearson, my name is Scott Wilson. I’m a
biochemist with the Michaels Laboratory assigned to the Didache program. I’m
here to recover the body of Peter Arrington and debrief your team. I’m assuming
containment was difficult?”

“I’ve been expecting you, Scott,” said Ryan, slightly
irritated. “Your Didache project pet gave us one hell of a fight. He killed two
of my agents before a sniper put him down. Containment wasn’t a priority once
we figured out shooting him with little bullets wasn’t working. I believe
almost everyone here put their eyes on him. So to answer your question, yes,
containment was difficult.”

“I’m sorry,” said Scott, in a disarming tone.

“Excuse me?” asked Ryan, a little puzzled.

“The agents you lost. I’m sorry, Ryan. I promise you
we’ll take good care of them. Once we finish processing the area, we’ll be
taking them to an airstrip about six miles from here. The deputy director is
making arrangements to get them home.”

“I appreciate that, Scott. What about the rest of my
guys?”

“Bravo and Charlie teams will go by ground in the
vehicles to the airstrip for debriefing. We’ve taken over a small hangar there as
a command post. We’ll send the sniper teams by helicopter once they come in
from the field. You, Dallas, Michelle, and Tom need to stay with us for a
little while longer. You should be out of here in about an hour.”

Bravo and Charlie teams were immediately whisked away in
the vehicles. Ryan and his team took off their tactical gear and huddled around
the remaining SUV. They watched as the forensic team poked and took photographs
of Arrington’s body.