Husk (29 page)

Dixon watched the blade pirouette around Simon's fingers, then placed a calming hand on the man-monster's arm. The knife retreated up his sleeve. “Simon's a little touchy.”

“Hey, who can blame him?”

“But don't worry. He's only got a few questions, just baseline stuff. Nothing hard. He'll handle you with kid gloves. We just want background for now. Tomorrow, the fun starts. Samples, probings, vivisection — the works.”

“I can't wait.”

“And then, when we're all done with that, the
real
work starts. You are about to become a father, Sheldon.
My
father. You have a gift, Sheldon, which you are going to share with me.

“And when we are done, when you are scattered about our laboratory like so much litter, I shall be released from the confines of this miserable body, and take my rightful, well-earned place as the first true immortal.”

“Oh Christ,” I said.

“Truer words never spoken, my boy.”

d

The beast and I spent a few hours together while he gathered data on the past few years of my pre-resurrection habits. Where had I traveled? What had I eaten? Who had I copulated with? Had I bitten or been bitten by them before or after said copulation? Etcetera.

Simon dragged a car seat from the back of a rusted-out jeep to make himself more comfortable during the interview. No concern for my comfort was shown; I was left exposed and leaking, my residual duodenum dotting the floor with what was left of my innards. Which was not much.

The questions were all public record stuff, innocuous, available in previous issues of
Scientific American
or online to anyone who cared to search
zombie
Sheldon
background
. True to Lambertus' word, Simon did his best to lay nary a finger on me. His engorged digits, hard as railway spikes, each capable of piercing a man's skull with one quick flick of the wrist, were kept busy manhandling a pad and pen. The instruments were farcically tiny in his mitts; he idly snapped more than a few pens as he jotted down my answers. By the time we were through, his writing hand was inked indigo. I thought to ask
isn't there a tape recorder you could use
but opted not to, determined to take what simple pleasure I could.

Simon was disillusioned; after a career's worth of finessing intel from unwilling suspects through subtle interrogation techniques interspersed with lengthy bouts of open torture, it must have been demoralizing to grill someone who was — as my entrails testified — obviously torture-resistant. Every now and then he would halt his scribbling and look me over with wonder, reflexively searching for pressure points to prod, joints to snap, wounds to desecrate, skin to puncture. He itched to inflict damage, but the worst he could do to me was to swipe my sunglasses and crush them into slag between his paws. I couldn't even summon the will to be irritated.

He couldn't keep me awake and disoriented. I was immune to pain. Duane and Mom both being dead, he didn't even have the leverage of loved ones to threaten with violence. He tried to threaten Sofa, poking his pen half-heartedly at her, shaking the carrier, getting a few yowls of protest, but Simon was a latent cat lover; abusing felines was that one line he couldn't bring himself to cross. Blushing fiercely and cursing at himself, he put the carrier down and whispered an apology.

“You old softy,” I said.

That was all it took for him to snap. He thrust the nib of his pen up and under my right eye and flicked it forward, popping my eyeball out and leaving it to dangle at the end of its tether. From that point forward my left eye watched his every move; my right took in the terrain of my chin, chest, and lap. It was disorienting, my view now a broken stereoscope, but I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of complaint.

I
was
hungry, though. I'd become used to always having a calming wad of bogus phlesh nearby.
How long could I last?
I thought. I'd never actually tested myself. Would I eventually become like Mom, mindless, all shuffling appetite? Was she like me at first, conscious after death, confused as hell? Without access to what her body craved, did her mind devour itself?

Simon snapped his fingers under my nose, shocking me out of my reverie. My loose orb jiggled and swayed, spinning my world. I hadn't even noticed that he'd placed his bare fingers mere millimeters from my teeth. I snapped at the air, ashamed I couldn't control the impulse even as my teeth gnashed, but Simon's bulk contradicted his speed and he was sitting back smugly before my bite had finished its routine. He smirked, finally seeing leverage; the oaf was not nearly as dense mentally as he was physically.

After that, Simon would occasionally curb questioning to take stock of my reserves of willpower. He rolled up his sleeves to reveal mouth-watering forearms, the skin taut around the sinew. He walked around the room, waving his bare arms over my shoulders, brushing the back of my neck, so fucking close. He removed his shirt and did a quick ten-spot of pushups, forcing blood to the surface, veins erupting into blue mountain ranges, casting alpine shadows over the pink plains of his chest.

His mockery served no purpose; I answered all questions asked. He was just wasting time before I was collected, processed, and sieved into oblivion. Simon was making this personal.

I endured the boredom by poring over him as I would a butcher's wares on a visit to the grocery, the fresh cuts kept clean under the sneeze guard, pondering which haunch of meat would be most tender. Simon worked out, so his biceps were nice and lean beneath the skin. He had let himself go slightly to seed; this lassitude encased his musculature in thickening sleeves of succulent fat. I pictured the meat of his hindquarters, fresh on a clean white plate, the pink steak fresh and bloody and ribboned with white, and began to drool.

My stomach growled moistly in the open air, bouncing limply against the back wall of my hollow. Simon noted that, his mouth a curved knife-edge of malice. He put a glove back on and grabbed my mouth, holding it shut while he caressed the underside of my nose with the bare fingers of his other hand. Blood-heat soaked through my skin and massaged my brain. My jaw labored to open, fighting my orders, determined to bite. Simon moved his free hand down, and I felt an intestinal squeeze as he slid his hand up under my ribs and between my lungs, grasping my stomach. He brought it out and held it up to my stable eye, compressing it in his palm.

“Could you do without this?” he asked, sincerely curious. “Is a stomach even necessary? How long could you go without it?” He gave it a quick jerk and my trachea began to rend. “
I
don't think you need it.
I
think we'd all be better off if this were in a jar somewhere.”

I tested the strength of my bindings at that, raising my right arm, letting the teeth of the cuffs bite down into my wrist as I steadily pulled up and reached at him. The metal chain began to complain at the tension.

I was rewarded with a sudden glaze of fear over his face. He let my stomach thump back hollowly against my lungs.

“You have no idea what's in store for you, freak,” he promised, releasing my mouth. “What they're planning for you, you'll look back fondly on these moments.”

“Should I be scared?”

“Most definitely.”

“Terrified?”

“Oh yes.”

“Well, you tell me. When the scary part comes. I wouldn't want to miss it.”

Zing!

Such wit was a short-lived triumph. Simon filched a roll of duct tape from somewhere and bound my upper limbs good and tight to the armrests. He did my legs, too, for good measure, and then, since the audio portion of the interrogation was well and truly over, my mouth. He wasted a few more hours teasing, childish really, but it seemed to make him happy. It also tired him out, and he finally left to get some sleep. He lifted Sofa's carrier — his stare dared me to comment — and left the arena. He turned off the lights on his way out, leaving me bound and gagged in the dark.

f

When the lights clicked back on, I had spent a good forty-eight hours alone, working out various scenarios for revenge through the judicious application of my teeth. I would leap at Lambertus Dixon and segment his head from his shoulders with one fell swoop of my hand and devour his brains by sucking up through the neck. I would take Simon down with a quick slice at the ligaments behind his knee and then gut him as he had me, slurping down his intestines like thick spaghetti while he watched. I would run amok through the complex and unleash the appetite of the devil on anyone foolish enough to try to take me on.

I would do all of this without somehow gaining release from my bindings.

Foolproof.

Between fantasies, I passed the time by playing ball-and-cup with my eye, jerking my head back to try and slip the peeper back into its orifice. Without the ball as cushioning, however, I could not command the lids to open, and the eye bounced off them like a child on a trampoline.

I could hear electric wheels trundling closer. I sat patiently — because I had no choice — and waited for Dixon's arrival.

“And how are you this morning?” he asked as circled to face me. The old man was outfitted in a new suit/wheelchair ensemble and looked rather fresh and alert for a man approaching his sesquicentennial. Behind him, Simon loomed, arms and chest clad in chainmail, alongside two soldiers at attention with semi-automatic handguns at the ready, sub-machine guns slung over their shoulders, and intensely painful-looking tasers at their waists.

“As you can see, I have recovered nicely from our escapades,” Dixon continued as he put his chair into park, “and I . . . my goodness, what has happened to your eye?”

I tried to
mmm
a note of explanation for my loose orb beneath my mouth tape. Dixon waved me quiet. “Simon, this is your doing?”

Simon stepped forward. “He got a little lippy with me, sir. Couldn't be helped.”

Dixon clucked his tongue in admonishment. “I did warn you, Sheldon, Simon does have a temper. But I do have something to show you today, so Simon?” Simon frowned. “Please pop it back in.”

Simon winced. “Couldn't I just cut it off, sir? He'll still see with just one.”

“Simon,” Dixon said after a beat, “I have very little time to waste, particularly on explaining my orders. Be so kind as to relocate Mr. Funk's eye back into its socket. Now.”

Simon sighed and approached me, motioning for the guards to follow. Ordering them to hold my head steady and keep my jaw clamped tight — even with my mouth taped shut, I didn't blame Simon for not taking chances — he shucked his right glove off and delicately fondled my eye and stalk, looking for the best way to thread a thick noodle through a hole crunchy with gore. I closed my stable eye to combat the vertigo as my vision cavorted and his fingers slid over my lens. At his command, the soldiers craned my head back until I was theoretically looking at the ceiling. Removing his other glove for better flexibility, he carefully poked my optic nerve back into my skull with the index finger of his left hand while he guided the eyeball in with the right, then slid his inky finger around to make sure the eyelid enveloped the sphere securely. I blinked a few times and rolled the eye up and down. The muscles still worked, but were torn and weary after getting fingerbanged. My vision was slightly doubled, but I could make do.

Having the soldiers release me, Simon took a corner of the tape and slowly ripped the gag free. A biggish chunk of lip went with it. One of the soldiers muffled a gag and thickly swallowed back his breakfast.

“All better?” Dixon asked.

“Much,” I managed. “Could I get another pair of sunglasses?” Simon grumbled, but slipped a new pair on me at Dixon's approval. I pulled at my restraints. “Any chance of letting me free as well? If I don't move about a bit. The muscles atrophy. I promise not to crawl away.”

Dixon shook his head in mock apology. “I'm afraid this is as free as you get. We're at the end of a long path, and I want to make sure I get to the finish. Enjoy sitting up while you can; very shortly we'll have you strapped to a table, which should serve as base for the remainder of your death.” He giggled and clapped his hands in anticipation. “Sheldon, we are so close now, can you feel it? Destiny has brought us together, at precisely the moment I need you most.”

“I'm not yet clear on that,” I admitted. “Why do you need me? I do get why. People want to study me. But why do you
need
me?”

Dixon began circling me as he talked, his version of pacing. “Sheldon, I have been searching for something as long as I can remember. A cure for death. I am not ashamed to admit it, what lies beyond has frightened me since I was a child. Can you imagine it; here I was, a little lad of six years old, already cognizant of my incipient greatness, and frustrated that no matter what I would ever do, death would take me in the end.

“Death should not be the great equalizer. I am meant to triumph, not perish. And so, from my first steps, I have been searching for a solution. Everything you see before you, this,” he looked around at his electronic chassis, “all this, all these procedures, all the surgeries, the grafts, the implants. Stopgaps, performed to get me to just this moment. You think of that, Sheldon; everything I have done in this world over fourteen decades has been for this sole moment to occur. You lying there, me sitting here.

“These little chaps roaming your system, keeping you alive, if that's the correct term—”

“Close enough,” I said.

“—
they
are what Ponce de Leon was seeking. The fountain of youth. I thought we just needed to figure out how to harvest them. If we can cure polio, surely this would be a breeze. Now, I told the others, this is plainly an earthly organism infecting our boy here. Mysterious, undiscovered up to now, yes, but surely still a
natural
occurrence. It may hold the appearance of a supernatural phenomenon, but that is only because we don't yet understand it. So let's do that. Understand the phenomenon, study it, and see if we can't filter out some of its” he waved his hands over my body as he glided by “less desirable qualities. But your bloodspawn in there, they don't want to give up their secrets. They don't correspond to any known tests. They don't correctly react to stimuli, they perish outside a human host, they're alternately too simple in structure to cause such a reaction in the human body and too complex to understand.