Husk (32 page)

Beyond the cat, Lambertus was my only link to anything beyond the reinforced steel walls that contained me. So I had to take him at his word when he assured me that no one was looking for me.

My disappearance was news, of course, it was all anyone had talked about for weeks. You couldn't kill a few dozen people and hope no one would notice. No, my exit from the public stage had to be manufactured, edited to completely remove all doubt.

Simon laid a board roughly across my thorax and dropped an open laptop on it. Lambertus jabbered as I watched the footage, released to news organizations
only because
what occurred was so monstrous an event it deserved to be seen by the widest possible audience. The chaos was edited down to a thirty-second news nugget; the footage was hectic, blurred with action, but it was clear that the zombie once beloved by all had finally snapped. Despite the heroic actions of security guards kept on constant standby by the production company for just such an eventuality, Sheldon Funk had slain the entirety of his castmates in a frenzy of blood-spattering savagery. The camera never lies; there I was, blood reddening my teeth, lurching toward Duane as he fell to the ground, his head marinated in his own brains. In the background, Samantha screaming as she bled out. A brief cut to Tim, intestines slipping through his fingers. Johnny slit open like an envelope. A close-up of me pulling one guard's spinal column out through the front of his chest (I didn't recall doing that at all). And at the end, a head, mine, exploding in a burst of bone and brain as bullets were pumped into it, the body slumping against a wall, loose arteries decorating the air with red.

Had I been consulted, I would have told them that my blood didn't spurt. No heartbeat, no circulation.

Had I been consulted.

The sham-zombie
did
look like me, an impressive likeness. A homeless person plucked from the streets of New Orleans, Dixon confided; no family who cared enough to come searching, no friends to wonder
whatever happened to that guy?
Thought he had won the lottery, picked up by good Samaritans and assured that his troubles in this life were soon to end. Conspiracy theorists already claimed the erupting head was not mine, that a frame-by-frame analysis clearly indicated a person with a more pronounced jawline, and a different eye color besides.

“So, no smoke, no fire,” Lambertus said as Simon packed up the computer. “As far as the world cares, you're in a box somewhere awaiting cremation. The point is, no one is looking for you save a few whackjobs with too much time on their hands.”

“You can't keep this secret,” I said. “Not this. Someone will talk eventually.”

“Key word there,
eventually
.” He swiveled his chair around and headed to the door. “Eventually, everything comes out,” he shouted over his shoulder as he left. “But sooner than eventually, that's not going to matter.”

I lay on the tabletop for weeks while scientists busied themselves with my genetic makeup. Any remaining liquids had been extracted, replaced with untainted blood (a surprising rush), studied, extracted, replaced, studied, extracted, replaced. If you've never withstood the sensation of having well nigh every cherished corpuscle of crimson fluid sucked from your body, I can't say I recommend it.

I once read that a giant squid injects its prey with an acidic solution, liquefying the innards until the victim is nothing but a sack of juice. The squid then drinks the body dry.

So, like that, repeated every few days.

Nasty stuff.

The arguments and hypotheses filled the room as they worked me over, figuring out what precisely they could and couldn't remove so that I remained “alive.” It was a virus, plain as day, tests all but proved it. But how could a virus not only kill its host but also serve a secondary function as oxygen proxy, surely the only thing that explains my post-death mobility? It thereby couldn't be properly classified as a virus and must be categorized as a higher level of organism. But if it was a higher organism, it wouldn't transmit itself through the blood and saliva to others, would it? It multiplied as a virus, it infected others along virus parameters, therefore, a virus. Maybe it's a parasite, living off its host while somehow synthesizing oxygen supplies to keep the body mobile after clinical death. Is this even clinical death? The heart is inert, yes, but the brain? Could this be a new form of prions? Possibly, but the brain has actually been enhanced, not decimated. But . . .

But.

But but but but but but but.

But where did it come from? But why this guy? But couldn't it be . . . ? But haven't you considered . . . ? But isn't it impossible that . . . ?

At this point in the analytical reasoning circle jerk, someone of the more religious bent would invariably pipe up with a poorly received insight on how we could not predict nor understand the will of God, I was a miracle whose existence should not be questioned and these experiments were a waste of everyone's time.

Questions, no answers.

Vainly trying all avenues of diagnosis, they even showed me a vastly magnified picture of the wee beastie, I assume to somehow trigger my memory.
That's it, officer!
I yelled when the thing popped up on the screen, squirming happily about in its bath of me.
That's the one who stole my wallet! I'd know those beady little cilia anywhere!

They didn't talk to me much after that, not beyond the occasional
This doesn't hurt? Really? Wow.

All the while, my body was whittled away slice by slice. A thin wafer of upper arm here, a hunk of ass-flesh there. My thorax was deboned and my foamy new interior lining scooped out, deflating me on the table and spilling the rest of me out. My loose organs were gathered up, separated into jars and spirited away for necropsy. I bemoaned the thought of all my entrails suddenly apart, brothers no more.

My heart was pried loose from Rhodes' expert gluing, the entirety of the local scientific community gathered around for the operation. There was no reason; the heart was plainly there only for show and sentimental value, but just to witness a human body continue to function perfectly fine without it was an event. My stomach was left alone, and I was fed according to schedule to ensure my deterioration was slowed. The meat was definitely human; I presumed I was eating convicts, or illegal immigrants, but I never asked. The stomach would bounce in my chest chamber like a rock in a tumbler as it digested the mystery manmeat, and anything left would sluice through the short tubelet of intestines I had left and spatter into an awaiting plastic baggie. It was then spirited away for a fecal freak to study, and I'd await the next meal.

After a time, the novelty of me wore off, and I became another daily chore for everyone to complain about. Poke, prod, slice. Poke, prod, slice. Every day, going down the checklist. Still here? Check. Still sensate? Check. Still bored? Check. Poke, prod, slice.

I had become unwanted topiary.

My brain was swabbed, greased, fondled, mopped clean, and gently impaled with metal spikes. Subdural reactions to images of frolicking puppies and pastoral farmlands were interspersed with variations along the theme of
let's see what happens when we poke him here.
Once in a while, to alleviate their tedium, they would switch the flow, and I would feel a pulse deep within my cranium. My legs would then spasm, or my hand would twitch, or my eyes would blink, or the smell of burning hair would inundate my world. Every few days I was wheeled out into the next room —
Whoo! Change of scenery! New cabinets! —
where I was slid headfirst into an enormous (and antique, by the looks of the rust)
CAT
scan for a distressing few minutes while X-rays pierced my skull and body, everyone cowering behind a large lead screen in an adjoining room.

And every day, aside from basic indignities no sentient body should ever suffer — I was often referred to as Mary Kay, if that gives you any indication of the level of discomfort I withstood — a little bit more of my brain was slivered away. Never much at one time, just a gossamer shaving off the top, an insubstantial sanding from the side. I couldn't see the results — unlike the front row seat I had to the rest of the procedures, they wouldn't supply a mirror so that I could watch my personality get julienned to bits, a subject watching its own brain vivisection apparently too disturbing to contemplate — but with every trim, I imagined the generous lumps of my cerebrum eroding away, eventually leaving me with a perfectly spherical lump of gray matter, a bowling ball of brain.

Then a softball.

A baseball.

Squash ball.

Olive.

Pimento.

x

One day, the probings stopped. The monitors and machines were unceremoniously unplugged and rolled away, tubes hurriedly ripped from their perches in my limbs, needles left dangling from my skin. Electrodes were rudely wrenched from the underpinnings of my parietal and occipital lobes, wires monitoring my speech center and body coordination nodes disconnected and left to scrape against my bones. A disinterested doctor — #5, I think, I had never bothered to learn the names of any of the anonymous, surgical mask-clad neurosurgeons who had defiled my anatomy without so much as a how-do-you-do — slapped some cellophane over my open brainpan and kept it snugly in place with a large rubber band that grooved itself into the wrinkles of my forehead. “Keep you fresh,” he quipped as he gave whatever remained of my frontal lobe a quick caress to smooth out the air bubbles. “Nothing but leftovers up there now, you know.” He chuckled, gave the wrap a friendly slap with his fingers that jiggled my memory bank.

“I'm going to miss carving you up, Mr. Funk. It has been a real pleasure.”

He checked on Sofa's food and water and affectionately chucked her under the chin as she lounged on her carpet tree.
Traitor!
I thought.

“Good luck tomorrow,” the doctor said as he reached for the door.

“What's tomorrow?” I asked, but he was already gone, turning out the lights behind him. The lock clicked in, and his footfalls diminished as he walked down the hall. I heard the
whoosh
of elevator doors opening and closing, an infinitesimal hum as the winch lifted him off to a world that no longer existed for me.

I lay on my slab, feeling like the family schnauzer left alone while my masters went off to a late-night movie. At least the dog could have leapt on the couch for a nap, or looked out a window, or nad-gnawed for a few hours to pass the boredom. My bindings were still as solid as ever, and my body so atrophied I couldn't have fought off an aggrieved kitten with any chance of success. Sofa bounded over in the dark, bumping up my legs and torso as she deigned to visit me for a few precious moments. She paused at my fumbling fingers for a stroking, traversed the hollow to bequeath me a friendly lick on the chin, then returned to my useless legs for the day's umpteenth siesta.

I strained to hear something, anything. No snatches of murmured conversation from nearby rooms. No footsteps above reverberating through the concrete. Not so much as a creak of the walls settling. If it weren't for the inimitable feline vibrating on my thighs, I would have assumed my death had finally taken hold. But I was certain there wouldn't be purring in Hell.

Once again, in blackness.

Somewhere above me, the members of my blood sect silently stood at attention, swaying in a breeze only they could sense, awaiting . . . something. Seeing them as a herd, I thought I finally understood the virtue inherent in their mindlessness. I had feared them as a reflection of my worst self, but now I envied them their tenaciousness of purpose.

They would never question their instincts.

There was no room for insight or compromise in their world view. It was consume, and wait to consume again.

Ideological purity.

I suddenly understood the appeal of the Republican Party.

The wraiths were patient when left alone to their devices, content to linger until time itself ceased its flow. Ignorant of deterioration, their limbs gradually lengthening as ligaments stretched and snapped, their genitalia shriveling like grapes on the vine. Eventually their flesh would putrefy, exposed muscles would crisp and split in the open air, and they would collapse in heaps of dehydrated gore. In the end the room would be a sepulcher of bones; unmoving, noiseless, completely harmless except for the hunks of brain peeking out through blind eye sockets, cradled like fetuses within parched calcium wombs. The brains would continue on until man had either killed himself off or evolved to the next level and left the planet for better climes. They would wait until the sun winked out and the Earth's crust became ice, and still the brains would bide their time in freeze-dried hibernation until distant astronomical explorers happened upon our once-mighty civilization and exhumed the contents of the tomb; they'd wait until some clumsy intergalactic intern dropped a vial of mysteriously still-sparking matter and cut itself on the glass, flecking alien bloodmass over the only functioning remnants of humanity and starting the whole thing up again.

That would be our legacy to the galaxy.

One final fuck to you and the horse you rode in on.

Alien zombies.

And who was I to rebut this future? There had to be some reason for all this. Walking and talking after death, living off the blood of others, a voice gone spectral with the sounds of the grave, the mind-bond between myself and Craig, myself and Eileen; these couldn't be written off as mere side-effects of a contagion. I couldn't fathom the purpose for it all, but perhaps that was not my role.

Whether it was mere happenstance of unforeseeable circumstances or a supernatural extension of the evolutionary process, I had been denying the truth of the matter.

I was a zombie.

It was high time I embraced my pop culture heritage and started acting like one.

That said, I was strapped in tighter than a child in a car seat. Hard to behave like a ghoul when you're obviously not goin' nowheres.