Thump.
Thump-thump-thump.
Alex furrowed his brow at the door and the thumps beyond.
It sounded … no it … yes it sounded … yet it couldn’t be … but it did!
He only recognized the pattern because of his time at the university. It was common practice for the students to utilize such knocks so they could gossip quietly after curfew, or even pass answers back and forth in mid-class through a series of surreptitious knocks. In fact, without knowing the secret of Morse code, Alex would never have passed Greek Literature 101.
And here it made little sense, but the thumps—three short, three long, three short—sounded exactly like Morse code. Or, to be more precise, the call sign for S.O.S.
A call for help.
“Hello?” Alex whispered. “Is someone in trouble in there?”
The thumps halted once more, only to start anew with a fresh pattern of long and short beats. Alex listened in horror as the letters formed and he recognized the single word the code spelled out.
Alex.
It took everything he had to hang onto the lantern.
The thumping spelled his name once more, then returned to its plea for help.
Thump-thump-thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump-thump-thump.
Trembling, more now from fear than from that dreadful chill, Alex ogled the door and wondered just how he was going to get past such a metal monstrosity. The thing towered eight feet if it towered an inch. Could he make his way past such a daunting barrier? But wait now, what was that? Alex spied what looked like the lever side of a lock. Raising the lamp, he followed a long line of similar latches, almost thirteen in all. The room was locked from his side. The outside.
Why would the doctor have need of a room that locked from the outside?
A burning need to know consumed Alex, overpowering every other emotion, sensation, or desire. His terrible fear, the chill, even his worry of being caught were all reduced to ashes in the flames of his curiosity. He had to get beyond that barrier. He had to know what was inside!
The locks provided a challenge, each lever stiff from their exposure to such chilling temperatures. As Alex worked, the thumping continued beyond the door, begging for aid, over and over and over, in a maddening cacophony of pitiful repetition. At last there remained a single lock, and with it returned the worry, the dread, the fear, but most of all, the cold. Alex drew a single deep, icy breath, disengaged that final lock, and gave the door a small push.
The thumping fell quiet again, the sound replaced by another.
The door didn’t so much squeak as it wailed, a high-pitched shrill of rusted hinges and warped metal. Alex cringed as the door’s warning note echoed through the laboratory, and prayed to all the spirits—saints and demons alike—that Boudreaux continued to prove the heavy sleeper. Once the doorway opened enough to allow Alex admittance, he held it still and slipped inside.
Beyond the door was a much smaller room, no larger than the very room Alex had chosen for himself. It dawned upon him then, based on his limited knowledge of the house’s layout, that this room must be directly under his. Which explained why he heard the knocking at all. And, perhaps, the reason Boudreaux seemed not to hear it.
Alex found a set of lamps on either side of the door, and took a moment to light each one. With three lamps, the room glowed, revealing all of its secrets, which confounded Alex. He expected to see someone. But no one was inside. The room was empty. Well, not entirely free of items, just people.
The room sported three wooden tables, two on either side and one against the wall at the back. Upon each table there sat a number of square glass cases, some a few feet tall, others a few inches, and each with an open gap at the top. The cases reminded Alex of the strange glass aquariums he witnessed when his family visited the London Zoo a few years ago.
Inside each glass enclosure bubbled a mysterious amber fluid. Tubes and wires and other fixtures ran into each container, through the gap at the top, and down into the bubbling fluids. These tubes traveled the length of the room, connecting to a large machine in the back corner. The machine ticked and hummed softly, doing whatever it was designed to do with quiet efficiency.
Alex took all of this in, piece by piece, using every bit of intellect at his disposal to make sense of what he was seeing without trespassing too far into Dr. Boudreaux’s secret lair. But it was no good. He was going to have to delve deeper, inspect closer, go farther into the room. When he moved toward the container on the right side, he caught the shadow of something suspended within the amber fluid. Something floating inside the glass container. He drew closer still, unprepared for the sight that awaited him. For inside the container, attached to the plethora of tubes and wires and harnesses, floated a nightmarish vision.
An entire human leg.
From hip to toes, the thing was intact. One could just make out the head of the femur, the meaty tissue of the upper thigh encasing the round protrusion of bone. Large, muscled and toned, the leg had a rich layer of manly hair. Loose veins and strings of muscle fluttered in the fluid, undulating in a wild dance between the rising bubbles.
And the leg twitched as if alive.
Alex jawed the air in total shock, raising the back of his hand to his mouth as he retched at the horrid sight. He turned to the next case, his eyes even wider with the discovery of yet another leg. This limb was smaller, more delicate and shapely, obviously female. More wires and tubes connected this second leg to the machine at the far end of the room. But more intriguing, this leg twitched as well.
Revolted and intrigued at the same time, Alex inspected each case. An arm here, another leg there, a hand, a foot, even a few torsos. One, to Alex’s embarrassment, was the nude body of a female, with full breasts still intact. As he moved from case to case, a dreadful notion struck Alex. From what he could tell, each body part was either perfectly formed, or perfectly disarticulated from their respective hosts, and still functioning.
The doctor either grew them or harvested them.
“I was beginning to worry about you,” Boudreaux said.
Alex whipped about in place to find the doctor watching from the doorway. “Sir! I … umm … I …”
Boudreaux didn’t seem bothered by Alex’s lack of excuses. “I was wondering how long it would take you to stumble upon this room. How long it would take before I could introduce you to my real work.”
“Work?” Alex glanced about the cases. “This is … work?”
“Of course.” Boudreaux, also dressed in his nightclothes, stepped into the icy room and laid a hand on the nearest case. “My greatest work. My legacy. This will change the world, young Alex. Change the world.”
“You mean you grew these things?”
Boudreaux cut loose with a maniacal laugh that filled the room and chilled Alex to his very bone, even more so than the cold air. “Grew them? Of course not! I might be good, but I’m not that good.”
“Then you … oh dear God!” Alex covered his mouth before he could gasp aloud.
“I started with animals as test subjects first. Rabbits. Deer. Whatever the woods would provide.” Boudreaux sighed. “But I found such animals lacked the tenacity that I needed. The vigor of the greatest living machine. The human body.”
Horrified by the doctor’s words, Alex stepped back, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the terrible man he had admired for so long.
“My reclusiveness proved a problem at first,” the doctor said. “You see, I require live specimens. Sure, I have to keep them practically frozen to ensure they remain fresh, but they must be alive when I start the process of preservation. And I couldn’t just start inviting people to visit out of the blue. That would’ve raised eyebrows and provoked unwelcome suspicion. No. I had to take my specimens where I could find them. From my own home.” As he spoke, the doctor motioned, indicating where each body part came from. “First my cook. Then my maids. My
driver. My stable hands. My valet. And eventually, my assistant.”
“Your assistant?” Alex asked as he came to rest against the table at the far end of the room. No sooner had he spoken, no sooner had he asked, than the thumping began again, from behind him. This time the pattern spelled out a different name. A familiar name.
Frank.
Alex twisted, very slowly, to face the last glass case. Inside the amber fluid, attached to a handful of wires and tubes and such, just like all the others, floated a human head.
Or, more specifically, Franklyn Sumter’s head.
Through the viscous amber fluid, the free-floating head looked up at Alex with a piteous expression. Its mouth opened and closed, much in the manner of a fish seeking food in an aquarium.
“Frank?” Alex asked.
Frank dipped his chin low once, an affirmative from the floating head.
“Amazing!” Boudreaux shouted and clapped. “I had often suspected he could hear me, but this is beyond anything I dreamed. I really must document this development.”
“Why?” Alex asked. “Why would you do this?”
Boudreaux blinked in disbelief. “Isn’t it obvious? Body harvesting is the solution to every medical conundrum. I have toyed and tinkered with mechanical substitutions my whole life, when the answer has been so obvious. The human body is just another machine. And what do you do when a machine goes bad? You replace those old and worn parts.”
“Body harvesting,” Alex echoed with distaste.
“We can take what we need from those less worthy. The insane. The unstable. Need a new heart? Take one from a criminal. He doesn’t deserve it. He certainly isn’t using it.” Boudreaux laughed aloud again.
“But killing people and cutting them up like this? Certainly there is another way to research the possibilities of organ donation?”
“I’m afraid not. Bureaucracy and bleeding hearts would crush my work before it could see the light of day.” Boudreaux moved to the doorway again, but just before he passed through, he looked to Alex. “Now, I am going to give you one chance. Join me. Make history with me. As you have seen, I don’t really need a lab assistant, but I do need someone to maintain my home who understands how important my work is. Someone who can cook and clean. Someone who can also pull duty in the lab when needed. Someone who can bring me fresh specimens. Tell me, Alex, do you want to be that someone? Do you want to help me change the world?”
What Alex meant to say was “Yes.”
What he meant to say was “That sounds like a fine idea.”
What he meant to say was “Sure thing. Just let me go change into my clothes, and we can start tonight.”
Then he meant to slip off into the night and get the hell out of this insane asylum and as far from Dr. Boudreaux as he could before calling the authorities and reporting everything he’d just seen and heard.
But that’s not what Alex said.
Instead, Alex said, “You’re crazy.”
The words were out of his mouth before he realized he’d said them. He grabbed the air in front of his lips, trying to catch the phrase before it traveled across the room and into Boudreaux’s ears. But it was far too late. He had said it. He may have meant it, but he didn’t mean to say it!
Boudreaux sighed. “I thought as much. It’s a shame. I really did like you. I was speaking earnestly when I said you were a clever lad. But you made your choice. I suppose I’ll have to send away to another school and try again.”
“What … what do you mean?”
“I mean I don’t have much use for your sickly body, but I am very interested in that clever brain of yours.” That said, Boudreaux slipped through the exit and closed it behind him.
Alex leapt toward the door, but it was far too late. The metallic clicks of thirteen locks resounded throughout the frozen room, each landing on his ears with the weight of gunfire. He pushed and pried, beat and begged, but there was no moving the door or the doctor’s heart. The room wheezed with a sudden blast of cold air, and Alex shivered as the temperature dropped at least twenty more degrees. Alex’s fingers took on a blue hue, and his chest ached with every breath.
“F-f-f-freeze …” he stammered. “He’s g-g-going to f-f-freeze me to death.”
From the other side of the room, the head tapped against the glass, spelling out Frank’s last message in dull thumps that echoed throughout the room. One last request. One last plea.
Kill me.
Yes. As his last act on earth, Alex would free the poor man from such a hideous fate. He pulled the wires and plugs from Frank’s enclosure, hoping that the head would die before the doctor returned. After this, Alex found he had to lie down to keep from collapsing. The mist of his breath, dense as a thick fog only moments before, became thinner and thinner, his lungs growing as cold as the surrounding air. As the chill folded its frozen arms around Alex’s weak body, he had time to wonder about one last thing.
He only hoped the next lab assistant would know Morse code.
The Last of the Bad Few
By Nathan Robinson
It was upon reaching the brittle cusp on the hill of shattered bones that Byron Loveday saw the Mistah. It was slumped over, leaning on the low branches of a deadening wild oak. The dirty brass, trying, but failing to blend in with the dire washed out and dried pastels of the open range. Steadying himself with one hand on the Ion-Glider, Loveday wiped the saline sweat from his brow onto his bat-skin sleeve, then with a weary and wary sigh, descended the bone hill into the gut of the empty valley, the jetting steam from beneath the glider sending up calcium plumes from the jettisoned skeletons beneath.
The Mistah had been fortunate, for the valley was sparse, decorated with dead trees spaced out too well; had the machine not had the tree to lean on, and fallen onto the dry grain of the valley floor, then this job would have been all too different. The mercury balance calibrator might have leaked for example, rain (HA! What rain?) could have quite easily soaked through into the sorption mechanism underneath the chest of the great brass beast. The retronics might have worked themselves loose. It was these problems he was assigned to deal with on a daily basis, it wasn’t his desired calling, but it’s what he was good at. And Loveday hated it. Because everyday a problem presented itself, and while he risked neck and limb, every other body paraded the confines of New Acre, whilst he gallivanted the grim outlands and desolate ranges for no more Shillars than a common Adamantiumsmith.
Why not a masseuse at Madam Curnow’s? Rubbing the girls down after a long shift servicing the mine boys. How about behind the bar at Jovanovic’s, even sloppy wanton Saturday’s seemed appealing compared to what job he was designated.
He knew why he was assigned the job servicing the Mistah’s in the field.
Because he was good at it.
He helped build them when they were first envisaged, aided in the deployment to protect New Acres, and now he serviced them when they broke down.
All because he knew how.
Everybody else who knew how to work them, were dead. That’s how old these damned things were. Burleigh was the last to go, vanished whilst out on a recovery mission. Loveday had tried to train up apprentices, but they soon got bored with the danger and minimal pay and handed in notice forthwith.
So Loveday was the man for the job, the man of the moment, a gentleman of the desert. One of a select few permitted access to the outside world, not that it was a privilege, but he felt obligated to protect his fellow man as he had the knowledge to make life easier and safer.
Maintain the Mistah’s.
Usually a vessperous kick and a shove to the galmut panel and they were back working again, dutifully patrolling the dangerous circumference of New Acre.
Loveday reached the Mistah, he fingered a dial and the Ion-Glider hissed to a stop, then settled down upon the valley floor with a soft thump. He unbuckled the securing straps and removed his trusty toolbox from the back of the glider, then glared at the Mistah. Any life force within the great hunk of
junk had ceased to be. Clumping dirt, brought by trade winds, and glued on by morning moisture had stuck in swirls to the arms and bodywork. Mistah #323a was now redundant. It was up to Loveday to bring life back to this yellow alloyed beast.
Each Mistah calibrator had a Magna-Patch sown into his or her overcoat, this slim sliver of metal told the Mistah’s by way of relay detector that the calibrator wasn’t an enemy. Wasn’t food. Wasn’t one of the Wildlings.
Loveday hated the Wildlings.
Everybody hated the Wildlings.
They caused mess, chaos, disease. Everything that New Acre didn’t stand for. New Acre was about goodness, living well, vigorous exercise and above all family values. Although the settlement was divided into two distinct areas; those with families and those without.
Those with family had gardens, decent ideals and a sense of wonder they thoroughly wished to pass onto their kidlings. Those without families (mostly lost to disease or death, usually at the hands of the Wildlings) lived in abject sin.
Gambling, whoring and liquid vice was usually the ruin of a good man (or woman).
Loveday had family in the ‘good part’ of New Acre, yet he lived in Sinville. This was down to his addiction to Nettle Rye, a morish brew and a common but delicious threat among the hard workers. Since she had left him, he’d had to look after himself, no matter how much he begged. He had to sew his own clothes, cook for himself, even shave when needs be. In all honesty, he’d neglected all three.
Loveday considered the Mistah. If the break was recent, pillars of steam would have been pouring from it. But no. #323a had last been sighted a week ago. He’d been out here a few days. Sometimes getting them started after this long took a while.
A rough clinking and susurration alerted Loveday to a commotion over to the North of the valley, he turned, the midday suns spoilt his gaze, but he could make out movement before the cliff top.
Rock fall. Nothing more.
He hoped.
Loveday rubbed his beard with his usual ponderous nature and dropped his tool box onto the dirt floor of the valley. He opened it up. The familiar green dappled bottle of Nettle Rye winked back at him in the sunlight.
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