The Pulptress Versus The Bone Queen: Blood and Bone (2 page)

"You said he had my name and number in his hand?"

Jackson nodded, "Yeah, I didn't notice that until I uh... knocked him back down."

"Until you what?" I asked, frowning as I peered over her shoulder to look at file in her hand. Nothing useful there. Just listing a John Doe roughly 30 years old with blonde hair.

"I hit him," Jackson said. "He startled me and I just...POW. Right in the kisser."

"And what did he do?" I asked, glancing down at her hand. Her left knuckles were bruised with bits of blood on them; she’d recently punched something hard no doubt.

"Well he went back down. I tied him up, and that was when I noticed the note in his hand."

I paused and stared at her, "Are you saying that he's still here?" I asked, trying to keep my mouth from hanging open.

"Well I tied him up and put him back in the freezer," Jackson elaborated at my shocked face. "I didn't know what to do! Bodies don’t get up and come after me on a real regular basis!"

"So you tied up a living dead and put him in the freezer?" I repeated back to her. I'd done and seen some wild things in my life, but that was a new one.

"Well what was I supposed to do?" She protested, "This doesn't happen here!"

"Just take me to wherever you have it," I finally said, pulling out my pistol from my hoodie pocket and carefully loading it.

"You are not shooting that in my lab!" Jackson shook her head, "Absolutely not!"

I sighed. "I'm a good enough shot I won't hit anything important, but fine." Reluctantly I put the gun away and pulled out a knife from the holster hidden under my hoodie. "Lead the way."

Jackson finally relented, moving through the house, wringing her thin hands together as she unlocked a basement door and started down the narrow, but well-lit stairs. She unlocked another door that opened into a solid white room with no windows. Stainless steel fixtures, and white lab coats hung from hooks above a few rust-colored stains. The smell of bleach mixed with the scent of raw flesh and formaldehyde. Overhead the fluorescent lights hummed while the one closest to the door flickered. Cabinets lined the back wall, each one filled with various bottles and tools. I immediately noticed the electric saw and what looked like a hammer.

One bed lay overturned with a table beside it. All the supplies that probably had once sat atop it now were scattered across the stained-brown laminate tile floor. The farthest wall from the entrance was covered with small metal doors that had to be the freezers for the body. A chair braced against one of the door handles gave me a solid idea of where this living dead body waited.

"I'm assuming that's where he is?" I asked, moving towards the cooler.

Jackson nodded as I pulled the chair to the side and yanked the door open. Cold air rushed across me and my skin prickled at the touch.

Pitch black on top of a stainless steel tray, my fingers brushed against an empty body bag that I threw to the side. I slowly reached in and grabbed the edge of the rolling tray, pulling it backwards and out of the cooler. Bound and tied in the center of the metal gurney, a blonde man laid still. Medical tape tied his wrists and ankles together.

His bones showed clearly through his almost transparent yellow-tinted skin. Clumps of his hair had long since fallen off, and one ear was completely gone to decomposition. His clothes consisted of old rags of what looked like a military uniform, but not from any branch I recognized.

I pressed my blade against his cheek. Though the edge cut through skin, no blood dribbled onto it. He groaned softly, his eyes opened to show a pale grey color with a sharp blue center just around the iris. I took a step back, keeping the blade ready.

"You're dead," Jackson said from behind me. "You're a dead man. I checked everything."

The man groaned again, looking from me to Jackson. As soon as his eyes focused on me, he let out a growl, and bit at the medical tape around his wrists. Gnawed to shreds in seconds, he pushed off of the tray, yellow thin fingers grabbing towards us.

Pushing Jackson to the side and out of harm’s way, I let my knife slide past his grabbing hands and slammed the blade into his chest before ripping lengthwise across him. His body sizzled as his skin dissolved into dust and everything faded until all that was left was a rag and a small shard of bone.

"What is going on?" Jackson demanded.

I took a deep breath. "It's not something you need to worry about," I said.

"Bull." She crossed her arms. "That man was dead. I checked his stats and cut out his organs myself. There is absolutely no way that he was alive, so how was he up and moving and attacking people! And then you just stab him and POOF! What is going on?”

I opened my mouth to respond when a dull thud sounded from one of the other doors. I froze, knife slowly coming back up. "How many John or Jane Does do you have in here right now?" I asked.

Jackson frowned, then realization slowly hit. She swallowed hard. "I have four unidentified bodies in here. They're all in the coolers waiting for transport. Someone was supposed to be by, but-"

"Alright, Jackson,” I said, firming my voice to let the doctor know there was no questioning me, “I'm gonna ask you to take a few steps back and out of the room while I deal with this." I pulled my gun from my hip holster. "And I'll try to not hit any of your equipment."

Jackson nodded slowly, taking several steps backwards and out of the room, closing the main door behind her.

One of the cooler door handles rattled, and I cocked my pistol as I reached forward with my free hand and pulled the door open. "Morning, sunshine," I said as I fired one shot point blank right between the eyes of the dead woman just as her hands reached my throat. Her mouth dropped open and she wheezed once before her skin began to dissolve into nothing but dust that flittered around me.

I heard another two of the doors rip open just before something grabbed me and jerked hard at my ankle. I groaned and toppled backwards, hitting the ground. One of the dead bodies crawled on top of me. The smell of formaldehyde curled around me as a gaping mouth opened and rotten teeth snapped at me. I felt the bone brittle fingers start curling around my throat, but before they could come close to strangling me, I rammed my elbow upwards, slamming into the creature's gut. Its spit splattered on my cheek as I rolled over and pinned it to the ground with one hand while firing my pistol with the other. It fell apart beneath me and I rolled over.

Two other bodies were just getting to their feet. One rushed toward me, grabbing my wrist and bending it backwards until my gun dropped from my hand.

"Think that's gonna do you a lot of good?" I asked, grabbing at the tools on one of the side tables. My fingers found a hammer. I gripped it and swung.

The hammer cracked the skull of the creature. It howled, releasing my wrist and stumbling backwards, grabbing at its head. It screamed and dust flew from its mouth as it dropped to its knees and exploded into a burst of its former self.

The last one lurched for me, grabbing my shoulders and slamming me into the cooler doors. One of the door handles bore into my back and I groaned, before pushing my knee up and into the groin of the dead man trying to pin me down. He growled but his grip loosened for just a split second. That was all I needed to push him off and send his head slamming into the steel plated cooler doors. Nothing but powdered corpse dropped to the floor.

I coughed and rubbed my throat.

"Jackson? It's alright now."

The doctor came rushing back into the room with a baseball bat in hand, "What? What's happening?"

I raised my hands. "Bat down. There's no need for that," I said.

She slowly lowered the bat. "What are you doing? Who are you?"

"Legitimate questions," I said, "I'm called the Pulptress and I’m here because you called."

"Well I know that much. But why are you here at all? Why did that thing have your information in its hands?"

"That I'm not sure about," I admitted, "but I intend to find out. What can you tell me about these bodies? Where were they found?”

Jackson stammered for a few moments before reaching over and pulling the hammer from my hand and putting it into a nearby sink. "Let me pull out their files," she said as she walked over to a large lateral cabinet and pulled out a collection of files. "I know they were all found within the same 24 hour period. It was a big scandal here. We don't have the kind of crime that say Atlanta or some big city has."

She opened up the first one and nodded. "They were all found not very far from Epsilon First Cemetery." She closed the folder. "I've got their belongings too." She walked over to a separate set of meticulously labeled drawers. She pulled out a few plastic evidence bags. "They all were in really tattered clothes. Police all figured they had to be homeless, probably got into a bad batch of drugs and overdosed."

"And what did your examination turn up?" I asked, picking up one of the bags and looking over the evidence and the ratty clothes.

"I didn't find any trace of drug use, but I took a few blood and tissue samples to send for a tox screen," she answered, then paused and walked over to a small refrigerator where she pulled out several labeled vials. "You have to be kidding me." She sighed as she shook the plastic vial now filled with nothing but a pale, ashy dust.

I looked over the second bag of collected items and spotted a strange sprig of green plant stuck to the bottom of a pant leg. "What's this?" I asked.

Jackson made her way back over to my side. "Hm? Oh yeah, I made a note of that. All of them had some traces of rosemary on them."

"Rosemary?" I asked. "Like the herb you cook with? So what? They all came from some kind of kitchen?"

Jackson crossed her arms. "Rosemary also grows in the wild, and it's one of the most popular plants to grow in a cemetery. Epsilon First has several plots of rosemary."

I nodded. That made it absolutely clear where the Bone Queen was, and that she was back to her old tricks, raising the dead and causing hell, but why here? Why now? I shook my head. "Well thanks. I think I'm going to go check this out. Could you give me directions to this graveyard?"

Jackson chewed at her lip for a few moments before pulling the evidence away from me and putting it back into the file drawer and locking it closed. "I'll go with you."

"Whoa," I said as I held up my hands. "What?"

"I'll go with you," Jackson repeated as she put away the rest of her files.

"I don't think you understand. This isn't a joy ride or a field trip through a cemetery. This is going to be dangerous. You saw those things right? The one just now? The one that attacked you? There will be more of those things."

"I gathered," Jackson said after a moment, "but I am willing to take that risk. Let me get my bag and we'll go." She headed back for the main area of her office and out of the morgue.

I stared for a moment, then followed after her. "You're willing to take that risk? Why?" I asked.

She sighed. "Because I need hard evidence for what just happened or else my job is gone. I've just lost four bodies in my care. Do you think that's going to go over well with the police department?" She shook her head, "I need solid proof so that I keep my job, and don't get taken to the loony bin for claiming that four bodies just dissolved into dust after raising from the dead and attacking." She walked over to her desk, and picked up her purse. "Now, if you're done asking questions, I'd like to get this done before thunderstorms roll in this afternoon."

I sighed, running a hand through my hair. I really didn't need some civilian to have to keep an eye on while trying to go after the Bone Queen, but I needed to get to this cemetery. "Fine, but you stay out of the way and the second I tell you to run, you take off without a word, got it?"

She nodded. "Yes, fine. Don't worry so much. I do know how to fire a gun, and have taken several self-defense classes. I'll be fine," she assured me as she headed out to the rusted out truck in the driveway.

I take a few seconds before I follow after Jackson as she climbs into her truck. I hesitantly settled into the passenger side of the truck. It struggled a few times as Jackson turned the key, then finally the engine turned over and it rumbled to life like a freight train. Shifting gears, Jackson backed out of the driveway and out of the area.

The dirt roads weren't quite as bumpy on the drive in the truck; I didn't feel like my teeth were about to rattle out of my head at least.

"So, what is going on?" Jackson asked.

"I don't think you'd believe it even if I did even if I did tell you." I said after a moment, "Just get me to the cemetery. That’s all I need from you.”

Jackson frowned, glancing at me before looking back to the road and taking a left down a gravel road. "So, there's dead things coming to life in my morgue and you're not going to tell me what's going on because you think it's too unbelievable? Unless you tell me you're filming some new episode of reality TV, then I think I'll believe it."

I felt a small smile tug at my lips. "Good point. All right look, there's a woman. I don't know her real name but she's known as The Bone Queen. She raises the dead by eating their bones. I fought her once in Paris, and I'm here to take her out for good. She killed someone very important to me, and I promised I’d hunt her down. That's all you need to know."