Spilling Guts

Part 55 - Digging Through Trash

The backside of the warehouse had been partitioned off with raised vegetable gardens and footpaths through cultivated weeds. A pile of compost steamed to one side of the garden while the plants bloomed. A volunteer, masked and gloved, stood at a rough sink made of an old tub and a garden hose. On one side of the sink was a pile of tainted polystyrene containers the size of a truck, on the other side were neat stacks of clean cups and trays nestled into each other and sorted by color. The volunteer was washing Louis' hope of being normal down a garden drain.

Louis took out his badge as he ran. "Stop cleaning!"

The volunteer startled, dropping the scrub brush on the metal tub, making it ring like a gong. He put his hands up and stepped back, leaving the trickle of water running.

"Sorry!" Will ran up next to Louis, panting. "We need the contents of some of the containers. Have you cleaned any coffee cups?"

Louis glanced to the side of the sink with clean Styrofoam and saw two cups with the familiar Bean Scoot logo. Too late. Gone. He would be stuck like this. He felt like his body was being crushed in a hot tube; a throat with no end.

Fuck...

"A few," admitted the volunteer. "But-"

Rachel shoved Will forward towards the pile and slapped a pair of gloves against his chest. "Get gloves on and start digging."

Digging. The day wasn't done yet. Louis dug into the pile, shoving aside lightweight egg cartons and lids. His left hand ached, either at his stress, or at the movement.

"And you-" Rachel pointed to the volunteer. His hands went up higher. "Do you have any cuts or scrapes on your hands or arms?"

"N-no?" The volunteer took another step back, eyes wide behind his mask. "Is there a biohazard?"

"Consider it one, and stay back until we are done," said Rachel, and then she gloved up.

The volunteer left to seek out hand sanitizer.

As the trio dug through the pile of polystyrene, bits of old food, mud, and occasional specks of mold clung to their gloves and clothes. It smelled like every bit of takeout coming back to haunt the world. Chili, potato salad, stir fry, Jell-O trifles, marinara sauce, pizza crusts, gravy, fried chicken. The culinary dumpsters of Denver all in one place and attracting flies.

Louis buried his nose in his collar. No wonder the volunteers had masks. They probably stuffed them with fragrance to keep out the stench, like old plague doctors.

Will lurched at the stench of old ranch dressing and spinach, hiding a green tinted face in his elbow.

"If you're going to throw up, do it in the compost," said Louis.

Will grit his teeth and went back to his section of the polystyrene pile. "Shut up."

Far away, sorting bottle caps in safety, the volunteer yelled, "don't throw up in the compost, please!"

Louis sucked a somewhat fresher breath over his shoulder, and set aside more containers. He was torn between thanking Will on his hands and knees for keeping his coffee cups from so long ago, and wanting to yell in his face for deciding today was the day to hand them over for recycling.

As for Rachel, he was glad she was here, digging through the trash with them like a bunch of raccoons in a dumpster, but she and Cetz had still kept him in the dark.

If Megan and Teegan had shown me that picture of Parker from the get-go, we could have connected the dots days ago.

After parking the SUV, Beni joined them. She grabbed a pair of gloves and wrapped a handkerchief around her lower face.

"What are we looking for?"

"Cups from Bean Scoot with my name on them," said Louis, flicking a kernel of fermented corn off his sleeve. "Preferably ones with little smiley faces for the dot over the "i"."

"If you can find more than one fitting the description, good," said Rachel. "Any with his name on them will help me see the differences in chemical composition."

Beni joined the mess, less perturbed by the smell than the rest. The more they moved the containers, the worse the smell became, taking on a putrefying note that made Will stand to the side and breathe with his head between his knees.

Louis would pity him if he wasn't desperate. He kept seeing those few clean cups and wondered how close they had been. If they had been quicker, would they literally be in this mess?

"Please fucking be here," he muttered.

Will rejoined them, sleeves rolled up.

As they unearth new layers and evolutions of smells, the heat and the sun itched at Louis' skin. Despite the shades protecting his eyes, he felt a faint full-body tingle that reminded him of being shut in a brightly lit BT chamber at Watch One with an asshole. The same feeling he got when his body want to flip the switch and shrink.

Not here. Not now.

Stress induced shrinkage. Louis didn't want to prove Rachel right on her theory. So he shoved the feeling, and the worry that came with it, to the back of his head as he laid a pile of still bloody meat trays to the side. Flies napped at his neck and hands, attracted to the smell.

Then, a unique odor drew him more than sight. Under a pile of containers that formerly contained coleslaw, was the stench of fermented coffee beans. Kaluha de nausea. To everyone else it was a nightmare. To Louis, it was pay dirt.

"I see one!"

He pulled it out, a familiar scrawl on it with a smiley face over the "i" in "Louis". Soon, all four of them were finding cups. Most had been separated from their lids and contaminated by other food stuffs. However a precious few were still sealed except for a lip-shaped stain around the hole in the lid. Louis peeked through one of the holes and saw blessed brown sludge. Out of all the dosed cups found five had coffee remains in them. And two cups with possibly un-dosed coffee drips.

Rachel held out a packet of plastic bags. "Let's bag them and get back to base."

They trudged back to the SUV, a case full of bagged and tagged coffee cups dragging behind them. Will hung behind to apologize to the volunteers for the chaos they had brought.

Sweat tacked the back of his neck, and stress still tingled below his skin like ants, but Louis felt better than he had for months. There was a possibility that Rachel could find out what Retten had dosed him with. Analyze, replicate. Reverse.

And the day had hours to go, the sun still far above the horizon.

Louis climbed into the back of the SUV. He expected to spend at least a few of those hours having a long hard talk with Cetz and Rachel.

Will took his seat, sniffed at his own collar, and grimaced. The minty cologne splashed on that morning had failed spectacularly. "I'm going to take a shower once we get back to base."

"I think Cetz will want to talk to us first." Louis glared up at the shotgun seat where Rachel held the case in her lap. "He and Rachel a lot of explaining to do."

Will held out his arm, still chalky from the latex glove. "Do I smell like Cetz wants to talk to me?"

One whiff of rotting food spatter and Will's distinctively strong body odor made Louis reel back. "Yeah, you need a shower." Warily curious, he sniffed his own shirt. "I need a shower."

As did his wrist brace. The latex gloves kept his hands clean, but everything above the wrist had been fair game for foul food. A sticky line of hell-knew-what followed the inside of the brace to stain his wrist.

"We all need a shower," said Beni.

"Shower, then talk," Will agreed.