Cleto’s head sat in a steel dish. His face was gray except for the top, which was pale and shaved bald. Tubes ran up his nose and into brass fittings along his temple. A net of wires crossed his scalp and were taped to his skin. His eyes were pressed tight, dark and shriveled as prunes, as if to not see what had happened to him.
On the other hand, Cleto deserved the look.
“Once you understand the biology and chemistry, it’s a straightforward process, a lot like fixing an appliance. The problem is not physical trauma but emotional. One minute you’re cruising along on two legs and the next you’re as mobile as a casserole.”
“Why attack Cleto?”
“Opportunity, mostly. I’ve been stalking those lowlifes for a while. I couldn’t believe my good fortune that I got a fresh head and my zombies got a nice snack.”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“I haven’t decided. His body was torn up when we captured him. In the meantime I have to keep his head locked up because of the brai…”
The zombies leaned into him and their cracked lips pursed to mutter their favorite word.
“You know what I mean.” Hennison set the stockpot over Cleto and secured the padlock. “I can keep brai…I mean what’s in his head, in stasis for an indefinite time.”
Hennison came back to the table. “Oh, I can go on and on about zombies. But vampires?” He raised a finger in an inquisitive manner. “I have many, many questions. Are vampires immortal?”
Not if we’re decapitated. “We can be killed.”
“I figured that from your reaction to the sunrise.” Hennison reached for the rheostat knob on the electric knife switch. “I mean, if no harm comes to you, are vampires immortal? You’ll live forever and ever?”
That’s what immortal means. “Yes.”
“How old is the oldest vampire?” Hennison’s aura became prickly with hostility. He rotated the rheostat knob. Up or down?
“I don’t know,” I answered, my muscles tensing as I expected the worse. “Several hundred years.”
“A thousand?” The prickles on his aura grew into thorns.
“I’m sure some have been that old.”
The thorns on his aura danced like individual flames. “Can this kill you?” He let go of the rheostat knob and grasped the switch.
The electricity bit where the steel hoops held my wrists and ankles. My body tightened in anticipation of the next jolt.
“Yes, this could kill me.”
Hennison nodded, pleased with himself. “What about a stake to the heart?”
“Yes.” I hoped we weren’t checking the list of options.
“Garlic?”
“Poisonous.”
“Really?” Hennison stroked his chin and studied the jars and bottles of chemicals along the wall. “An acid bath?”
“Probably.”
“Gunshots?”
“Not fatal but very painful.”
“How painful?”
He rolled the right leg of my sweatpants to my knee. The thorns on Hennison’s aura shrank into a shroud of undulating cilia. Intermittent tentacles whipped out. He couldn’t see it, obviously, but I could read his deranged pleasure.
He opened a drawer on the workbench and withdrew a revolver. More tentacles whipped from his aura.
The zombies, even Sonia, leaned close.
Hennison aimed the pistol at the shin of my right leg. He steadied the gun. The bullets shone in the cylinder chambers with their evil promises of pain and destruction.
My kundalini noir turned on itself in despair. I steeled myself to be strong. The bullets would tear flesh and shatter bone.
Hennison closed his left eye and focused his right down the sights of the pistol. “Are you afraid?”
“Yes, I am.”
“But you said gunshots weren’t painful.”
“I said gunshots weren’t fatal.”
“First rule of any guest. Don’t correct your host.”
Hennison fired.
CHAPTER 42
My mind put everything in vampire speed.
The knuckles on Hennison’s index finger turned white as he squeezed the trigger. The hammer cocked and the cylinder rotated. I heard the mechanism click, the spring compress and release. The firing pin struck the back of the cartridge. The primer cap exploded, detonating the propellant in the cartridge and pushing the bullet down the barrel.
The bullet spiraled toward me, my mind so focused on the slug that I could pick out the grooves carved into the brass jacket from the barrel rifling.
Despite that, it happened quick. The trigger pull. The bullet flying out the barrel.
The bullet striking my right leg.
Time reverted back to normal speed. Pain tore up my leg through my spinal column to my head, a thunderbolt of misery that blanked out every other sensation. I couldn’t do anything but cry out to relieve the agony.
Blood gushed from the ragged hole, a well of red liquid that turned into a swirl of brown flakes.
Hennison lowered the revolver and admired what he’d done. The zombies went, “Ghaw. Ghaw.”
He dropped the gun into a pocket of his lab coat. He went to the workbench and returned with a wooden tongue depressor. He scooped through the dried flakes and they floated light as ash. “Interesting.”
I couldn’t escape. I accepted the inevitable. The Araneum was sending help-Jolie-and with me captured, that meant the destruction of everything and everyone in this house. Felix Gomez included.
I should’ve waited for Jolie before starting this assignment.
This was what I was reduced to, wishing for relief by annihilation at the hands of a friend and ex-lover.
Hennison pulled the leg of my sweatpants down to cover the wound. “Don’t want you to get an infection.”
He told Sonia to go downstairs. He instructed Reginald to put out guards. Kimberly pawed my crotch and gave an abbreviated zombie smile: I’ll be back, sweetie.
“I’ve got another project demanding my time,” Hennison said. “Who would’ve thought that the life of an evil genius would be so busy?” Hennison twisted the foot of my shattered leg.
The pain crushed me to unconsciousness. I came to a moment later.
He said, “I trust you won’t insult my hospitality by trying to escape? Tomorrow you’ve got a date with Mr. Morning Sun.”
Hennison turned to cowboy zombie and put the revenant’s hand on the electrical switch. “Watch him. If he tries to escape, close the switch. Shall we give it a test?”
“That’s not necessary,” I replied.
Hennison hopped up and down. “He’s trying to escape.”
Cowboy zombie pushed the switch closed.
The hot blast of pain ricocheted inside my body. My muscles locked up and my vision went from blurry to black.
The pain stopped. My arched back rested flat on the table. I tasted charred flesh and belched smoke.
“Excellent.” Hennison patted cowboy zombie on the shoulder. “I’m trusting you.”
Hennison wagged his finger in my face. “As for you, vampire, play nice.”
He walked to the left and turned down the stairs.
The situation couldn’t seem more hopeless. The electrical pain was gone but I still felt the throb from my shredded right shin bone. I was locked against a wooden table and wired to a generator.
I relaxed against the table, grateful at least for the respite from Hennison’s bestial attentions.
If I lay undisturbed, my leg might heal by morning. Fresh human blood would do wonders for the wound and my attitude. The blood transfusion machine click-clacked at the far side of the room.
The blood sloshed back and forth. I imagined the heavy copper taste warming my tongue. Those thoughts brought relief, like huddling against a candle during an icy blizzard.
Cowboy zombie kept his cold undead eyes fixed on me.
I strained my wrists to test the security of the steel bands. The bands held firm. At the moment I was too
weak to rip free, but give me a few hours. How to break loose and not get blasted by electricity?
I lay still and willed my life force to where I needed it most, my shattered leg and my kundalini noir. A chill started at my extremities and worked inward through my arms and my left leg. My fingers and the toes of my left foot went numb.
Twin pools of warmth settled in me, one in my body core and the other along my right shin. My kundalini noir turned slowly, rotating like an egg incubating under a heat lamp. The pain of my right shin dulled to a cramp as the cells repaired themselves in a growing frenzy.
Thirst rasped my throat. Hunger gnawed at my belly. My chances of escape were thinner than slim. Despair filled my mind like water flooding the hull of a sinking ship.
What buoyed me was the song of hope click-clacking from the transfusion machine.
CHAPTER 43
I don’t know what time Dr. Hennison returned. For me, the day was a long stretch of misery.
Hennison bounded up the stairs, grinning pleasantly. He carried a half-gallon-sized Tupperware bowl. The sleeves of his lab coat were rolled to the elbows. Spatters of blood and a greasy black liquid covered his hands, arms, and his apron. He reeked of blood and meat like he’d been working in a slaughterhouse.
“Ah, you’re still here,” he said in mock surprise. Dark flecks dotted his safety glasses. “I knew my accommodations would be irresistible.”
He patted the sweatpants right over my wound. His touch renewed the ache. “You might want to get that looked at by a doctor.”
Was Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition such a ball of laughs?
Hennison turned his attention to cowboy zombie and took the lid off the Tupperware. Hennison circled the open bowl in front of him. “Look. Brains.”
Cowboy zombie’s eyes snapped to the bowl. Yellow drool dribbled to his chin. “Brains.” He reached for the container.
Hennison kept the Tupperware away. “Just a snack for doing such a good job in making our guest feel at home.” The doctor plucked a tablespoon from a pocket on his apron. He scooped gray mush from the bowl.
Cowboy zombie dropped his arms and opened his mouth. Hennison spooned the brains like it was a helping of Gerber’s baby food. Cowboy zombie smacked his lips as he chewed the brains. A dab of gray yuck stuck to his upper lip, and a black tongue licked it clean.
Hennison put the lid back on the Tupperware and closed it with a burp. “The sound of freshness.” He slapped cowboy zombie on the back. “Make sure Felix sticks around.” He went down the stairs.
Cracks of light leaked in from around the drapes covering the windows. The light yielded to dark as evening crept upon us.
Night was a better time to escape. Without sunscreen, daylight would burn me like a bug under a magnifying lens. I knew that pain all too well. In a previous assignment, a government assassin had chased me with a machine gun while my naked skin burned under the sunlight. I survived by jumping into the Atlantic Ocean. This time, there weren’t any oceans close by.
Cowboy zombie kept his eyes locked on me. His hand remained on the switch handle.
The power rheostat indicated half maximum voltage. That’s all? Damn, that hurt. What would full power do?
A feather of hope drifted into my head. An hour ago, escape was impossible. Now it seemed possible. How? By making the zombie throw that switch.
What did this zombie want more than anything?
I whispered, “Brains.”
His eyes crinkled with the teeniest of recognition.
I repeated, louder. “Brains.”
His mouth sagged open and pus-yellow slime dripped over the black stubs of his teeth.
One more time. “Brains.”
His free hand clawed the workbench. “Brains,” he gasped.
“You want brains?” I asked. “Lots of brains?”
Cowboy zombie took a short step toward me but kept his right hand on the switch handle.
“See that knob?” I motioned to the rheostat. “If you turn it all the way to one side, it will fry me like a wienie if I try to escape. Dr. Hennison would be happy. He would reward you with more brains.”
Whatever feeble juice powered his decomposing noggin, cowboy zombie labored to imagine another helping of brains. Drool trickled from his mouth and soaked his shirt.
I described brains in revenant mouthwatering detail, as if reciting recipes from a zombie Rachael Ray. Yum-O!
Cowboy zombie wiped his mouth. A thick scab fell from his hand to the floor.
“You got the idea,” I said. “Now turn the knob.”
Cowboy zombie leaned to one side and gripped the rheostat knob. He turned it full-on clockwise.
Drool splattered on the switch handle. His right hand slipped, and when he grabbed the handle again, the switch nudged toward the closed position.
The terror of being turned into the fried wienie made my back arch and my shoulders tense. “No, no,” I said, trying to sound calm. “That’s off, the other way.”
Cowboy zombie’s eyes remained as dull as the shells of dead beetles. His left hand turned the rheostat knob back to half.
“That’s good,” I commended. “Now keep going. Think brains.”
He twisted the knob to the other stop.
I made the okay sign with my fingers. “Perfect.”
Cowboy zombie put both hands on the switch handle.
“Bet you can’t wait for me to escape?”
He answered, “Brains.”
The sounds of gushing, drilling, the sparking of electric welding torches (and the burnt metallic smells), plus hammering came from the lower floor. Dr. Hennison didn’t once come upstairs for a break. Although he was conducting experiments so fiendish they would make Nazis wince-and planning to roast me in the morning-I had to admire his work ethic.
My right leg was mended, but the effort fatigued me. I needed blood.
Cowboy zombie kept his insect gaze on me. Except for wiping drips of pus leaking from the sores on his face, he made no moves-no blinks, no twitches, nada-to show he was sentient.
I did a function check on my body. I flexed and relaxed my arms and legs and twisted my wrists and ankles. Quarter-inch bolts held the steel bands to the table. I should be able to tear loose. All I needed was to free one hand and my talons would rip through the table. Except for my right leg, all my limbs felt strong despite the torture and the lack of sleep and nutrition.
The rheostat knob remained on the lowest power setting. Now to escape.
I pushed my wrists against the steel bands. They held firm. I closed my eyes and put more effort into wrenching free. My muscles quaked and my hands trembled. The steel bands stretched and bit into my skin. The bolt heads groaned and rotated.
I yelled at cowboy zombie, “Hey, garbage water breath, in case you haven’t figured it out, I’m trying to escape.” Go ahead. Close the switch. The wooden table creaked. In another ten seconds I’d be free.
Cowboy zombie grasped the rheostat knob and spun it to full power. He slammed the switch closed and muttered, “Brains.”
CHAPTER 44
I came to with my face and the front of my body burning like an attack from fire ants. I heard a sizzle.
I moved my arms and legs and more pain came from my wrists and ankles. Burns. That explained the sizzling noise. And the odor of charred meat.
My thoughts filtered though a wall of suffering. I realized that I had been flung onto the floor of the lab. I pulled my right arm up, then the left arm.
I regained my balance and slowly came to my feet. I brushed splinters and dust from my face and chest.
Everything hurt and I wanted to curl into a dark corner and rest. But there was no time for a pity party, I was free of the table and had to scram.
Smoke curled from the scorched and melted remains of the restraining bands. Sparks trickled to the floor. The electrical surge must have had too much power and blasted me off the table.
The overhead lights flickered. The transfusion machine had
stopped click-clacking.
Cowboy zombie gazed at me. His orders had been to cook me with electricity, but now that I had escaped, he didn’t know what to do.
I did.
I leaped and grabbed him by the face, sinking my talons into the fissures of his skull. I threw him to the floor. I tore the table from its mount and slammed it over him. I jumped on the table, stomping hard as I heard bone crunch and flesh squish. I didn’t care how much this hurt my wounded leg, I kept stomping until trails of zombie goo ran from under the table. Too bad it wasn’t Dr. Hennison.
Where was Hennison? He could’ve been deaf and still caught on to all this commotion. What was he up to?
My priority was to escape, recuperate, and then return to raze this place. I limped across the floor to the transfusion machine. Its promise of sustenance was what kept me going. I’d guzzle the blood and break out of the lab, then head for shelter.
One of the windows shattered and the curtain billowed open. Kimberly the zombie rushed in and swung an ax.
I dodged her first blow, but on the backswing she swiped the transfusion machine. The ax blade tore through the bag and it burst in a water balloon splash of blood. The delicious aroma licked at my nose. My stomach jumped from the pangs at losing this meal. I wanted to dive on the puddle of blood and lap it from the dirty floor.
Kimberly readied for another swing. I seized the ax handle above her hands and twisted. She held tight, ignoring the tearing sound from her shoulder. I gave another twist and her right arm tore free from the socket. I grasped a handful of her hair and cocked the ax back to sever her head. Her right hand let go of the ax and the dismembered arm dropped to the floor. It twitched and flopped.
“Don’t move a muscle,” Hennison said.
The dismembered arm froze.
I turned.
Hennison stood at the landing of the stairway. His aura undulated with anger while his gaze raked the room. His face tightened in spasms as if counting the hours and money needed to repair the damage.
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