Husk (31 page)

“And in many cases — not all, but more than I ever anticipated — I found what I sought. And very soon, I had myself a menagerie.”

He spread his arms out. “This is my life's work, Sheldon. Where some collect stamps, I collect zombies. We have studied every one you see here, and thousands more besides, trying to find the key. There is no single element in common with any of these resurrections, except that they exist. Some are survivors of attacks, but others just rise of their own accord. There is no religious factor common to them all, no physical commonalities, no environmental, no viral, fungal, bacteriological, ecological, geographical, socio-economical, or other. My scientists assure me that their existence is rooted in the physical, my roster of theologians insist only the supernatural explains them.

“I could have them destroyed, of course, but I find myself with little desire to. I come here to contemplate mortality. Seeing them gives me hope. They cheated death, so can I, but on my terms.” He started pointing out individuals. “Why should Sally there, the one in the polka-dot dress, why should she, mother of four that she was, unhappily wasting her life away in an Alabama suburb, why should
she
receive this gift?” He swung his finger farther left, singling out a dark-skinned ghoul, the remains of a turban still clinging to its skull. “Why should a raghead Taliban be bestowed an eternity of existence and not me? Or next to him, that marine, why him? Why that African tribesman over there? That Eskimo? That Hassidic Jew, that Amish daughter, that Polish waitress?”

“I guess death isn't fair,” I managed.

“Well put. But I mean to fix that.” Dixon lifted his mask slightly and took a sniff. “Do you smell that, Sheldon? That's the smell of eternity.”

“And my mother?” I asked.

“Oh, she was here. As soon as I discovered you through Miss O'Shea, I had a team extract her. I was truly excited to see her; we so rarely get one so fresh. It's a miracle she hadn't bitten anyone, even without her teeth, but then the care she was receiving was hardly first-rate. You couldn't have put her in a better establishment, the woman who birthed you? Shameful. Alas, she was like the others, useless, so we threw her in here until I got word that you wanted to see her. We dug her out, flew her to Phoenix, made up some nonsense that you bought wholeheartedly, and let you kill your own mother.”

“Cold,” Simon muttered behind you. “Stone cold killer, that's what you are.”

“Fuck you,” I shot back weakly.

My mother, part of that throng of appetite. I thought I had spared her some indignity.

“But for as long as I have been searching,” Dixon continued, “I have never found one like you. The one who talks. There were always rumors. Men who walked and talked with full awareness after being crated up and buried six feet under. I believe most if not all of our religious ideologies evolved from such examples. Was Jesus a zombie? Was Odin, or Shiva, or Wawalag? I believe so. And so I knew, if it happened before, it can happen again. All I needed was to live long enough to find one of you and crack open your secret.

“I didn't think I'd make it. But then, there you were, walking around, drawing attention to yourself.
Working
. I have to tell you, I have cheated death many many times, but when I discovered that
you
, the Grim Reaper, you were actually hitting the pavement looking for
work
? I almost laughed myself to death.” He chortled briefly and began to cough, pulling his mask up and horking a loogie into the horde where it splattered against the forehead of a desiccated Japanese businesszombie and crawled down into the folds of its expertly knotted tie.

“Death is not without a sense of irony,” I said. I watched the ebb and flow of the crowd as the doctor gently thumped Dixon on the back to dislodge more sputum.

I could hear them, faintly, as I had Mom. I had no connection to any of them, but still a dim clamor tickled my thoughts, an imbecilic moaning that shook my brain in its container.

Across the zombie depository a door opened and a pair of soldiers strode in, each wielding a length of thick pipe. At the far end of each rod a set of thick pinchers extended forth, each clamped tight over the throat of an unhappy zombie held just outside of reach.

“Ah,” said Dixon. “Good timing. Our newest acquisitions. Simon, move us closer.”

The soldiers expertly maneuvered their captures onto a small platform that extended out from the track over the mob below. On a three count, they released the neck clamps and stepped back, where one attended to a set of controls attached to the railing. The platform began to slowly descend into the pit, its riders slowly turning to try and attack their handlers, already ten feet above them.

I couldn't quite make the arrivals out yet. But I could smell them. Simon moved me down the walkway to a better vantage point. The hazy picture came into focus. I clenched the armrests, imprinting my fingertips into the metal. The animated corpses of Duane and Samantha joined their siblings.

Samantha looked to be little worse for wear, with only a few bullet holes and a mouth-sized gash on her throat as visual proof of death. Duane's body was relatively untouched, but only the bottom two-thirds of his skull was intact; everything above his eyebrows had been jaggedly excised, including most of his brain. But the residue of matter he retained still flickered, and I could hear Duane's pleas for food join the mental sea of appetite.

“You bastards,” I said, gritting my teeth. I felt my gums give at the pressure, surrendering finally to the rot, and two of my incisors bent outward.

“I though you'd be pleased!” Dixon said. “Look, there's your lover, in most of his glory. You can thank Simon for the surprise, he thought you might be more amenable if you saw a friendly face.”

“Half of one, anyway,” Simon said.

“Quite. If you like, Sheldon, I can arrange a conjugal visit.”

I held my tongue, picturing myself snacking on Dixon's kidneys, as Duane and Sam mixed themselves into the mob, falling into the same mindless swaying.

There was an eddy in the shuffling current below me, distracting me from thoughts of revenge. I saw a white lab coat, its wearer fighting against the aimless flow of the mob. It raised its face to me and moaned, a plaintive keening I heard in my mind rather than my ears. I knew that face intimately.

You never forget your first, do you? Even now I can recall the taste of those few precious drops of coppery wine gamboling about on my taste buds as I made short work of his limbs.

Craig motioned toward me. His left arm was still contained in a filthy plaster cast, but his right was free; the bone had never completed setting, and the forearm now had an extra joint. The wrist and hand hung loosely at the end of the superfluous elbow, but his fingers still twitched wildly. Unlike his brothers and sisters who had, I could now discern, focused directly on the humans who surrounded me, the nearest source of food, Craig gawked at me alone. His teeth shuttered open and shut excitedly as our eyes met, catching his tongue and severing the bulk of it. He paid it no heed as it tumbled to the gruesome carpet. In my head, I could hear his tireless mantra.

You. You. You.

“Well, would you look at that,” Dixon said excitedly through the carbon filters. “I think he recognizes you.” He motioned down to Craig. “Doctor, what is that?”

“How—” I stopped myself, knowing the answer.

“How did we find him? As soon as he was on television talking about the attack I had a team put on him. We couldn't find you, you were too ridiculously minor a person to even exist, so we staked out his apartment. They waited for a few weeks to be sure. Depending on the bite, full infection can take anywhere from a few minutes to several months. Once they observed that he had turned over, they took him.”

“I was there,” I said. Dixon tilted his head, suddenly more attentive. “I was looking for him. I walked in, I saw everything. Your men must have just missed me.” Behind me, Simon snorted a laugh.

“His child,” I pressed on. “His wife. He killed them. Your men could have saved them.”

A shrug of eyebrows underneath the mask, a sigh escaped the filter. “You understand, we had to be certain. There are limits to power, even mine, and I cannot afford to draw undue attention to this operation. Every action I authorize must be a surgical strike to remove the infection, particularly in a highly urban environment. Until rebirth, the symptoms are almost identical to that of the flu. My men have strict orders not to undertake containment and capture until the birthing process is confirmed.”

“They didn't have to die.”

“You would have killed them anyway,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “Do not blame me for the actions of your firstborn.” He turned his attention back to Craig, the zombie now audibly groaning his anguish at me as he struggled forward. “Your thoughts, Doctor?”

“I am unzertain,” Rhodes spoke. He had walked forward on my other side at the commotion and was now leaning out slightly over the edge of the railing to get a better look. “I haff never zeen ziz zort of behafior before.” Below us, Craig scrabbled against his partners in death, pushing them to the floor and standing atop their uncomplaining bodies to get a better look at me. As we watched, the ghoul to Craig's right, a long-dead refugee from the Jersey Shore, looked up at me as well. Then another, a man clad in a flannel shirt and hip waders. Then a small child, a boy scout. Then an elegantly dressed socialite. Then another. Then another. Soon there were dozens of zombies, all unmoving, staring at me, silently shrieking. It was purely impossible, but my temple began to throb.

Rhodes' eyes widened. “Zat iz fazinating! I zink ziz iz actual comprehension!”

Dixon lifted his mask for a clearer view. “Doctor, what does this mean?” he asked. “Why are they following him?”

“It muzt be zomezing in the viruz, a rezidual memory zomehow tranzferred whole.” Rhodes frowned. “Zomehow, zere iz a telepathic connection between Sheldon unt zem.” Forgetting himself, he grabbed my arm and pulled it against the chain, laughing as my acolytes followed it like bored spectators at a tennis match. He looked back over his shoulder to Dixon. “I zink zey may zee Sheldon az a fazzer, perhaps, jah? Or pozzibly a mezziah figure. Jah, ziz may haff major zeological ramificationz.” He moved his hand up to my wrist and gaily waved it at the crush of ghouls, pulling me forward as he leaned out over the railing. “Zir, ziz behafior muzt be rezearched further. Zee implicationz are—”

My fingers grabbed his and pressed in, pulping his digits into mush. Beyond pain, he gasped at the mangling. Before Simon could react I pushed my weight against my shackles, wheeling the chair forward slightly, enough to knock Rhodes' balance off-center. His arms pinwheeled and I rocked the chair again, the merest of extra nudges.

Rhodes slipped out into the air, swiveled his body in midair as an involuntary objection to gravity's rules, and was enveloped in claws and teeth before he hit the floor. His one scream was short-lived, as was the rest of him. Chunks of jellied red flew upward as my siblings macerated their lunch. I sensed thoughts of gratitude as they feasted on him; I fancied I could taste the metallic piquancy of Rhodes' flesh on my tongue.

The whole process took five seconds. Neither Simon nor Dixon had moved. I sat back in my chair. Craig ignored the meal, staring up at me.

“I'd like to go now,” I said. For a change, Dixon had nothing to say, and together we silently contemplated the future.

h

The men in the white coats came soon after.

j

I'll say this for them; unlike with Simon, I was never bored.

l

A white room. Glaring spotlights. Stainless steel cabinets and instruments. Men in lab coats, faces hidden behind surgical masks, concealed mouths mumbling arcane medical lingo.

I was back where I started.

Full circle.

Morgue to morgue.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, sunrise, sunset.

Rebirth to redeath.

They can take away my organs
, I thought,
but they can never take away my sense of irony.

As they sliced their way into my skull, soft gray tendrils of smoke rising as the saw blade whirled through my braincase, spraying marrow over an inattentive attendant, I began to laugh.

z

“How are you, my boy?”

“All things considering?”

“Good, good. Like I always say, a sense of humor—”

“—keeps you sane. I remember.”

Lambertus visited me in the vivisectorium every day, engaging me in conversation between scrutinizations of my depleting inner geography. I was a work in progress, splayed out and bound so that any medico could simply come in and examine whatever portion he desired at his whim. My torso was left open, its contents scooped out like a pumpkin on Hallowe'en. The lungs and remaining major digestive organs were left intact, but everything else was up for grabs. My head was propped up on a block of wood and a temporary plastic cap had been snugly fitted over the top to protect the now-exposed brain and still allow for ease of access.

Simon would be alongside Lambertus, scoping me out for new physical mortifications, taking notes. Sometimes anonymous others would join the duo, men and women in suits, men in holy vestments. They never spoke, but the presence of a slop bucket to catch their inevitable spewage spoke volumes on my appearance. Senator Kud passed through once to bless my condition with a sneer.

“How are you today?” Lambertus would always begin, to which I'd rejoinder with something pithy about being akin to a fetal pig awaiting a classroom of eager sixth graders armed with plastic scalpels. Frankly, I began to enjoy the company; our conversations were at least a brief respite from the usual medical pillaging.

They wouldn't even give me a magazine to read, or a television, or iPod. They at least allowed me Sofa for companionship, constructing an ad-hoc cat tree out of discarded engine parts. She watched my daily disembowelings safe and high from her roost, and came down occasionally to feast on whatever Simon had brought that day. The doctors and nurses spooked her, however, and she rarely came close enough to visit.