by Gemma Files
“Now. Like I already said…you wanna try again?”
(Or what?)
—
Perhaps because he also spent much of his own time constantly caffeinated, DD seemed to get broken in to the whole Herbert West, ReAnimatED idea a whole lot easier than most other people—people not Rice or Horatia, specifically—might’ve. But he did have to work his way through it at least once, maybe just to hear it out loud:
“So…you’re all dead but not, ‘cause you been gettin’ high on your own supply?” Rice, leaning on the kitchen island counter as Horatia fussed around her, nodded. “Which means…you must’a been makin’ that shit out of shit that, like—makes you all not dead and shit.”
A snort: “Oh, you’re smart,” Horatia observed, not even vaguely sounding like she meant it. Switching over to Rice: “You do know what you’ve obviously done to yourself, I take it…”
“‘Obviously’? No, not really—and your bedside manner sucks, by the way.” To which Horatia just scowled, taking yet another blood sample (though what she thought she was going to learn from this one she hadn’t from the pint or so she’d already taken, Rice seriously didn’t know); as she did, Rice turned back to DD, snapping—“And as for you…seems to me like you got crew problems that go waaay beyond the whole total-lack-of-discipline thing.” She glanced significantly past him, first at Lil Trey’s bisected body, then over at the still-open door, through which the rest of his gang (all but Big Trey, now lying semi-concussed on the couch) had already booked. “So if you still want to get in on this with us—”
DD blinked. “What?”
Horatia wheeled back up from the microscope, jaw dropping. “Excuse me, what? He shot you, Rice!”
“Yeah, thanks—might’ve missed that, you hadn’t pointed it out to me.” Rice ignored Horatia’s near-purple flush and looked back to DD. “Like I was saying, the assholes who tore out of here, they’re your guys. What are they gonna say happened, once they’re back on the street?”
DD shrugged. “Nothing anyone’ll buy; shit, I’m lookin’ right at ya, and I don’t even buy it.” He scratched his head, oddly quizzical. “So, you like Wolverine now? Whatever happens, you just heal back?”
Horatia shook her head, impatience-quick. “Not how it works, not at this stage; the reagent builds a collagen-silicon neurocompatible tissue scaffold that sustains cells while they’re living, redirects around them when they’re dead or damaged....”
Rice yawned. “Tech, tech, techitty tech tech...”
“You’re not even listening to me.”
“Not as such, no. There a chase we can cut to?”
A slow, deep breath. “I’ll need more tests to make sure, but I’m guessing your whole nervous system is probably more reagent than living tissue now. But since inert cells means no reparative process—”
“—I can’t die, but I can’t heal. Meaning I’m stuck full of holes for...ever, basically.”
“I’d tell you to be careful with yourself from now on, but…” Horatia shrugged, helplessly, as Rice shrugged back: given.
Big Trey looked at them, then at Lil Trey’s corpse, then back at DD; his face twisted, half-disgust, half-sorrow. “Listen, boss-man—what these bitches got, this, this is really ill, man…”
Rice: “Says the on-command rapist enabler. Just step the fuck off, Sasquatch.”
“Hey.” Dorfmann raised his hand, abruptly hard. “My call, not yours, even if we partner up on this, and that’s a way fucking big if. ‘Cause I’m still not sure how much I trust you, Zombie Hooker from Mars—”
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” Rice exploded. “You shot me in the fucking chest, you dork, and I’m the one offering you free fucking money—does the Aryan Brotherhood only take retards these days, or what? You unbelievable fucking pussy!”
“Okay, okay; Jesus!” DD took a second to get composed, then braced himself against the other side of the kitchen island, lowering his voice like he thought 5-0 might be outside right now, listening in. “So…how soon before we can start to ship this shit?”
Far too many fricatives to that sentence for comfort, which Rice almost felt like telling him—but didn’t, ‘cause she’d already been shot more than enough times today. Besides which, at least he’d finally remembered that the primary active ingredient in dealing was making fucking deals.
—
Later, though—long after DD and Big Trey had gathered Lil Trey’s remains up in a couple of sacrificed pillowcases, and departed—
“I’m beyond pissed, Clarice,” Horatia began, almost conversationally. “Using the reagent recreationally is perhaps the single stupidest thing you’ve ever done, let alone using it this much—and now you’re planning to play Scarface with some moronic meth-head meatbag?” Considering that her voice didn’t even rise while cursing, Rice actually found herself paying attention. “Not to mention how we don’t know nearly enough about prospective side effects to begin mass-producing anything…”
“Those seem pretty cool, to me.” In an infomercial announcer’s voice: “‘Side effects may include: if it so happens you end up getting shot in the chest, don’t even worry…plus, as an extra-special bonus offer, free head-ripping ability!’”
Horatia shook her head. “You really don’t get it, do you? For fuck’s sake, Rice—is it really too much to ask that we occasionally approach the science part of all this like, oh, I don’t know…scientists?”
Rice straightened up, grabbing for the old familiar sweet, hot flush of rage—though now, even with effort, all she suddenly found she could conjure was an offputtingly uncomfortable tinfoil-bite sting which rippled her nerves, from dry mouth to equally dry crotch. “Define terms, bitch,” she said. “Did we, or did we not, just already spend three months manufacturing this exact same shit in large quantities, then selling it to people to get high on?”
They stared at each other for a long moment. Then:
“Oh, fuck,” they both said, at pretty much the same time.
—
It wasn’t until two weeks after the first major incident that TV newscasters co-opted the street-name, and started referring to people who unwittingly overdosed on reA, wandered into some public area and spontaneously combusted in a spray of potentially contaminative material as “Dusters.” Rice and Horatia watched shaky black-and-white security camera footage of one poor bastard, as narrated by an equally shaky voiceover: he came weaving up to the counter of an all-night Tim Horton’s, abruptly dissolving seconds later in an explosion which covered the horrified, easily infectable people around him in dried-out human matter.
Horatia stared. Muttered to herself: “Heart attack, aortic embolism, or…for him to go off like that, he must’ve died weeks ago, overdosed and just not noticed. So—one of the initial buyers, the first wave…”
“Yeah, I guess.” Rice tried vaguely to summon some faces from that particular party run, but couldn’t. “Eeeugh.”
“We’ve released a plague of zombies, and all you can say is ‘eeeugh’? Rice, this is bad.”
“Look, that’s not going to be me, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“What? How? How is that not going to be you?”
Rice grinned, and lowered her voice, conspiratorially. “Human flesh spackle. We got it; they don’t.”
“I really wish you’d stop calling it that.” A pause. “Besides which…they aren’t supposed to OD!”
Which Rice supposed was true—but to be fair, they probably weren’t supposed to be taking drugs at all. In lieu of saying so, however, she started macking on Horatia instead, to change the subject—Horatia relaxed into the clinch initially, but soon drew back, nose wrinkling. Said: “Your tongue tastes…weird.”
Rice took a swallow, considered the result. “Huh. It sort of feels weird, too…”
She turned away, snagging an empty coffee cup, and spit. It came out black. “Well,” Rice said, at last. “Probably some new kinda side-effect, huh?”
Horatia, b
arely able to keep herself from spitting too: “Oh, you think? You see? You see?”
“Man, stop being all Plan 9, and let’s just fix this shit.”
“Again, how? You don’t know— I don’t know! Anything! Because both of us were too goddamn busy getting high or fucking with each other to ever run any motherfucking tests!”
“Okay. So here’s what I don’t get, H—if you think I’m such an irredeemable idiot, why don’t you just up and leave my dumbshit ass?”
Horatia breathed out through her nose, just once, a short, controlled huff. Saying, eventually—
“I’m certainly not going to do that. Because—”
(you took my virginity)
(you’re the only friend I have)
(you’re the only person, friend or not, I actually know…let alone like)
“—this is my apartment, too,” she finished, finally. And went right on back to whatever she’d been doing, before Rice getting herself corpse-ified in the service of keeping Horatia’s narrow ass strictly reserved For Ladies only had so rudely interrupted her.
—
(Un)naturally enough, of course, black spit soon proved to be only the tiniest tip of the New Model Zombie iceberg; Rice careened blithely from symptom to symptom, dead heart not even skipping a beat between fresh new disasters—already starting to shrink a size or two overall, like the Grinch’s leftovers. Her tapetum began to scrape away, eyes throwing light like a cat’s, while her skin grew iridescent with dust, proteins calcifying and rising everywhere she looked, fine and sharp as mica. A pheromonal miasma, decay-in-the-mist, exuded through her pores. She wore her shades all the time now, even at night, like the old song went—but it didn’t look so cool anymore, not even in a retro way. Just…tired.
As things cooled off between Rice and Horatia, meanwhile DD began hanging around a lot—far more so than their mutual three-way business “relationship” really warranted. one lazy summer afternoon, Rice walked out of yet another spackle-bath—stark naked, natch—to discover him sprawled out on their bed, shirtlessly inviting, like he’d picked up his entire idea of how a Cool Guy Who Wants to Impress a Cool Girl acts from watching home-made pornos.
“Oh, man,” Rice said. “Necrophile much? Pervin’ away on the Living Dead Girl; no, that’s not creepy at all.”
“You don’t look dead. You look…slammin’.”
“Oh, do I? Hadn’t noticed.” Rice sat down to gel her hair, and grinned at him in the vanity mirror. “Dieter, you do get that some people are just gay, right? All DC, no AC? And thus unlikely to be quite as interested in your eight inches as—say—you are, or would like them to be?”
“Sure, I get that—like her, right? But you…” He grinned at the thought, offputtingly wide. “I think I might’a found, like, clips of you doin’ it old-school, all penis in vagina and what-not, right there on the Internet. True or false, missy?”
Rice shrugged. “Busted.”
“So you can get down with the bone, if you wanna.”
“Well, proven—but see, that’s just not what’s gonna happen, with you and me. ‘Cause I don’t even like you that much.”
“This is still ‘cause I shot you, right?”
“Somewhat, yeah. ‘Course, I might be persuaded to rev up ol’ Faithful and do you up the ass ‘til you screamed, if it turned out you were into that.”
“Why would I be?”
“I don’t know. Why would you?”
“You’re—just—makin’ this ten thousand times more complicated than it has to be.”
“Ah, my cunning plan revealed. Think of it like…space exploration. Broaching the limitations of human endeavour; broadening people’s minds, proving points, keeping accurate notes while you do it. Science.”
DD frowned. “Are you really high right now?”
“Sure am. All the time, pretty much—I think it’s one of those infamous side-effects. And guess what? This could be you. Take enough of this stuff, and you too could be pushing the walls of perception back ‘til they fall apart. Take enough, and after a while you’ll be all: ‘okay fine, I’m in! Soup it up, bitch!’”
Unexpectedly, as DD blushed bright at this last idea, Rice felt a sudden tweak of interest; she realized for the first time that A) she was a full head taller than him and B) he was sort of cute, in a maybe-trainable feral/rabid puppy kind of way.
“Listen,” he said, “more’n enough with that crap, okay? I pimp, lady; I don’t get pimped. I mean, I didn’t even put out in jail, and I was there a good long while…”
Rice leaned over him, assaulting him with her just-washed scent—gave him a close look at where the paste-on jewel she’d put over the original entry-wound went, a little off-centre, right between her boobs. Working that you know I could pull your head off right now, little boy vibe hard, and murmuring—
“And just how well did that work out for you, anyhow? In the long run?”
—
Hours later, Horatia walked in on them, took one look—then walked back out, twice as fast. But she had to come back, eventually. All her stuff was there.
Rice sat in the dark, alone, ‘til she heard the key in the lock, but didn’t bother to turn around when the door opened. “Where’ve you been?”
“Does it matter?” Horatia sat down, heavily. Then said, after a long pause: “You…listen, I think you need to stop. Doing…things. Like that. You need to, Rice.”
Rice let out a breath which—even to her—sounded more like a sigh, especially in context.
“…I don’t think I can,” she replied, at last.
“Why not?” No answer. “And more to the point—Jesus, Rice, what the hell? Pegging some straight thug in the middle of our goddamn living room? Why would he even go along with that?”
Rice’s hands rose in a flourish of dismissive disbelief. “I don’t know, man—I mean, that is a little weird, isn’t it? Maybe he just likes having somebody tell him what to do.” But now it was Horatia’s turn to sigh, sharp and angry, and that finally made Rice look at her directly, laying on the charm. “Hey, c’mon, though—it didn’t mean anything, ‘Rache, you know that. Not really. Not like—”
“—Like us? And I’m just supposed to, what, take that one on faith, because you tell me to? You lie for fun!”
“Not about that,” Rice snapped back, without even thinking it over first. Which, once again, was…
(Surprising. Uncomfortable. Inconvenient.)
…typical. Especially coming from somebody who’d never, ever, in her entire life, known when to leave well enough alone.
“‘Scuse me,” Rice finally said, softly, as though lack of volume alone could really negate the reality of what she’d just let slip. Then walked out herself, shutting the door in Horatia’s still-gaping face, and prowled downtown Toronto’s increasingly empty streets until dawn.
—
Between the rising did you say you loved me/Uh…maaaaybe tension, Rice’s increasingly permanent crazy-high and physical deterioration, and Horatia’s insomniac cure-hunting mania, DD took on far more of the business end of reA sales than anyone had really planned for—and un-higher-educated as he was, he certainly knew how to move product. Too well, it turned out. But with Horatia too desperate for formula fixit funds to care, Rice too stoned, and DD just too plain greedy, their peripheral awareness of Toronto’s response to the duster phenomenon—the reappearance of surgical masks as a fashion accessory; who health warnings triggering a free-fall economic collapse; ever-more-frequent and deadly street riots, whenever some poor calcified bastard went up in public and set off a crowd-wide bug-out—remained just that: peripheral, at best.
When she thought about it at all, Rice could only chalk the authorities’ helpless flailing up to her own personal conviction: smart just made you stupid in different ways. As long as the who remained stubbornly certain it was a viral or bacteriological vector they were looking for—subconsciously influenced by five decades of movies, for all Rice knew—they’d never put two and two toget
her with the cops on the reA drug, barring some lucky (or unlucky) break.
So (un)life went on, work vs. play vs. some arcane combination of the two—nothing Rice couldn’t work around, just business as usual. Until the day it wasn’t, any of it.
—
“Yo, cook-bitches!” DD shouted as he came through the loft’s door, loaded for bear with a gun in either hand, and all tricked out like some pimpy Elvis from Hell, otherwise. “Grab your crap, we’re on the run!”
Rice, thankfully fully-dressed this time, was checking her LavaLife profile on Horatia’s laptop, trying to figure out whether adding “vitality-challenged” to her profile would be more a draw than a drawback. “What you mean ‘we,’ White Power man?” she asked. “Better yet, where’s your posse?”
DD found Horatia’s camping-sized rucksack, and got busy shoving the wads of cash which lined his ridiculous suit inside it. “Uh—dead, I guess. Big Trey started givin’ me shit about…shit, so we drew down, and I took his fuckin’ head off. Then the fuckin’ cops show up, but they got, like, Feds with ‘em and everything. Plus these other people started breakin’ in, all dressed in plastic bags and crap…”
“The CDC broke up your firefight?” Horatia had just emerged from the bathroom; as Rice stared: “Prime Minister called them in on Monday, to help with the who initiative. Don’t you even vaguely try to keep up, these days?”
“That’d be a ‘no.’” To DD: “So how the hell did you make it out?”
DD didn’t miss a beat. “Threw a lighter into the main cook tanks and booked out the back. You need to do the same, and fast.”