by Tim Waggoner
Conrad often spoke like that, almost as if he was a poet instead of... whatever he was. Catherine didn’t see her work in such lofty terms, but she wanted Bekah and Marshall to be comfortable with their restored bodies, wanted them to be able to go out in public without drawing attention. Simply put, she wanted them to be as normal as possible, given the circumstances. She certainly didn’t want them to turn out to be freakish monstrosities, like the dog. But then, she hadn’t been concerned with aesthetics when she’d made it, only in testing the efficacy of NuFlesh. And, of course, in proving that Conrad’s resurrection techniques worked.
At least she didn’t have to worry about the dog anymore. Conrad had let her know that the beast had been disposed of. He’d provided no details, and she’d asked for none. One of the key aspects of their working relationship was that she didn’t press him for information, and he didn’t tell her things that she’d prefer not to hear. It was better that way.
Bekah’s long hair was a deep rich brown, and Catherine loved to brush it. The action reminded her of when Bekah had been a child, unable—or truth to tell, unwilling—to brush her own hair. Even when Catherine had finally managed to get the girl to go into the bathroom and brush, she always “forgot” to do the back, leaving it to Catherine to finish the job. Bekah had grown out of that phase eventually, and Catherine had been surprised to find herself missing it. She’d enjoyed the sweet intimacy of touching her daughter’s hair, of running the brush through it, of chatting with Bekah about this and that while she worked.
She was tempted to get a brush and spend a few minutes grooming Bekah’s hair now, but she resisted. She hadn’t removed Bekah from the freezer and laid her out on the table so she could play Mommy. She had work to do. She’d begin with the head.
Many were the wonders that Conrad had shown her during the course of their collaboration, and although she was a rational woman, she had come to believe that there was, if not magic in the world, far more to science that she’d ever suspected. One of the most amazing things he had taught her was the formula for creating a chemical mixture that could reverse the cellular damage caused by decay. In and of itself it did not restore life, but it prevented dead bodies from rotting, which given the amount of time Catherine had needed to have Bekah and Marshall out of the freezer and on the table so she could work with them, was vital. However, the treatment wasn’t permanent, and when it wore off, not only did decay return, it did so with a vengeance, accelerating exponentially until the subject was nothing but a fleshless skeleton, as she’d learned from observing numerous test subjects. Rats, mostly, and in one case, a stray cat Conrad had brought her. The results of accelerated decay were unpleasant to observe, to say the least, and it was a fate she was determined to avoid for her husband and daughter. So every few days Catherine checked Bekah and Marshall to make sure they hadn’t begun to actively decay once more. If she’d had an unending supply of the treatment, she’d use it on them every day, but the ingredients weren’t easy to come by, and the process for creating the mixture was quite involved. A mistake at any step along the way would render the result useless. So Catherine made sure to employ the treatment only when it was absolutely necessary.
The results were almost beyond belief. When Bekah had been little, many was the time that Catherine had crept into her room at night, ostensibly to check and make certain she was all right, but in reality because she simply loved watching her daughter sleep. She was always so still—no restless sleeper, she—and her breathing was so gentle that Catherine had to lean down close to hear it. Now, looking at Bekah lying on the table, her features awash in the harsh glow of fluorescent light, Catherine had no trouble imagining that she wasn’t dead, that she was merely sleeping as sound as ever, waiting for her mother to rouse her.
In a way, she supposed that was true.
Enough woolgathering. She had work to do. She began her examination with Bekah’s feet.
She lifted the sheet and began searching for any discoloration on the skin. Finding none, she drew the sheet back further and moved on to the legs. She was in the process of examining the torso when she heard footsteps on the kitchen floor overhead. Conrad had arrived.
She rearranged the sheet to cover her daughter’s body once more, then leaned close to Bekah’s ear and whispered, “Don’t worry. I know you don’t like it when he looks at you. We’ll finish the examination later, when he’s gone.”
She heard the basement door open, and she straightened and took a step back from the table. She saw nothing wrong in talking to her daughter, but she never did so in front of Conrad. She wasn’t worried that he’d think her crazy. He was a bit odd himself, to put it mildly. But her conversations with Bekah—one-sided though they might be—were private, meant to be kept between mother and daughter.
He came down the stairs, moving gracefully despite being burdened with a large cardboard box. It looked as if it was heavy, but he carried it with ease. She wasn’t surprised. She’d long known he was stronger than he looked.
“More supplies?” she asked.
Conrad reached the basement floor and walked to one of the counters where he set the box down on one of the few empty spaces to be found. He removed his lab coat from the hook on the wall where it had been hanging, slipped it on over his suit jacket, and then joined Catherine by Bekah’s side.
“More NuFlesh,” he said. “We’re going to need it.”
“Good.” She’d finished restoring Bekah’s body for the most part, but there were still a few things she wanted to do to Marshall’s. Then she frowned. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘We’re going to need it’? You sound as if you have something special in mind.”
Conrad smiled. She disliked it when he did that. He had a habit of giving her a smile that she imagined a cat might show to a small rodent an instant before pouncing.
“I do indeed! Feast your eyes, my dear, upon this.” He removed a small object from his jacket pocket and held it out for her inspection.
At first, it didn’t look like much to her. It was an oblong stone of deep blue, its surface polished smooth. Then she realized that instead of catching and reflecting the light, the stone seemed to absorb it, and not gently. It grabbed hold of the light and dragged it down into whatever untold depths lay within.
She blinked. For a moment, she’d felt almost hypnotized by the stone, and it took an effort to tear her gaze from it and focus on Conrad once more.
“What is it?” She kept her tone neutral, but inside she was burning with excitement. She could sense the power the stone exuded, and she knew that Conrad had indeed brought her something special today. Very special.
“It’s called the Lapis Occultus,” he explained. “A token of great power.”
“Can I... hold it?” She was almost afraid to ask. The longer she looked at the stone, the less distinct its outline became, as if it radiated some kind of energy that distorted the air around it.
“Of course.” He held it out to her, and she took it with trembling hands. It was then she caught a glimpse of Conrad’s right palm and saw the black X marring the flesh.
She frowned. “What happened to you?”
“It’s nothing of consequence. The materials we work with can be dangerous, as you well know, and I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. It will heal in due course.”
The symmetrical shape of the mark made it look deliberate. If the affected area hadn’t been raised, she might’ve thought it was a tattoo.
Before she could think on the matter further, her attention was drawn back to the object she held. The Lapis Occultus, Latin for dark stone.
It was cool to the touch, and seemed to almost vibrate in her hand, as if it was charged with power. In fact, the longer she held it, the more she had the sense that it was somehow alive. She thought she could even hear a voice, so faint it was almost imperceptible, calling to her as if from a great distance. A man’s voice, she thought, but she couldn’t make out what it was saying.
Conrad took the
stone from her hand, and the voice was cut off. Catherine felt momentarily disoriented, as if she’d just awakened from a dream. She shook her head as if to clear it. No doubt about it, she needed to get more rest.
She forced herself to look away from the stone and meet Conrad’s gaze. “What does it do?”
“It is the final piece of the puzzle, Catherine. With it, we can ensure that your husband and daughter’s bodies will be completely resistant to decay once they are resurrected.”
She stared at the stone in Conrad’s hand, unable to believe what she’d heard. The problem of decay was the one impediment to successful resurrection of the dead. You could restore them to life, even create a new being from separate parts, but regardless of how careful you were, the resurrected would eventually begin to decay, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but it was inevitable. She had observed this in one test subject after another. It was almost as if they had a force eating them away from the inside. The effect was more pronounced when pieces from separate donors were joined, most likely due to tissue rejection. NuFlesh helped slow the process of decay a great deal, but it could only forestall it so long.
If the Lapis Occultus could do what Conrad claimed, then there was no reason to wait any longer. They could begin resurrecting Bekah and Marshall right away! But if the stone didn’t function as Conrad promised, she would be restoring her husband and daughter to life only to condemn them to a slow, painful second death.
“I can see the hesitation on your face,” Conrad said. “When I first came to you, you were skeptical of what I claimed I could do, but have I not proved myself to you time and again? I know to one such as yourself, schooled in the ways of modern science, the Lapis Occultus must appear to be nothing more than a mere gem. Pretty enough, but certainly not capable of performing miracles. Yet you held it in your hand, Catherine. You felt its power. You cannot deny the evidence of your own senses.”
She had felt the stone’s power. She didn’t understand it, but she knew it was real. And Conrad had been able to deliver on every promise he’d made so far, no matter how impossible it might have seemed at the time. Surely he’d earned her trust by now. Beyond all that, though, was the fact that she missed Marshall and Bekah so very much. They’d been separated too long. It was high time they were a family again.
“All right.” Now that she’d accepted the Lapis Occultus as genuine, she could feel her excitement rising. “Bekah’s body is complete, and she’s already on the table. I’ll give her a thorough examination to make sure she’s ready and then—”
“Perhaps we should begin with your husband.”
Catherine had already turned toward Bekah, intending to get to work right away, but Conrad’s words stopped her. She turned to look at him, frowning. “Marshall isn’t ready. He still needs a few finishing touches. Bekah—”
Conrad stepped forward and reached out to touch Catherine’s arm. Even through the sleeve of her lab coat and the sweater beneath, she could feel how cold his hand was.
“I understand your eagerness to proceed, and in my own way I share it.”
There was something in his tone of voice that made Catherine think there was a hidden meaning to the last part of his statement, but Conrad went on before she could consider it further.
“I have every confidence that the Lapis Occultus will function properly, but I must admit that I have never used it before. Not in this way, at least. I think it might be prudent to test it first.”
“You want to use Marshall as a test subject?” The thought horrified her.
“If he was alive, and this were a more... mundane medical procedure that both he and your daughter needed, a procedure that carried with it a certain amount of risk, what do you think he would do?”
Catherine knew exactly what her husband would do. The same as she would under similar circumstances.
“He’d insist on going through the procedure first to make sure it was safe.”
Conrad’s face betrayed no reaction to her words, but she felt a sense of satisfaction from him, as if he’d won an important battle.
“How long do you anticipate it will take to ready your husband’s body for the procedure?”
She considered. “All the major organs are in place and properly connected. The nervous system could use more tweaking, but it’s essentially finished. Really, all that’s left are mainly cosmetic touches. The nose isn’t as straight as I’d like, he’s still missing several teeth—and there’s the tongue, of course. That’s what will take the most time. But with the new... donations you acquired the other night, along with a fresh supply of NuFlesh, I’d say Marshall could be ready to go in two, maybe three hours.”
Conrad smiled. “Excellent. Shall we begin?”
TWELVE
After Dr. Martinez had, as Dean put it, turned into a “soft nougaty center,” the brothers split up and searched through the NuFlesh offices, looking for any clue to the location of Conrad Dippel’s home base. As they moved from room to room, they had to be careful not to step in Martinez’s liquefied remains pooling in the hall, which were beginning to smell almost as bad as Frankenmutt’s. When they were finished, the brothers compared notes in the reception area.
“There was nothing on Martinez’s computer or in his desk,” Sam said. “He left his phone in his office, but there was no number or address in it for Dippel. No texts or emails, either.”
“Same with Ms. Speedy Gonzalez,” Dean said. “Both her computer and desk were fresh out of Dippel, too. Did you see anything with your, uh, death vision?”
Dean still didn’t know how he felt about Sam’s latest revelation. If it was true, it meant that his brother’s infection was worse than he’d suspected. If it wasn’t true, it meant that his hallucinations were starting up again. Hell, it could be both: the infection might be causing such a strain on his system that it was provoking hallucinations. That was the thing about being a hunter. When you lived in a world where the impossible not only existed, it wanted to tear your throat out and feast on your insides, real was a slippery concept at best.
“I found this in his office trash.” Sam held up an empty glass vial. The inside of the glass contained residue of some thick, greenish-yellow substance.
“Dippel’s special unguent,” Dean said, then frowned. “What the hell is an unguent anyway?”
“Kind of like a medicinal cream,” Sam said.
“Looks more like snot. Can you imagine the TV commercial for that stuff? ‘Side effects may include sudden goo-ification.’” He paused as a thought occurred to him. “You think maybe Dippel messed with the formula to make sure it killed Martinez?”
“Maybe, but why would he off the only supplier of NuFlesh in the world?”
Dean shrugged. “Maybe he’s learned how to make it for himself. Or maybe he just doesn’t give a damn. He is an immortal psychopath, after all.”
“I suppose. But it could’ve been an accident, too. Maybe Martinez used more than the recommended dose.”
“If that’s the case, then given what happened to him, I’d say he used way more.”
“So what do we do now?” Sam asked. “Go check out Martinez’s home, see if there’s any info on Dippel in his home computer?”
“I doubt he’d have Dippel’s address stuck to his refrigerator door. Whatever we do, we’d better step on it. Once the local police see Martinez’s remains—such as they are—they’re going to freak. They’ll put another call into the CDC, maybe even fax some pictures of Martinez’s bones-and-pink-goo-stew, and once that happens...”
“Brennan will be crawling with CDC personnel.”
Dean nodded. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they dropped a giant plastic dome over the whole damn town. If the CDC shows up in force, Dippel will go to ground or get the hell out of Dodge. Either way, we’ll have a tough time finding him after that.”
Sam yawned. “We could get rid of the goo, so there’s nothing for the police to find.”
“Now I know you’re half asleep. You’d
never suggest anything that stupid when you’re on your game.” Dean started counting points off on his fingers. “For one thing, I’m not touching what’s left of Martinez. We don’t know just how toxic that goo is. For another, even if we could find a safe way to move that crap, it’ll still leave residue for the cops to find, and the CDC after them. And remember, the receptionist saw Martinez when he was in the process of melting, so we could only conceal what happened to him for so long. Hell, she may have already reported his condition to the cops. So, if we move Martinez’s goo-mains and the cops find out, they’re going to start thinking some kind of conspiracy’s going on in their town, which could end up bringing in the real Feds, or maybe Homeland Security. Either way, the heat would get turned up real high, real fast.”
“Yeah. I see what you mean. Sorry.” Sam stifled another yawn.
Dean was really starting to get worried. If Sam’s infection continued spreading, his reflexes could be dulled to the point where he might not be able to defend himself in a fight. After that, how much longer would it be before he didn’t have enough energy to move? He might even slip into a coma. They needed to track down Dippel if they were to have any hope of finding a cure for Sam’s condition. Otherwise, Dean was afraid his brother wasn’t going to make it. Dean wasn’t about to let that happen. They’d been through too much together—life and death, Heaven and Hell, and everything between. Dean wasn’t going to let his brother down. He’d die—again—first.
“Maybe Dippel has another Igor,” Sam said.
Dean had been so caught up in his thoughts that Sam’s words didn’t register with him at first. “What?”
“Martinez supplied Dippel with NuFlesh, and in turn Dippel gave him the anti-itch cream. Martinez described it as a trade, which suggests it wasn’t a medical collaboration. If Dippel had help making his creations, he probably wouldn’t go to a biochemist anyway. He’d want someone with a medical background. A physician or maybe even a veterinarian.”