“You’re not my wife. You only look like her.”
The Miriam-creature looked mournful. “I’m really, really sorry, honey.” it murmured.
“Shut up, Miriam,” he said. He turned towards his assistant. “What are you waiting for?”
He’d forgotten the second zombie. He heard the cage door and only then saw the creature moving fast across the room, knocking the guard out with one blow. Before David could move away or even reach the syringe, the zombie’s hand was around his neck.
The creature sniffed him and smiled, as David gasped for air. He tried to reach out, to push him away, but his arms felt so weak.
“What are you doing?” Miriam’s voice. The world was getting fuzzy at the edges.
“You know what your husband needs?” asked the creature. “A little fucking empathy. And I could use a snack.”
David heard the crack an instant before the lights went out for good.
#
Raw meat! Shoves blood right into the brain, turns a lump of cold oatmeal into a Van de Graaff generator!
Jack walked down the hallway, eating the arm of the man he'd just killed. He'd been waiting for them, that great anonymous unknown them, to come after him for months. He'd kept his head down, been careful, been very very very good, knowing that it would only hold off the inevitable. But now that it was really happening, all he could think was How dare they! Put me in a cage like a hamster with a wheel and some wood chips? Do they know who I am?
No, they didn't. Of course not.
And that was funny, actually. He hadn't realized that when it finally happened, it would be funny, and when he figured out where Arturo and the others had gone, that would be the first thing he told them, it was all just ridiculous.
Kill him? He was Jack Fucking Kershaw, the greatest hitter in baseball! He dropped dead six times before breakfast, came back slick and shiny and sweet-smelling as a new car fresh off the lot. Good as new. Better than new. And it came to him that he'd spent way too much time worrying about what other people thought because really, he was indestructible, and he might as well start acting like it.
Yes, he had to find Arturo and explain it to him, as soon as he got rid of this festering sinus infection prickling deep within his head. He hated sinus infections, they itched in a place no one could reach, but if you gave him a dental vacuum, or maybe a sharp enough stick, he might think about giving it a try, if his face didn't shoot straight off from the terrible ballooning pressure...
For the first time in months, Jack sneezed, a practiced hands-free runner's sneeze, and heard a sharp PLINK as the grey meaty blob hit the linoleum. Bullet fragment, he thought, wiping his nose on his sleeve and leaving the snotwad where it had fallen.
Where was Arturo, anyway?
"Hey, dead guy!" said a German woman's voice.
"Hello, hallucination!" he said, smiling at the thing floating in front of him, the ghost of a sea anemone, glimmering like licked wet glass. "Guten abend, beautiful!" He stuck out his tongue to try to catch it like a snowflake, but it zipped up and out of reach.
"If you're not too busy, there's someone you should talk to over there." It waved its flagella down the hall.
He heard a pounding noise from an office in the direction the hallucination had indicated, and a muffled voice calling, “Let me out!” And there was a sign on the door that read, “Prof. David Leschke.”
Sometimes you just had to smile at the ways things worked out.
The door was bolted shut, so Jack kicked it in. Behind the door cowered a pimple-faced young man.
“Hello there,” he said. “Tranquilizer dart kid. I’m going to need your help.”
“Whose arm is that?”
Jack looked down at the arm he was holding. “Someone named David Leschke. Friend of yours? Stupid question. Of course you know him! I bet you're Ian. I met your friend Sarah.”
“Oh, God,” said the young man, stumbling backwards, fumbling for the desk behind him.
“He’s got pretty impressive muscle development for a man his age. Check it out.” Jack flexed the arm, showing off the bicep, round like a ripe, juicy apple. How could he help taking a big bite?
Boy, he was just covered in blood, wasn’t he? It was amazing how much came out of someone if you ripped off his arm, even if he was already dead when you did it. Some kind of blood backlog, he guessed. He was no physiologist.
“Listen,” said Jack, waving the arm at the greenish young man. “I need to find where the other ghouls are. Where should I look?”
“The basement?” whispered the young man.
“And what’s the quickest way down there?”
The young man pointed a shaking finger at the stairwell.
“Thanks. I appreciate your help. Sorry for the interruption.” He carefully set the splintered door back within its frame and walked away.
#
Lisa drove back towards Winthrop Square, feeling annoyed at the whole general world. She’d called the cops about Sarah’s disappearance, but the guy they sent to talk to her was more interested in figuring out why Lisa cared than tracking down where the girl had gone.
Adults have the right to disappear any time they want, Ms. Alioto. And how do you know Ms. Chen? She was a customer? Was she a frequent customer? Then how did you decide to visit her apartment?
Sometimes, Lisa wished she were a better liar.
So she had a new plan. Lisa was going to try to track down the office where Sarah worked. Maybe she could find the other guy Sarah had talked about-- what was his name? Ian?
But as she drove up Massachusetts Avenue, her windshield wipers squeaking against the glass, she came up to a cop in a raincoat stopping cars in front of an orange-striped barricade. She opened the window. "What's wrong?" she asked, leaning into her collar so she didn't breathe on him.
"Parade," he said. "Winthrop's totally blocked off until ten tonight."
“Thanks,” said Lisa. Was she getting paranoid, or did that sound suspicious? No, this wasn't paranoia. A parade, in this downpour? Who were they kidding? Something weird was definitely going on.
And where the heck was that girl?
#
Maybe this was good news, thought Ian. If Prof. Leschke was dead, he would get a new, sane advisor! That would be great! Someone who could finally nurture him and put him on a good project and help him graduate and get him a great job with lots of money and not too heavy a teaching load...
Only now he was trapped in Prof. Leschke’s office, in a building filled with rampaging zombies. He couldn’t jump out the window-- he was too high up. And if he tried to escape through the corridors, he’d probably get eaten before he made it outside.
Plus he was beginning to suspect that he was the sort of person who could only be brave for a short period of time, because if the Board of Overseers found out that he'd disobeyed orders and refused to inject Mrs. Leschke, something unimaginably horrible was going to happen to him.
He'd heard there was an underground lake filled with blind albino alligators under the main library, the descendents of a pair brought back to Winthrop by Agassiz himself-- but that couldn't be true, could it? Would Winthrop really keep a pack of albino alligators to eat library thieves and recalcitrant grad students? Okay, maybe that was a little unlikely.
Or maybe that's just what they wanted him to think!
He wished Sarah were here, because she would know what to do.
The door fell off its hinges and crashed to the door. Behind it was not, as Ian had expected, a team of angry Winthrop guards, ready to haul him off to the bad basement, but the crazy zombie from before, which wasn't any kind of improvement. His hands and face were clean, but his shirt didn’t look any less blood-stained than it had last time. At least he'd finished eating the arm.
“Oh, good,” said the zombie. “You’re still here.”
“Where would I go?” asked Ian, from on top of Prof. Leschke’s desk.
“Out the window.”
“We�
��re three stories up!” said Ian, his hands waving frantically.
The zombie shrugged. “Lucky you stayed. Listen, I need another favor.”
“Are you going to eat me?”
The zombie looked him up and down and grinned. “No thanks. Do you have an extra lab coat?”
Ian pointed towards the coat rack.
“Fantastic,” said the zombie, and put the coat on. When it was buttoned to the top, it hid most of the blood. The zombie fixed his hair in the mirror on the wall, then nodded, apparently satisfied. “Don’t look so nervous, kid. Do you have any weapons?”
“Are you kidding? This is an office! We’re scientists!”
“Ooh, look at that.” The zombie had found an old-fashioned fire axe in a glass cabinet. He shoved his hand through the glass, shattering it, and took the axe out. “It’s got a beautiful balance.” He held it out to Ian. “Want to try?”
“Not really,” said Ian.
The zombie tucked the axe in his belt, pulling the lab coat over it.
“Let’s get going,” said the zombie. “We’ve got to get the other ghouls out before they get really hungry.”
Ian’s hands involuntarily clamped onto the edge of the desk. “What do you mean, we?”
“You think they’ll believe me if I come in by myself? Not a chance,” said the zombie. He looked in the mirror again, examining his cheek. “Still blue. How dead do I look? I’m okay, right?”
Ian couldn’t figure out how to answer that one. The zombie took him by the upper arm and gently pulled him off the desk. “It’ll be fun. Call me Jack. Did I have your name right? You're Ian?”
“Uh-huh."
“You’re not going to scream now, Ian? ‘Cause that’ll really bollix things up.”
“Nope!” said Ian. “Too scared!”
“Good man,” said Jack the zombie. He slung his arm around Ian’s shoulders. “Tell me, Ian, do you think people can change?”
“What?” Ian had lost control of the conversation, and probably his immediate future. Do what the crazy man says! he thought. Maybe you won’t die and get eaten! In either order!
“I’ve been giving this some serious thought, and really, I think we are what we are. I mean, I tried my damndest, and I could only keep her fooled for about two months. So what the hell, right? I might as well do what I like.”
“Please don’t eat me,” mumbled Ian.
“I told you, I’m not going to eat you.”
“You ate Prof. Leschke.”
“Just his arm. Why, I bet he’s even grown himself a nice new one by now.”
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA thought Ian. This is why we should never have done the experiment! Now the zombies are here, and they’re going to make us pay for all the horrible things we did! And I’m too young to die!
The zombie thumped him on the back of the head. Ow. “Stop that. This’ll never work if you’re making that noise."
ch. 24
David Leschke was feeling as cheerful as he’d been in a long time. He'd been looking at this the wrong way from the beginning. Unproductive? Washed-up? A has-been? I don’t think so, dear colleagues! Have any of you raised the dead?
Well, maybe not him personally, but two of his graduate students, which was essentially the same thing.
Nobel Prize, here I come! And if they say they don’t give it posthumously-- I’ll show them posthumous!
He felt fantastic. The only downside that he could see was that his head kept keeling over to one side. But he’d grown his arm back! That was good!
And also-- he’d never realized how incredible his wife smelled, like honey and burned toast. She’d been sick for such a long, long time... sick and off limits, so to speak...
“Sweetheart, where are we going?”
“Ahhhrrhrrrr,” he said. Something was wrong with his voice box, too. But Miriam seemed to understand him perfectly as they stopped in front of the door to the departmental museum. It was locked, so he just ripped the door off its hinges.
Miriam followed him inside, giggling like a little girl as she looked up at all the deformed specimens that had been given to Winthrop over the years. A leg that looked like cheese. A gangrenous hand. And-- there was the one he was looking for--
He pulled down a malformed heart in a glass jar and handed it to Miriam. “Is that for me?” she asked.
“Aaahr,” he said.
She twisted off the glass lid, smelled the jar, and chugged a big gulp of the formaldehyde solution.
That’s my girl.
She giggled. “It goes straight to my head!” She fished out the heart like it was a big olive and bit into it. “It’s delicious, darling. Here, have some.”
Now that she mentioned it, he was feeling hungry. He took the heart from her and finished it.
“Honey,” she said, shyly, “I’m so sorry for what I did. I can’t say it often enough. You must have been horrified. But I love you and-- can we start over?”
He licked his hands clean, picked her up easily-- he was so strong now!-- and set her on a lab bench. He kissed her like they’d kissed when they first fallen in love.
“Oh, honey,” she murmured. He began unbuttoning her blouse. “What are you doing?”
“Graaaaaahr,” he explained, as Miriam started to laugh.
#
It was probably a serious character flaw, Jack reflected, that he was happiest when he was about to lie his head off.
But really, who cared? He was done being so damn apologetic.
He quickly surveyed the room, the motion making his beehive of a head ache more. Four large gorilla cages full of unhealthy-looking ghouls, and Arturo, who was doing a good impression of someone who didn’t recognize him. Two Winthrop henchmen in white jumpsuits, just like the fellows who had attacked them in the cemetery. The cages were crammed between dust-covered lab benches, in a row down the center of the room.
His own assets: a fire axe, the cringing kid behind him, and the stream of complete swamp water that was about to pour out of his mouth.
Hit it.
“Who are you?” asked the redheaded henchman.
He arranged his face into a look of scholarly disdain. “I’m Dr. Jack Kershaw from the CDC in Atlanta, and I’ve been sent to investigate an unusual outbreak. And who are you?”
“I’m the hired muscle. And no one told me you were coming.”
“No one tells you the CDC is coming. We just show up. Much like this infectious disease, which-- judging by that--” he pointed towards the cages-- “is not being properly controlled.”
“The Board of Overseers--”
“Sir, the CDC does not give a brass hoot about the Board of Overseers. We answer to the American public.” He moved a few steps closer to the cages. “Have proper protocols been followed? They have not. Look at this. As far as you know, this disease can be transmitted by air. And here you’ve got all these people in cages. Congratulations. By now, we’re all infected.”
He saw the redhead back up a step. Good. He moved a little closer to the cages.
That left the second man, whose cheeks were pitted with old acne scars. “This is actually a very unusual disease. Not at all a CDC matter.”
“Are you kidding?” Jack smiled. “We’ve seen zombies before. There was an outbreak in Beaufort just last year that would make your hair curl.” He picked up a pack of rubber gloves from the lab bench and waved them at the henchmen. “Ooh. Discount rubber gloves. Zombie spit’ll cut right through these. I hope they’re paying you fellows well for this, because your widows’ll appreciate it.”
The redhead looked at him as if struck with a new idea. “How did you hear about this?”
Line, Ian, Jack thought.
“I called them,” said Ian. “Last night.”
“Yes,” said Jack quickly, before Ian tried to elaborate. “Took the red-eye up from Atlanta, just got here this morning.”
“No you didn’t,” said the redhead. “Logan’s been closed all morning. I know, because my mom’s fl
ying in from Philadelphia, and her flight was delayed. Rain.” He raised a gun at Jack. “So who are you really, Dr. CDC?”
Jack picked up a glass five-liter jug of ether from the lab bench next to him and hurled it at the redhead, hitting him in the chest and knocking him to the floor. The other drew his gun and started shooting, but Jack had been careful to stay behind a bench. As he ripped his lab coat open-- sorry to see that go-- he heard the door slam behind him as Ian took off for parts unknown.
Smart, thought Jack, as he jumped over the lab bench, landing directly on the redhead. He was alert enough to point his gun in Jack’s face, so Jack grabbed him by the red hair and pounded his skull into the floor.
Which left the remaining henchman, Mr. Acne Scars, free to shoot him in the back, twice. “Goddamn, that hurts,” Jack said. He spun around and threw his axe, watching it fly end over end until-- thock-- the shaft hit the man directly in the forehead. His eyes crossed and he dropped to the ground.
"Nice work," said Arturo.
Jack smiled at him. “Where do they keep the keys?”
“Over there, doctor."
Jack pulled the keys down from the hook on the wall. “Is this everyone?” He unlocked the cage with Arturo in it.
“We’re missing Miriam.” Arturo came out, trailed by the rest of the lurching, grumbling zombie horde.
“She was upstairs with me. She's fine.”
Jack coughed and spat another metal fragment into his hand.
"You okay?" asked Arturo.
"I wonder if I've got anything else stuck up in there." He dropped the bullet fragment on the floor and wiped his hand on his pants.
"Let me check." Arturo grabbed Jack's head and shook it back and forth. "Yeah, I think I hear something jingling."
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