More Than Life Itself Read online

  How in heaven's name was he going to manage that?

  He looked around the room, searching for heaven knows what. The Dummies' Guide to Organ Preparation maybe? Inane thoughts poured through his mind, the flotsam and jetsam of an educated life - the human lung weighs ounces, the lungs have over 1500 miles of airways, you breathe in more than thirteen pints of air every single minute - as the rational part of him struggled to deal with what he'd done. Then it came to him.

  He needed camouflage.

  He rushed over to the refrigerator. He hadn't been shopping in a while, so there wasn't much to be found inside, but after rummaging around, he managed to come up with a half-drunk carton of orange juice, three Strawberry Burst juice boxes and a packet of powdered Kool-Aid. All of them went into the blender. In the pantry he found a couple of bananas and an apple. They joined the juice. Last, but not least, he added a handful of ice, figuring the cold might help mask the taste, and then stepped back to survey his work.

  The blender was full. The lung could barely be seen beneath the rest of the ingredients.

  Good enough.

  He put on the lid, laid a finger on the power switch, took a deep breath, and then pressed the button down.

  The machine jumped to life with a hideous groan as it fought to grind the rubbery flesh into tiny little chunks. Sam let it go on for several minutes, switching back and forth through the various settings, until he was certain the contents had been thoroughly mixed, chopped, and pureed.

  He took a large thermos out of a nearby cabinet, and opened both containers. Being careful not to spill even a single drop, he poured the greyish-orange mixture from the blender into the thermos, and then put the thermos into the fridge.

  Next he returned to the table and picked up the knife and garden shears. He washed those as thoroughly as possible, and then carefully dried them with a dish towel. All three items were placed on the counter nearby for later disposal.

  That done, he took a quick glance at his watch.

  Just after 3 am.

  Entering the hospital wouldn't be a big deal, getting into his daughter's room would be even easier. After all, they expected him to be there. But if he waited too much longer, there would be a shift change, which meant another set of rounds. That would be a problem. Getting caught in the act wouldn't be good. Which meant he didn't have time to dispose of the body properly. He'd have to settle for hiding it in the basement for the time being.

  After checking to be certain he hadn't stepped in any of the blood or vomit that had landed on the tarp, Sam left the kitchen and climbed the stair to the second-floor linen closet. He removed an old bedspread from the shelf and returned with it to the kitchen.

  This time, the sight of the gaping chest wound didn't bother him as much. Gone was his revulsion about touching the corpse. Gone was his dismay over what he had done to this innocent stranger. Purpose had eradicated guilt; the woman had died so that his daughter could live. He was doing only what was necessary to save his little girl. What parent wouldn't understand that? He picked up the rib cage and forced it back into the opening in the chest. It didn't fit quite right, but Sam didn't care. All he wanted was to keep the rest of the internal organs from spilling out everywhere when he wrapped the body in the bedspread. Once the chest plate was in place, he folded the flaps of flesh back over the wound, leaving him with a relatively intact torso. A gap of no more than two inches split the skin down the centre of the corpse. Several long stretches of duct tape pulled tightly from one side to the other readily dealt with the issue.

  When he was satisfied, he shook out the bedspread and spread it out next to the corpse. Putting both hands beneath the woman's body, he rolled it over so that it lay face down on the bedspread. Several more minutes of effort and he had the corpse wrapped up tightly in the fabric, both ends twisted and secured with more duct tape, the rubber gloves he'd worn through the procedure wrapped up inside the shroud as well. He hefted the body up and over one shoulder, then carried it down the cellar stairs to the basement, where he tucked it away into a dark corner for the time being.

  He returned to the kitchen, rolled up the tarp, and stored it in the basement alongside the body. Later, he'd deal with both with more finality, but for now they would be safe from all but a determined search of the property.

  If it came to that, all was lost anyway.

  ***

  Jessica was asleep when Sam slipped inside her room an hour later. He held the door open a crack, watching the hallway, making certain no-one had followed him. When he was satisfied, he gently closed the door and did what he could to wedge a chair beneath the handle. It wouldn't keep out a really determined individual, but it might give him time to hide the thermos and its contents if it became necessary.

  Moving over to his daughter's bed, Sam used the remote to raise Jessica into a sitting position. Gently, he shook her by the shoulder. "Jess? Honey? You need to wake up, sweetheart. I have some new medicine for you."

  "Daddy? Is that …" The rest of her sentence came out garbled, a result of the heavy sedation the nurses had given her earlier. Sam breathed a sigh of relief; her condition would make what he had to do easier on them both.

  He took the thermos out of the backpack he was carrying and twisted off the top. Rather than using the cup, Sam raised the container itself to his daughter's lips. "Here, sweetheart. Drink this."

  Catching a whiff of the stuff, Jessica turned her head away. "Ugh! What is it?"

  "I know it smells bad, Jess, but the doctors want you to drink it. You want to feel better, don't you? Now, come on, one sip at a time."

  Jessica did as she was told, leaning forward and taking a cautious sip. After she'd swallowed her first mouthful, Sam moved to take the thermos away, expecting her to gag on the stuff, and was surprised when her hands jumped off the mattress to lock on his own, holding the container to her mouth with surprising strength, more strength than she'd had in weeks. Perhaps more strength than she'd ever shown before. The sound of her greedily sucking down the mixture sent a chill through his bones, but he let her continue nonetheless.

  Several long minutes later, the thermos was empty.

  Then, just like that, Jessica rolled over and went back to sleep.

  Sam sat there, dumbfounded by it all. He'd never expected that kind of reaction from her.

  He stayed seated in the chair next to her bed, watching her closely, waiting for her body to suddenly reject the mixture and vomit it back up, but she remained peacefully asleep. Second thoughts came and went like ephemeral phantoms in the night; there was no turning back now. Either it would work or it wouldn't. Time would tell.

  Placing the thermos back into the backpack, Sam settled into the depths of the chair and watched the rhythmic rise and fall of his daughter's chest, rise and fall, rise and fall …

  Monday Morning

  The commotion around his daughter's bed woke him shortly after seven. He emerged from sleep in a near panic, thoughts of the previous night's activities playing on the viewing screen of his mind's eye and the fear of discovery almost forcing him up and out of his chair, but no-one was paying the least bit of attention to him. Several of the doctors and nurses were gathered around Jessica's bed, asking her questions and surreptitiously congratulating each other when she wasn't looking.

  Hope blossomed in Sam's chest as he sat up.

  The motion drew the attention of one of the doctors, who quickly moved to his side and motioned him to join him in the hall. Sam did, though not before grabbing his knapsack in order to keep it close at hand.

  "Wonderful news this morning, Mr Dalton," the doctor exclaimed as soon as the door had shut behind them. "That new pharmaceutical mix seems to have been a godsend. The monitors are showing your daughter's lungs operating at full strength this morning." The man's smile was infectious. "If I hadn't seen it myself, I wouldn't have believed it. Positively amazing!"

  Sam couldn't believe what he was hearing. He struggled to grasp what he was being told, hesi
tant to grab on to so elusive a thing as hope, but still …

  "… if it's okay with you?"

  Sam started. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

  "I said we'd like to do a series of blood tests, maybe some chest x-rays, if that's all right with you. If it turns out we find a definite decrease in the spread of the infection, we'll up the dose of the medication and hope for the best. I don't want to get you too excited, Mr Dalton, but I do believe we've had a breakthrough, I do indeed."

  Sam agreed to let them do their tests, and the doctor rushed off down the hall, leaving him alone with his thoughts. Not for a moment did Sam believe that the drugs were the cause of the change; they'd been giving her the same stuff for days. No, he knew better. Jessica's lung was better. Not her liver, or her kidney. Her lung.

  Sheer unadulterated joy swept through his system like lightning. He wanted to shout at the top of his voice, dance up and down the hallway, let the world know he'd found a way to cure his daughter. She was going to live. Jessica was going to live!

  But six more people had to die first.

  Again, it was like someone else's thought spoken aloud in his mind, but this time around he didn't care. He'd sacrifice a dozen if it would bring his little girl back to him safe and sound. Two dozen. Three!

  The door to his daughter's room opened, and two of the nurses and an orderly came out with Jessica on a stretcher. She smiled at him as they went past, and he nodded and waved in return.

  There was so much he had to do and so little time. Selecting the victim, determining how he needed to kill him or her, harvesting the organ, all within the next twelve hours - it was almost overwhelming.

  But first the body from the previous night.

  He had to get rid of that, before anything else.

  And he would need a plan to deal with the other six before he was finished.

  Walking calmly down the hallway was one of the most difficult acts of his life. He said hello to the nurses on his way past their station and took the elevator to the first floor. Once outside, he sprinted for his car.

  The ride gave him plenty of time to consider the possibilities.

  Not once did even a passing sense of regret enter his thoughts.

  ***

  He made one stop on his way home, a short trip to the local Home Depot to pick up and few tools, and when he arrived, he descended immediately to the cellar, aware of the ticking passage of time.

  It was close to 10.00 am, which meant he had less than fifteen hours to dispose properly of the first body, select his next victim, kill him or her, harvest the necessary organ and get back to the hospital to feed it to Jessica before the next deadline came and went.

  That was a lot to do in a short period of time.

  The question of how to dispose of the bodies proved a difficult one to answer. He quickly realised that he didn't care about getting caught in the long run. He'd committed a crime, a major one, and he fully expected to pay the price associated with doing so. He just didn't want to get caught in the next seven days.

  Once Jessica was safe, then he'd see about retribution.

  Which meant he needed a reasonably safe but temporary hiding place for the bodies, one that wouldn't be accidentally stumbled over by anyone.

  Someplace close to home was probably best.

  His house was an old one, built in the days when concrete foundations were unheard of. Instead of poured concrete, the cellar floor was a simple wooden platform built over baked earth, which meant he should be able to dig down into it without too much difficulty. Interring the bodies beneath the floor would prevent anyone from finding them in the short term; he had no friends, no remaining family, no-one to stumble upon them while rooting around in his basement. Eventually the stink of decomposition would give them away, but he could deal with that in the short term. He and Jessica wouldn't be staying there for long, anyway; there would be too much attention on her miracle recovery, attention they couldn't afford.

  Yes, the basement would do just fine.

  He gave himself two hours to complete the job, and set to it at a fevered pace. He used a pick axe, one of the tools he'd rented at Home Depot, on the floorboards, savagely smashing through them and then tearing them loose until he had a space some six feet long and four feet wide that exposed the earthen floor beneath. Once he had cleared the discarded lumber out of the way, he used the same tool to break the hard-packed surface of the dirt, then switched to a shovel.

  The dirt proved to be harder to get through than the wood. He had to take frequent breaks, as the previous months had taken their toll and he was no longer in decent shape, but eventually he had a hole about five feet deep. Good enough, he thought.

  Sam climbed out, walked to the hastily-wrapped corpse and dragged it over to the edge of the hole. Getting on his knees beside it, he gave it a good shove, tumbling it into the makeshift grave. He winced at the flat thump as it struck bottom. He didn't have the strength to lower it gently into the hole with the compassion it deserved.

  Ripping open one of the bags of quicklime he'd purchased, he poured its contents over the body and then added several more. It would help the body deteriorate faster and mask the smell of the decomposition. It wouldn't be perfect, but it was certainly better than leaving the body to decay on its own.

  Refilling the hole went much quicker, though he was still more than an hour and a half over his deadline by the time he'd finished. He stomped over the dirt, packing it down, and then unrolled a throw rug over the opening in the wood flooring. It wouldn't hide the hole from a search of the premises, but anyone looking into the cellar from the stairs would see nothing amiss.

  After he'd put the tools away and disposed of the empty quicklime bags, Sam took a quick shower. Wrapped in a towel, he wandered back down to the kitchen and made a sandwich. Sitting at the table, he ate slowly and tried to plan his next move.

  Selecting a victim was going to be difficult. He needed someone who had no ties to anyone else, no-one waiting for them to come home, no-one who could get suspicious at their absence over the next week. Finding someone like that would be difficult; even prostitutes and druggies had friends, though less inclined to go to the authorities if they went missing. Someone who wouldn't, or couldn't, put up a forceful defence was also a necessity. While he knew he was large enough to overpower more than his fair share of individuals, he also had to be cautious about doing them any major bodily harm, because the organs had to be harvested without damaging them.

  Eventually, after a fair bit of deliberation, he had a mental list of characteristics he would need to look for. Young, but not too young that parents would be looking for them. Preferably female, since they'd be more likely to be intimidated by his size than a male. If they were from out of town, all the better.

  Where the hell was he going to find someone like that?

  When the answer came to him, he was surprised at its simplicity.

  He needed a transportation centre. A place where people were coming and going, where it wasn't unusual to see two strangers meet for the first time and leave together, where an older man picking up a younger woman wouldn't be too conspicuous, particularly now that the holiday break was starting.

  It was perfect.

  Except for the fact that the nearest airport was more than a two hour drive south. Four hours wasted just driving there and back again? Wasn't going to work.

  But the bus station might, he thought.

  The nearest Greyhound station was about thirty minutes away, in Avondale. He checked the internet for the daily schedule and discovered that several different buses arrived between 8.30 pm and 10.00 pm. With that much traffic, he should be able to come and go unseen, just another anonymous face in a crowd of holiday travellers.

  A glance at his watch let him know it was now close to 4.00 pm, which meant he could grab a few hours' sleep and then head over to the station about a half hour before the first of the buses was due to arrive. That would give him enough time to scope ou
t the situation and come up with some kind of makeshift plan. He should also be able to run a couple of other errands on the way, if he was quick about them.

  He finished his lunch, put his dish in the dishwasher, and headed off to bed.

  ***

  He awoke to the crash of thunder and the blare of his alarm clock. The skies were dark with thunderclouds that had swung in from the east, and lightning could be seen on the horizon. By the time he had finished dressing, it had begun to rain.

  He wasn't concerned about the weather. The buses would still be running, the passengers would still be arriving, and the poor weather would help hide his actions. In fact, it seemed a fitting atmosphere in which to continue his work.

  He made three stops before heading for the bus station. He bought a copy of Gray's Anatomy at the local Barnes and Noble. He went by a surgical supply company and picked up a case of surgeon's tools, paying cash and claiming they were a gift for a nephew graduating from medical school. His final stop was to pick up five more fifty pound bags of quicklime from a different Home Depot than the one where he'd picked up the first batch. Multiple purchases at the same store would be suspicious, but he knew that by spreading them around he'd be likely to avoid discovery.

  After leaving Home Depot, he got back on the highway and headed for the Greyhound depot. The rain was still coming down hard, making it difficult to see. Cars passing in the other direction threw great sheets of water up and over the barrier between the north- and south-bound lanes. Suddenly more afraid of an auto accident than he'd ever been in his life, Sam got out of the high speed lane and moved over to the right, where there was less congestion and less chance of a fatal slip by himself or one of the other drivers. An accident, even a minor one, could end the whole escapade well before its time.

  That simply wouldn't do.

  Just before the curve near exit 151, the headlights of his car swept across a solitary figure walking backward down the side of the road, his arm stuck out into traffic with a thumb upraised. Sam had a flashing glimpse of a slim male dressed in dark clothing, a backpack slung over one shoulder and a baseball cap pulled down low over the eyes.