The Siege (36 page)

“You see,” Rodgers said, stroking his chin, “I had to continually modify the ingredients of the compound. The important thing, I’m sure you’ll agree, is control. The drug cannot be effective unless it completely reduces the individual’s will and his sense of purpose.”

“Don’t tell me about control,” Sam said sharply. “Considering the problems we had with those last two you sold me.”

“It was a mistake, I’ll admit. But all the ones before those two are still fine, correct?”

Sam nodded.

“And I assure you it won’t happen again with this one or any others. The drug is perfectly balanced now, and, although I’m quite sure the individual is still dimly aware that he is or was living, there’s no motivation to do anything except what he’s told to do.”

“And what about the other problems?” Sam said. He turned sideways to face Rodgers, and when he did, Dale got a good look at his face. Quickly signaling Donna, he slid back behind the casket so she could sneak a look.

“Is that Higgins?” Dale whispered at her ear.

After only a split-second look, Donna ducked back down. Her mouth was set in a grim line as she nodded her head yes.

“The deterioration rate, yes,” Rodgers said. “Well, when you consider all the factors, we’re lucky they last as long as they do. Repeated doses of the drug in liquid form will maintain this state for… well, what’s the longest time you’ve had one last?”

Higgins scratched behind his ear. “I think I had a couple that lasted nearly two years before they… well, you know what happens.”

Rodgers cleared his throat and cast a glance at Larry, who was now sitting bolt-upright in the casket, his eyes vacantly focused straight ahead. “I’ve told you, I’m sure,” he said, “what my studies in Haiti indicated.”

Higgins nodded.

“Unless you can think of some way to provide a steady diet of human brains, your workers will inevitably deteriorate with time. There’s really no way I know of yet, to stop the body’s decomposition. I’m working on it.”

Higgins shook his head vigorously from side to side. “No I don’t want to get into
that
,” he said, his voice taking on a trembling edge. “I mean, what we’re doing with these is bad enough. I’m not going to start murdering people just to feed these things.”

Rodgers tossed his hands up into the air and then clapped them to his side. “Well, you certainly can’t have it both ways. Besides, it’s not as though we haven’t on occasion
arranged
, shall we say, a bit of an accident for someone who’s perhaps a little too close to our project.”

“Look!” Higgins said, suddenly turning on Rodgers and jabbing a forefinger at him. “I pay you to do what you do, and for now it works out just fine for both of us. I get cheap labor, and you get to ‘experiment’ with your drugs and potions. At least so far, by moving them around frequently, and not being too obvious, we’ve been able to keep the police and people around town here from getting suspicious. Let’s just leave it at that, all right?”

“I mean nothing by it,” Rodgers said placidly. He took Higgins by the arm and turned him toward the door. Dale just had time to snap down behind the casket, and as the footsteps approached, he and Donna wriggled under the table to the other side.

“Do you want to take this one with you tonight?” Rodgers asked.

Higgins huffed. “You said you had another one that will be ready by tomorrow night?”

“Yes,” Rodgers said. Dale could see their legs as they stopped by the waiting room door. “That poor chap, Mr. Perry, who died this afternoon in the hospital. He’s in the lab now, but after the fuss that friend of this one made about the closed casket, I’m going to have to wait until after the ceremony to get him out of the coffin and give him the final dose.”

“I suppose, then, that I could wait until tomorrow night to pick them up,” Higgins said as he walked out into the waiting room.

Dale saw this as his chance to escape, and pointing toward the door that led to the laboratory, told Donna to get going. Higgins and Rodgers were through the doorway when Dale and Donna stood up and made a dash for the door. If there was an exit from the lab they would be safe; if not…

Donna was at the door, fumbling to turn the knob, and Dale was just a few paces behind her when from behind them, they heard a loud, gurgling moan that froze them both. Glancing over his shoulder, Dale saw Larry’s wide, black, empty eyes fixed unblinkingly on him. His arms were raised, reaching out toward him as though in greeting.
Does he recognize me?
Dale thought, his heart all but bursting from his chest.

Again, the moan issued, this time louder, from Larry’s dead throat. Satin hissed and dry ligaments crackled like ice underfoot as Larry struggled to kick his legs free of the confining coffin.

“Come on!” Dale whispered harshly to Donna, who stood there, unable to turn the doorknob clenched in her hand as she watched, fascinated with horror.

“Open the fucking door!”

“
You!
” Rodgers’ voice suddenly boomed in the room as his face peered around the door jamb.

Dale and Rodgers locked eyes for a frozen instant, then Dale shouldered Donna aside, turned the doorknob, and slammed the lab door open. The harsh smell of formaldehyde was like a solid wall in the room, and Dale had the instant impression that he had suddenly plunged under water. Pulling Donna in behind him, he started to swing the door shut; but when he chanced one last glance over his shoulder, he saw something that took all of the nerve from him.

Rodgers had moved back into the display room, but he hadn’t begun pursuit. Instead, he was standing with his finger pointing to the lab door. His voice like iron when he riveted his eyes on Larry Cole, sitting up in his coffin, and shouted, “Get
them
!”

V

L
isa woke up about an hour after everyone had left her room. She had some vague sense of people milling around her bed, but she had been lost, spinning backward into a dizzying yet, in a strange sort of way, fun darkness. The feeling was cold, tingling every nerve in her body, but it also had a measure of reassurance, as though she had somehow been transported out of her body.

When her eyes flickered open, though, she knew something was dreadfully wrong! The lamp beside her bed was still on, but the light it shed burned her eyes, making the edges of everything dance with a ripple of vibrating red. She squinted her eyes tightly shut, but the afterimages remained, dancing and weaving with light that for some reason had a sense of touch to it.

How can you feel light?
she wondered, as a low whimper struggled inside her for release.

She couldn’t tell how long she lay there, lost in darkness spiked with points of hard light. She tried to will herself out of her body again, to get back to the pleasant darkness, but something held her down, as if hundreds of tiny fish hooks had pierced her flesh and pinned her to the bed, not letting her escape.

Sweat streamed down her face, mixing with the tears that seeped from underneath her closed eyelids. Her hair was plastered against her forehead. She was distantly aware of all of this, but worse than that, she felt as though her very bones were being tormented into different shapes. Her skin and muscles twitched with wet, snake-like ripples, and a distant corner of her mind filled with the fear that she was somehow going to slough off her skin, as a snake does, or worse that her skin was going to crawl away from her on its own accord.

With a sudden, gut-wrenching shout, she sat up in her bed, forcing her eyes to open in spite of the pain that dropped down on her in one heavy, smothering load. Her bedroom was alive with energy. The dark rectangle of the window was dancing with fingers of blue light, slow-motion lightning touched her bed and bureau and reading chair. It touched everything in a slow, sinuous dance. Colors ran and melted into each other, twisting like bubbly plastic, and everywhere light fragmented into bright prisms.

A sound like thunder rumbled behind her. Turning, she looked in horror as two things lurched in through her door and came slowly toward the bed. The light from the hallway behind them poured like a waterfall into the room and seemed to sweep these things up and carry them toward her. There were dark spirals where their faces should have been, and long, tangled fingers reached out of the spirals, grabbing for her throat.

”No…
No!
” Lisa screamed. Her words reverberated and got increasing louder, rather than fading. In her mind, every syllable she spoke became a different colored foam.

The two dark shapes loomed over her, and Lisa was sure that, within seconds, she would feel a crashing weight flatten the life out of her. She flailed wildly, kicking free of her covers that held her like claws as she scrambled away from the onrushing creatures.

“
What’s… the… matter… Lisa?
” a voice as cold as death booked. It was so close to her ears it hurt. Each word was drawn out with sludgy, thunder-rolling slowness.

Lisa stood up as tall as she could, stretching to challenge these beings before they got her.

“Go away! Leave me alone!” she wailed, as she battered at them in a flurry of fists.

“
It’s… me… Lisa!
” the voice droned.

“Go away!
Go away!
”

The waterfall of light, sparkling silver like a river in the sun, caught her eye. Coiling up all of her strength, Lisa ran past the figures; she dove into the light and, as though her legs belonged to someone else, was transported down the stairs and toward the front door.

“
Lisa… wait!
” the voice boomed from up stairs, but Lisa plunged through the door and into the night. Her fleeing footsteps rang hollowly on the walkway, like hammers on stones. All around her, the night jumped and sparkled with trembling purple light. At first it briefly hurt her eyes to look around as she ran as fast as she could from the house. Everywhere she turned, though, it didn’t look like night at all or day, for that matter. The world was suffused with rippling violet light, and now that the threat of those creatures that had tried to destroy her was past, Lisa’s mind was fixed on one thought on her mind…

She was
hungry
!

VI

D
ale watched as Larry swung his legs out of the coffin and dropped to the floor. For just an instant, his legs sagged, and, like the scarecrow in
The Wizard of Oz
, he looked as though he was going to collapse; but then came Rodgers’ harsh command: “I said get them!”

“Come on, Dale! Run!” Donna shouted as she tugged on his arm.

Dare suddenly snapped to and shouldered the door shut. His fingers fumbled to throw the dead bolt lock, but if he hadn’t been leaning against the door, it would have flung open when something slammed into it with a heavy thud.

“There’s a door to get out of here!” Donna shouted from the far side of the lab.

Dale was still leaning against the door, afraid that thing out there would smash through the door as if it were balsa wood.
It’s no longer Larry!
he thought.
It’s a dead thing!
He tried not to imagine those rotted hands, reaching through the splintered door and grabbing him by the throat.

“Come on!” Donna shouted.

Dale found the courage to lean away from the door, but when he turned to run, his eyes finally registered what was all around him. There were three marble slabs, arranged side by side, each one illuminated by a powerful stainless steel overhead work light. Neatly arranged on the slabs and in several handcarts was a wide assortment of tools that looked like surgical instruments. Dale tried hard not to imagine what they were used for. In one corner of the lab there was a large plastic-lined trash can. Sticking up over the rim were two shriveled human arms.

On each slab there was a human corpse, two men and one woman. Each was in a different state of decomposition. The freshest looking one, a young man, was strapped down. As Dale looked at it, he was positive he saw the muscles working against the restraint of the straps.

“Do you see what’s going on in this place?” he shouted, stripping his throat raw, “Look at this!”

Donna was fumbling with one hand to undo the lock and banging the door with her other hand. “I don’t want to see! I don’t want to know!” she wailed.

Dale tore his eyes from the ghoulish specimens spread out on the slabs and dashed over to the door. He practically tore the lock off and, flinging the door open wide, ran out into the night, dragging Donna along behind him. Just as they left the room, they heard the locked door burst open with a loud shattering of wood.

“Run like a bastard!” Dale shouted as he and Donna started off across the lawn toward the woods. Their minds were filled with images of Larry Cole, stumbling after them in the darkness with his dead arms reaching out, his senseless fingers burning to crush their throats. And Dale couldn’t forget what he had heard Rodgers tell Higgins.

“
It’s not as though we haven’t, on occasion, arranged a bit of an accident
…”

Suddenly the whole of Rodgers’ back yard was flooded with light as every spotlight winked on. Dale and Donna cast long, wavering shadows as they ran, not daring to look back to see how close the pursuing
thing
that had been Larry was getting.