Cold Summer Nights Read online

  “Oh sweet mother of Mary,” Clark gasped, stepping backwards. “What the hell is that?”

  Rusty was too terrified to attempt a response. She looked just as dead and pissed off as before. He took a slow step backwards, bumping into Clark, which is when she started floating towards them. Rusty froze, his round eyes watching her colorless, cracked toes drag along the shiny floor below, leaving a wet trail in their wake.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here!” Clark shrieked.

  The woman drifted closer without effort. Her long dark hair pulled back just enough to reveal her determined hollow eyes.

  “Summer!” Rusty yelled.

  She stopped.

  He squinted at her face, masked in shadows from the flickering lights. “I know you’re in there.”

  She stared back silently, as if contemplating their fate.

  “I know you can hear me!”

  Her head tilted to the right, observing him with the wonder of a curious child.

  Clark gulped loudly and took a deep breath. “I take it that’s your ghost-friend?”

  “Sort of,” Rusty said, not taking his eyes from the dark figure in the tattered dress.

  “Don’t look too friendly to me,” he whispered.

  Her head straightened and she resumed effortlessly gliding closer.

  “Oh shit,” Clark muttered, stumbling backwards.

  “Summer! You’re supposed to get me out here!” Rusty screamed, his heart in his throat.

  She stopped again, flexing her fists in the flashing light.

  Rusty breathed in and out heavy gulps of sterile air. “We’re not the ones you want!” he said. “We didn’t do this to you!”

  The woman looked down to her legs and bare feet. Jagged cracks ran throughout her pasty skin. Suddenly, she twitched like a scratched DVD.

  Clark screamed, horror flickering across his face.

  “We can help you find whoever did this to you,” Rusty said in a drained voice.

  The woman looked back up to Rusty and Clark, then to her gray hands. She twitched again and began sliding closer.

  “We just want to help you,” Rusty pleaded, ready to accept his fate. Ready to put an end to this madness, one way or another.

  Her murky eyes widened and dropped to her feet when she realized she was suddenly floating backwards, as if someone else was controlling her. Her dead arms reached for Rusty, desperate for something to hang onto to stop her motion. Her hands smacked against the walls, leaving trails of broken fingernails as she disappeared into a room at the far end of the hall. Rusty looked back to Clark, who had gone white as a ghost.

  The lights flickered a few more times and then gained strength, jerking back to life like an unconscious swimmer at a summer camp.

  “You still coming?”

  Clark glanced to the door leading back to their cell behind them and exhaled.

  Cautiously, they continued down the narrow hall, making their way to the open door she had disappeared into. Rusty stopped just before the entrance and took one last look over his shoulder to make sure Clark was still behind him. Clark nodded lightly and Rusty stepped into the doorway. His eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw all of the dead guards littering the modest sized break room. Blood was everywhere, even on the ceiling fans.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Holy mother of pearl,” Clark gasped, surveying the room with horrified eyes.

  Some of the guards looked like they were simply taking catnaps at the round tables with their heads resting on folded arms. The blood seeping onto their beige colored sleeves, however, said otherwise. Others were slumped on the floor beneath the tables, like they had been taking cover from an EF5 tornado, terrified of even seeing a finger of God, let alone brushing up against one. A younger looking guard sat leaning up against a pop machine, a look of absolute panic frozen across his face and purple rings circling his twisted neck. His bulging eyes stared blankly at a foosball table across the room, where a heavy set woman in uniform lay face down, folded over it. Her gun was still in its holster.

  “Not one of em drew a single weapon,” Clark said thickly. “That’s impossible.”

  Rusty could only stand there, trying to convince himself this hadn’t really happened. He was getting good at doing that lately. A thin river of blood reached his orange shoes and suddenly there was no denying the carnage in front of him. The carnage that was basically his fault. His intestines wormed into knots while beads of sweat ran down the sides of his face. He fought back the urge to vomit and lost, spraying the floor with macaroni and cheese from the night’s dinner.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Clark asked, his large eyes hopping from body to body.

  “She said she wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Rusty whispered to himself, wiping his mouth with his hands.

  Clark glanced behind them, like he had just heard something out in the hall.

  “That fucking bitch,” Rusty sneered.

  A guard sitting with his head down at one of the round tables on the far side of the room suddenly sat up. The slumped guards on either side of him gently slid to the floor with his movement. Blood oozed from his hat and face to the table below. Rusty and Clark simultaneously gasped in horror.

  “Holy shit, Tubbs was right! It’s a fucking zombie!” Clark shrieked, backpedalling.

  Rusty watched the guard slowly get to his feet. He stared at Rusty through dark eyes, hidden in the shadow of the black visor. No one moved. The next few seconds seemed like hours. Rusty tried to run as the thing began shambling closer, but couldn’t. His shoes felt glued to the sticky floor. At this stage of the game, what was the point anyway? There was nowhere to run. His chest heaved and he briefly wondered how much more of this his heart could take before it literally exploded.

  The guard leisurely limped closer, stumbling over bodies as he went.

  Clark bent down and snatched a gun from the holster of a guard who looked like Dr. Phil. “Stay back!” Clark yelled, proficiently clicking off the safety and pointing the gun at the lumbering guard.

  The guard only moaned in return, raising a heavy arm and pointing a bony finger at them as he kept coming.

  Rusty’s eyes narrowed, studying the approaching figure. “Wait a minute,” he said faintly.

  Clark fired two rounds into the guard’s chest, jerking him backwards and knocking off his hat. Long dark hair spilled out from beneath, spiraling through the air as the guard fell over a plastic chair and dissolved in front of Clark’s eyes.

  “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

  “This way,” Summer whispered, wiping tears from her blood smeared face and leading Rusty and Clark down the white hallway to a locked door. She passed her hand over the card reader and the light flipped from red to green with a short beep. “One more door till we get outside,” she said, hurriedly leading them down another long corridor with a lone door sitting at the far end.

  “My car is just outside that door,” she said without looking back, her boobs bouncing in her bra along the way.

  “Her car is right outside,” Rusty repeated to Clark.

  “I hope she’s not driving,” he said, trying to keep up.

  The door at other end suddenly whipped open. Three guards burst through, clad in black riot gear and pointing assault rifles at them. Summer stopped abruptly, causing Rusty to bang into her and Clark to bump into him.

  “Freeze!” a burly guard yelled, his eye looking down the rifle’s sight with a gloved finger on the trigger.

  Rusty threw his blood-soaked hands into the air and froze as ordered. Clark dropped the gun and mimicked him.

  “Get on the ground!” a chubby guard ordered, with a tall skinny guard bringing up the rear.

  “I’ll take care of this,” Summer said, walking towards them.

  “Don’t kill them!” Rusty shouted.

  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.

  “Summer?” he cried again.

  She met his helpless gaze one last time, tears storming down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said, just before her mouth dissolved.

  Rusty couldn’t breathe. He dropped his arms to his side and watched her hazel eyes beg him for help.


  He took a step towards her.

  “Don’t you fucking move!” Chubby shouted.

  Her tears faded away with her gaunt cheeks. Her eyes vanished next.

  “Get down!” the taller guard screamed, closing the gap.

  “Get down, Russ!” Clark yelled.

  Rusty didn’t hear any of them. He was too busy watching the top of Summer’s brown hair evaporate into nothingness. He glanced down to the blood covering his shirt and hands just before the chubby guard jacked him in the face with the butt of his gun.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Rusty shifted on the concrete floor, pulling his knees up to his chest and staring blankly at the silver toilet in the corner of the small cell. He could already feel the effects of solitary confinement beginning to eat away at his brain. But at least he had his own toilet. It had been two months since he watched Summer vanish into thin air and there had been no sign of her since. No sign of her other side either. Sometimes he found himself missing them both. He missed Clark too. Occasionally, he got to see Clark during their one hour in the yard a day, but Clark wasn’t too eager to pick up where they had left off. Rusty didn’t blame him.

  If Clark managed to live another thirty years, he would be doing it from a smaller cell just like the one Rusty was in. Last he heard, Clark’s wife had officially divorced him and wanted nothing to do with him ever again. Rusty felt bad knowing it was his fault that Clark would probably never see his kids again. Not unless they had a change of heart when they were adults anyway, which was doubtful after the state of Iowa branded Clark and Rusty cold blooded monsters. There was no way around it because as it turns out, no one really believes in ghosts. Even Rusty’s parents hadn’t come to visit him in over a month now. The last time they were here, they could barely look at him.

  He laughed in the dark isolation, thinking that if only Nick could see him now. He wouldn’t believe it. Unfortunately, Nick didn’t have enough time to believe anything. Rusty wished it had been him that night instead of Nick. Anything would be better than this. And, barring some unforeseen illness, this would last for decades. Rusty wiped a lone tear from his cheek with the back of his orange sleeve and shivered. “Turn the heat up, ya stingy bastards! Not all of us weigh three hundred pounds!” he yelled, shoving a pencil down his cast to reach a major itch on the forearm that had snapped when he hit the ground in the hallway that dark day.