"It's not the liquid," he told Jack. "This stuff is Bloodstrife, or at least a part of it. It smells like old honey just like it should. The bad smell is coming from somewhere else."

"Great. What about backup?" Jack asked.

"Not yet," Preston said. "I think this place is fully automated. I've heard of operations like this, but never on such a ma.s.sive scale. All you need is one or two people to push a few b.u.t.tons." He pointed toward the machinery until it disappeared around a wall. "This stuff is set up to cook itself."

"Okay, well, let's find the chef," Jack said confidently. "Just don't do anything stupid."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Preston said seriously, breathing through his mouth.

The men followed the path of production as the Bloodstrife went from the tall vat at the entrance through a series of machines which added various chemicals and water. Preston made note of each of the catalysts used in the process. The two men mentally checked off each of those the scientists had been able to determine to date. So, far, nothing jumped out at them as the unidentifiable catalyst. They continued to follow it all the way through until the end of the line.

The entire time, they kept one eye on the line and one focused on a possible ambush. Preston rea.s.sured himself that the fact they had gotten this far meant no one knew they were there, or possibly they were just waiting.

Finally, they approached what appeared to be the end of the production line. There, a large nozzle poured the reddish-black syrupy liquid into kilo-sized bags that both detectives were familiar with, having seized them from street dealers in the past. The bags were subsequently moved via a conveyor belt to a large box and placed on a pallet, all of it still automated. They had yet to see a single person anywhere.

Upon closer inspection, the factory wasn't nearly as big as Preston originally thought. Despite the size of the warehouse bas.e.m.e.nt, only about one tenth of the place was reserved for the machines. Peering off into the distance, he confirmed most of it was merely empty and abandoned, like the rest of the building.

He eyed a large metal roll-up door near the pallets. It was open at the base, and they could see a ramp on the other side moving upward to street level.

It was all coming together. The truck would drive down the ramp, be loaded up and on its way, all without any suspicion from the outside world. The truck drivers may not even be in on it.

After reaching the end beyond the pallets, both men instinctively took cover behind an outcropping in the wall and looked farther inside inconspicuously.

They had found the source of the horrible smell.

A single man was sitting in a chair behind a desk with his back to them. Littered all around the top of the desk and the floor were hundreds of fast food wrappers and chunks of rotting meat.

Maggots were everywhere, crawling in the dusty bas.e.m.e.nt and writhing on top of the food. Hundreds of flies buzzed about in the air. At times the black curtain of insects made it hard to see the suspect. Large sides of beef hung unrefrigerated to the left side of the man. Preston couldn't see them as clearly, but they weren't a healthy red. Most were turning brown or black. Again, white maggots dotted the surface, along with the fluid black swarm of constantly roving flies.

To the suspect's right was a panel of computer monitors and a few piles of unorganized doc.u.ments. Preston immediately felt a surge of excitement. It had to be the distribution evidence they were looking for. His heart skipped a beat, thinking about all the formulas that could be listed in that much paper. It could be everything they would ever need.

For a moment, Preston imagined how differently the world might have turned out if somebody had managed to stop the first discovery of bas.e.m.e.nt Methamphetamine or if Albert Hofmann had never created LSD. The war on drugs may even have been winnable, rather than a Sisyphean struggle. If Bloodstrife spread beyond the city, it was only a matter of time until the street dealers learned to make it themselves. He knew he was standing on a precipice. It was all so close, and so preventable.

The sound of the machinery wasn't as prevalent toward the end of the process. That unfortunately made it easier for the two detectives to hear the man wheezing, almost struggling to breathe as he sat motionless in the curtain of flies. It dulled Preston's antic.i.p.ation of a seizure, reminding him that they weren't through yet. He focused on the man in from of them, two arms and a head sticking out from behind a worn wooden chair.

The suspect's hair, although stringy and white, did manage to cover his entire scalp. He looked old, probably an irrelevant fact since Preston a.s.sumed that the man's only apparent responsibility in the factory was to press a few b.u.t.tons within arm's reach of his right hand. There would have been no physical strength required from the look of it.

Preston looked to Jack, wondering what he made of the situation. When Jack shrugged, it sent Preston's eyes right back to the old man as he formulated a strategy.

He understood it wouldn't be complicated. There were no other people in the whole factory. The two detectives had seen it all before arriving at the old man's desk. The problem with a stealth attack was the fast food wrappers. If they could hear the man wheezing, then he could hear them crinkling the garbage as they walked toward him. The maggots would also squish under their feet as they approached.

More important, there were numerous places where the man could be hiding a gun, especially on his person.

Preston was preparing himself for the fact that no matter how it went down, he'd be sc.r.a.ping maggots off his shoes for a week.

The detectives each gripped their shotguns tightly as the man started to move.

Without noticing them, he struggled to get up from the chair. With a weak groan, the suspect managed to rise after two failed attempts. Preston and Jack looked at each other, wondering how it could be so easy. Hobbling slowly, the man gradually made his way to the closest side of beef, hanging only a few feet away.

His weak, stumpy hands grabbed onto the side of the meat, letting out a soft squish that Preston swore he could hear ringing in his ears despite the humming of the factory machines. The suspect stood there motionless, appearing to regain his strength while using the rotten beef as a crutch.

Without warning, Preston and Jack watched in horror as the man brought his face closer to the meat and started to ravenously devour the rotting side of beef, maggots and all. Preston brought his handkerchief to his mouth again as he saw live insects fall out of the man's mouth along with pieces of the almost liquefied rancid meat.

All thoughts of strategy deserted him immediately. The image of it was too much. The mental pictures he'd produced earlier of a garbage dump in the factory with them came flooding back. Preston coughed as he turned away, managing to hold back the vomit.

The old man heard him.

The suspect turned to see Jack, his shotgun aimed squarely at his head from about ten yards away. They locked eyes, the man continuing to chew. Brown liquid was dripping down his chin from the meal. Small chunks of brown meat clung to his face.

"Freeze!" Jack ordered.

Preston was still behind the wall, trying to regain his composure. Looking back, Preston could see that Jack was holding back the sickness as well, albeit more successfully than he.

The man simply turned away after hearing the detective's demands, back toward his meat, and continued to devour it eagerly. The sounds of wheezing had been replaced by groans of what seemed like ecstasy. He even appeared to be smiling as he chewed.

Jack looked back at Preston after he'd regained his bearings. Preston nodded as he stood fully, bringing his gun up along with him. Both men, shotguns aimed, ran out from behind the wall and approached the suspect quickly. By then, even Preston had managed to forget about the maggots beneath his feet.

"Freeze!" Jack ordered again. "Police! Hands above your head!"

Again, the man looked at them, and again he faced them indifferently. Now that the two detectives were up close, they could see the true wretchedness before them. He was an absolute mess. His skin was shriveled, not because he was old as they had originally thought, but because he appeared to be dehydrated, like a sponge that had all the water squeezed out.

His hair hung loosely across his face, and his arms had no discernible muscle of any kind. He appeared no different than the holocaust victims from the grainy black and white World War II footage. Covering his whole frame was the juice of the meat and the horrible smell that went along with it. Small patches of dried liquid from previous meals flaked off when he moved.

He wore large baggy pants, but no shirt or shoes.

"Put your hands over your head," Jack repeated, already eager to be done.

There was one discernible marking that Preston noticed immediately. On the man's face, written across the forehead, were the letters GLU and NY. s.p.a.ced between them were creases of dried out flesh that garbled the rest of the tattoo.

Despite Jack's warning, the man turned back to the beef, just as he'd done earlier, again, without a word. By then, he'd eaten more beef than either detective thought possible in such a short amount of time. Roughly a quarter of the slab was gone, some of the bones apparently included. Still, he continued to eat relentlessly. Now that they were close, they could clearly see the bones in the side of beef were being devoured, cracked into pieces by the man's impossibly strong jaws. Preston winced at the sound.

Then it started.

The man began to contort and groan. His skin became clearer, shifting from a ghostly white to a bronze hue in mere moments, while the wrinkles began to smooth themselves out as if the man were being filled with all the muscle he'd lost.

"That's . . . impossible," Preston said, genuinely scared. He realized in that moment of awe he'd let himself lower his weapon slightly. He brought it back up with a vengeance, mirroring Jack, who hadn't lost his focus in the slightest.

The man's back cracked aloud as he grew several inches, all the while groaning and breathing heavily. His stick-thin arms were increasing in size and growing. Body-builder size muscles soon sprouted and took shape. The once white, oily hair was becoming darker and more alive.

Only seconds earlier the two detectives had their guns trained on a small, seemingly defenseless old man. Now they were dealing with an enormous muscular behemoth. As the man looked directly at them, he took a step forward. Preston and Jack rea.s.serted their positions by c.o.c.king their guns.

"This is your last chance," Preston yelled in an uncharacteristically harsh command.

Across the man's face, his skin had evened out. The word Gluttony started on one side of his forehead and ended on another, written in the same wavy letters that had become so familiar to both of them.

Still covered in blood and fragments of meat from his meal, the man's face contorted in a twisted smile. All of his stained teeth were sharpened to points, perfect for chewing bone. Drops of the fresh red and brown liquid dribbled down his chin and shirtless chest.

"Jesus Christ," Jack said.

Gluttony's smile faded as he groaned again, this time with anger.

"Cops," he said, in a deep, almost demonic voice. "I hate cops." He brought his fists together and cracked his knuckles. Training his eyes on them, he began to scream. The monster ran toward the two detectives with large muscular legs that propelled him so quickly, they were each barely able to squeeze off a round.

They instantly saw red filling their vision. Preston had forgotten the stopping power of a shotgun, enormous and frightening. Just as quickly, just like they'd been trained to do, each c.o.c.ked their guns immediately, loading the next sh.e.l.l. The echoing sounds of two casings striking the floor preceded the heavy breathing of all three men in the room.

Gluttony was still standing, albeit with two large b.l.o.o.d.y wounds in his torso. The look of anger on his face now resembled something similar to fatigue, not pain or surprise.

He fell backward, trying to grab a side of beef for stability, just as he had before the change. The monster's strength now acting as a liability, he struggled briefly to remain standing before his tree-trunk arm tore the rotten beef free of its hook, sending him to the ground with a sickening thud. The beef landed beside him, sounding more like a water balloon bursting on the floor than a slab of meat.

He lay there for a few moments before Preston and Jack made their way over to the body. Although they heard the crinkle of fast food wrappers beneath their heels, neither man was still concerned about traveling through the floor carpeted with maggots. Momentarily, they were standing over him, both guns pointed downward, their eyes like stone, refusing to look away.

The body began to shrivel almost immediately. The change they had just witnessed began again in reverse. The muscles seemed to melt away into nothingness, followed soon after by the retreat of healthy skin, bronze consumed by the pale white. The whole body shrank to a third of its size in moments. Preston remembered seeing something similar when he would pour salt on garden slugs as a child.

Before long, the person before them was once again the emaciated, fragile figure they'd seen when they entered the factory. The suspect spasmed without warning. He coughed, then began vomiting some of his meal. Quivering slightly, Gluttony let out his last breath with a gurgle. Both detectives knew the sound of a death rattle when they heard it.

"Tell me you saw that," Jack said, already out of breath.

"Of course," Preston said. "I had no idea Bloodstrife could do that to a person."

"You think Bloodstrife did that? He didn't inject himself with anything that I saw. There were no veins either," Jack said, looking around cautiously. Preston followed his gaze as they surveyed the area once more. "He just ate that rotten beef, which by the way is still stinking up the place, so I'd like to get out of here ASAP. I mean, look at this-" Jack raised his gun in fear, looking back down toward the suspect. "Preston," he whispered, "the body is gone."

Preston turned back in disbelief and confirmed his partner's declaration. Quickly, both men stood back to back, combing the area, guns outstretched. A piece of meat that still hung on a hook began swinging in the distance. The sound of the metal peg sc.r.a.ping the pole from which it was suspended echoed in the large s.p.a.ce as if taunting them. Startled, they moved behind the desk, hoping it would offer them at least some protection. Both were ready to gun down anything that moved.

"Get down!" Jack yelled. Preston turned his head at the last moment, seeing a side of meat flying toward them. Each man jumped in opposite directions away from the desk as the beef crashed into it, cracking it in two and sending the pieces backward.

Stunned, Preston realized he'd lost his shotgun in the melee. Eyeing it quickly, he instinctively reached for his weapon laying only a few feet away. Sawdust and wood chips still hovered in the air and fell around him, clouding his vision. Fresh puddles of juice from the rotten meat covered the floor and mixed with the sawdust, creating a thick soup. Preston had stopped breathing through his nose long ago, but it was still difficult to take in the air.

A large bare foot stepped quickly into his line of sight, separating him from his gun, which now lay only a few inches away. The force of Gluttony's foot impacting the puddle splattered Preston's face with stagnant cattle blood.

Enraged, and letting a fierce yell escape through his razor sharp teeth, Gluttony picked Preston up by the neck using a single arm. Preston gasped for air as the monster choked him, not caring if he breathed in through his nose.

Gluttony's chest, while still b.l.o.o.d.y, was no longer wounded. Preston could clearly see that the suspect had changed again into the juggernaut that first attacked them. He continued to struggle, capillaries bursting in his eyes.

The man brought them face to face, tightening his grip. He smiled again with that sick, tooth-filled grin. His breath was terrible, worse than the air around them. In that moment, Preston saw the tattoo across the man's forehead more clearly. It appeared as if it were moving. The wavy letters flowed across the skin as if alive. Veins bulged beneath the membrane, pumping blood into his scalp like it was feeding the reaction.

Preston gasped for air again, feeling the life starting to leave him.

His feet dangling off the ground, Preston felt, then saw a shotgun appear between his legs. Jack was on the ground behind him, raising his weapon underneath Preston. He fired point blank into Gluttony's chest, sending clumps of flesh outward from the monster's back.

The monster screamed in pain before dropping Preston. Jack quickly moved backward to avoid his partner landing on top of him.

"Preston, are you alright?" Jack yelled, his gun still trained on the body which was already fading into the emaciated shadow of its former self. Jack winced as he heard the bones in the man's spine being reshaped to accommodate a smaller frame. Fortunately, he realized, the suspect's screams dulled some of the noise.

Preston choked out a "Yes" between coughs as he lay on the ground, holding his throat.

"Can you call for backup? I lost my phone when he threw the meat at us." Jack turned his head slightly to confirm Preston's answer. Watching his partner rise from the now-b.l.o.o.d.y floor, he said. "This is the same guy, right? He got back up after two shotgun blasts to the chest?"

Preston paused for a moment and radioed for backup without answering between gasps for air. After finally managing to catch his breath, he leaned against the nearest wall.

Jack turned to Preston, his gun still trained on what he hoped was a corpse. By now, the monster had returned to the shape of a frail old man. His shriveled face was frozen in pain and his eyes were a lifeless white. The tattoo was stagnant and unmoving. Some of the letters were wrinkled, once again hiding in the folds of his skin. Preston wondered if he'd actually seen it move on its own at all.

"I think we found what we're looking for." Jack gestured toward the vat at the top of the tower. With a smile, he lowered his weapon slightly. "You think it's the catalyst; secret ingredient maybe?"

Preston's eyes darted back toward Gluttony's body, wide with shock. He didn't have to say a word. Jack instantly picked up on the sign of disbelief on his partner's face. Immediately, he turned back to look. The corpse's shriveled arm was outstretched, his hand inside a shredded wrapper, trying to grasp an old moldy hamburger. Seeing there was no weapon inside, Jack only watched, still trying to process how all he had seen was even possible. Neither man could bring himself to speak.

Preston walked forward to have a better look. The hole from the shotgun blast was still present in the man's chest, easily having obliterated Gluttony's lungs and liver. A small bit of the concrete floor shown through from the other side of the wound. There was no way he could still be alive, Preston said to himself.

The creature brought the burger to his mouth slowly and started to chew. Almost instantly, the hole in his chest began to close. The cement on the other side disappeared, replaced by a newly created tapestry of muscle-tissue and bone. Frantically, as if he'd experienced taste for the first time, Gluttony started searching for more food. His other arm darted blindly out around him. Preston a.s.sumed that the man was practically blind in that state judging by the way he flailed his arms. He was searching for food based on touch and smell. Fortunately, the rest of him didn't appear able to move.

His body started to contort and he began to scream. With almost inhuman speed, he darted up from the floor, lunging at the two of them.

"Take his head off," Preston screamed with a coa.r.s.e voice, seeing that the wound had almost healed completely amidst the blur of shriveled skin and blood.

Jack fired. The man's head split apart and flew across the floor. b.l.o.o.d.y fast food wrappers were tossed into the air from the force of the blast and floated back down slowly in a sick display of filth. Gluttony's frantic arms froze in place before falling lifelessly at his side. The shotgun wound in his chest had all but closed. Still healing before their eyes, it had stopped dead in its tracks as the man died.

"When he eats, he gets big and all his injuries heal," Preston said aloud. "There's no way Bloodstrife can do this to a person. All those kids on the street; the worst they did to themselves was take out a razor and make a few cuts."

"No," Jack replied. "I don't think this is all from Bloodstrife. We would have seen this before now. Maybe it was a mixture of different things?" Jack said, breathing heavily. "Maybe some new type of steroid treatment mixed in with the BS." He paused and knelt down. "That can wait," he continued, looking up from his position on the floor. "We need to take a look at that ingredient."

Gluttony was surely dead, Preston rea.s.sured himself. Most of the man's head was gone. Only the bottom part of his jaw was still attached to his neck. Physically, he couldn't eat anymore, even if he were still alive. Preston cringed at the image of four razor sharp teeth that jutted out of the meat which formerly comprised the suspect's mouth.

Already, they could hear the sirens. Jack rushed to the roll-up door, opening it quickly, running up the ramp to greet the police.

Preston heard brief inaudible chatter between his partner and the other officers drifting downward. Soon, shadows and the sounds of footsteps preceded their entrance through the metal door.

When backup arrived moments later, Preston confirmed that the body hadn't moved at all. Black ooze was pouring out of several of the wounds, mostly from the face. The liquid didn't look much different than the ingredient at the top of the tower or the junk they had removed from Pride's body at the morgue.

Chapter 6.

In time, police were everywhere. It seemed like half the force was now occupying the bas.e.m.e.nt of the factory, setting up mobile forensics labs and obtaining mult.i.tudes of samples. Preston and Jack had each relayed their account of the events to their peers, weathering the looks of disbelief that came across the faces of their own people as they recounted the suspect's odd behavior.

Preston had declined to tell anyone, even Jack, about the moving letters of the tattoo.

"Detective Burroughs," a uniformed officer shouted. "I think we have something over here."

Both detectives approached, seeing the large computer terminal hidden in the corner. Doc.u.ments were arranged neatly on both sides of the tidy workstation, and it appeared that the man they had gunned down refrained from eating near his work. Both the floor and console were spotless. The smell on that side of the bas.e.m.e.nt was also lessened, offering a slight, but much welcome reprieve from the stench.

Men in hazmat suits were removing the sides of beef hanging from the hooks, and large fans had been brought down to clear the air, venting it up the walkway to street level. Men with large wooden push brooms had begun sweeping maggots and wrappers off the floor. Most of the police officers present were working ten minutes at a time, stopping when they had to go outside to get some air or risk being sick.

"Detective Burroughs," a voice shouted over the increasing sound of the fans.

Preston turned and saw a man in a hazmat suit who had removed his mask and was now walking toward them. He was young, probably only a few years out of college. He was clean shaven, but tired. Sweat clung to his hair and face. It was clear that dealing with the factory and being cooped up in the suit were relatively new experiences for him. Preston thought about mentioning how this would be the first of many late nights for the boy, but he didn't feel like depressing him.