Dead Things (19 page)

His eyes shift to Ian briefly before deciding to break off from his contest. “I was a vampire once. And a clown when I was ten or so.”

“I mean it’s not really a costume,” Van replies eyeing the creatures below. “It’s more of a uniform.” He explains. He always explains.

There are few outfits one can wear and become the very thing the outfit represents. Putting on a surgeon’s smock and a mask, for example, doesn’t convey a medical license. But dress like a clown, and you automatically become one. Once you put on the make-up, don the green wig, and wear the size 27 shoes, for better or worse, you’re a clown, at least until it all comes off.

Ian’s confused. “Burt wasn’t part of a circus. He didn’t visit children in the medical ward. He didn’t make monkeys out of balloons. And I’m pretty certain that he never rode around in a car chock full of thirty of his friends. He dressed like a clown on Halloween, Van.”

“Intent and forum don’t matter,” Van sighs. “I’m talking about the activity itself. If you were to define a clown’s key function, what would it be?”

“Make people laugh,” Burt replies.

“Maybe a good clown makes people laugh. But let’s take that idea a step further. Making people laugh just a product, a symptom, of entertainment.”

“So, in dressing as a clown, you, in essence, became a clown. It wasn’t a costume. It was a uniform.” They think Van has rested his case until his eyebrow arches. There’s more.

There are other examples. Dress like a celebrity, and you’re a celebrity impersonator. And it works in reverse, too. Take off your clothes, and you can be a stripper.

Ian concedes that this is funny, and he chuckles. “That’s something to add to the resume, Burt.” But with a glance to his side, Ian’s good spirits are quickly dampened. “Holy shit.”

Burt and Van step to the window on either side of Ian. All three peer from their perch, watching in stunned silence as a half-dozen more creatures burst through the forest and into the clearing below them.

These latecomers move more quickly than the others, seemingly with deeper purpose. They are led by one, his dark hair matted and thick with flies. The Fat Man. He points an angry hand toward the window and lets forth a guttural growl full of rage and angst. His skin is pale blue—not dark and dry like those clambering before him—except for his hands, where there is none.

Autolysis, or self-digestion, is the first stage of decay. The body’s own enzymes, no longer in check by the immune system, devour the membranes holding the cells together. The liquid seeps, depositing between the skin and the tissue beneath, the skin sloughing off. When it happens on the hands, coroners call it “gloving.”

Sheets of skin fall away during autolysis, but here, now, it’s limited to the monster’s hands, maybe his feet. Ian recollects his conversation with Wright: mummification. Since the creatures remain upright, the liquid pours out of them like an upended bottle.

Unlike Burt’s hero, Superman, Ian has no power of x-ray vision. Had he, he would see through the shroud of the being’s stained sweatshirt. He would see the creature’s belly button, although slightly distended, is oddly devoid of maggots.

If Ian had Superman’s superior hearing, he would perceive no “crackle” or “pop”—the sounds of wet rice krispies—of larvae gnawing and gobbling their way through the subcutaneous fat in the genitalia and throat. The fat had collapsed and leached from the corpses. Since there is no meal to be had, there are no guests over for dinner.

The ghouls’ faces and bellies, although swollen, lack the severe bloat characteristic of putrefaction. Odd, as the dead generally cannot expel gas, for they have no working stomach muscles or sphincters. The small intestine collapses, sealing itself off and creating a “gut balloon.” Perhaps, though, kinesis and vertical alignment are enough to allow the gas to vent. Perhaps it is the expulsion of the gas over the vocal chords of these things that gives them their monstrous voice.

Perhaps the bacterial colonies on the skin and in the intestines and lungs have nothing on which to dine. Perhaps the pathogen responsible for the transformation multiplied so quickly that its sheer numbers kept the competitors in check.

Decay operates quickly. Three weeks after death, the body’s organs turn to soup. The colon and lungs go first. Then bacteria chew through the palate to the brain. The liquid discharges from the ears, and a thick chocolate-like syrup purges from the mouth.

Without putrefaction, however, decay is slowed. In these creatures, the digestive organs and lungs remain, but now with as much purpose as an appendix. More importantly, the brain stays intact, well protected inside its bony fortress. And while the creatures cough bits of purge from time to time, the pace of overall decomposition is glacial.

**

Wright shakes her head as she looks out the window of the master bedroom.

Now there are forty of them, probably more. The new ones make a racket. More will come this evening. The windows on the first floor will not hold.

They need to act. And fast.

Wright knows they should leave, depart under the cover of night. But there will be casualties. And they need to set a course. And there’s Jessica.…

Jessica’s death warrant has been signed. They should leave her, Wright knows. Wright just can’t bring herself to do so. Not just yet, anyway.

They need to buy time.

They move everything and everyone upstairs.

Then Ian, Van, and Burt go about the business of destroying the staircase. They pull up the stairs one by one, dropping them into the cellar below. They stop at the first landing, about eight feet up, the basement serving neatly as a moat.

Jessica is getting worse. She’s coughing and moaning. Anne no longer sits with her. Wright has sent her to the master bedroom. Instead, Wright reads to Jessica from an antique rocking chair, shotgun propped ominously against the wall.

It is hard for Ian to walk into her room. When he does, Jessica is sleeping fitfully. Wright sees him, puts her finger to her lip. Ian motions silently for Wright to join him.

“What?” Ian says. “Kari, she’ll never be able to travel. Not with us, anyway. You know this. Why are you denying the inevitable?”

Because she is my responsibility, Wright wants to say. Because I failed her.

She doesn’t need to say a thing. Ian knows what she’s thinking. “This isn’t your fault, you know.”

Wright tries to be a good soldier, but a lone tear falls. She’s shocked when it deflects off her cheek. Her shoulders start to bounce, her face cracking.

Ian draws her to him, buries her head in his chest. Her sobs are muffled in the fabric of his shirt, but not totally.

Burt leans out the master bedroom. He makes eye contact with Ian, sees Ian mouth, “It’s okay,” even though it is anything but. Burt nods, pulls the bedroom door behind him, affording them just a moment of privacy.

Chapter Seventeen: Bait and Switch

Wright wakes Jessica. They need to talk. Jessica can guess why. Jessica knows she’s changing. She can feel it.

Inside Jessica, a war is raging. The enemy has invaded, and her body mounts a response.

Jessica’s complement molecules are first to attack the invader—something more complex than a virus, something less than a protozoa. The complement molecule’s job is simple; latch onto the invader, punch holes in its membrane and break it down. Then call for help.

This is in accord with the invader’s plan. The intruder lets the complement molecule do its work and prays for it to call for reinforcements.

Jessica’s macrophages respond to the beacon. They probe with fine hairs, filopodia that wave about like fishing lines, increasing the area the warrior cells cover as they sweep for intruders. Filopodia snare trespassers and retract quickly, allowing the macrophages to swallow their enemies whole.

Just another step in the invader’s plan. It allows itself to be consumed without a hint of fight.

As the macrophages lumber forth, they signal the immune system to act, loosening and widening blood vessel walls so more macrophages can attack. They dispatch molecules to drag other immune cells, like roaming T cells, to the battleground.

This is the third step of the invader’s plan. It wants the roaming Ts on the frontline.

Later, they will become Jessica’s own worst enemy.

In a perfect world, the macrophages make their way to the lymph nodes. There, B and T cells, with faces as distinctive as jigsaw pieces, look for bits of the invader, bits called antigens presented by the macrophage like trophies of war. When presented with the antigens, T cells bearing the right receptor multiply, forming three regiments.

1. Killer Ts, T cells that search for infected cells. They are the Special Forces. They identify the contaminated cells and force them onto their own swords.

2. The infantry, or inflammatory Ts. They rush to the site of the breach, spraying deadly poison. The inflammation they cause allows other immune cells to enter the fray.

3. Helper Ts infiltrate and provide military intelligence. They work with B cells, binding to antigens. Once locked on, the T cells spy on the visitor, providing signals to the Bs to create antibodies. The antibodies attach to the invaders, rendering them harmless.

But Jessica’s immune response fails to escalate. The regiments do not form. For the macrophages are nothing more than Trojan horses, the invaders hidden inside. Ensconced within the cells, the invaders go to work severing the macrophages molecular knives. It’s a neat piece of mischief, for the macrophages can no longer present bits of the enemy to the audience of Bs and Ts in the lymph nodes. Since there are no antigens, the existing Ts lack reinforcements.

And there are precious few Ts ready to handle the crisis. Those that do respond get twitchy, adopting a slash and burn policy, assassinating friend and foe indiscriminately. The collateral damage mounts, and the war further spirals out of control.

Yet another phase of the invader’s plan. Dead host cells and antigens pile up and start to rot. The macrophages cannot remove the dead and dying soldiers from the battlefield quickly enough. The body becomes over-stimulated, septic, and attacks itself.

The few trespassers who fail to find homes in macrophages have another trick up their sleeves. They change their coats, by manipulating the position of the DNA on their surface. They change their skin so often, the antibodies fortunate enough to survive the fire fight cannot match the pace.

With little in the way to stop it, the attacker makes its way forward. It knows where to go. The body is a closed system, full of bouncing chemical markers. The invader circulates through the body, sensitive to all the molecular “smells.” As it nears the brain, it detects hormones released by the hypothalamus, a gland controlling critical bodily functions, like circadian rhythm, homeostasis, and…

Hunger.

The scent is a trigger, telling the invader to stop its caterpillar-like progression, and start burrowing.

The brain’s blood vessel walls are tight knit and form a daunting barrier, the blood-brain barrier. The wall keeps large molecules from seeping in from the bloodstream into brain tissue.

Or, at least, that’s the concept. Jessica’s barrier is compromised. The invader presents a protein, not unlike the one resting on the surface of the rabies virus, that opens a passageway in the blood vessel walls and into the individual nerve cells. As if uttering the magic phrase, “Open Sesame,” the invader enters the cavern of the upper spinal cord, following the nerve to the brain.