State of Shock by M. Todd Henderson

Author:M. Todd Henderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

CHAPTER 27

He dreamt of Alex. Of Alex’s pain, of his blood seeping out of his body, of his last thoughts and what they might have been, of his lost life. Royce knew that Alex felt no pain when Gerhardt’s men put that bullet in his brain—that his death was instantaneous and that the pain was reserved for the ones he left behind. But this was a dream, and in his dreams, Alex could feel the life drip, drip, dripping out of him, just as he was certain Jante had. In Royce’s fits and starts of deep sleep, Alex had time to imagine what he’d miss and how his loss would damage so many lives. Alex’s pain welled up inside of him, and with every roll onto crushed ribs, every turn onto a badly bruised kidney, and every squish of the blood pooled against his bandage, Royce cringed in agony for Alex.

The sleep ended with a gasp. Royce sat up and vomited again onto the floor. He could hear some music coming from the cubicles around him and mumbling voices echoed throughout the Annex. But the odor was what woke him. Not the smell of homelessness or rancid fried food. That smell he’d smelled when he arrived, and he knew it still lingered. It wasn’t that. It was the reek of death. He had smelled it many times, of course. There were corpses of varying states of decay seared into his memory, each with its own particular stink. Three days gone smelled different than ten days gone, and, on top of that, context mattered. A body left in a dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant reeked of death infused with garlic and five spice, while one abandoned in the desert of northern Mexico smelled indistinguishable from the lizards and antelope whose bodies were also known to be lying around in various states of decay. This smell was something else entirely. It wasn’t just the smell of death as of dying. It was the smell of him dying. It was wet and fetid, an acrid odor of his insides rotting and putrefying that made his stomach do cartwheels. He wretched again, and in doing so felt the stab of pain in his lower back. He could feel the heat too.

Royce reached around and removed the bandage. Pulling it away from where it had been stuck for hours hurt like he was pulling a scab off his entire body. The bandage told a frightening story. Black with blood, as expected, but also covered with a yellowish-green ooze. He tried to bring it to his nose but pulled it back before it got within a foot. Infected. Badly, rottenly infected. There was no mirror in the room, but everything he needed to see was on that bandage. Death on its way to the party.

Another bottle of hydrogen peroxide down his back, but it wouldn’t be enough. He pulled another large bandage from the Walgreens basket, and put it in place with a wince. He bit the tip of his tongue, while he wrapped the ace bandage around his waist.

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