Cold Summer Nights (19 page)

“Where the
hell’d
he go?” Clark blinked, jerking the gun around the room.

Rusty watched
Summer
slowly get to her feet, the guard’s uniform hanging loosely from her skinny frame. Reluctantly, her eyes swept the gory scene around her. Revulsion gripped her bloody face and grew stronger with each body she processed. She looked back to Rusty with tears in her eyes. Suddenly, she sprang across the break room and leapt into his unready arms. He stumbled backwards against her weight as she hugged him so hard, he could hear wheezing in his windpipe. He wasn’t sure if she was trying to kill him or not.

“I don’t know what’s happening!” she cried, her face buried in his neck. Tears and snot darkened the shoulder of his orange jumpsuit.

Grudgingly, he wrapped his arms around her cold, trembling body. His frigid breath flashed through his mind.

“Say Russ?” Clark said, still pointing the gun. “What’re
ya
doin
?”

“Please tell me I didn’t do this!” she sobbed. “Please!”

Hesitantly, Rusty began stroking her blood-soaked hair. His eyes bounced from body to body, not believing Nick had ever loved her. Not believing Nick was a body now too. “It’s not your fault,” he said softly, sounding like someone else’s voice in his ears.

She pushed away. “Yes it is!” she screamed, covering her mouth with bloody hands.

He flinched and stepped back, his large eyes dropping to the uniform she was wearing. It was at least two sizes too big and dripping in fresh blood. His gaze continued to his orange jumpsuit, now smeared with crimson stains as well. He looked back up to
Summer’s
terrified face. “That wasn’t you.”

She shook her head and scanned the ghastly room. “It had to be,” she said. “The part I can’t…” She trailed off, crying even harder.

Rusty noticed the tall guard, who had escorted Rusty into his cell, sitting at a table and still clutching a copy of
Cold Faith and Zombies
in his blood-stained hands.

“The angry part of me,” she whispered, sounding like she was afraid to awaken it again. “Before all of this I was just a girl who had finished college and was beginning a new life in the real world,” she said dully, staring at a guard lying on the floor next to an empty paper coffee cup with playing cards on its side.

“Russ, we should really think about getting out of here,” Clark said, anxiously checking the hallway behind them. “Maybe we should just go back to our cell.”

“She’s here.”

Clark frowned.
“That thing from the hall?
Where?” he cried, shifting back into a defensive stance and swinging the gun through the air.

“No, that thing is gone. Summer is back.”

“Summer?
That your lady ghost-friend?”

Rusty nodded.

“Well, who the hell was the other one then?”

He turned to meet Clark’s panicked eyes.
“Her dark side.”

Clark’s face slumped. “Oh brother,” he moaned, sweeping his eyes across the room again.

Summer’s face twisted in disgust as she hastily began peeling off the soiled uniform. The beige shirt with official patches slipped from her bloody fingers to the tiled floor below. Rusty couldn’t help but notice the way her milky breasts filled out her lacey black bra. His eyes casually dropped past her lean stomach to the matching panties pulled tightly across her firm rear end. The dark undergarments made her smooth skin seem even whiter.

“What’s she doing now?” Clark asked, still peering around the room.

“Changing,” Rusty said, watching her kick the dark polyester slacks to the floor and step in a pool of blood with bare feet.

Clark gasped.
“Into that
thing
again?”

Rusty shook his head.
“Changing her clothes.”

Summer glanced up to Clark, tears carving out dark trails down her dirty cheeks. She sniffled one last time and rang blood from her hair. “You sure you want to take him with you?”

“Yeah, he’s paid his dues to society.”

She straightened her bra straps, snapping them back to her sticky skin. “Okay, but if he kills someone it’s on you. He is a convicted criminal.”

Rusty turned to see Clark finally lower the gun and exhale a long breath that puffed his bristled cheeks out. “He’s not going to kill anyone.”

Clark raised an eyebrow at him. “I wish you two would stop
talkin
about me behind my back.”

“We’re right in front of you.”

Clark dropped the eyebrow.
“Awe hell.”

“Come on,” she said, pushing past them out into the hall.

Rusty turned to Clark and nodded towards the open door. “Come on,” he said, following
Summer
out of the gruesome break room.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Definitely a female,” the forensics detective said, carefully turning a skull over with gloved hands. “By the looks of it, been here a while too.”

Detective Roberts put his hands on his hips. “Can you tell what she died from?”

Detective Leister shook her head and stood up. “I’ll have a better idea once we get her back to the lab,” she sighed, peeling off her rubber gloves and waving three men over.

Two men with several plastic bags approached the body while a third man jumped in behind the wheel of a white Ford Excursion, a Des Moines Police Department shield on both sides, and began backing it closer.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

The forensics team carefully placed the woman’s remains into different bags, each with their own label.

“Think it’s the Parker girl?” Roberts whispered, watching one of the men carefully stuff a long femur bone into a plastic bag.

“I don’t know,” Leister said morosely.
“Could be.”

Roberts shook his head. “This case is so cold,” he said heavily. “I don’t know if there’s enough here to get the asshole who did this.”

Leister stared at the bones in the dirt and sighed. “Yeah well, there’s one Judge the asshole can’t escape,” she said, kissing the cross hanging around her neck. “We sometimes miss
em
, but He never does.”

Roberts nodded grimly and turned back to the shallow grave.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Get on the fucking ground!” the muscular guard screamed, his finger wrapped tightly around the trigger.

Summer approached him and raised her hand. The guard went limp and slid to the ground, his weapon clattering to the tiled floor. He slumped forward, his black helmet sliding over his eyes.

“Dan!” the chubby guard screamed.

Dan didn’t answer.

Chubby and the taller guard returned their guns to Rusty and Clark, carefully sidestepping to their fallen comrade.

Summer looked back to Rusty. “Don’t worry, he’s not dead.”

Rusty wrinkled his face, his hands still reaching for the sky. “Just get us the fuck out of here!”

The tall guard’s eyes snapped back to Rusty.
“Shut up, asshole!”

Chubby looked from his unconscious partner back to Rusty, the gun shaking in his hands. “I’m not going to tell you again, get on the ground!”

“Now!” the taller guard ordered.

Summer approached the tall guard and raised her hand again. Suddenly her eyes dropped to her feet, which were slowly disappearing. She inhaled sharply and screamed.

“Get down!” the taller guard yelled, not noticing he had just walked right through her.

Clark hit the deck and spread his arms out to the side.

Rusty’s face slumped as he watched
Summer’s
bare legs gradually dissolve into thin air.

She turned back to him with frightened eyes. “What’s happening?” she cried, her black panties beginning to evaporate into a blurry mist.

“
Summer
?” he yelled.

“You
wanna
die?” chubby screamed, inching closer with his gun trained on Rusty.

Summer met Rusty’s worried eyes as her bra disappeared next.