Husk (16 page)

She straightened back up and blinked a few times. “Sheldon,” she said evenly. “There is no cause for shouting here.” I reflexively muttered a bashful apology. “I have always looked out for your best interests, Sheldon, even when others suggested I toss you under the bus. And proving my instincts correct yet again, you have finally become a moderately profitable investment of my time. But if you persist in this behavior, I will have you removed from this—”

And she stopped as I struggled to my feet.

And she stared as I opened my shirt.

And she gasped as she took in the misshapen torso, the sagging gray that threatened to slough off the bones if shaken too hard, the staples that held the overlapping elephant ears in place.

And she walked forward and felt at the meat, wondering out loud at the fantastic job those makeup boys could do nowadays, but how did this fit into the plot of the movie?

And her cigarette loosed itself from her gaping lips and fell to the carpet, smoldering as I reached up and fingered my digits in between the staples and pulled outward, the skin ripping open, a lone staple
poinging
its way free and rocketing past Rowan's head.

And she placed a hand over her mouth as organs and fetid towels slipped wetly forward and out, dangling like decayed deli meat, dribbling muck.

And she closed her eyes as I wrenched off my makeshift ribcage, slid my hand inside, and yanked free my heart, holding it out to her as an offering of supplication.

And she whimpered, once, a sound of the actuality of her existence flexed to the point of snapping, as I took her hand and drew it into me, pushing her fingertips through the gap between my lungs and against the inner wall of my back.

And her reality fractured with an audible
crack!
as she kept pressing and leaned past my shoulder to look behind me at the imprint of her fingers elongating my skin outwards.

“Jesus,” she breathed. “Oh Jesus God fuck.” She flailed back away from me, grabbing at anything to hold, finding her chair and flopping down as her knees went numb. “Fuck.” She took another look at me, my chest gaping, too real to be an effect, too sloppy and loathsome, too unprofessional-looking to be anything other than an authentic carcass standing before her, and put her head between her knees. She panted, whispering obscenities.

“I am,” I rasped, “in real trouble here.”

And I laid it all out bare for her as she wavered and teetered in her seat, clutching at her desk for support, keeping her head down and staring at the floor. The bus. The attendant. My mother. The vagrants. D.J. I carefully relocated my innards back into place while I unspooled the tale, using a few roles of packing tape from Rowan's closet to keep the casserole in its dish.

“And that,” I said, handing her the last roll to hold as I stuck the tape to my stomach and spun myself slowly in place, arms lifted, swathing my torso in thick layers of sticky cellophane — her hands didn't even shake at this point, I noted — “is that.” The tape ran out, and I lowered my arms and put my shirt back on. Rowan still held out the empty roll for me, her eyes wide, lips pursed, and eyebrows raised.

I placed a hand upon hers and pushed her arm down. The roll slipped from her fingers and joined the doorknob on the carpet. “Are you okay?” I asked, knowing the stupidity inherent in the question but unable to come up with anything else to say.

“Um.” Rowan blinked, once, twice, three times. And then again, three times. “Um. Um.” She turned to her desk, turning her back to me, then fearfully looked over her shoulder. Her hands blindly fumbled over the surface, knocking over penholders and paperclip dispensers until it found the intercom. She settled herself down, making sure I had not moved closer, and pressed the button.

“Ms. O'Shea?” a voice crackled.

“Who am I speaking to?” Rowan snapped.

“This is Taylor, ma'am,” the voice informed us.

“I don't know you, Taylor, where's Marianne?”

“I'm Mr. Barton's assistant, ma'am, he sent me out to see what was going on. It's kind of crazy out here. Security is here, they're asking for you. Should I send them in?”

“Where's Marianne?”

“They're very insistent, ma'am.”

“I want Marianne, Taylor, put her on.”

“Uh . . .” There was a rustling noise as Taylor cupped his hand over the receiver. Through the door, we heard Taylor yell for an update on Marianne's condition. A few muffled shouts were returned. “Ma'am,” he said, “Marianne, uh, she's, she's . . . she can't come to the phone right now.”

“What's her problem?”

“I think the security guards could—”

“What is her problem, Taylor?” Rowan snapped.

“Yes, ma'am, she is . . . she is unconscious, I guess you could call it, one of the guards is looking after her—” From outside, a yell, something like
she's freaking out
. “Ma'am, she's convulsing, and her hair is all white. There's a, ewww, there's a lot of vomit. The security guards really would like to see you, they're very—”

“No,” Rowan shouted. She closed her eyes and breathed in through her nose and out her mouth for a count of ten. “Under no circumstances,” she continued, “is anyone to come into this room, do you hear me, Taylor? Repeat that back.”

“No one is to come in, yes ma'am.”

“Anyone comes in before I call, you're fired,
comprende
?”

“Yes'm.”

“Now, call an ambulance for Marianne and keep the guards out there on standby until my say-so.”

“Should I get another ambulance for Carrie and Lily?”

Rowan shot barbs at me. “What the hell did you do out there?” she hissed. I shrugged. “Yes, call an ambulance for whoever needs one, do what needs to be done. Just keep people away from this office until I call.” She released the intercom button, switching off Taylor's acknowledgment in mid-grovel. Outside, voices sang out in anger. The guards really did want to storm the room. Rowan looked at me, considered something, then pressed the button again. “And call Ed Judger, get him on the line for me, tell him it's urgent.” Already I could hear Rowan switching gears, moving boxes to make room for new information.

“Who's Ed Judger?” I asked.

Rowan stood up and walked to the other side of the desk, sitting back down in her seat of power. She closed her eyes again, appeared to offer up a silent prayer, and opened them again in full agent mode. She looked at me, taking me in fully and appraising me as her client and product. “What do you want, Sheldon?” Rowan asked, ignoring my question. “From me. What do you want? Where do I fit into this? Forgive me, won't you, for worrying about my own needs before those of the walking dead.”

I mimed a sigh. “You're the only person. I could turn to. You could protect me, maybe. If this gets out. I'm dead.”

“Figuratively, I take it.” Her sardonic nature was re-emerging. I took this as promising.

“I'm not saying I shouldn't be. Held responsible. I've done horrible things. I'm Dahmer bad. I reacted poorly to my situation. I should have thrown myself in a fire. Or shot myself. Something. But if they get a hold of me, it's not. Going to be the same. There won't be a trial. Look at me. I'm a walking science experiment. I'll disappear. They'll torture me, dissect me. Until there's nothing left. I'll be a brain in a jar. I'll be
aware
of this. The rest of my life. My existence. Will be an eternity of probing. Literally. An eternity. This can't get out.”

Rowan crossed her arms while she considered this. “I take it that destroying your body now somehow is not an option? That would make my job easier. I've already made a good chunk for your work, and your disappearance could elevate your profile, bringing in more dollars for the movie. We could get you to one of those car crushers junkyards have, garlic press you out of my misery.”

I shook my head. “My mother would be left alone to die. Even she doesn't deserve that. And my cat. All alone.” I had a fleeting image of Sofa in police custody, yowling from a cage, waiting for the injection. “And you'll probably disappear too,” I added, in case she'd decide to exterminate me behind my back. “This is probably a matter. For Homeland Security here. Whatever it is that has happened. They couldn't take a chance on anyone else. Knowing. Sorry.”

“Well, this
will
get out,” Rowan said. “That's a guaranteed fact at this point. They're already searching your house, something led the police to you, and I'll assume that they'll find something. They may not find the remains of everyone you've,” and here she allowed a brief instance of human emotion to crack her armor in an abrupt but noticeable full-body quiver “
eaten
, but they will find something. All we can do now is damage control. Honestly, you should have come to me with this weeks ago, months, we could have been fully in front of the situation.”

“You're taking all this very calmly,” I said. “I thought you'd need some. Time to process.”

“I think I've got the gist, assuming I'm not hallucinating all this. Maybe I've completely lost it, don't think it hasn't crossed my mind, but I think that people who've gone gaga aren't usually aware of it as such, so I'm in a quandary. In any case, the way it is is the way it is, and I will deal with it.” She withdrew a calfskin journal from a drawer. She began jotting down notes as she talked. “You're my client, you have come down with a, a rare illness, something incredibly rare, something foreign, from Africa say, you got bit by a tsetse fly, that's believable, and in the feverish delirium brought about by your condition you committed a few unfortunate, random — but perfectly understandable given your impaired mental state — acts of homicide. That's how we'll play this, I think. We'll need a doctor, no, two, three, that should be enough to start.”

“Illness?” I interrupted.

Rowan sighed, a sound I was very familiar with, the exhalation of barely restrained impatience with a dull-witted client, and looked up from her writing. “Sheldon,” she said, putting me in my place with one simple inflection of my name that equated me with an implied subclass of short-bussers, “you can't expect people to simply accept your state as a zombie without building up to it first. People will need time to adjust, not everyone is as flexible in their perceptions of reality as I am. Of course, again, this could all be one big delusion and I'm actually in a rubber room somewhere painting landscapes with my feces, but that's for future therapy to work out. So, how many?”

“Many?”

“How many people have you killed? I'll need a number to gauge what kind of trouble we're in. The real problem is that you're not famous yet — that would have really helped a lot with the press.”

I shook my head in wonderment at Rowan's thought processes. She started slightly at the noise of my vertebrae eroding against each other and made another note in her book, circling it twice. I heard the word
plastic
escape her lips. “Eight,” I said. “No, maybe seven, it depends, my mother, I . . .” I shuddered, unable to complete the thought. I wondered that no one at the ward had called to inform me that my mother had gone a wee bit bitey as of late. “Judger?”

“Ed Judger,” Rowan said, a touch impatiently, “is one of my counterparts in L.A., a very, very influential gentleman, particularly when it comes to putting the best spin on things. We're going to need help from the higher-ups, and he is a man who makes things happen. I'll set up a meet for you.”

“Spin?” I repeated. “Rowan, we're not talking about a. Drunk driving charge, or a drug bust. This is pretty much. Pre-meditated murder—”

“—that you were unable to control because of the organic nature of your affliction,” she finished. “Believe me, this can be spun. People are going to see you as an object of pity and pathos when Ed gets through with you.”

“But I'm a zombie!”

“And last year's Best Actress winner collects Nazi paraphernalia, but you haven't heard any of that thanks to Ed, and you did
not
hear it from me. And you are
not
a zombie; let's get that straight right now. No, what you are is . . .” Rowan leaned back and rotated her hands, searching for terminology “. . . living impaired? A natural evolution? A miracle?” She looked me over. “No, not a miracle, people like their supernatural marvels to look a little less off-putting. I'll put someone on this, we'll think of something more user-friendly.”

“I'm a freak.”

“Save the self-pity for your autobiography. Which you
will
be writing, come to think, so you might want to start making notes for the ghostwriter. It's never too early to start thinking about merchandising rights. How do you feel about T-shirts?”

“Whoa.” I held up my hands, the motion pulling the tape tighter, tearing it in several places. I pressed the adhesive tighter to the skin. “Dammit. This isn't, I can't, no. I need help. That's why I came to you.”

“Sheldon, I am your agent,” Rowan said, smartly crisp and professional, still making notes and not looking at me. “I am not your friend. You cannot crash at my place until this blows over. I cannot help you in any capacity as anything but an agent, and what agents do is fight fire with fire. We need to be in control of this, and the only way I can see to protect you as a client is to launch an all-out media assault. I'm talking interviews, television specials—”

“What?”

“Ed knows people who know people. I'll float the idea by him, but I'm sure he'll come up with the idea himself in any case. This is going to take some time, we'll have to get you set up somewhere. Your house is not an option, obviously. We have a few bungalows in town we keep for guests, I'll set you up in one. The question is how, how, how?” She accentuated each
how
with a sharp jot of her pen on the paper. “How to keep the police off you until we're ready to go. Any ideas?”