Empty Bodies 3: Deliverance (Empty Bodies Series Book 3) (10 page)

“Glad you made it back,” Gabriel said as they patted each other’s backs. He pulled away.

“What happened to them?” Marcus asked.

“I really need to sit down,” Will told them, collapsing down at a nearby table.

Gabriel listened as Will first explained to them the good news about how his strategy to lead the Empties out of the garage had worked, making it a breeze to get back into the hospital when they’d returned. Will then told them everything that had happened at the house, and how Brandon had eroded once he’d found his father lying in his bed, dead of an apparent suicide.

“I tried to get him out of there, but he fired a shotgun at me. Told me if I didn’t leave him, he wouldn’t miss the next time.
Sam
ran inside once he heard the gunshot. He decided to stay with Brandon. We ran into some resistance on our way out to the parking garage, and he got bit.”

“Shit,” Marcus said.

Will bowed his head. “There was a large horde that had made it to the back patio, but I still shouldn’t have left them.”

Gabriel started to say something, but before he could, Jessica spoke.

“I would have done the same thing after I found my parents if your mom hadn’t been there to talk some sense into me. But I wanted to live. Brandon made his choice.”

“And you can’t blame
Sam
for what he did,” Marcus added.

Will looked up and nodded, and then his eyes met Gabriel’s. “How’d everything go here?”

“We’ve got everything ready to go,” Gabriel said. “Just take your time getting cleaned up and we can start whenever you’re ready.”

Will squeezed Gabriel’s shoulder. “Thanks, brother.” Will stood up, then leaned down to kiss Jessica on the forehead and mumbled, “Thank you.”

He left for his room.

***

Will

The rest of the group were awaiting Will when he came back out of his room about a half hour later. Holly stood at the front and, without a word, took Will’s hand as he approached her. She turned and walked with him down the long hallway toward the elevators as the rest of the group followed. Everyone was silent.

As they reached the elevators, they turned to the double doors which were now decorated with flowers. Holly would later mention that she’d collected them from the various vases that sat around the hospital. Gabriel moved in front of them and finally broke the silence.

“You ready?” he asked, looking at Will.

Will drew in a deep breath. He knew what lay on the other side of the doors. It had been the hardest day of his entire life, and he hoped this makeshift ceremony could bring some kind of closure. He looked to Gabriel and nodded. As Gabriel moved to open the doors, Will’s grip on Holly’s hand tightened. She returned the gesture, stroking the top of his hand with her index finger.

Gabriel pushed open the doors, and there they lay.

The four bodies had been placed on the ground, each covered with a white sheet. Their only identifiers were pieces of paper neatly placed on each of them, the given victim’s name handwritten in a beautiful script.

The first in line was Rachel, the hospital receptionist who David had thrown into the room with the hospital’s experiment Empty, forcing her to let the creature loose. When she’d tried to escape after her task was complete, David had shot her in the leg so that she couldn’t get away. The rest of the group had had to listen and watch as the Empty had devoured her.
 

Next to her was Kristen, the innocent nurse who David had killed in his attempt to show Rachel and the rest of the group that he wasn’t bluffing. Will sensed that everyone in the group knew that it could have been any of them lying there; Kristen had just so happened to be the unlucky person standing next to David when he’d decided to pull the trigger just to prove a point.

Trevor lay adjacent to Kristen, his body having been retrieved from the area where the group had stored their weapons. From what Jessica had overheard, he’d been stabbed after he’d helped the two rednecks and David with stealing all their weapons.

Will’s eyes moistened as he looked at the last body in the line, and Holly shifted in reaction to the new tension from him, going
 
from clutching his hand to wrapping her arm around him.

Though he couldn’t see her face, Melissa Kessler, Will’s mother, lay under the third sheet, her name beautifully written across a piece of paper placed on her chest. Marcus held the door opposite Gabriel, and Will, Holly, and Sarah stepped through.

Marcus stepped forward, moving to the other side of the bodies so he could face the group.

“Would anyone like to say anything?” Marcus asked.

After another few moments of silence, Sarah stepped forward, wiping her eyes, and began to talk about Kristen. Working as nurses on the same floor of the hospital, the two women had worked together often and become close. Sarah spoke about the first time she’d met Kristen. It had been her first day in the hospital, and Kristen had been on the same shift. Sarah shadowed Kristen most of the day, and they’d sat down and had their first lunch together, as well. This had been less than a year ago, and now Kristen was gone.

She tried to gather herself to talk about Rachel and Trevor, but she was too distraught. She had to step out of the room.

All eyes seemed to fall on Will after Sarah departed. He had barely paid attention to what Sarah had said about the other two women, focused solely on his mother. It pained him that he couldn’t see her. How was he supposed to get closure if he couldn’t actually see what lay under the sheet? His gaze finally left the body and he looked around to see the rest of the group looking at him in silence. He hoped they didn’t expect him to speak, as no words came to him.

“Melissa Kessler was an amazing woman.”

Will looked to the side and saw Jessica staring at him. She stepped forward and stood next to Marcus.

“While I didn’t know her long, she became almost like another mother to me over the short time we did spend together. She was one of the strongest women I’ve ever met.” She cleared her throat, and her eyes never left Will’s. He got lost in them, listening intently as she spoke. “When Walt died, I thought I was going to lose her, too. She was devastated. She loved your dad so much. But she was too strong to give up. I could tell it wasn’t in her nature. She was determined to find you, Will, and even though her death was premature, I think she died in peace, knowing that you were alive.”

Will’s eyes gave way as tears poured from them. Jessica came over, and Will felt Holly let go as Jessica embraced him. She lay her head on his chest and he held her tight.

His red eyes looked down past Jessica to his mother’s body, and he saw David Ellis’ face in the stark white sheets.

CHAPTER TEN

Dylan

When Dylan’s eyes opened again, he was surprised to find that his hands were free. He immediately grabbed his wrists, rubbing down the grotesque wounds that the chains had embedded into them.

He lay on his back and stared up to a ceiling fan. It spun and whistled, sending a cool breeze down upon him. Rolling over toward a wall, he felt the surface he was lying on. They’d placed him on an old mattress on the floor, its sheets stained and unwashed. He could have complained about it, but he was just relieved to have his hands free of the shackles and not be trapped in the dank barn.

“Are you okay?”

The voice startled Dylan, and he turned to see a young girl. She appeared to be around his age, with long dark hair and bright green eyes, and she wore a tattered dress.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” the girl said. She was lying down, but sat up straight on her mattress to talk to him. Like Dylan’s, her mattress lay on the wood floor, though her sheets appeared to be a little bit cleaner than his. “My name’s Mary Beth.”

“I-I’m Dylan.” His jaw ached when he spoke, the gag having spent hours in his mouth. He worked to stretch it, opening it and closing it a few times. Even talking felt strange to him, and his own voice sounded almost unfamiliar.

Mary Beth smiled. “Hi Dylan.”

He looked around the room. It appeared old and unkempt, train engine wallpaper torn away from the drywall in several spots. In one corner of the room he saw cobwebs, and on the wall near him, there were five wooden letters hanging on the wall that read “BRIAN”, though the “R” looked like it might fall off the wall at any moment, hanging at an awkward angle.

“Where am I?” Dylan asked.

Before Mary Beth could answer, the door swung open, the knob slamming against the wall behind it. Two people appeared in the doorway: a man and a woman. The burly man had a large beard and long hair coming over the V of his tank top. The woman had stringy brown hair and a toothless grin, though she appeared to only be in her 30’s—seemingly far too young to worry about porcelain teeth unless you have a career as a professional hockey player. He realized he recognized both of them from when he’d first been brought to the farm. They’d both been there when he’d been dragged out of the trunk, and the woman had even been the one to blindfold him.

The man picked Dylan up before the boy could protest, and dragged him out into a hallway.

“Don’t hurt him!” Mary Beth cried, but the woman slammed the door behind them.

“Where are you taking me?” asked Dylan, but neither of the adults responded.

Their feet creaked on the wooden floor as the large man carried the boy to a restroom down the hall. The man placed Dylan on his feet in the middle of the bathroom.

“Strip,” the large man said.

Dylan looked down at his tattered clothes, crying now, and failed to do as the man asked.

Apparently impatient, the man leaned down and tore at Dylan’s clothes as the woman watched. He ripped off the shirt, unbuttoned the boy’s pants and yanked them off, and then tore away his underwear, leaving the pre-teen child stark naked in front of the two strangers, his face red with embarrassment.

Not even bothering to ask Dylan to get in himself, the man picked him up again and put him in the bathtub before he turned on the showerhead.

The cold water poured down and stung Dylan’s skin. He yelled out, begging the man or woman to warm the water, but neither listened. Dylan tried to shield himself from the water, but it was useless. He looked down and saw the water turning a light brown—not surprising considering how long it had been since he’d had a shower.

After a few moments, he looked up to see the woman leaning in.

“Stay still,” she commanded.

She grabbed a bar of soap and lathered his entire body. When the soap was all over him, she used an old body brush, far too rough to be used on human skin, to scrub him with.

“You’re hurting me!” he cried out, but the woman continued to rub him down with the brush like she was trying to grind the rust off of an old coin. He swung his hands, slapping the woman on the arms. She grimaced and slapped
 
him across his face.

“Keep that shit up, and I’m gonna let him bathe you,” the woman said, signaling back to the large man. “And believe me, you don’t want that.”

Dylan finally conceded, knowing that crying wasn’t going to do him any good. In fact, his resistance had only made the woman scrub harder.

She shut off the cold water and Dylan found himself shivering. She put a towel over him that was more like a rag, barely large enough to cover his shoulders, and started drying him. She used almost as much force as she had with the brush, not allowing him to dry himself.

When she was done, the man came back and picked Dylan up under his arms. Dylan squealed, his arms still sore from the chains they’d hung him from in the barn.

The man lowered Dylan back to the ground, and he noticed the used clothes hanging over the sink.

“Put these on,” the man said.

Dylan abided, having no interest in finding out what would happen if he refused to put on the dirty clothes. The shirt was two sizes too big, but the elastic band sweatpants fit just fine. He didn’t want to think about where the underwear had come from, so he just slipped it on, trying to convince himself that it was his own.

When he was finished, the woman grabbed him by the arm, pinching him, and led him back down to the bedroom.

The man opened the door and the woman pushed him inside. Somehow, he managed not to fall, and the door was slammed and locked behind him.