Free Fear the Abyss: 22 Terrifying Tales of Cosmic Horror by Jack Ketchum, Tim Waggoner, Harlan Ellison, Jeyn Roberts, Post Mortem Press, Gary Braunbeck, Michael Arnzen, Lawrence Connolly Page A

keyed in the ignition sequence and kept his eyes fixed on the pad.
    Didn't mean he didn't hear it. Smell it.
    The first time she'd done this, he'd almost passed out. He saw his share of shit working in a forward field hospital, which had started him on the pills, but it was the care she showed that freaked him out. The delicateness, almost love, sorting through the bags, unzipping them, gently examining the limbs that had been cut from soldiers only hours earlier.
    "You're jonesing," Fynn said.
    Teller hadn't known he'd been shifting from foot to foot, his fingers twitching. "Not too bad. Been eight hours," he lied, adding two hours since he'd last popped a pill.
    "Good," she said. Plastic crinkled against the duffel's heavy fiber as she slid a bag in.
    What did she do with them? Teller asked himself for the thousandth time. Research, she'd told him once after fucking. He hadn't been paying attention. Hadn't even asked. Something about an abandoned program to keep severed limbs viable. Surgeons could focus on the critical procedures and re-attached amputated limbs hours, even days, later. Need to keep it quiet, she'd said. I don't want the military to know because I want to save lives. They'd use it as a weapon. She'd then sprung out of her cot, naked, sat at the small desk in her quarters and typed into her tablet.
    "We're done," Fynn said, wiping bloody gloves on her apron before snapping them off. The room reeked of coppery, congealed blood. She reached into her fatigues pocket and handed him a plastic bottle.
    Not wanting to, hating himself, he shook it. Not as full as usual.
    "If you can go eight hours," Fynn said, "try for ten. That will last you four days." She hoisted the duffel onto a shoulder and ran a finger down his cheek. "Come by when you're done." She turned and left.
    Teller cursed, hands quivering now. When she wanted sex, she wanted him clean. Not that he didn't enjoy it. She wasn't much to look at, but military service gave her a firm body. She didn't even make him wear a condom. I'm a doctor, she'd said, I'll cure anything you have. And getting knocked up? All she'd said was Uncle Marty took care of that when I was 13.
    At least after sex she opened up, talked about herself. Like it was pillow talk. Like they were a couple. He hoped she'd let slide some sliver of knowledge he could leverage against her. An officer, a surgeon and his source—she held the cards. Hell, she was in her mid-thirties and he'd just turned 22.
    Now she was cutting him back. To help wean him off the pills, he knew. To get clean.
    But his junkie heart and junkie brain had control. He needed to know something about her. Even things out. Her taking body parts would be his word against hers if he didn't know what she did with them. Where she took them.
    Leaving the gurney, he went into the hall in time to hear the stairway door slam shut. He followed, sprinting up the metal steps, and paused at the main level. Doors led outside and into the hospital hall. Checking outside, he spotted her crossing the gravel road between the main building and a row of DRASH tents. He waited for her to move between tents before crossing the road himself, waiting in the shadows of the next tent over. Beyond the row of tents, flood lights from the main building barely illuminated the few large supply tents and pre-fab sheds in the no-man's land between the main compound and the perimeter fence. Beyond the fence, its outward facing lights showed the brown, hard scrabble countryside. And beyond its illumination, the enemy.
    Teller spotted Fynn in the no-man's land. She stopped at the side of a large shed with two roll up doors on its front. Teller had assumed it was part of the motor pool. Fynn undid a lock on a side door and went it.
    He'd check it out later. Right now he was jonesing too bad. He moved back to the main building, hoping no one had found the gurney unattended.
    *****
    By the time he reached his tent, the world had gone deliciously