Harry’s nose off his face, though Sarah could not see any other wounds or what had exactly killed him, but with Trina, he had taken out all of his fury.
Her torso had been flayed of all skin, as were both hands. Between her legs looked even worse. He had carved out her vagina like he were coring an apple. Sarah could not have imagined the pain she must have gone through.
Torres turned and punched Dale in the stomach, doubling him over.
“If you can bring them back, then you’d better do it right now, and you’d better hope you can do it because if you can’t I’m going to do to you everything you did to them.”
Dale dropped to his knees and vomited onto the floor. Torres kicked him in the ribs, knocking him into his own vomit.
“Get the fuck up and bring my friends back!” Torres pulled out his gun and pointed it at Dale’s head. “Do it now!”
Dale struggled to his feet. His eyes rolled up in his head and he looked again like he was going to lose consciousness but then he steadied himself. He walked over to Harry and placed his lips against the detective’s lips. He took one long breath and breathed into Harry’s mouth. Then he did it again, taking an even deeper breath this time and fully expanding the detective’s lungs. The third time he breathed in and Harry breathed out. The detective began breathing on his own in a fast, panting breath like he was hyperventilating. As Sarah watched his nose began to regenerate, like a film running in reverse. Detective Torres made the sign of the cross and continued to stare as Harry began to blink and open his eyes.
“Oh
He removed the gag from the detective’s mouth and Harry bent over and threw up onto the floor.
“Cut him loose!” Detective Torres said, and Sarah began opening drawers, looking for something to cut the detective free with.
Torres grabbed Dale by the shirt and dragged him over to Detective Lassiter.
“Do her now. Bring her back.”
Dale put his lips to Trina’s lips and began breathing into her lungs. Her chest rose and fell with each exhalation. Sarah and Josh stopped what they were doing to watch. The detective’s skin began to reknit itself, growing back up over her chest. The skin on her hands began to grow back also, starting at the wrists and spreading back down over her fingers. Between her legs, the ragged hole Dale had carved in her sex began to sew itself shut and her vulva gradually reformed. When Dale removed his lips from the detective’s she was completely whole again though still unconscious. Dale dropped to his knees at her feet, kneeling in a small pool of congealed blood.
“I can’t fucking believe it. He did it,” Torres said in an awed whisper.
“Cut me the fuck loose.”
It was Harry. He was fully conscious now and struggling to free himself from the tape still binding him to the chair. Josh finally found a butter knife and went to work trying to cut through the duct tape around Harry’s arms. Sarah used a key from her key chain to saw through the tape on Harry’s ankles. It took a while but they finally managed to cut Harry free.
“Where’s my fucking gun? I’m going to put a bullet in this freak’s brain.” Harry stepped forward and Detective Torres grabbed him by both arms to hold him back.
“Wait. Wait, Harry. Wait. Will you wait a second! We have a problem.”
“There’s no problem, Mike. Give me your gun and I’ll fix the problem right now!”
“You don’t understand, Harry. There are about a dozen officers outside who just saw you lying dead on the floor in here. What the hell am I supposed to tell them when you walk out of here looking as healthy as a horse?”
“Dead? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“This piece of shit murdered you and Trina. He tortured you to find out where we were keeping Mrs. Lincoln. I just made him bring you back. You should have seen it, Harry. I’ve never seen anything like it. You were dead as disco, bro, and he just breathed into you and you were alive again. You don’t remember it? Were you in heaven?”
“Heaven? Fuck no! I don’t remember shit except waking up tied to a chair and seeing you three all standing around looking at me. I went for a drink after work. I was walking to my car and then I woke up here. You’re saying I was dead?”
“You were in full rigor. He had cut your nose off and then I think you choked on your own vomit. He had a gag over your mouth and you must have thrown up.”
Sarah and Josh went to cut Detective Lassiter free. She was still unconscious, snoring soundly as if she were merely asleep and not reanimated. Josh took the butter knife to the tape around her arms and shoulders while Sarah squatted down in Lassiter’s blood to cut her ankles free. Harry and Torres were still debating whether to shoot Dale and how to explain to the cops outside why Harry and Trina were walking out instead of being carted out in body bags. Dale had lost consciousness and was lying on his side with his face in the detective’s blood. Sarah had the urge to take the butter knife from Josh and try to cut Dale’s throat with it but it was too dull. She considered stabbing him in the eye with it instead. She removed the last strip of tape from Trina’s ankles just as the woman woke.
Detective Lassiter looked around in a panic. She was breathing hard and struggling to free herself from the rest of the tape while trying to reorient herself. Before anyone could react, she leaped up from the chair and ran over to Detective Torres. She snatched the Glock out of his hand and pointed the gun down at Dale.
“Motherfucker!”
She pulled the trigger, once, twice, three times, four times, until Torres finally wrenched it back out of her hands. All four shots had gone directly into Dale’s skull, scattering his brains across the floor.
The front door opened and police officers rushed into the room with guns drawn. Torres turned his back and held up his hands to tell the officers to hold their fire.
“Hold it. Hold it. I got this. It’s all under control. I got this.”
Sarah felt the pain even before her body began to fly apart. She looked over at Josh as his head began to bleed and his throat tore open in the same spot where Dale had cut him in the video they had taken on their spy camera. Harry collapsed first, convulsing on the floor and choking. His nose fell off, leaving a hollow crater in the center of his face like there had been before Dale had resurrected him.
Trina began losing chunks of flesh and skin. She stumbled around screaming as her skin sloughed off in sheets and her vagina fell apart.
Sarah looked down at her body as her chest tore open. One of her breasts fell off and the other lost a nipple and most of its skin. Her stomach ripped open and her intestines spilled out onto the floor; then she began to choke as her throat split wide and blood filled her throat and lungs. She collapsed between her dead husband and her murderer.
As she lost consciousness, she heard Dale beside her begin breathing rapidly. She turned her head and tried to focus her eyes as her vision began to darken. She could make out what was left of Dale’s skull as it began to knit itself back together.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Monica O’ Rourke and Kelli Dunlap for their much needed last minute assistance in proofreading this book; to Tod Clark, my dedicated reader, for his honest opinions; to Larry Roberts of Bloodletting Books for being the first to publish my first novel; to Brian Cartwright for the beautiful work on the limited edition; and Brian Keene, Maurice Broaddus, my wife Christie, and my son Sultan for their constant support and encouragement. Oh, and special thanks to Jack Staynes for his rabid enthusiasm. Here’s a little bit of siction for ya.
Praise for Wrath James White and
“This should definitely be on your reading list.”
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