Meta Zero One (5 page)

  She gave money to charity, cared for the poor, and somehow kept a wholesome girl next door image, despite the many tabloid stories about her highly energetic sex life.

  Then four years ago she had married a complete nobody. Steven Windrow was a research scientist, as humble a man as you could hope to meet. It turned out, according to the gossip magazines at least; he had been her childhood sweetheart and had pursued her for years. He was skinny, plain looking, and not even that bright. No one at the time had understood what on earth she saw in him. But despite the occasional rumours of her straying, the marriage had lasted.

   Lasted until last night anyway.

  “The police were called to the scene at three am, so that makes it about 2 hours ago; when the neighbours reported that they heard screaming. They said that they had never heard anything like it. At first it was a woman’s' voice, then after a few minutes a man’s took over. This gives us I think a pretty accurate time of death, probably when she stopped screaming. The man’s screaming had stopped when the cops got here. Officers Byrne and Ditko,” the tech officer, whose name Elroy now remembered was Arthur Lister consulted his notes.

   “Officer Ditko was the first to enter the house, he reports that they could no longer hear much noise, just the sound of moaning and gurgling from upstairs. He reckoned that worried him more than the screaming would have, it sounded so inhuman.”

  “On entering the bedroom they found a young man, we now know to be Mr Windrow crouching in the corner of the bedroom, mumbling and groaning to himself, he was almost insensible. He was covered in blood, almost as if he’d been sprayed with a hose pipe, and would not respond to any of the officers questions.”

   “Mrs Windrow was already dead when they found her. Their 2-year old,”  Arthur consulted his notes again, “Sally, was her name, she was also dead at the scene. At least that is what we assume, it'll take DNA testing on the bones to be sure it’s her. I would say that at first glance though the thighbone length is consistent with a child of her recorded age. It’s hard to be sure but it looks like the cause of death appears to be similar but different to that of Jean-Marie.”

  “How, how did it differ?” Elroy dragged his eyes away from the gaping hole in the woman’s stomach.

  “It appears that Sally was eaten alive.” Arthur, leaned over the body of Jean-Marie, and almost lovingly used a pair of tweezers to peel back the edge of the stomach wound, “whereas the formally lovely Mrs Windrow, died of blood loss from having half her stomach removed. The splatter patterns on the wall and ceiling suggest that anyway. She was kneeling on the bed at first, then she fell, or was pushed backwards, at which time the blood spray travels upwards on to the ceiling.”

  “Judging by the position of the body, the splatter patterns, the blood all over Steven, combined with the traces of semen on the sheets and her thighs. I would say that Mr and Mrs Windrow were having sex when whatever happened, happened.”

   “So he killed her while they were fucking?”

   “If he did in fact kill her, I'm not so sure, she seems to have almost exploded from the inside, perhaps he’s just an extraordinarily energetic lover.”

  Elroy knew that although this was gallows humour there was an element of truth in it. Both he and Arthur had had to clear up after one of The Norseman’s wild parties last year, that man could literally blow a woman’s head off.

  “Maybe, but looks like the wrong angle to me. The points of entry and exit don't match up and anyway where's the little girl’s body?” Elroy asked.

   “I don't know, I'm assuming in the guts of whatever ate her. There wasn't much left of her you see, just a few bones. She had been almost picked clean.”

  “Why call us in so soon, any direct evidence of Metas yet?” Elroy struggled to think of any normal way such damage could be done to a human being, but so far he had not seen any direct evidence of super-powered involvement and it was unusual to be called in so quickly.

  Arthur looked at him skeptically, “Well this could just be a normal case of husband killing his wife while in the throes of passion, cutting out her womb, stomach, heart, lungs, most of the major organs, getting rid of them probably by eating them. Then he ate his own child as she slept, right down to the bone. It could be, but for a few simple clues.”

  “Ok, stop a minute, how do we know Sally was eaten?”

  “There are tooth marks, very little ones, all over the bones, lots and lots of them.”

  “Rats?” Elroy said jokingly.

  “Maybe, but I doubt it. Just listen a minute, first Jean-Marie was about 9 months pregnant, according to her neighbours she only had a few weeks to go.”

  “So?”

  “So, where’s the baby? Because it isn't in here anymore,” Arthur waved his tweezers at the open wound. “There's no trace of it at all, it's gone, as is most of her stomach, her womb, and most of her internal organs. Also, before Officer Ditko retired outside to chuck his guts up, he found this on the bed. He said that he would have missed it if it hadn't leaped at his throat. Anyway he managed to catch it by one of its legs and Officer Byrne ran to get a jar from the kitchen. In the process it bit Ditko’s finger, took out quite a chunk too, he'll be lucky if he doesn't lose it. Still they managed to get it into the jar and here it is.”

  Eric held up a coffee jar, there were still a few grains stuck to the side, but as Eric passed it to him, Elroy saw something moving inside. The creature was about the size of his thumb and it moved with shocking speed around the walls of the glass. Elroy held the jar in his hand carefully, it shook violently in his hand, and he looked closely at what it contained.

  “What the fuck!”

  “What the fuck indeed. I think that's your evidence of meta powered involvement right there.”

   Elroy prowled the house.

 Mr Windrow had been taken into custody, into the secure holding facility just outside New York the FBI kept for people suspected of being involved in a Powers' related incident.

   It was the sort of facility which if you didn’t answer the questions correctly, or if Elroy decided you were a threat to America in any way, you wouldn’t be getting out of.

   Mrs Windrow’s body had been taken to the same facility, where it would be examined and then incinerated.

  The creature in the jar was in Elroy’s coat pocket where he could feel it moving as it tried to escape from it's tiny prison.

   The neighbours were being sold a story at the moment which would not, he knew hold water for long, but he also knew that it didn't have to. This was after all America, where people had attention spans which were shorter than the average commercial break.

   In a week some celebrity would have a divorce, buy a black baby from Ethiopia, or show everyone her fanny getting out of a limo, and the incident in the Windrow house would be forgotten.

  Now Elroy prowled about the house, he avoided the little girl’s bedroom and the main bedroom, cleanup crews would arrive in the morning to begun sterilisation of the scene. They would deal with the final forensic analysis and they could clean up the mess.

   He did not need to see it again.

  For now he had the house to himself and he wanted to look for things the forensic team might, with their more structured approach, overlook. He was looking for things which interested him in particular.

  Elroy wanted to understand the Windrows, he wanted to see how they lived. He wanted to see if there was anything to suggest why they would have become targets for a Meta Powered attack or if, as he suspected, they had brought it on themselves.

  Starting in the sitting room, he wandered through their lives picking things up at random, searching for inspiration.

  He examined the books on the shelf, nothing unusual there, it was the normal mix of thick airport thrillers, magazines and books of photographs. He picked a few up at random and idly flicked through, nothing.

  There were lots of photographs of Jean-Marie and the toddler Sally. He looked at them all closely, his analytical mind noticed how the girl looked very little like her parents. Odd he thought, picking up a recent scan photograph, propped on the shelf, there were no photos of Sally as a baby. He made a mental note to check on her paternity, and careful not to crease it, he pocketed the scan.

  Turning on the TV he checked on the digital recorder, the usual mix of films and TV shows. There was the complete run of Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek and The Big Bang Theory. You're a bit of a science fiction geek are you Mr Windrow?

  Finding nothing else unusual, he sat on the sofa, and absently ran his hands behind the cushions. Old pens, toys, and dried out desiccated food scraps, again nothing of interest to him.

  The kitchen next, he looked in cupboards, opened drawers and glanced in, a mix of fast foods, and standard store cupboard essentials. At the table cookbooks and magazines were strewn around. One was open with a list of ingredients for an Indonesian chicken curry written on the back of an envelope.

  They were clearly not expecting whatever had happened, you don't often plan a meal for two, then murder your wife.

  There was in fact nothing to suggest that they were anything other than your average American family.

  But your average American family didn't usually end up gutted in their own bedroom.

  The fridge was full, there was beer and white wine chilling, and he noticed with interest an expensive bottle of champagne cooling. Ready, he thought, for the big day, the plan no doubt being to crack it open when Jean-Marie and the new baby arrived home.

  Shame to waste it, he thought, taking it out of the fridge it was a classic year and far more expensive than he could afford. Smiling to himself, Elroy Cockram grabbed a glass from the cupboard, sat down at the kitchen table and opened the Windrow's celebratory champagne and poured himself a glass.

  “Lovely,” he said, watching the bubbles form in the imperfections on the glass. Now, he thought, what now? There was a perfectly normal kitchen, dishwasher full, cookbooks on the table, fridge cooling wine and beer, washing machine full of dirty clothes.

  Washing machine, he thought, you can tell a lot by looking at someone’s laundry. Tipping back the champagne in one satisfying gulp, he placed the glass carefully on the table and stood up. Then kneeling by the washing machine he pressed the button and opened the door.

   The smell of clean washing filled his nose, immediately taking him back 20 years to helping his mum hang out the clothes to dry. He pulled something out and put it to his face, breathing in the fresh clean smell, breathing deeply, enjoying the moment immensely. He realised suddenly that he was sniffing a pair of Jean-Maries French knickers, so he smiled looked around self-consciously and put it in his pocket, for later. They would fetch quite a lot on EBay.

  It was right at the back of the drum where he found it, even though he didn’t know what it was he was looking for when he had started.

   But he knew when he found it.

  Holding the distinctive green and yellow shirt in his hand, he reached into his pocket. Pulling out the coffee jar, he examined what it contained. Careful not to drop it he held up the shirt next to it, the thing inside was motionless and seemingly asleep.

   “Fuck me,” he said.

  It all made a sick kind of sense to him now.

  “How is he doing?” Elroy looked though the one-way glass into the interrogation room. Steven sat at the desk, his arms strapped to the arms of his chair by thick leather bands. He rocked slowly back and forth moaning to himself.

  “Not too bad considering,” said his colleague Dr Francine Miller. She was tall with long fiery red hair, and Elroy had liked her since the moment they first met three years ago, when he had interviewed her for the job of head medical officer. They had flirted for years, and he had toyed with the idea of asking her out so many times but despite himself, he couldn’t build up the courage. 

   He was sure she was single and also sure that she knew how he felt, that she knew the effect of her glasses and tied up hair, and short skirts had on him. But there was something about her that made him keep his distance.

  Francine looked him up and down and smiled over her glasses, her hazel eyes seemed to know exactly what he was thinking, Elroy found himself blushing uncontrollably.

  “Considering that his wife and at least one child died last night and he is so doped up on Dopamine that he couldn't stand up if he tried, he is doing pretty well,” she continued.

  They were standing in the viewing room of interrogation cell 101, 15 floors underground in the FBI's euphemistically called Superpowers Liaison Office. It was just outside New York City and from the outside it looked like any other anonymous government facility. The upper levels did in fact serve as the office for traffic management, and the milk marketing division, two departments, which in Elroy’s mind served no useful purpose at all.

   What was not visible from the outside was the maze of underground corridors, labs, meeting rooms, monitoring stations and holding cells which practically riddled the surrounding area. There were miles of offices and thousands of people, monitoring, analyzing and tracking super powered individuals in the USA and the rest of the world.