“She was my wife, Clay!” Auggie bellowed, tears of rage and pain streaming down his crimson face. “When she died I wanted to die with her, for her. She was an experiment for you, a test subject, ja? How dare you tell me I didn’t care for her! She meant no more to you than these poor girls whose bodies you desecrate now! Her soul was at peace and you, you took that away from her, you arrogant bastard!”
“Shut the hell up!” Clay snarled and charged Auggie low, driving his shoulder into the portly shopkeep’s stomach and legs, knocking Auggie off his feet and onto the straw-covered floor of the barn. Clay smashed Auggie again and again with his fists and the bigger man blocked them as best he could with his forearms while lying on his back. Occasionally Clay got through and landed a solid blow to Auggie’s face.
“You shut your mouth, you stupid, blundering fool!” Clay barked as he punched his friend, over and over. Hot tears burned and blurred Clay’s eyes as well. “She’s the best human being I ever met on this cesspool of a planet! You were supposed to love her always, not just till her meat failed her, you sanctimonious hypocrite—all prayers and hymns to some imaginary God that does nothing for any of us! Nothing! You left her in darkness and patted yourself on the back that she was having tea in some Bible-school heaven! You idiot! Damn you, Auggie Shultz! Damn you to your childish Hell!”
Auggie bellowed and drove a massive right to Clay’s chin; the smaller man flew off Auggie’s chest and crumpled to the floor. Both men clambered off the floor and began to circle each other, fists raised. Gillian started to interpose herself between the two old friends, but something in her made her stop. This was old blood being let, poison drawn. They both needed this. The wound was too old and too neglected to remain.
“Who makes you God? What gives you the right?” Auggie said, his wet eyes hooded in anger and pain.
Clay stopped circling and dropped his guard. He looked at Auggie and for the first time the shopkeeper or Gillian could ever recall there was pain on Clay’s face, a grimace of soul-deep pain.
“I … I love her,” Clay said softly. His slight frame began to heave with sobs. “All my reason, all my skill, all of it falls away when I think of her. She … she’s the only reason I want to be in this world, Auggie. I knew it the moment I first saw her.”
Clay sobbed, wrestling with the pain buried in him. Auggie blinked and lowered his fists.
“You have someone else who loves you.” Clay pointed at Gillian. “You get to have another life, Auggie. Gertie, she was the only one ever for me. No offense, I know how much you loved her. I respected that and I stayed away. It’s just, she was the only one ever for me. It’s just how I’m put together.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say all that. You’re the best friend I ever had. I just love her and I know I can save her, give her another life, another chance. Even if she doesn’t want to be with me, even if she goes away or wants you back, wants another, I don’t care. I just want to know she’s in this life, sun on her beautiful face and happy and smiling and singing, like she used to. That will be enough to keep me going.”
Clay fell in a little on himself, crying, shaking from the tears. Auggie shuffled forward, all the anger gone from him. He wrapped his massive arms around his friend and held him tight.
“You … you are a good friend, too, Clay,” was all Auggie could think to say. The storekeeper held him tight and let the scientist sob.
* * *
It was the witch’s hour: three in the morning. Gillian had led them to Clay’s house on the compound and she made them coffee in the kitchen and got fresh water and clean towels for the men to clean up from the brawl in the barn. The three of them sat down at the kitchen table.
“Everything, Clay,” Gillian said. “Now.”
Clay sipped the coffee and winced in pain at the effort. “After last year—the fire at the store and all the townsfolk’s changing from exposure to the lumbricina-like creatures the infected possessed in their mouths…”
“Lumbricina?” Auggie said as he dabbed a wet cloth at his swollen ear.
“Earthworm,” Clay said. “A very loose analogy to toss around, I assure you. But I was attempting to put you and Gillian at ease by using referential terms that you could understand.”
Auggie looked at Gillian. She smiled and shrugged, then patted Clay’s swollen, bleeding hands.
“Thank you, Clay. That’s very kind of you. Please continue.”
“The infected who suffered mortal injuries continued to function,” Clay said, “but once the epidemic was over those infected individuals were dead, while those who were infected and avoided life-taking injury were very ill, but recovered.
“It occurred to me that the process by which the so-called worms converted the host’s blood into a different substance also provided a method of regeneration and reanimation for the infected that had been effectively killed, keeping the body going past death.”
“So you took it on yourself to collect those things,” Gillian said, shaking her head. “They’re evil, Clay.”
“‘Evil’ is a word the superstitious use when they can’t discern a motivation that fits their view of the world,” he replied. “The physical world has no good or evil, Gillian. It has effective and ineffective and these worms and what they do is very, very effective. So, yes, I gathered as many as I could find alive and as much of the fluid as I could acquire as well. In the chaos of the first few days after the plague ended, it was easy enough, while the dead were delivered to me.”
Gillian sipped her coffee and said nothing.
“Go on, Clay,” Auggie said.
“There was also the matter of the late Arthur Stapleton,” Clay said, oblivious to Gillian’s silence. “He was poisoned, very effectively I might add, by the so-called worm-blood, which I analyzed and deemed to be highly toxic. So I concluded that the factor that allowed the substance to animate the dead or near dead and poison the living was the worm creature itself. Once I began to examine them and vivisect them, I began to understand what needed to be done and how to create a biorestorative formula from the creature’s secretions.”
“A bio what?” Auggie said, shaking his head.
“Biorestorative formula, Auggie,” Clay said. “It’s the secret to eternal life. Processed from the black worm venom and diluted and adulterated with certain other compounds—sodium bicarbonate, alum, garlic, to name a few, some other concoctions of my own manufacture. The end result is nothing short of astounding.”
“You sound like a cheap huckster, Clayton,” Gillian said, adding more sugar to her coffee. “Hawking your potions off the back of a wagon. I thought better of you.”
“And you will again,” Clay said, standing. “Not that I care. A moment.” He exited the room and Auggie turned to Gillian.
“How angry are you at me?” he asked. Gillian took his torn and bloodied hand carefully, and kissed it.
“Furious,” she said. “That you didn’t tell me what was happening. You do that to me again and we will have a most tempestuous falling-out, Mr. Shultz, I assure you.”
Auggie smiled and winced from his split lip. “I am a very lucky man, Gillian. Thank you.”
“Augustus.” Gillian held his hands tightly in hers and looked down at the table. “If what Clay is saying is true and he can bring Gerta back to life, then … I’d understand if you wanted…”
Auggie pulled her close to him. “No, you listen to me, Gillian. Gerta was my wife and I loved her—you know all that. You loved her, too, and it made me very sad when she passed and I … got … scared and did a foolish thing to try to keep her, a selfish thing. People are meant to grieve, remember, and continue living. I was in that half-life I damned her to as well. You saved me, Gillian—your love saved me, and it saved Gerta too.”
“I just know how much she means to you,” Gillian said. “And I want you to be happy and I love her, too, and…”
The tears were hot on her cheeks and Auggie pulled her closer to him, cradling her in his huge arm
s.
“Hush, nun, meine Süße, still,” Auggie said. “No tears, my love. Gerta is my past and it was a wonderful past. You are my future. Whatever happens with this … creature Clay calls Gerta, she is an echo of my Gerta, and I can’t go back anymore, can’t live in death anymore.”
“But Auggie,” Gillian said, wiping her eyes, “what if Gerta wants to be back with you?”
Clay returned to the room, a large, wide glass Erlenmeyer flask in his hand. He sat down and placed the glass on the kitchen table with a thunk. Inside the conical flask was a solution that looked like equal parts water and swirling ink, the two not entirely mixing. At the terminator of the ink cloud, the clear liquid had an almost purplish cast to it. On the bottom of the flask, curled and unmoving, was one of the black worms. The motion of placing the flask on the table made the thing twitch and drift a little. A small squirt of black ink-like substance excreted from its body.
“Is that thing alive?” Gillian said, scooting back from the table. Auggie pulled her close to him.
“Of course,” Clay said. “You need it to keep producing the substance, but at a less toxic level. Part of the formula I devised keeps it dormant. This is it, the biorestorative formula. It is capable of healing wounds, regenerating tissue and revitalizing and maintaining dead tissue. With this, death holds no more sting for mankind, and Gertie can live once again. It’s my life’s work.”
“Clayton,” Gillian said. “If you created this process and it is such a miraculous product of science, why do you need those … creatures for it to work, couldn’t you just produce the substance you need from them artificially?”
“Sadly, no,” Clay said. “But an excellent question, Gillian.” Clay sat down and placed his palm over the wide mouth of the flask. “The worms’ biology simply defies all I understand about biology and the process of life and death. They possess numerous traits that would indicate they are dead; however, they also possess characteristics that show they are very much not dead. It’s strange—the closest thing I can compare it to is that carnival of murderous hemovores that rolled through town some time back.”
Both Gillian and Auggie cringed a bit at the memory.
“Their bodies upon examination,” Clay continued, “showed similar signs to the worms … to what the superstitious might call ‘undeath.’ As with the worms, I was able to observe effects caused by their bewildering biology and produce effects I can replicate. As a matter of fact, I used some fluids I collected from their bone marrow in this formula.”
“So this gunk is made up of worm blood and vampire juice?” Gillian said. “Sounds terribly scientific, Clayton.”
“Science doesn’t promise us to unravel every mystery right away, Gillian,” Clay said. “It merely promises us there is an answer. One day, we will have the answer of how these creatures function. I think my formula is a large step toward that day. It shows that death is not immutable. It can be defied—cured, if you prefer.”
“It sounds like you’re playing at being God,” Auggie said.
“Well, he’s not doing a very good job of it himself,” Clay said. “I figured I’d take the initiative. Auggie, if man waited around for God to drop things out of the fool sky for him, we’d still be in skins and living in caves.”
Clay reached for Auggie’s hand. “Now give me your paw, here. I’m going to show you what my formula can do.”
Auggie pulled his hand back and Gillian helped him.
“No,” Auggie said.
“Indeed,” Gillian said.
“What are you?” Clay said. “Yellow?”
Auggie sputtered, “I … I am not … not yellow, ja? But this is, how did Gillian say, gunk … and I will not…”
“I’ve tested it,” Clay said, looking at the two and shaking his head. “You think I’d use it on anyone if I didn’t know it was safe?”
“If that’s the case, Clayton,” Gillian said, “then why on Earth haven’t you used it on your face and hands? Your burns?”
Clay blinked a few times and then slowly touched his own scarred face. “Gillian! It hadn’t occurred to me to do that. It would be an excellent demonstration of the restorative fluid’s properties.”
Gillian had to smile. “Yes, Clayton, it would. Are you sure this is safe to use on yourself?”
“You saw how it restored poor Gertie’s head after the decay and the fire. Observe.”
Clay took a long glass pipette with a rubber bulb at the end and drew it full of the fluid. He then carefully dripped the formula over his free hand, turning the hand, to moisten both sides. Auggie and Gillian leaned forward to observe more closely. In less than a minute, the flesh began to return to its normal color and smooth texture. The damage from the fistfight—the bloody torn knuckles—also began to fade, to mend.
“Süße Mutter im Himmel,” Auggie said. “How can this be?” In less than five minutes, Clay’s bony, slender hands and even parts of his wiry arms were completely healed of the horrific burns, of any damage at all. Clay held them up, still damp from the formula that had not soaked into the skin.
“Quackery indeed, Gillian,” Clay said. “Science. Pushing back the frontiers of ignorance and superstition. My formula will change the world.”
* * *
The waiter at Delmonico’s brought Gillian and Clay’s entrées.
“’Bout time,” Clay uttered. “Starved. Smells good.”
Clay tore into his roast beef without a care for how his lack of table manners may have troubled the other patrons. Gillian sipped her water and watched him attack the food on his plate, occasionally taking a small bite from her own and chewing it carefully before swallowing. There were smacking sounds from Clay’s full mouth and the clink of metal against china. Gillian half expected to see sparks.
“Something still troubles me, Clayton,” she said, dabbing her lips with a napkin. “You had a diagram up of a…” Gillian looked about and lowered her voice as she leaned forward. “… headless woman.…”
“Yes,” Clay said, as particles of the partly chewed food erupted from his mouth like a volcano. “Template. I needed to calculate the dimensions of the body for Gertie to make sure I could harvest the appropriate-sized parts. That’s what took so damn long and why I needed Auggie’s help. I had to find the right sizes for everything, or else Gertie would be all mismatched, and I wasn’t going to do that to her. It was a damn sight easier with the dog, that’s for sure.”
Gillian refrained from asking what dog and instead said, “Those were my measurements, Clayton. To the inch. Why?”
Clay paused and grabbed the sleeve of the passing waiter. “Hey, Slick, send another gravy boat over this way, will you?” The waiter nodded and walked away, shaking his head and muttering something in Spanish that Gillian was sure wasn’t “the customer is always right.” Clay picked at his teeth as he answered her.
“Yes, I used you as the model for the template. I didn’t realize it at first but after I saw you and the drawing, I realized it was you. You have a perfect body by the Western standards of beauty, Gillian. Congratulations.”
The waiter returned with the gravy in time to hear Clay’s scandalous admission. He blushed a bit and looked from Clay to Gillian, then departed as quickly as he could back to the kitchen.
“Pass that bread, will you?” Clay said, unaware of the waiter and Gillian’s discomfort.
Gillian blushed and became acutely aware of the other patrons who were now intently trying to eavesdrop on their possibly torrid conversation. Again, she wished that Clay had asked to meet somewhere more private, but that would beg the assumption that Clay Turlough had any idea of how humans worked past a purely biological level.
“I … Clayton! Well … thank you, Clayton. No one has ever said that to me before … in such a manner.”
Clay shrugged. “Just stating a fact’s all.”
“Did you ever consider … harvesting my body?” she asked. “Seems much easier than hunting up already dead parts.”
Clay stopp
ed picking and eating. He looked squarely at Gillian. “Did I consider murdering you, cutting off your head and attaching Gertie’s head to your body? Yes, I considered it as an intellectual exercise, of course. For about ten seconds. Gillian, I know you think I’m some kind of monster—”
“No, Clay, I think very fondly of you—”
“Sometimes,” Clay interrupted. “Other times you think I’d do anything to prove my theories. I’m very dedicated to my work, but I’m a straight shooter, Gillian. Auggie is my best friend in the world. Not many folks in this world have the patience to be my friend. You make Auggie happy—happier than I’ve seen him since Gertie got sick. And … I must confess a certain … fondness for you as well. You are a brave lady, and you have a reasonably well-stocked brainpan; and you love him, as much as Gertie did. Auggie has lost so much in the last few years. I would never take you away from him … and I would never want to do you harm myself. I hope that clears things up for you.”
He tore back into the meat and Gillian watched him again, smiling, some wonder and confusion in her eyes, battling it out.
“I must confess a fondness for you, too, Clayton,” she said. “I must indeed.”
* * *
After the demonstration at his kitchen table, Clay walked them back over to the barn and showed them the body: It was on one of the tables in the cold room. It was spallid, dead flesh, stitchwork and, of course, a headless, ragged neck. The hands were missing but Clay explained that the girl who had been murdered in the Dove’s Roost alleyway had perfect hands to complete the patchwork body. Gerta’s head and brain were fully healed and revitalized in the biorestorative formula.
“I should be able to complete the preparations and undertake the revivication process in the next few hours,” Clay said. “You are both welcome to stay.”
“I … no,” Auggie said. His knuckles and face were now healed, as were Clay’s injuries; even Clay’s burned face was unmarred. “I do not think I should, Clay. I am still unsure that this is what is best for Gerta. She was so unhappy. She wanted to be free from the pain of that existence.”
The Shotgun Arcana Page 24