Husk (35 page)

“Astonishing,” he said. He looked at me and arched a hairless eyebrow. “Sheldon, you. Were holding. Back. You never. Said how this. Felt. I feel. Wonderful.”

“Sir, we need to get you upstairs,” the doctor said, placing a stabilizing hand on Dixon's arm. “I really must insist. We have so many tests to run.”

Dixon stood still, resisting the doctor's efforts. His eyes blanked, taking on a sheen of disconnectedness, the pupils focusing past the walls. He looked to be in a trance.

Threads of drool slipped out from bloodless lips.

The doctor pushed a little harder, motioned for Simon to take Dixon's other arm. Behind them, a computer began to blare a warning as Dixon's brain activity shot into overdrive.

I could have stopped them. The doctor could not sense the thunderbolts shooting up Dixon's arm from the heat of the doctor's hand, thoughtlessly bare of protection. He could not feel the rush of blood through the fingers that caressed the old man's skin. Simon could not see Dixon's eyes bulge with anticipation; he could not hear the sudden roiling erupt from the doddering zombie's hyperactive stomach. Neither could see the world from Dixon's point of view, suddenly painted cherry.

I could have told them, had they asked. Step one was animation. Step two: lunch.

Simon wrapped a paw around Dixon's upper arm and made to turn him, walk him back to the bed. Dixon's jaw opened near to dislocation and the frail old man bounded onto Simon's chest, straddling the vast torso with his thighs. Before Simon could raise an armored hand as protection, the elderly ghoul sank his few remaining teeth into Simon's neck, tearing through the epidermis and ripping free the trachea. He tugged, and the windpipe came free, tearing loose from the lungs and hanging from his gorestained grin like a tube of raw rigatoni.

Simon panicked as his life bled away, knocking the doctor down and carrying Dixon back, crushing Rowan against my gurney as Lambertus wrapped his limbs spider-like around the giant's body and continued to feast, the two of them bouncing off the walls in an obscene waltz. Wires whipped the air as they spun, opening trenches of the red wet across Rowan's face. The soldiers fought for handholds on the writhing corpse, but Simon's wound was firehosing over the two of them, lubricating them with blood. Finally, Simon worked one hand between the snapping jowls and another beneath the zombie's ribcage and pushed. Even intoxicated and refreshed with raw meat, his muscles stronger than they'd ever been, Dixon weighed barely north of eighty pounds; he flew across the room and crashed into the bank of computers, falling directly atop the still-floorbound body of the doctor.

Dixon may have retained his intelligence, but he was blood-drunk, and gave himself willingly over to the dictates of appetite. The doctor's frenzied screams were short-lived, his wet moans only slightly longer.

Simon's will to live was merciless. He stumbled around the room as his heart evacuated itself of its last beads of blood. His eyes widened as his brain quit on him. His legs weakened, his bowels loosened, and he collapsed atop me, snapping a few of my vertebrae. He slid off to the floor, where my arm draped loosely over his trunk. Our eyes met, and I watched his consciousness expunge itself from its prison.

There was screaming. I lifted my head to see with one eye the singular image of a naked geriatric piggyback-riding a heavily muscled mercenary, tearing off the gunman's ear and ecstatically tonguing the hole. My other eye swung free, spinning, seeing Rowan sitting up against the wall, her face lacerated. The eye swung back, getting a glimpse of a large black object protruding near Simon's waist. I fought to reconcile the dual images, gave up, and pulled at the loose orb until it tore loose, automatically halving my visual spectrum.
Goodbye, depth perception.
The ball and nerve plopped to the floor as I took a clearer look at the carnage.

The second gunman had gathered his wits and was aiming his weapon, the red light of the laser sighting playing across the tussling duo, trying to get a bead on Dixon's forehead. The frenetic assault made a clean shot impossible, and the soldier began to fire rounds into anything moving. Bullets tore through Dixon's back as the dying blue plate special he straddled pirouetted, trying to throw the old man off. They punched through Dixon's body and embedded in the merc's chest and neck, ceasing the screams. Dixon rode his prey to the floor and then leapt at the other, clearing a six-foot gap with ease and wrenching the surprised soldier's jaw clean off. As the chinless man gargled a howl, the old man brought him down and proceeded to shuck the remainder of his face.

Could I have jumped like that?
I thought, amazed.
Jesus, could I
ever
have moved that quickly?

As the soldier's dying breaths bubbled forth from his lungs, Dixon stood up and took stock of his massacre. The ichor smeared over his skin, his body looked healthier, fuller; if anything, he seemed to have put on mass. His skin was tighter, his musculature more defined. The bullet wounds that peppered his chest and back were small, smaller than they should have been.

Is he healing?

He turned to me, his red grin enormous, his eyes blazing, transformed. I was a monster, but he was
the
monster; Lambertus Dixon was the apogee of our species. Compared to him, I was little better than the brain-numbed walking dead that even now I could sense screaming for release from their prison. If I was a poor man's idea of Jesus Christ, then this was Our Father Who Art in Heaven in all His terrible glory.

His chest bulged as he forced a breath in. “Well,” he exhaled. “That was. Unexpected.” A silent giggle shook him. “Is it always. That intense?” he asked me. “The thirst?”

“Always,” I said.

“It was so. Unstoppable.” He shivered as he licked his fingers. “I couldn't help myself.”

“You'll need to work on that.”

“Oh, Sheldon. If I had only known. I never would have waited.” He stretched out his limbs, examining muscles that had not moved with such grace in generations. “Glorious. Absolutely. Glorious. I have never felt. This good.” He walked over to me, his stride smooth and unwavering, and crouched down to look me in the eye.

“This isn't right, is it? You could never. Move like this. With such. Fluidity?”

“Can't say so,” I wheezed. “Always preferred the. Lumbering look myself.”

“Fascinating.” He looked himself over again. “It seems I. Have changed a bit. From your template. I'd say we were. Able to refine the process. Filtered out the impurities.” He raised his hands to the sides of his head and closed his eyes. “Sparks. Such. Such colors! Sheldon, I can
see
my brain evolving. To a higher level of consciousness. Already I can feel myself. Getting stronger.”

He looked back at me, thoughtful. “How long did it take you. To learn to speak?”

“Hours.”

“And here I've mastered. It in minutes. I'm not a zombie, Sheldon. Not entirely. I am something new. A step in evolution. What a gift you've given me.” He cocked his head, looking up. “And what is that noise? No, not noise. But in my head. Do you hear that? The screaming?” I nodded glumly, my scraps of brain bouncing about. His eyes brightened. “It's them, isn't it? Your children. No.
My
children.” He clapped his hands in joy, and his still-withered manboobs quivered. “What wonderment. They're just waiting for their orders. A whole species, mine to control. Much like humans.”

“At least it hasn't. Gone to your head.”

He shot me an expression of pity. “And there you were. With all this power. This potential. Wasting it. Hiding from your true self. You don't deserve this.”

“Never thought I did.”

He stood, stretched his limbs, becoming aware of his newfound death. “Imagine what I'll be like. Once I get my full strength! Once we start the alterations. That Doctor Rhodes had planned. I'll be unstoppable.”

“Not if you keep eating your doctors.”

“Details. I'll become invincible.”

“A king among men,” I said.

He nodded to himself. “To start. I think—” His eyes widened, then bulged, an impossibility with no blood flow. “Oh my,” he whispered. “Can you see them?”

I glanced around.

“There, Sheldon.” He pointed past the machinery, to the wall. “In the cracks. Between the atoms.” I looked, seeing nothing but painted concrete. His face slackened in astonishment. “Oh, Sheldon. If you only knew. I understand. I see it all now. I see
them
.” He looked back to me, unnervingly peaceful. “You never knew about them, did you? Somehow, you never knew.”

A whimper rose from the corner of the room, distracting Dixon from the invisible spectacle. He looked over his shoulder at Rowan, huddled against the wall, watching us, knees curled to her chest, her fingers dabbing at her wounds.

Lambertus slid his eyes over her, and I watched the appetite return. Blood oozed from her injuries, alive with copper, the scent already distinct from the dead plasma that filled the room.

He gave me a slow wink, not yet a mastered skill. “What do you think. Sheldon? Should I let her live?” He took a deep breath. “
Shall I let you go?
” he bellowed. “
Shall I be merciful?
” His voice ripped through the boundaries of time and space. The gouged remnants of my brain shriveled at the sonic assault. Rowan's electronic plugs sparked in her ears, singing her hair. She vomited over her blouse.

He laughed, taking a breath beforehand, the intake of air already a natural process. His cackle was a crime against humanity. “What fun. Sheldon, you truly missed out. And to think. I thought
you
could be a messiah. You are a worm compared to me. You couldn't even be. A proper zombie. You had to be
conflicted
. How pathetic.”

He reached down and tore off a mercenary's arm, biting off the index finger and swallowing it whole, bones and all. “You disgust me, Sheldon,” he said as he nibbled on the thumb. “That I ever thought I should. Be like you. I see now, there is. No limit to what I can achieve.”

He smiled, his grin broad, his teeth red. “Perhaps I'll keep you around. As a pet. A reminder to myself. Of what could have been. I will feed you scraps. Just enough to keep you aware. And you can watch as I fulfill your potential.”

I wish I could have thought of a witty rejoinder. Something pithy and devastating. Something a hero would have said. Something a movie star could have spat out before the climactic turnaround.

Even a non sequitur would have done.

But my mind was blank to all but purpose.

I was no hero. I never was. You can't be a hero
and
a cannibal.

I wasn't even human. I was a zombie who dreamed of humanity.

It was time to wake up. But not before one final gasp of compassion for what I once was.

I raised my arm, my hand gripping the gun Simon had tucked away into his holster, and fired.

The slug pierced Dixon's throat, pureeing the Adam's apple, puncturing the trachea, and splintering the cervical vertebrae. The shards gladly joined the bullet in its destruction and rampaged through the spinal cord, punching nerve cells through the back wall of Dixon's neck.

Dixon gaped. His arms twitched as he tried to raise them up, to plug the hole. His legs gave way and the old man fell forward to his knees, next to Simon's body, closer to me. Dixon tried to speak; his new orifice whistled.

I took aim and fired three more times, almost completing what I started.

Dixon's head flipped back, the vertebrae useless, the discs punctured, the spinal cord almost completely demolished. His body went into spasms as he tried to order his limbs to fight back, to attack. The movements ruined whatever balance he had, and he fell back, knees bending at unfamiliar angles. He squirmed as his appendages protested their orders, confused.

I couldn't finish the job from where I lay. Dixon was twitching his way across the floor, out of my line of fire, and I didn't know how many shots I had left. I swung the gun Rowan's way. “Rowan, would you be a dear. And toss me that saw?” She looked at the tool in her hand, her face slack, responses sluggish. She was going into shock. I fired a shot over her head to get her attention focused on the here and now. She squeaked and threw the saw across the floor, sliding it through the fluids that drenched the tiles. It came to a rest next to Simon's groin.

I heaved myself off the gurney and fell heavily onto the dead giant's chest, forcing a glut of black matter to eject from his mouth. A small chunklet of me wrested free from my open brainpan (
How much is even left?
I worried) and landed next to Simon's nose, jiggling as I rolled off his torso.

Holding the gun in one hand, grabbing the saw in the other, I crawled toward the zombie that was convulsing itself away from me. My digestive tubing snagged behind me, leashing me to Simon's belt. Cursing, I switched on the saw and sliced away at my intestinal rope until I was free, leaving me with an esophagus, trachea, stomach, and not much else.

Wouldn't have needed it much longer anyway.

I arm-walked through the sludge until I reached Dixon's side. He was flopping away, still angrily commanding compliance from his rebelling physique. His neck had twisted around; his face banged against the floor. I slid in next to him and used my gun hand to right his skull. The two of us stared up at the ceiling, his twitches slowing.

“Can you hear me?” I asked. “Dixon, can you hear me in there?”

His frame calmed its thrashings.

I turned his head so that he could see me. His eyes shook in their housing.

Yes.
The word filled my mind.
Yes, I can hear you still, cocksucker.

“Nice. That makes this easier.”

With the saw, I carved through the last shreds of his spinal column. Dixon's body instantly deactivated itself.