Supernatural: Carved in Flesh (24 page)

“Recognize this fellow? It’s Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead. He’s not much in the height department, but he kicks ass when it comes to bringing folks back from what Shakespeare called ‘the undiscovered country.’” He looked up at Trish and smiled. “Isn’t that right, sweetie?”

Trish opened her mouth as if she intended to reply, but all that came out was a thin stream of drool that fell onto the bacon.

Walter turned back to the brothers and grinned. “So, who’s hungry?”

* * *

From the outside, the NuFlesh Biotech office looked the same as it had yesterday, but as Sam and Dean got out of the car and headed for the door, it burst open and Dr. Martinez’s office assistant came running out. The slender woman looked absolutely terrified, and without realizing where she was going, she ran directly into Dean. She didn’t have a lot of meat on her, and the collision sent her stumbling backward as if she’d run full force into a brick wall. Dean managed to reach out and grab her arms in time to stop her from falling on her bony posterior.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Has something happened?”

He groaned inwardly. He hated it when people in horror movies asked stupid questions like that.
Of course
something had happened! Why else would she be running as if she had a pack of Hellhounds on her tail?

At first her gaze refused to focus on either Dean or his brother, and her lower lip kept quivering. He was beginning to fear that she’d taken the last exit to Loonyville, but then she spoke.

“It’s Doctor Martinez. He’s... he’s not well.” She tore free from Dean’s grip with surprising strength for such a petite woman and ran into the parking lot. If she had a car there, she didn’t bother with it. She just kept going until she reached the sidewalk and was gone.

“I’d say that definitely qualifies as a bad sign,” Dean said.

“You think?”

The brothers drew their pistols—both weapons reloaded and ready to go—and entered NuFlesh.

The reception area was empty, which made sense, as its usual sole occupant had just high-tailed it for the hills. Dean held up his hand for Sam to stop for a moment, and the two of them listened. At first Dean didn’t hear anything, but then he was able to make out a voice singing softly.

“The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout.

“That’s a little creepy,” Dean whispered.

“More than a little,” Sam replied.

Together the brothers headed down the hall toward Martinez’s office. The singing grew louder the closer they got, the same phrase, repeated over and over in a childish singsong tone. Martinez’s door was half open, and Dean debated the merits of calling out to the doctor or going in silent, guns at the ready.

He didn’t have to make the choice, as the door opened the rest of the way and Martinez stepped into the hall. He stopped when he saw the Winchesters. If he noticed they’d drawn their pistols, it didn’t seem to bother him.

“Hello, agents! I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. What can I help you with?” His voice was a thick, liquid burble, almost impossible to understand.

Dean and Sam could only stand and stare. They’d seen some genuinely awful things in their lives, but this qualified for the top ten, easy.

Martinez’s skin had taken on a bright pink color that reminded Dean of the nasty slime fast-food burgers were made from, and it sagged from his bones like melting wax. The flesh had drawn away from his eyes and mouth, giving his face a skull-like aspect, and his hair had slid down the left side of his face like a toupee that refused to stay put. His ears dangled from thin pink strands that hung from his head like braids, and his fingers stretched all the way to the floor. The flesh from his legs had run out of his pants cuffs to overflow his shoes, making it look as if he had thick pink stumps instead of feet. His chin had become a long tendril that stretched past his chest and wobbled horribly when he spoke.

Dean turned toward his brother. “Sam, remember when I said this job reminded me of
Frankenstein?
I changed my mind. We are way into
Reanimator
territory here!”

Martinez went on as if Dean hadn’t spoken. “I hope you haven’t come for any samples of NuFlesh to compare with what you found on that nightmarish beast you showed me yesterday.” He spoke almost cheerfully in his burbling voice, as if nothing was wrong. “I’m afraid I traded the last of my supply to a special customer of mine. He provides me with a special unguent that relieves the itching caused by my burn scars and—”

That was the last word Martinez got out before his lower jaw detached from his skull and tumbled to the floor. It landed with a plop in the widening pool of pink goo that spread outward from his feet, and Sam and Dean scooted back to avoid contact with the disgusting substance. Dean had seen the
Blob
movies, and he knew how dangerous nasty goo could be. Pinkish slime continued running from Martinez’s skeleton, flowing like syrup, and individual bones came loose without muscles, ligaments, or cartilage to hold them in place. His form began to lose shape and fold in upon itself, though his eyes remained unaffected, darting back and forth in confusion, as if he’d finally come to realize that something was terribly wrong but wasn’t able to determine what. Then Martinez lost what little solidity remained to him, and his skeleton collapsed, leaving nothing but a pile of bones, his clothing, and a mound of watery goo. Only his eyes remained, housed in the skull, which sat lopsided atop the pink mound. They looked up at Sam and Dean, whatever emotion they might have held unreadable, until at last they too melted away to nothing.

“I’m never going to eat ice cream again,” Dean said. “Or chew bubble gum.”

Sam looked as if he might lose the gallon or so of coffee he’d drunk so far that morning. “I’m right there with you, brother.”

* * *

“I’ve been using the basement as a lab for weeks now, and I still haven’t gotten used to how chilly it is down here. Sometimes I feel as if I should be wearing a parka instead of a lab coat. But the cold’s good for you, isn’t it, sweetie?”

She smiled down at her daughter. Bekah lay naked on the table, a white sheet covering her from the neck down. Even though it was just the two of them, Catherine wanted to give Bekah her dignity. Catherine might be her mother—not to mention a doctor—but Bekah was a teenager, nearly an adult, and her body was her own. The last thing Catherine wanted to do was treat her like a piece of meat.

Like you treated that poor dog?
she asked herself.

That was different. That creature was a test subject, its only purpose to help Catherine determine how effective NuFlesh—with Conrad’s special “enhancements”—was at fusing body parts from different donors. Both Bekah and Marshall’s bodies had suffered severe damage in the accident, and it had been necessary to replace numerous organs, tissue, and in a couple cases, entire limbs. A good half of Bekah’s face had needed reconstruction, and only one of her original blue eyes remained to her. The other was now brown. Beneath the sheet, her body was crisscrossed by faint scar lines of NuFlesh indicating where Catherine had operated on her. She’d taken far more care with Bekah than she had with the dog, so the scars were hardly noticeable. She’d been even more careful with her daughter’s face, working diligently to ensure that the skin looked as smooth and natural as possible. When Bekah was... well again, Catherine wanted her to like what she saw in the mirror.

During the last few weeks Catherine had often felt more like a sculptor than a doctor, though with her medium being flesh instead of clay. Conrad had encouraged her to view her work that way.

We want strong, healthy bodies for your family,
he’d once told her.
That is, of course, the ultimate goal. At its best the human form possesses an elegance and beauty unrivaled in nature. So we want to make sure that not only are your loved ones restored to life, but that the bodies that house that life are worthy of the gods themselves.

Conrad often spoke like that, almost as if he was a poet instead of... whatever he was. Catherine didn’t see her work in such lofty terms, but she wanted Bekah and Marshall to be comfortable with their restored bodies, wanted them to be able to go out in public without drawing attention. Simply put, she wanted them to be as normal as possible, given the circumstances. She certainly didn’t want them to turn out to be freakish monstrosities, like the dog. But then, she hadn’t been concerned with aesthetics when she’d made it, only in testing the efficacy of NuFlesh. And, of course, in proving that Conrad’s resurrection techniques worked.

At least she didn’t have to worry about the dog anymore. Conrad had let her know that the beast had been disposed of. He’d provided no details, and she’d asked for none. One of the key aspects of their working relationship was that she didn’t press him for information, and he didn’t tell her things that she’d prefer not to hear. It was better that way.

Bekah’s long hair was a deep rich brown, and Catherine loved to brush it. The action reminded her of when Bekah had been a child, unable—or truth to tell, unwilling—to brush her own hair. Even when Catherine had finally managed to get the girl to go into the bathroom and brush, she always “forgot” to do the back, leaving it to Catherine to finish the job. Bekah had grown out of that phase eventually, and Catherine had been surprised to find herself missing it. She’d enjoyed the sweet intimacy of touching her daughter’s hair, of running the brush through it, of chatting with Bekah about this and that while she worked.

She was tempted to get a brush and spend a few minutes grooming Bekah’s hair now, but she resisted. She hadn’t removed Bekah from the freezer and laid her out on the table so she could play Mommy. She had work to do. She’d begin with the head.

Many were the wonders that Conrad had shown her during the course of their collaboration, and although she was a rational woman, she had come to believe that there was, if not magic in the world, far more to science that she’d ever suspected. One of the most amazing things he had taught her was the formula for creating a chemical mixture that could reverse the cellular damage caused by decay. In and of itself it did not restore life, but it prevented dead bodies from rotting, which given the amount of time Catherine had needed to have Bekah and Marshall out of the freezer and on the table so she could work with them, was vital. However, the treatment wasn’t permanent, and when it wore off, not only did decay return, it did so with a vengeance, accelerating exponentially until the subject was nothing but a fleshless skeleton, as she’d learned from observing numerous test subjects. Rats, mostly, and in one case, a stray cat Conrad had brought her. The results of accelerated decay were unpleasant to observe, to say the least, and it was a fate she was determined to avoid for her husband and daughter. So every few days Catherine checked Bekah and Marshall to make sure they hadn’t begun to actively decay once more. If she’d had an unending supply of the treatment, she’d use it on them every day, but the ingredients weren’t easy to come by, and the process for creating the mixture was quite involved. A mistake at any step along the way would render the result useless. So Catherine made sure to employ the treatment only when it was absolutely necessary.

The results were almost beyond belief. When Bekah had been little, many was the time that Catherine had crept into her room at night, ostensibly to check and make certain she was all right, but in reality because she simply loved watching her daughter sleep. She was always so still—no restless sleeper, she—and her breathing was so gentle that Catherine had to lean down close to hear it. Now, looking at Bekah lying on the table, her features awash in the harsh glow of fluorescent light, Catherine had no trouble imagining that she wasn’t dead, that she was merely sleeping as sound as ever, waiting for her mother to rouse her.

In a way, she supposed that was true.

Enough woolgathering.
She had work to do. She began her examination with Bekah’s feet.

She lifted the sheet and began searching for any discoloration on the skin. Finding none, she drew the sheet back further and moved on to the legs. She was in the process of examining the torso when she heard footsteps on the kitchen floor overhead. Conrad had arrived.

She rearranged the sheet to cover her daughter’s body once more, then leaned close to Bekah’s ear and whispered, “Don’t worry. I know you don’t like it when he looks at you. We’ll finish the examination later, when he’s gone.”

She heard the basement door open, and she straightened and took a step back from the table. She saw nothing wrong in talking to her daughter, but she never did so in front of Conrad. She wasn’t worried that he’d think her crazy. He was a bit odd himself, to put it mildly. But her conversations with Bekah—one-sided though they might be—were private, meant to be kept between mother and daughter.

He came down the stairs, moving gracefully despite being burdened with a large cardboard box. It looked as if it was heavy, but he carried it with ease. She wasn’t surprised. She’d long known he was stronger than he looked.

“More supplies?” she asked.

Conrad reached the basement floor and walked to one of the counters where he set the box down on one of the few empty spaces to be found. He removed his lab coat from the hook on the wall where it had been hanging, slipped it on over his suit jacket, and then joined Catherine by Bekah’s side.

“More NuFlesh,” he said. “We’re going to need it.”

“Good.” She’d finished restoring Bekah’s body for the most part, but there were still a few things she wanted to do to Marshall’s. Then she frowned. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘We’re going to need it’? You sound as if you have something special in mind.”

Conrad smiled. She disliked it when he did that. He had a habit of giving her a smile that she imagined a cat might show to a small rodent an instant before pouncing.

“I do indeed! Feast your eyes, my dear, upon
this.”
He removed a small object from his jacket pocket and held it out for her inspection.

At first, it didn’t look like much to her. It was an oblong stone of deep blue, its surface polished smooth. Then she realized that instead of catching and reflecting the light, the stone seemed to absorb it, and not gently. It grabbed hold of the light and dragged it down into whatever untold depths lay within.