The Reincarnation

Victor Grey had an army. Grey’s Army, he liked to call it. They were more of a gang than an army, but when Grey needed things done – his way – he called them in. It was a small unit, but they were all highly competent people. Grey had seen to that himself. He had hand-picked and trained them personally.

Grey’s Army scoured the tiny town, leaving nothing unturned. They broke a few laws, broke down a few doors when residents weren’t as cooperative as they would have liked, and generally acted as an army.

They weren’t learning much, but did locate the car Grey had been after. It was parked at a cheap motel. The gentleman who had rented it was in the motel. But he was dead. Cockroaches were scurrying all over him.

Grey wanted the body. He wanted to smell it.

They were across the border. Laura had merely held her MCA card up to the window and border patrol waved her through.

David was playing with the tag that hung around Hannibal’s neck like a noose. That can’t be comfortable, he thought. It was made to stay on, and it took David some time to work its clasp loose. Once it was in his hand, he noticed the weight of it. It seemed heavier than it should be. He turned to Laura.

“Do you have a knife?”

“What for?”

“Hannibal’s tag. It’s heavy, and it seems like it opens somehow. I wanna pry it open. See what’s inside.”

“On the back seat. I grabbed some stuff from the Lab.”

David pulled a bag off the back seat. It too was heavier than he expected. Opening it, he realized why. It was his time capsule – the things he had given the Lab before they suspended him. Putting it back, he picked up the other bag on the back seat. It was exceptionally heavy as well. Laura had packed enough little bottles of chemicals in it to kill an army.

“Planning on killing someone?” David held the open bag up to her.

“Let’s just say it’s security.”

“Fair enough.” David rummaged through the bag, sifting through bottles, syringes, bandages, emesis basins, and tape. At the bottom he found a medical kit. Inside was a scalpel. He pulled it out, and pried open Hannibal’s name tag.

“Pull over,” he commanded.

“What? There’s nowhere to pull over.”

“Any idea what this is?” He held up a tiny transistor.

“Was that in his tag?”

“Uh-huh. We better get rid of it. Pull into the next gas station.”

“Just throw it out the window.”

“No, wait,” David said, confidence welling up in his breast. “I have a better idea. Keep driving.”

The gunman’s body was brought into the Lab and laid out on an operating room table. Jesus, it stank. It was a horrible, meaty aroma.

Grey, despite the odor, breathed deeply, very close to the man’s body. He identified his mystery smell, or at least thought he did. It was death, but of a variety he hadn’t sampled before. Death by starvation? he wondered. Under the stench, Grey smelled cheap cologne, and makeup. Pancake makeup. He wasn’t sure of the brand, but it wasn’t important. They had brought the room’s contents in a bag along with the corpse and his car.

In the man’s wallet, Grey found an ID. He learned that the corpse’s name had been John Springer. They had found the gun. Was it the same one responsible for last night’s escapades? Grey smelled it. It had been fired recently. The butt of it was scratched where it might have been used to scrape the wall. He had his Army test it anyway, along with the bullet from the wall. Grey was confident that he had found his man.

The guy had obviously been dead for a while, though. How could he have done it? Grey thought. He wiped the makeup off the man’s face and hands with a wet rag. Taking in the visage, he was shocked at the pallor of his skin. Along with the smell, the look of the man was something new to Grey. The cadaver’s skin was nearly transparent. It reminded him of a clear, see-through fish he had once seen in an aquarium. Inside the fish, its little heart beat, and Grey could see it. But this guy’s heart wasn’t beating.

He stripped the clothes off the body. The skin on the body of the cadaver was the same – gelid and spongy. He touched the man’s jaw. The teeth embedded in it could be seen through the skin. Sliding his hand along the jaw revealed skin as smooth as a lizard’s belly. The guy must have shaved the second before he died. Grey realized his beard still would have poked through a little regardless. This was indeed a new experience for him. He saw a monstrous, dark purple bruise on the man’s chest. Looking closer, he realized it was his heart. It was nicely encaged by his ribs, which Grey could also see clearly.

It was getting late. Even if this was the gunman, what did it matter? Grey still didn’t have a way to find his main target. He decided to put the autopsy off until morning. He didn’t think they would find out anything significant from it, nothing to aid him in his search, anyway.

By nightfall, they had located the Lab’s car that had been stolen, presumably now by the day nurse. Another vehicle had been stolen from the same shopping mall. Grey instructed the MCA Reconnaissance Lab to find it.

The nurse’s family was badly shaken, but none of them knew anything that would help him. They would be watched, nonetheless. Their phones were already tapped, their houses under surveillance. The pigeon always flies home, Grey knew this to be true.

Among the corpse’s possessions, Grey found a tracking device. It read “CATSCAN.” He smelled it, trying to learn its secrets. He put it in his pocket.