Chapter 27: Justice

The body convulses, like a puppet in an earthquake. What was once Clara looks to the ceiling, the moonlight and lights highlighting the black tears bubbling from her eyes. Black bile begins to leak from the ears, nose, and mouth. Henry rubs his hand, watching wide-eyed as the body stands up from the table, marionetted by something older than old. Black, tar-like liquid begins to cover the body, seeping in from every pore, until nothing of the old remains. Its hair melts away into the shining black veneer now covering it evenly. All evidence of Clara—her hips, cheekbones, and breasts—all melt inwards as the body is stolen from her.

The movement is all wrong, like the figure is moving in reverse. Bones reform under the skin with loud cracks. The creature that is meant to be the steward has now claimed control. It sees the world with new eyes, breathing through its oil-slick skin like a tree frog. Giant pores form all over, flaring and tightening as it takes in the environment. No eyes appear, not even the cavernous orbitals like the failure upstairs. The only lifelike feature that forms on its face is a gaping mouth that opens like a slit and expands into half of its face. The teeth look like they belong to a human three times its size. Henry approaches it, his eyes harboring fear and curiosity.

“Clara?” he says timidly, reaching out a hand.

It pants, its mouth opening and shutting like a dog’s. It sniffs the air before darting at him. Tufts of Henry’s hair shoot into the air, along with heavy droplets of blood, as he gets swiped away by the creature. His face is slashed, and he falls back, holding his face. He backs away as it advances at him, clacking its teeth in thirsty anticipation. Clear slivers of drool string from its mouth.

“Help!” Henry cries through his hands. Gartz, upon hearing this, tosses Nick aside. As the creature stands over Henry, it is quickly hooked hard in the side of the head. Still new to the world in this body, it gets acquainted with physical pain. It sits against the wall, sniffing the air through its pores.

Scampering back from the scene, Henry sees his life erupt into chaos. A perversion of nature that has still not dawned on him. This creature, the muddy bootmark on God’s welcome mat, is now fighting Henry’s creation. His face stings with a frigid pain. The wide red lines running along his face and cutting into his scalp now burn in the open air. This is it, it is all ruined. Nick did not do this; the shot came from above. Who?

The creature lunges at Gartz, slashing and kicking as it becomes acquainted with its new, deadly body. Gartz’s body allows him to heal as fast as he is getting hurt, but even it has limits. Henry gawks at the fight, surmising from his research that destruction of the brain or heart means death. Yet still, the Gartz body is tough; flesh steams as it is woven back together as fast as it gets cut.

The chaos in front of him gives Henry a chance to look up from where the shot came.

“You,” he says, seeing Liv, the girl from Elvira’s funeral. “I forgot about the girl.” He rushes to his feet and runs to the stairs, with white-hot murder in his heart.

“Crap,” Liv says, her hand still shaking from what she has just witnessed and is still witnessing. She sees Nick grip his knee and check his cut brow, getting his bearings while his resurrected partner is fighting a slinking tar monster. A pissed-off, two-hundred-pound Marine is now rushing upstairs to kill her, and she has a limp.

“Crap,” she repeats as she retreats from her position, further down the walkway of the second floor.

Below, the creature, this “Half-Thing”, as Nick calls it in his head, clacks its teeth like a nutcracker. It advances at Gartz, who has once again assumed a boxing stance. It is sloppy in form, gifting Gartz precious openings to pummel it. With each successful counterattack, the creature learns. It retreats and cocks its head, its skin pores expanding and tightening rapidly. With each advance, each attack is more severe than the last. Gartz’s breath falls out in piles before him, his skin healing slowly. He slouches in front of the creature with wounds bleeding black. It clacks its teeth once again, a scare tactic perhaps, before jumping at him. Gartz, in his dim and vacant mind, prepares for this to be the end.

Mere inches away from Gartz, the creature is shoulder-tackled by Nick, who can barely stand.

“John!” Nick yells out to him, aware of the priceless moment he just bought them. “Let me help you.” He holds out his handcuffed hands. Nick has always been a gambler. Gartz shoots him a look. He steps quickly to this man he vaguely remembers and grabs the chain between his wrists. With one swift motion, like tearing a clothing tag, he splits the chain. No words are needed.

“I don’t know if you can hear me in there, John,” Nick pants. “But I need you to remember how to kill.”

Gartz says nothing. He directs his attention to the Half-Thing. In front of it stands an impossible duo, the deadly reunion: Gartz and Romeo. They have brought on the death of countless monsters. The duo and Half-Thing circle each other, awareness settling in for all three; the next step is death. Nick picks up his pistol, holding it with trembling hands.

“I’ll cover you; you keep it away from me. Immobilize it and beat it down,” Nick says, unsure if Gartz understands.

It slithers towards them, its own anatomy now more familiar to it. It goes for Nick, eager to take the weakest piece off the board. Nick jerks seeing it get close. His injuries have now caught up to him. What keeps him going is his own stubbornness. Gartz grabs the creature before it reaches Nick and throws it away, squaring up to it. They begin trading blows. Calculated, brutal punches weave through feral slashes. Nick pivots around them and fires off two shots in its leg, slowing it down, allowing Gartz to land an overhead right that stuns the creature. Nick runs in, his body burning with pain. Nothing else matters anymore. He unsheathes his curved blade and cuts the creature’s tendons. Nick hopes the creature retains the prototype’s weaknesses. It panics, quickly turning around to wind up a killing blow at Nick, but its clawed hand is caught at the wrist by Gartz, who drives five body shots into its side. Nick begins to wonder if blunt force trauma has any effectiveness. The point is not to hurt it, but to kill it.

Upstairs, Liv hobbles away from the stairs, looking behind to see darkness greeting her. She runs to the corner of the walkway, able to see ten feet in front of her in both the left and right directions. She aims the gun down the walkway she came from, alternating to the other walkway every few seconds. There are only two directions he can come from.

“Olivia!” the darkness screams. “Stupid… You just did something very fucking stupid.”

Liv’s lip is stiff as a board. Her weapon hand shakes as it struggles from a dwindling pool of blood in her body. Either she kills him, or she passes out from blood loss, and then he kills her. She forces her eyes open to pick him out of the darkness. She focuses her hearing as best she can to try to use the creaky floorboards to her advantage. Nick needs help downstairs, but the best thing she can do now is not move, but wait for him to come to her. She’s going to kill him. The moment hits her like ice water. Once she sees his faint outline against the dark, she will line him in the crosshair of the gun and pull the trigger, like taking a photo. Watch the birdie. Liv nearly bursts out laughing from nerves.

She controls her breathing, making herself harder to detect. Leaning against the corner and listening, she begins to hear faint creaking, followed by sprinting toward her. Liv aims the gun in front of her. For now, all she can see is a bookshelf on the left part of the walkway. The sprinting stops somewhere in the dark.

Liv chuckles to herself. “What’s the matter? C’mon, keep running, jackass.”

No response.

“No monologue for me? Good, I don’t give a fuck anyway.” Liv props herself up, pushing away from the corner. Henry is somewhere in front of her, waiting for her to slip up. She moves towards the bookshelf, trying to get a better angle at her pursuer. Henry is smart, but he’s not thinking straight.

“I’m glad I ruined your little experiment, Henry…” Liv lets out through dry lips. “Nick was right, you’re sick. But on top of all of that, you’re pathetic.”

No response. Liv feels the flare in her back pocket. Every second is pregnant with fear and the promise of death. Henry is among these shelves. Liv checks the first one and, in the darkened alley of books, finds nothing.

“And even if you did bring them back, Henry, what makes you think they’d want anything to do with a murdering piece of garbage like you? You think you’d be able to keep them in the dark for life?” Still nothing. Liv checks the next bookshelf. No Henry. “Nothing to say?” Liv tries to keep the annoyance from her voice. She wonders where the hell he went.

Down the walkway, a loud and continuous creak is heard, like the floor is under strain. She hears an even louder creak, like an old ship, followed by a thumping and a crash. The crash births another crash, followed by another, in a terrifying rhythm. Liv realizes what is happening and limps away from the bookshelves as fast as she can. Before she can get too far, the bookshelves close to her fall like dominoes. The bookshelf next to Liv falls on the last one, blowing up a dust cloud. Liv coughs on the floor, trying to get her bearings. She sees the gun next to her, kicked away by a black boot. In a heartbeat, Henry is on top of her, weighing more than her body can support. His hands wrap around her throat and begin squeezing.

“What was all that you were saying about my kids, you little bitch?” Henry spits venomously down at Liv. From her perspective, pressed down into the floor by his monstrous hands, Henry is the world. He is a dark figure, one side of his face rusted with blood, lip split and pulled apart every time he smiles. He is wrath and discord, perversion and murder. From where Liv lies, fighting for an inch of air, Henry’s black eyes offer nothing human, only misery and the delight in inflicting it. Panic burns her brain, all thought abandoning her. “After I’m done here, I’m gonna give your family a visit,” he whispers.

Before it all goes black for Liv, she sees Miguel and her mother. In the end, it never mattered that she was not like her father. He died protecting her, and she will live so she can do the same. The light of her life is the family she has left. Light. Of course, it’s light.

Liv uses her last seconds of consciousness to retrieve the flare from her back pocket. Her fingers go numb as she twists the cap off. It hisses and lights the world up in red. Henry’s reaction is too slow; his expression is now red and confused. Liv’s hand weaves around his arms, plunging the burning flare into his eye. He tries to recoil, his grip loosening as he screams in pain, but Liv’s other hand grabs the back of his head. The sizzle of the eye and the skin surrounding it makes her sick. The room fills with deafening screams. Henry flails like an animal but Liv does her best to keep control, eventually pulling Henry’s right sleeve and forcing him to the ground.

The next minute is a blender. Liv can barely understand her own movements. She sees her hands moving, trying to push the burning flare into Henry’s eye as he screams on the floor. He reaches out for her throat, only for her to bite his fingers. She feels a crunch between her teeth, her jaw numb from adrenaline. At some point, she feels nothing in her mouth but blood, no fingers. Either she swallowed them, or she let his hand go. The flare burns against his eye, but even then, it is not enough. With more gas left in the tank than Liv would have thought, Henry swipes the flare out of her hand. It lands next to them, under the railing of the walkway, too far to reach. He tries to wiggle out from under her, but Liv cannot let him get up. He dies, right now. With that thought solidified, she grabs one of the books from the fallen bookshelf and hits him in the head. From the impact, she feels it is not heavy enough. She grabs another, much heavier, lifts it over her head, and slams it down into his skull. She feels his head hit the floor, the vibrations sinking into her skeleton. It’s not enough. He is going to get up.

“Keep hitting him, honey,” her father says. “Make sure he never hurts anyone ever again.”

Liv’s throat tears as she tries screaming in anger. Her vocal cords are dry and strained. From Henry’s perspective, Liv is bathed in blood red, her image dancing like a mirage under a crimson sun. She is the Fury Alecto, his punishment. He looks at her with his crusted-over eye; his other one is completely burnt. This girl is the last thing Henry will see. He thinks of his wife in his last moment, strangely enough. He thinks of how he let her down, and how truly pointless this all was. This thought runs through his head as the girl on top of him brings the book down into the bridge of his nose. His head turns, and she slams his temple. He tries to shield himself with his hands, but Liv slams them into his head.

Her shoulders and forearms sting like pincushions, but Liv keeps slamming the books into him. She keeps hitting him through every plea he tries to utter through broken teeth. Even after movement stops and convulsions begin, even after she hears soft cracks in his skull, Liv continues slamming the book.

“Still want to find my family, fucker?!” Liv yells, her head pounding. Sweat runs down her body. “Answer me!” She yells at the deformed Henry under her. His face is purple, burnt, bruised, and bleeding all at the same time. He says nothing, save some gurgling that can be heard from somewhere deep in his throat. Liv slams his head a couple more times out of pure anger.

Standing up, Liv’s feet feel boneless, light as air. She can barely make it to the railing without collapsing. She just killed someone. She fights the urge to vomit, forcing it down. The world feels like it’s moving a thousand miles a minute. Once again, the ice water washes over her, and that freezing feeling sticks to her. She looks down at the ground floor and, from what she sees, imagines her mind has started playing tricks on her.

Downstairs, Nick continues his hit-and-run tactics, all while barely avoiding the Half-Thing. Gartz does his best to draw all the attention to himself, but the creature now sees him as a distraction, and Nick as the primary target. Its tendons have still not healed. Nick continues shooting it, missing a few precious shots as it advances like a millipede. It lunges upward and swipes at Nick, who ducks under it and fires two shots into its back. The Half-Thing shows no signs of slowing down, no signs of being hurt.

Nick pants like a dog. He’s done. There’s nothing to be done. This might be beyond him. He unsheathes his curved blade one more time. Nick steels himself, planning on going down swinging. Gartz stands next to him, putting his arms up. The two rush the creature, not giving it enough time to pick a target. Gartz starts with heavy punches to its midsection, throwing off its balance. Nick slices at the tendons and collarbone; he flanks it and slices at the back. The creature tries to slice at Nick, but every turn away from Gartz is punished. The unrelenting power of Gartz’s attacks feels like a waterfall, which gives Nick’s stinging and cutting more openings. As the two partners attack, dismantling every move the creature makes before it makes it, defending the other in their own way, they begin to notice the creature is tiring. Its black head is becoming dented like a cheap aluminum bat. It is less responsive, but still dangerous. The final attack needs to be decisive. It stands between them, dazed and ready for death.

Nick winds up for a slice, aimed at the base of its skull. His blade shoots toward the creature, but winds up buried in Gartz’s chest. Nick looks dumbfounded; the creature is now standing to his right. It dodged. The creature’s knee drives deep into Nick’s stomach. It dodges Gartz’s attack and slices under his knee, immobilizing him, before slicing at his neck. Gartz falls to the floor, holding his throat. The creature clacks its teeth as it grabs Nick by the collar and throws him aside. Nick gets up as fast as he can, and the creature lets him. It knows that there is little else he can do. Nick backs away as the Half-Thing keeps clacking its teeth like a nutcracker. Nick puffs out his chest, spitting a thick wad of blood in front of him.

“I’m sorry, Clara,” Nick says as it approaches, its long, bladed fingers now glistening with Gartz’s black blood. “I tried, I really did. But I failed you.”

The thing that was once Clara shows no regard or understanding. It winds back its claws. Nick, this time, wants to close his eyes. He’s had enough of violence. The world goes black, and he hears a soft gushing sound, like soil being punctured by a pitchfork. He feels no stab, no pressure, no blood running down his leg. Nick opens his eyes to see Gartz standing in front of him, the creature’s fingers peeking through his shirt.

“John…” Nick mutters. He walks around to see Gartz holding the creature by the shoulders. Expressionless, Gartz pulls the creature closer, plunging the claws deeper through his chest. The creature hisses and clacks its teeth, louder than ever. All Gartz does is calmly put his hands on both sides of the creature’s head. His elbows flare out, and the creature panics as it feels the pressure. Nick watches Gartz’s arms shake and tense as he squeezes. His face contorts in effort, brows furrowing and teeth gritting. The creature’s screams turn distorted as it begins to feel real pain. Cracks can be heard as Gartz keeps crushing. Its head elongates into an unnatural oval shape. Its jaw begins to droop down to the floor. In an instant, the head of the Half-Thing explodes in a mess of bone and black blood.

The body goes limp. Gartz fishes the claws out of his chest and wobbles to the wall. He sits, strangely calm. Nick limps to the metal table Henry used in his preparation, picking up the Orpheus file and other assorted paperwork. He then walks over to Gartz, easing himself down to sit next to his partner—the two lean against the wall, shoulder to shoulder.

“Now I’m very confused. I’m confused as to why you helped me, why… eh, whatever.” Nick looks up, lights a cigarette, then uses his lighter to set the papers on fire. The flames lick at the pile. Once Nick makes sure the entire pile has caught fire, he tosses them onto a tiled section of the floor. “There are… so many things I want to say to you. But I guess it’s better to ask something. You remember me, right? We used to work together.”

In what feels like—and in most ways is—another life, Gartz remembers Nick Romeo. It is muddled and drowned out by white noise. The grating voice, the stench of those strange cigarettes, the time Romeo saved his life after the Chinatown incident. Gartz remembers how they met, at the practice range. Nick commented on his shooting, shook his hand, and introduced himself. “Gartz, huh? Pretty sure we’re partners,” he said. Gartz smiled and said, “S’pose so.” Years down the line, something happened. Gartz remembers being angry with his partner, but he cannot for the life of him recall what it was. This man beside him fought bravely. Whatever their conflict was about, it feels so small in his chest, like it happened to someone else, because it did. The man sitting next to Gartz is a brave man.

John Gartz looks at his partner. He nods.

Nick smirks. “You always did have a way with words,” Nick says before blacking out. His head rests on Gartz’s shoulder as he drifts off into the murky nothing.

He did his best; he gave this city something to choke on before it swallowed him. It all goes blank, not white or black, just blank, and Nick is OK with this. Pain is now a memory.