Free Infernal Angel by Edward Lee Page A

the words, no actual sound came out of his mouth.
    “I’ll see you there soon,” the dead man continued. Now he grinned insanely, holding his neck straight.
    “See me... where?” Walter stammered.
    “In the city.”
    Walter stared down, quivering.
    “Your destiny awaits,” the man whispered, but now his voice sounded like sandpaper rubbing together.
    “What?”
    “Embrace your destiny.”
    The dead man’s eyes crossed again, and he collapsed back onto the gurney. Walter dropped the clipboard and ran away.
    He wouldn’t shoot himself in the head until tomorrow.

Chapter Four

(I)

    The Halman Map Library
Laurel, Maryland

    Penelope’s orgasm struck with the sign-in clock—at midnight. For a moment it felt like the entire building was shaking, but she knew it was just her, all her desires unlocked yet again. Gary always spent himself quickly—like in a minute or two—which in itself would’ve been aggravating as hell, but he never failed to fulfill the rest of the obligation mechanically, i.e., with certain devices known as “marital aids.” Didn’t matter that they weren’t married, and, Penelope, in truth, preferred this. It got right down to business. Gary had a considerable cache of such battery-driven implements, and tonight, as Penelope lay spread-legged and flattened on the guard room desk—wearing nothing but blue socks—Gary slowly withdrew one of the “toys” he’d brought along, an eight-inch, bump-riddled vibrator molded from translucent-orange rubber which Penelope fondly referred to as “Mr. Bumpy.” She gasped once, in a final blissful hitch, as the device was extracted from her thrumming privates.
    “There,” Gary said. “That should simmer ya down some.” He hauled up his Levi’s and loped shirtless to the coffee pot, looking around.
    Good God, Penelope thought. I just came like a freight train. And at that moment she felt like she’d just been run down by one. When she tried to get up off the desk, she quit in the middle of the process, still too exhausted from the explosive release of her ecstasy.
    Gary lived in a boarding house, so they could never do it at his place, and Penelope lived with her infirm mother, so her place was equally out of the question. The two of them had been dating for about a year ... or, well, perhaps “dating” wasn’t the word. A different transitive verb—one that started with an F—might be a better designation. Penelope’s workplace was about the only spot they could do it, save for rare occasions when either of them might have an extra forty bucks for a night at one of the fleabag motels near the Army base. Gary was unemployed most of the time, having recently gotten out of the Army himself. He’d actually been released short of the finish of his hitch, for urinating in the battalion commander’s coffee pot. The accusation was hard to refute at his court martial, when the JAG prosecutor had shown the court the actual security video of Gary smiling as he completed the act. Thirty days in the stockade and a bad conduct discharge. His only consolation was the fact that the battalion commander had drunk from that pot all day before the crime was reported. As for Penelope, the employment office had gotten her this job when her welfare ran out. She was the night-shift security guard.
    Now Gary was poking around with a cup of coffee. He looked down the hall, then looked out the window into the night. “This sure is a weird place you’re working at,” he commented.
    He’d said that before, but Penelope never knew what he meant. The small brick building at the end of Soil Conservation Road—the Halman Map Library—was a Maryland Department of the Interior facility, quite unassuming. It occupied the top of a modest hill on an isolated tract of land just off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. Most of this land comprised a protected nature and wildlife preserve, which Penelope never understood, because there was no wildlife that she could see,