by Jay Smith
He said this as if it would help make his point.
Paul winced, the scarred side of his face folding and twisting like a bad prosthetic. "No, Doc. I was saving that for the last stop on the tour."
Yukov offered me his creepy, little grin. "You'll like her," the doctor assured me as he turned back to his patient. "As for Mr. O'Neal here, we're about to try something new and frightening and maybe even fun! I'm going to take some of Lucille's blood and inject it into the rotten marrow. And we'll watch what happens."
Paul answered me before I could open my mouth. "Yes, we're infecting a living person. Mr. O'Neal has no treatment options and will be deader than folk music within a month. He gave us consent to perform a drastic medical procedure."
"You lied."
"No, I didn’t, Jill. If it works, the blood will cure him. Of course, then it will kill and reanimate him, but..."
Yukov added, .”..the point is that we have proof of concept that we can use Pervasive Assimilative Immuno-necrosis to cure disease when and if we can control them…I mean… it."
"There's your lead paragraph, Jilly. This is going on all over the world. And we've got something every other lab wants. Let me show you."
Part 2
I tried to keep track of all the twists and turns, but I got the feeling that Paul was taking me the long way around the FEMA bay, trying to disorient me or give me the impression that the Down Under was much bigger than it really is. I tried to keep track of the details if only to identify rooms and passages I’d been down before, but Paul was careful to avoid the places with name plates on doors and all the signs I’d seen in other parts of the site had been pulled from the walls.
As we wound our way through the Down Under, Paul kept humming a few bars of a song I didn’t immediately recognize. It echoed down the corridor, off the drywall and plaster. It reminded me of my dad working on his old Dodge in the garage. Just as that memory began to bleed into the part of my mind such thoughts should not go while in polite company, we stopped walking and Paul stopped humming.
We arrived at another examination bay. These doors were closed and locked with a passcode that Paul entered with fast fingers, resulting in a digital chirp and a click of an electronic lock. He cast me a quick look and that smile that suggested I was in for another shock. He disappeared into the gray shadows wiggling his one intact eyebrow.
I followed him into a room similar to the one where Yukov had been looking over O’Neal. In the center of this room was a cylindrical chamber stretching floor to ceiling with no discernible entry but a clear glass ring around the top third of the cylinder. The interior was dark and the perimeter lit only by soft white light from spots in the ceiling. Paul approached the chamber and found a button to press.
“Excuse me, Lucille. May we speak with you?”
For a moment, we heard nothing but a scratchy static, but it was followed by a low, slightly wet growling sound and then the sleepy, hungry reply: “One moment, Paul. Allow me to awaken fully.”
Paul exaggerated a shudder for my benefit, clicked the button again and said. “Creeps me right down to my god-damned balls. You?” I did not reply, but my face apparently convinced him I felt the same, minus the balls. He clicked the button again and announced “Lucille, I’m going to turn on the lights. I brought you a guest.”
Another click and light faded softly into the chamber, like a stage spotlight for a solo ballad. In the center of the chamber, under that spot, was a body propped up in an examination chair. It was the body of a woman, arguably in her mid-30s, shiny black hair that fell like a hood around her slender face and to her neckline, pale with a bluish hue under the spotlight. She had the look of a fresh corpse; skin taut and waxy with yellow, unblinking eyes empty of life or moisture. She wore nothing but the scars of her autopsy.
The distinct “Y” of a coroner’s cut crossed between her breasts down to her navel. The incision was closed by needle and thread in a tight pattern that made me think it was done by machine. It was done neatly, though I noticed it had begun to pull and stretch in places where the body might move. She was like a cross between the body of Vladimir Lenin on display in the Kremlin and a Greek statue of a maiden in repose, but it made no sense. This was just another corpse, I remember thinking and then looking around the chamber for the source of the voice, then up and out into the room for someone watching us remotely. There were no cameras in the room.
Paul made two quick clicks on the microphone button and said, “Take it easy on the girl. I think this might be a lot to take in at once.”
The body moved. Its head turned in our direction, slowly and deliberate. The lips parted. With effort, it articulated its breathy words with stiff lips and a nearly frozen tongue.
We are… Lucille.
My inside voice said, “No. You were Lucille. Past tense. I AM Jill. Present tense.” My outside voice automatically responded as I’d been taught growing up. “Nice to meet you. I’m Jill.” And as soon as it left my mouth, I felt like I’d just been introduced to the life-size fiberglass bird outside a Red Robin and told it the pleasure was all mine.
Yes. We've been told many excellent things about you, Jill Woodbine.
I stuttered a few syllables in reply, but then settled on being absurd, “I don’t know what social rules we’re following. I-I’ve never talked to a corpse in a can before, so… forgive me for not shaking hands.”
Jill, Paul growled
Purple, dry lips cracked as she spoke. “We have no arms or legs where we come from, Jill. These hands arms are quite cold and weak. We hope my appearance does not disturb you too greatly. You’ve no doubt witnessed great horrors in recent weeks and months. We are so sorry for that.”
“Who are you, Lucille? Why are you locked up in here?”
Between exchanges, there would always be a moment of silence, perhaps in part to form a reply, but also to gather the necessary strength to speak. I could see Paul shifting nervously from heel to heel.
We are speaking through the woman who was last to die as host to us. If you think of us as a sickness to the body, perhaps it is best if you imagine that you are speaking to the disease.
I looked over at Paul, who seemed a little uneasy watching Lucille shift in her chair. I was looking for the sign he was about to deliver the punch line. When it didn’t come, I pelted him with sarcasm. “An eater. I can’t believe it. I’m talking to…interviewing an eater. It’s like Anne Rice ran out of ideas and…”
Paul cleared his throat. “Sorry, Lucille. She doesn’t know the differences between you and your…”
Lucille interrupted. It is quite all right. As derogatory names go, it is actually fitting. Until we earned understanding of the human soul, that name had no meaning. You’ll understand that the name ‘eater’ is a mark of shame to us in light of the suffering and death we’ve imposed upon you. What can we do to put you at ease, Jill Woodbine? We understand this can be an overwhelming experience. Try to imagine what the part of us who is Lucille Albrecht feels at this moment.
As I tried to think of a hundred things to say BACK to the corpse, Paul spoke up. “Let’s dial this back so I can explain. Doc Yukov says that you’re not really talking to Lucille. The real Lucille had a bad heart and she had an attack while working down here died a week ago. Before she died and…” he made sure to emphasize this part “WITH her consent, we injected her with the blood of another subject – Laurie, I think - who could talk and remember who he was in life.”
Lauren, the corpse corrected.
“Right. This is an improvement, but Doc said she still sounds a little autistic. She had trouble with abstracts and emotions. She…”
Lucille interrupted. Corrections are needed, Paul Hansome. Lucille is here in this mind with us. She is preserved among us.
Somehow, even as my rational brain tried to figure out how Paul was pulling off this extraordinary prank, I had decided that something was talking to me through Lucille Albrecht’s body.
What I was fee
ling, the core of this entire exchange was the dawn of a horrifying realization that this entire crisis had a face. It had a voice. And a name. Lucille. In that moment, everything evil and wrong and sad in the world personified. I believed it as much as the name I took from my parents now probably dead or walking the earth like Lucille’s kind. Of course, Lucille had the gift of speech and, despite the fact that she claimed to have trouble understanding emotions and semantics and all those abstract social concepts…she was quick to pick up on it.
And as the dawn of this reality burned slowly through my darkest cynicism, it didn’t matter to me if she were patient zero, a scientific fluke or just some crazy bitch in make-up. Like that murderer Henry Pennyweight said at his sentencing hearing for murdering six children in a public park last year: “Those kids didn’t cut my job, take my house or kill my wife, but since I couldn’t kill God for all that, I took some of the things He loved best.” I can’t kill the disease, but I could enjoy burning the flesh off your genocidal bones.
Lucille continued, We can feel your rage and accept it. We need it to understand the scale of what we’ve done if only so we can move on and grow from our tragic introduction.
“Waitaminute,” I shot back. “What do you mean you ‘feel my rage’? How the hell do you have any feeling at all?” Lucille did not respond right away and that just made me angrier. "I would like to burn you.” I didn’t know why I said it and was shocked at the anger in my voice when I did. Paul took a half-step back from me.
Stiff flesh stretched around her mouth, and cracked lips bowed into a satire of a smile. Perfect teeth set in black gums. Honesty is appreciated. To be honest in kind, parts of us wish to die. But we see our mission as an opportunity to atone and try to make right something that went horribly wrong. We would like to help you, Jill. We would like to help you save the world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - THE SOFT MACHINE
Even with a distance of a few hours, recounting those moments and recalling my emotions is a little bit of a challenge. Let me get this out now: this was a real, talking – shit, philosophizin’ – undead thing mourning its catastrophic First Contact with the human species.
Apologizing to me for all the bad things it had done to humanity and acting like I was there to grant it absolution. And how was your day, dear reader?
I hope my account of what followed makes sense to you. I should probably sleep on it and edit the chapters tomorrow, but honestly…I don’t want to sleep. I feel like I’m being watched from inside my own head. I see Lucille’s dead eyes and feel like she’s eavesdropping on my thoughts. I am unsettled, unconvinced and…well, I’ll get to that part in the next chapter.
As I write this, I’m safely back in Molly’s room – for now – glass of zinfandel in-hand - pondering the biggest question of my life.
Someone’s at the door. Molly’s home! More in a bit.
…
When Molly returned to the room a bit ago, she was in old jeans and a cream colored baby-doll. She didn't have her coveralls. Her whole body was soaked with sweat causing the dirt on her face and arms to streak. She said nothing, but gave me a weary nod on her way to the shower. She remained in the shower for nearly half an hour. I decided to review the documents Paul gave me instead of working on my diary. I thought it made it seem like I’d actually done some work today. I can’t tell Molly what I saw. I can’t tell her about what I was asked to do…what it could mean.
I’m curious what she'd been doing all day and excited that we finally have time together.
Reading over the files Paul gave me about HG World, I realize how much the government knew about the coming plague. All the projections pointed to a doomsday scenario, but by the time they pulled the trigger on their strategic response plan, it was too late. There’s nothing left to the original plans for Down Under except orders written by men probably long dead for people who never showed up to execute them, but according to these documents they really did have a plan. In its place is whatever Paul and Company came up with to keep things going in the hope that something better might break. I have a breakdown of all the people who were admitted to HG World since its activation as a relocation center. It shares where they came from, where they were headed, who they were in that long-dead life and who they hoped to meet again in this or the next life.
Paul gave me all this to remind me what’s at stake. A list of official “meltdowns” runs three pages with a clear trend toward an increase in frequency the closer we get to the winter and the traditional holiday season. A list of “necessary medications” for refugees reads like a ransom note. He didn’t need to give me a roster of school children. But I know why he did.
“Project ARGENT” outlines a world after the walking dead burn out, fade away or Plan Crazy actually works (more on that in a bit). Project Argent – Asset Recovery Genetically Engineered Necroambulate Transformation. The first Chapter is on the “Enkidu Initiative” - These folks are proud of their acronyms. It’s all about trying to shut down all the eaters with a sort-of rogue infection that makes more sense if I pretend someone from Star Trek is explaining it. Even so. My head hurts.
I’ve attempted to present this diary as a linear account of things, written in those long periods where there’s nothing to do but sleep and sleeping doesn’t come easy. Before Molly and I can share the night together, I have to get the rest of this written out, particularly the choice I’m asked to make.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - THE ELECTION OF ONE’S PERSONAL QUIETUS
Part 1
The Everly Brothers. That song Paul had been whistling in the hall? It was “All I Have to Do is Dream” and stuck on a loop in my head; not the smooth love song from a time when rock stars wore suits and ties un-ironically, but Paul’s weird nervous whistle. Did the song pop into Paul’s head after Yukov mentioned that O’Neal was dreaming? And what neither of them got around to explaining why dreaming was mentioned so emphatically. And then the weirdest shit ever happened.
Lucille looked over at me. She held my gaze a moment. It frightened me because there was something else going on that I couldn’t figure out at the moment. I felt slightly light-headed and giddy, but I attributed that to the rotting thing behind the containment unit window. Before she could draw the breath to speak, I somehow knew what she was about to say.
“Your father,” Lucille began. “He owned an old red Dodge truck. Your father would spend hours on the weekend in the garage unloading his stress by fixing it up. You called it his Fishin’ Truck because he always talked about taking you to the lake in it when he was all done. This was after he stopped drinking and your mother took him back. It was a good time. You remember him playing the oldies, which you hated, because it wasn’t your kind of music and your father couldn’t carry a tune.”
Paul stood to the side, head down and hands clasped behind his back, like he was reflecting over a closed casket.
I don’t recall what I said back, exactly. What I DO recall is the realization that Lucille’s words weren’t coming through a speaker or echoing from the hard chamber walls. They were in my head, like the memory of my dead father’s laugh, his bad singing… like the voice that naturally comes when you read the words of a character in a book. If not for that frightening but certain fact I would have assumed Paul got that information from me when I was drugged. At that point, I still denied what I’d heard. I looked at Paul and demanded to know: “How did you know about my father?”
He seemed startled and looked genuinely confused. “What about your father?” He apparently did not hear what I’d heard. “Shit, I didn’t even know you had one. I thought you just shot out of the forehead of Zeus.”
Lucille answered me, again inside my head. “In learning how the human body and mind work, we stumbled upon ways to…unlock certain functions.”
I felt light-headed. The last of her words faded like radio signals hitting interference. I didn’t like the thought of something inside my mind, touching my thoughts and rooting around my memories like
fingers digging through my insides… I felt faint and things went gray and sparkly. The world spun into black for a moment…
I shook myself awake, ejecting myself from a nightmare with that psychic egress cord that pulls you free and back into a safe, darkened bedroom. Unfortunately for me, instead of waking next to my Molly I found myself in a high-backed office chair, in the same room staring at that chamber again.
“I didn’t expect you to crash like that, kiddo,” Paul said from behind me, nearly causing me to tip out of my chair again in alarm. He circled around to the front and put himself between me and the chamber. “I take it you were just touched by Lucille’s 2-way brain radio.”
I couldn’t speak. I could barely keep my breathing under control.
“It helps,” Paul continued, “if you close your eyes. Don’t look at it, I mean, her.
“’them’, maybe?” She talks plural.
“Yeah, well…not for nothin’ Jill, but she knows damn well she’s falling apart like road kill in summer. She’s good about keeping quiet, but you can understand your dwelling on that feeds her with signals that distress her.”
Concern for the eaters? Politeness? Paul seemed to want to keep this thing in the tube HAPPY. I wanted to say a few things on the subject, but…I didn’t. It just wasn’t worth it to get worked up again. I relied on the wisdom of Vance Nash, a veteran foreign correspondent who wrote about covering stories under stressful and dangerous situations. Facts never change. Perception can be controlled. Stick to the facts and tell the story. Ask questions. Hope you don’t die in the process. “How is she doing this, Paul?”
You probably haven’t noticed that there is no physical way Lucille could be as articulate as you hear her. She’s speaking, alright, but it’s…it’s like a Muppet. She’s pantomiming the words through a dead breathless mouth. The chest movement is just instinct.”