"Sure you don't want a bite? I can pick the meat out."
"Stop tempting me," she said.
#
For the first time in years, Donna Chillingworth was eating shrimp and grits for lunch because Sam Lazarus, with a sense of humor she wouldn't have expected, had taken her to a Charleston-themed restaurant in Baltimore.
"You've seen my cousin?" asked Sam. He'd barely touched his tuna, which Donna thought was a real shame; you should never let expense-account food go to waste.
"I saw him briefly," said Donna. "We were at the same press conference. He was pretending to be a writer for a paper in Memphis."
"This was in Boston?"
"Mmm-hmm." She scooped up another forkful of grits and wondered if Sam would be willing to share some of his tuna. She was one of those people who forgot to eat when she was busy, until her hunger caught up with her with an unladylike vengeance.
Two days earlier, she'd called up an old acquaintance from her Charleston days and learned that (a) no one at the Palmetto knew where Jack was and (b) Sam was in Baltimore trying to track him down. She'd argued with her credit cards about paying the cost of a trip down there-- and with the fact that no one was paying her to write about this, at least not yet-- and finally her curiosity won out and she took a train to Baltimore, intending to spy on Sam from a distance, to see if she could figure out what her old employer had planned.
Who could have expected that he would have recognized her, sitting in his hotel lobby? Or that he would have asked her to lunch? She should have realized that her "friend" at the Palmetto would discuss her phone call with his boss.
But Sam didn't seem annoyed at her intrusion into his family's affairs. And she was getting a free lunch out of it, which was always a good thing.
Unlike most people, Donna did believe there was such a thing as a free lunch.
"Did you speak to him?" Sam asked.
"No. Actually, it got a little strange. Jack faked a heart attack, and that was the last I saw of him." Donna hadn't spent too much time thinking about whether she should tell Sam the rest. Then I followed him down to the morgue and watched him bite his own index finger off. And get this, Sam-- he claims to be some kind of supernatural monster! Why tell the part of the story that made her sound like she'd lost her marbles?
In any case, she'd told Sam enough to unsettle him. He shook his head as if annoyed by his cousin's inexplicable behavior.
She swallowed the last piece of shrimp and continued. "I couldn't figure out why he was working in Memphis, instead of at the Palmetto, so I followed up, and they've never heard of him."
"Of course not."
"And I haven't seen him since. I'm sorry I can't be of any more help." She'd eaten everything on her plate, and she was still hungry. She stuck her hand into the bread basket, which proved empty.
Wordlessly, Sam slid his plate over to her and took her empty one. "Can I trust you? This doesn't leave this table, all right?"
"Certainly."
"I always liked you, Donna, and I never thought we should have fired you, just because you were curious. There's nothing wrong with healthy curiosity. We should have told you the truth back when you were working for us, because that's all you wanted, and I'm going to tell you the truth now." Sam sighed. "Jack is an embezzler."
"What?" She was genuinely surprised.
"He stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the newspaper. We didn't find out until he disappeared after my aunt and uncle named him the next publisher."
"That's why he vanished."
"That's why," nodded Sam. "It doesn't make sense otherwise. The thing is, he took enough to kill the Palmetto, as soon as some loans we've taken out come due. And if there's any of it left--"
"You need it back."
"We do. Or that's it for the Palmetto, at least as an independent paper. No one knows yet, not even the people working there. And we need to keep it that way, or the bank will call our notes in immediately. I know you don't work for us anymore, and I know your job with us didn't end well. You have no reason to think kindly about any of my family. But for the sake of any friends you still have at the Palmetto, if you hear anything about Jack--"
"I'll let you know."
Sam smiled at her. "You're very talented. I'm sure you'll learn something."
I have, she thought. You killed him. Because she'd believe a lot of things about Jack, but she wouldn't believe that he'd embezzle six figures and end up working at a pizza joint less than a year later. And someone had to have given Jack all those stab wounds she'd seen in the morgue.
She'd always thought Sam was a spring wound too tight. He must have finally spronnnggged free.
"Thank you," said Donna, and ate the nice murderer's tuna.
#
Jack was a happy man. It was a beautiful day-- he had ridden into work with his head out the window, daring decapitation so he could feel the sunlight on his skin. And he was standing next to the love of his life, and he was pretty sure she loved him back, though she'd never actually said the words. Such a hard case, but he loved her anyway, and he was happy standing next to her, working without saying a word.
And he had a story, a story story story. He'd call Donna after the zombie meeting on Wednesday, and carefully shepherd her through a series of interviews with the most clean-cut zombies he and Arturo could dig up (ha) and help her polish that story until it shone. He'd been serious about winning her that Pulitzer, and he was going to stand behind her as she shook hands with the judges, and the cameras flashed, with a sharp suit and a French tie and a big bossman smile on his face and he would visibly demonstrate the Palmetto's commitment to serious journalism in an era of bureau-cutting bean-counters.
Take that, Sam Lazarus!
Humming a little under his breath, he sliced peppers into rings while Lisa diced onions next to him. He had no idea why, but she smelled especially good this morning. Like something new had been added to the stew. What was it?
He leaned in and sniffed her neck.
“You’re so funny,” she said. “Listen, I wanted to talk about something.”
Lilacs, cinnamon, cigarettes... sassafras. Just like on himself. Just like on Sarah, who’d been infected, but hadn’t died yet.
Oh dear God. He’d infected Lisa.
“I know you used to be a reporter, and if you ever want to start looking for work doing that, I'd understand."
They hadn’t used any kind of protection. Why would they? He hadn't thought of it as a disease, but some strange supernatural thing, the well-deserved result of his own shameful waste of a life. And he’d infected her.
“I know something happened, and you don’t like to talk about it.”
No-- what would be worse is if he hadn’t infected her when he had sex with her. If just by standing next to her, he was shedding enough of the virus to infect her. Or anyone else he happened to be standing next to. Was he some kind of Typhoid Mary, spreading poison in the world just because he was there?
“You look like you’re going to puke. Forget I mentioned it.”
He should probably tell her. He should probably tell her right now, but what would she say if she knew she was going to end up like him? Not up in heaven with her mother and father and the little ceramic angels, but down here with him digging up someone’s grave?
And there went the idea of going public, because people might be willing to feel sorry for zombies, if you told the story right, but if there was a chance you'd become one if you got too close-- no one would stand for that. If he was lucky, he'd end up interned somewhere, like they'd done with TB cases before antibiotics. And if he was unlucky, they'd kill him properly. And he could think of a few ways that would probably work.
Lisa was looking down at him, such warmth in her kind dark eyes, waiting for him to say something. He couldn't tell her. He couldn't. Because if she stopped loving him, he might as well be dead.
Sometimes he was just a misery to himself.
"Lisa," he said, "Bei
ng here, working with you-- it's the happiest I've ever been. Ever."
She leaned over and kissed him on the lips. He flinched. Too late. “Sometime,” she said, “sometime you’ll tell me what happened.”
#
David Leschke pulled the calligraphied envelope out of his mail cubby. Silence descended as the rest of the people in the office pretended to be occupied with other things. They all knew what it was.
Winthrop was an old university, and many of its traditions were equally ancient. One of the most venerable was the method by which the Board of Overseers communicated with professors.
Prof. Leschke opened the envelope and pulled out the engraved invitation.
THE BOARD OF OVERSEERS
REQUESTS THE PRESENCE
OF PROF. DAVID LESCHKE
AT
10:15 TOMORROW MORNING
They know, he thought, crushing the stiff paper in his hand. They might even know about Miriam.
ch. 18
Ian stood over his laundry basket, sniffing his shirt and trying to figure out how to get rid of the weird rotting root beer smell.
There comes a time in every smart person’s life when he realizes that smart only takes you so far, that eventually even the most determined student gets his last A, and that he will find himself in a situation for which there is no obvious correct answer, or possibly no answer at all. Ian had done his best to avoid such tangles. Staying in graduate school had offered the promise of an obvious life: get the grades, do well, be set forever. The only problem was to avoid the temptations: the love of money, the desire for independence, the desire for love and a family. All this would come later, after the PhD. Everything would be okay, if he could only get his PhD.
Unless your advisor was a total psycho who wasn’t letting you do any actual work because he had you out chasing zombies. And now the university knew about the zombies, but they might not know Ian knew about the zombies, so maybe he should just go back to his original research, if he could only remember what that was. And the only person Ian knew who had any perspective on this had totally vanished. If only Sarah would come back and tell him what to do!
When Ian signed the letter agreeing to come to Winthrop, he had thought about all of the famous people who had gone there before him. And at the end of the list, he had imagined his own name. Going to Winthrop made you one of the elite. It opened doors.
What a bunch of hogwash!
Winthrop wasn't in the business of making Ian Comanor successful. Winthrop was in the business of being Winthrop, the most important university in America. Which meant that Winthrop would do anything to protect its good name. And if he, Ian, did anything to embarrass the university, they would crush him like a bug. Probably literally.
So he needed a Plan B. If no one was going to hand him a PhD and a tenure-track teaching job, he needed to figure out something else to do with the rest of his life. The only problem was the world outside the university was a total mystery to him. He had never lived outside the bubble. He had no idea how to get a job, unless there was a "help wanted" sign in the window. And health insurance-- he supposed he couldn't just go to the university clinic any more every time he got the flu. Did jobs usually come with insurance or not? He didn't know. Hell, he barely knew how to cook for himself. He ate at the Winthrop cafeteria during the week and had ramen on weekends.
Here he was, twenty-nine years old, and unable to feed himself.
"And they expect us to be the great analysts of modern society," said a German woman's voice, inside his head.
Goddamn it, I'm hallucinating again. And why did his hallucination have a German accent? Did that make sense? Was it some kind of Freudian thing?
"Lie down on the couch, and we'll talk about it," said the voice, with a freaky little laugh.
Don't pay attention to the hallucination, he reminded himself, for the twentieth time. It only encourages her.
Someone was pounding on his front door.
He looked through the peephole. It was Sarah. There she was, the most beautiful woman in the world, dressed in a very short skirt. His brain seized up momentarily, then recovered. “Thank God you’re back. Prof. Leschke’s been going totally bat-shit.”
She looked totally unsurprised. Maybe it was time to win some points? Points capable of being exchanged for actual physical contact? “I didn’t tell him you were there when Uncle Fester escaped,” he added. “He thinks it’s all my fault.”
“That’s really sweet of you, Ian.”
She didn’t look happy. A horrible memory descended on Ian, of Sarah, bleeding, locked in a cage, his tranquilizer dart embedded in her chest. “I’m really sorry I shot you,” he mumbled. “Are you mad at me?”
She waved dismissively. “It’s okay. It probably made the bite hurt less.”
“He wants us to find another zombie. Where are we going to find another zombie?”
Sarah nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. And I know exactly where I’d go if I were dead.”
#
Why didn’t I stay at Mankato State? wondered David Leschke as he scanned the list of names carved into the slate walls lining the Hall of the Dead. And there it was.
DAVID LESCHKE.
He’d heard about this before. How did the Board of Overseers manage to have your name, your own name engraved on a wall that had apparently stood, unchanged, for the past hundred and fifty years? One of the many things he found unpleasant and disorienting about Winthrop-- its apparent existence outside the world of normal scientific laws. He wished he'd known about it before he decided to come, but you couldn't turn down Winthrop, could you?
He touched the name and the letters melted under his fingertips to nothingness. To his left, another slate panel shifted open. Behind it was the iron cage of an old-fashioned elevator. The elevator shook slightly when he stepped into it, and he closed the cage behind himself. There was no button, and the elevator sat in place for a moment while David wondered whether he should just open the cage and get out. Then, with a jolting lurch, he rattled upwards.
Up was good. He'd heard some wild stories about what was lying under the tower of Memorial Hall, and he was glad he wasn't going to find out personally.
At least, not yet.
The elevator doors opened on a scene of unbelievable masculine plushness. The walls were paneled in some rare wood that Prof. Leschke could not identify, and the floor was marble, but covered in an enormous antique Oriental rug. Taxidermided animals lined the walls-- and every one that Leschke recognized was extinct. (Where did you even get a taxidermied dodo bird?) Seven portly, middle-aged men sat in a circle of club chairs. Whenever one set an empty drink on the table by his side, a white-jacketed waiter instantly replaced it with a full one.
They had reserved another club chair for David, and it was only after he sat down that he realized that it was somewhat smaller than those belonging to the others.
They'd thought of everything, before he even knew it was time to stage a counterattack. They'd had so much more practice than he had.
The man in the center chair spoke. “So glad you could join us, Prof. Leschke. You may call me Mr. Dudley. I speak for the Board of Overseers. Would you care for a drink?”
Anything to delay this discussion. “Yes, all right.”
A servant-- where had he come from?-- pressed a tumbler of scotch on the rocks into David's hand. It was only then that he realized that, unlike the members of the Board, he hadn’t been given a table for his drink. He held the glass awkwardly on his leg, feeling the condensation run through his pants, leaving a dark circle.
"You will grant me the old man's privilege of telling the story slowly, and with a discursion or two," said Mr. Dudley. "This is an ancient university, professor-- more ancient than our young nation, and in many ways, far older than that. And as you might expect, very little remains beyond our dear Winthrop's experience. About a century ago, Winthrop, like many other institutions of its era, was suffering through terrible labor dis
ruptions."
"Bolshevism," rumbled a similarly stout man to Dudley's right.
"As a progressive man, my predecessor, Mr. Faneuil, met with a previous holder of your position, a Prof. McGill, to see whether there might be any scientific solution to this problem. And while McGill did find an alternate labor source, my predecessor was forced to acknowledge that these workers were far more trouble than they were worth. The experiment had to be terminated. And I regret to say that Mr. Faneuil appears to have been lax in destroying the records of Prof. McGill's efforts. Otherwise, why would we currently be suffering from a recurrence of the problem?"
David had reflected whether there was any use in trying to bluff. Definitely not. “My students and I are working very hard to resolve that issue.”
“Really? How’s your wife, Prof. Leschke?”
David froze. So they knew absolutely everything. Then why had they called him up here? What did they want from him?
“My colleagues and I think that it’s time we brought out some people with more expertise to address the matter.”
So they were taking it out of his hands? Or, to put it another way, were they saying that he had become unnecessary?
He had heard a story a year or two after he had taken this position. Something that had happened in the Eighties. A group of animal rights activists decided to break into one of the buildings and free the poor bunnies and puppies and mousies. But somehow the Board of Overseers got wind of it, and before the activists got there, replaced the whole menagerie with a pride of ravenous lions.
Was it true? Who knew? But God help him, and God help Joshua, if the Board decided that David was an unnecessary complication.
“We’re getting very close,” he said. “We’re getting great results from the antivirus. Very promising results. Our prior expertise in this project--”
Dudley cut him off with a wave of his hand. “I have reflected that Mr. Faneuil's worst error was to have prevented Prof. McGill from correcting his mistake. Otherwise, how could my predecessor have allowed records of the experiments to escape? Obviously Mr. Faneuil was unaware of their existence. Of course our experts will benefit from your prior researches into the matter. And your own personal involvement.”
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