Husk (36 page)

His eyes blinked at me. I
had
always wondered whether that was possible.

I took him by the nose and slipped the two of us forward, feeling his curses swarm over my neurons, tossing him across the doctor's body and having him wait for me as I lugged myself over. I brought myself to a sitting position against the wall and picked the head up to face me.

“So,” I said. “Here we are.”

What do you want, Sheldon
? There wasn't much movement in the face, the musculature too vandalized, but his eyes still shone with fury.

“What do I want?”

I can help us both, Sheldon. We
can
be rebuilt. You know this is possible.

“You trying to bargain with me?”

You and I, Sheldon. We could rule this world.
You just need a little guidance.

“You know, I'm sick of guidance. It feels like I haven't been myself in. Forever.”

We can be gods. I can feel the power out there, in a way you never could. I am so much more than you. I can sense the powers beyond our world. Given time, we can harness them! Reshape the planet with our minds!

“Wow,
magic
zombies. Where were you when. I was looking for scripts?”

Don't be a fool, Sheldon. There has to be a reason why you were chosen. I believe this is it! You were meant to be so that
I
could be! Sacrifice for the greater good! I see this now. They tell me this. We are their emissaries. It was fate that brought us together, to become avatars for beings long absent from this reality!

I mulled that over. Rowan started to slide herself over to the door as I pondered; I fired another shot over her head to keep her still, raining plaster dust over her hairdo.

Fate. If there had to be a reason . . . maybe the gods did choose me as a vessel. Who was I to say they didn't exist, or that there wasn't
some
force beyond my comprehension moving me across a hyperdimensional chessboard? Nothing about me made sense anyway. Wasn't it just so much fucking easier to say I never had a choice at all? That I was just a pawn, a character in a poorly conceived pulp novel of gore, tragedy, and painful metaphors?

I thought of Fisher, watching myself gut him with my fingers.

I thought of setting fire to Mom's body.

I thought of Duane, above me, brain all but gone, his lovely soul scrambled like eggs in an omelet. I thought of what could have been with him, had I still been alive and not a coward to my own insecurities.

I thought of my stomach, open in my lap, somehow still gurgling.

“I never put much stock in gods,” I said. “As you said. I've never been the contemplative type.”

This is a chance for immortality! We'll become vessels for beings of unimaginable energies. Can you not see them? Can you not hear them, bellowing from the void? They are ordering us to proceed, Sheldon! The plan is almost complete. They are willing to forgive; they understand that they didn't get the formula right with you.

“You know,” I said, bouncing Dixon's head back and forth between my hands like a basketball, “there are schools of thought. That say when you eat someone. You gain their knowledge. I saw some movies like that. Until now, I knew that wasn't true.

“But in your case” I raised his head and stared him in the eyes “I wonder.”

I placed him on my lap, face down, and sawed through the top half of his skull, spinning him slowly in my lap as the blade spun through the bone and freed his pulsing cerebrum to the air. I plunged my fingers in and ripped loose a McNugget of Lambertus and popped it into my mouth, hearing his screams of anger and somehow tasting his rage as my molars made quick work of whatever embers of personality abided within its tissue.

I tore out handfuls of his personality and squished them in my fists before licking his cogitations off my fingers. Around me, I fancied I could hear the walls scream as I denied vast gods/monsters from hidden realms their exit strategy.

As I devoured him, I began to see. Random clouds of his consciousness crept through my system while I chewed, jolting my neurons, pushing the rods and cones of my one eye to the edges of their capacities and then beyond.

I began to see. The walls were tissue, reality a thin veneer that masked untold wonders and horrors. Light filled the infinitesimal interstices between atoms, and silhouettes the size of mountains wriggled and pushed against the fabric of existence. Colossal tentacles wrapped around the room and squeezed. Teeth the size of galaxies gnawed at the walls.

Do you see them?
the morsels asked as they were impaled upon my incisors.

“Yes,” I answered truthfully. “I see them.”

Do you understand?

“Oh yes.”

They were nameless, and leviathan. What peeked through the fractures were the original old ones, the progenitors of every religious movement that had existed since man had shrugged off the last drops of primordial ooze and decided to wonder what else there could be to life. I was to be their vessel. They had been waiting eons for their chance to break through and claim their birthrights as rulers of time itself. Past efforts had been futile; our brains were too simple, our technologies unprepared, and the best messiahs they could summon were deceased humans with thought, and even that success they achieved only a few times among untold numbers of braindead corpses hungering for flesh. But deathlessness had taught them patience; they continued to experiment, reaching though the ruptures between worlds, molding our minds, raising us to do their bidding. Now humanity had split the atom, finally advancing to the point where we could conceivably open gateways between dimensions; all they needed was a patsy. It had been me, but as Dixon said, they had once again fucked up the recipe, and it was only through happenstance that the old man had lucked into the proper procedure.

A creature as old as the universe pressed its scaled digits into reality and pleaded for release.

I lifted Dixon back into my eyeline. Only a few tablespoons of thought remained in his skull. The old man's eyes were still bright and focused, and he pleaded with me to stop, that it wasn't too late. My stomach burbled in my lap, digesting a god.

“Can they hear you?” I asked the severed head in my hands. “Are you in contact with them?”

Yes, Sheldon
.
They understand your confusion. They are willing to forgive. This can still work; I can still open the doorway. I see how, it is so simple.

I bore the tips of my fingers into his remnants and took a firm grip.

“Tell them something for me.”

Anything, Sheldon
.

My fingers tightened.

“Tell them that this is all your fault.”

His memories imploded.

“You should never have killed Duane.”

I wrested the last of Dixon free. His eyeballs sucked back and out of his sockets and jiggled between my fingers.

I crammed Lambertus Dixon into my mouth and swallowed him up.

The walls blinked back to normality.

I let the empty head tumble from my fingers. It rolled into my chest cavity, and I was too tired to care.

I looked over at Rowan, still sitting, watching me warily.

“Do you know what I just saw?” I asked her.

She shook her head.

“Neither do I. And I am too tired. To think about it.”

We regarded each other.

“So, what happens now?” she asked uncertainly.

“What do you think. Should happen?”

“Could I go?”

“That's one option. Or I could eat you. Option two.”

“I always had your best interests at heart, Sheldon.”

“That's true. Until the end, of course.”

“Well, I
am
an agent, after all.”

We shared a chuckle over that.

“I don't know what I am anymore, Rowan. I thought I was an actor. Then I thought I was a zombie. Just now, I could have become a god. Where do you go from that?”

“We could still make some money together. Go on an international tour. Tell people what you've seen. You could donate the profits, if you want. You're still functioning, more or less.”

I lifted up my stomach, dancing happily as Dixon's eyeballs dissolved. “Definitely less.”

She smiled. “We'd have to clean you up a bit, of course.”

“I think that would be. Like putting lipstick. On a pig at this point.”

“You'd be surprised what a touch of rouge can do.”

“I'm sure I would be. Catch.” I tossed the saw over to her. She picked it up hesitantly.

“Do you . . . do you want me to . . . kill you?”

I waggled the gun at her. “Don't get any ideas, Rowan. No, I still blame you for Duane. And all this, of course. You could have told me at any time. But you used me. Like a good agent should. Sold me out for thirty pieces of silver. I don't think I can forgive you.”

She hung her head. “I
am
sorry, Shel.”

“Too little, too late.”

“Then why—”

“Why the saw?” I pointed at the bulk of Simon. “Don't you see him twitching there?”

Rowan looked. Simon's fingers were beginning to spasm.

“I don't think. I'll have much time left here. But since I'm going to go. I'm going to go as what I am.

“I am a zombie. It's time to monster up. But I figure I do owe you. A fighting chance. You
did
stay with me. When others doubtless would have dropped me. I haven't forgotten that. And I am grateful. So we're going to wait here. Until my new disciple Simon. Is good and ready.”

Simon started to shake. Rowan rose unsteadily to her feet.

“And then, we will see. If you deserve to leave this place. Alive.”

She took a step toward Simon, raising the saw.

I cocked the gun, stopping her.

“Not before he's up. Let's keep this fair.”

c

She gave as good as she got. Have to give her that.

v

After Simon finished deboning his meal, I had him scoop out Rowan's braincase and wolf down the matter; I didn't want her returning.

By that time, both soldiers and the doctor had reanimated. I let them get a few noshes down their gullets, and then had them stand at attention. They obediently lined up by the door, swaying in an invisible breeze. I considered letting them run free through the complex, have some fun, but I had a few things left to do, and I'd need a little help.

At my command, in fits and starts, Simon ineptly bundled me up in his arms and hefted me over to Dixon's mechanized wheelchair. Strings of red meat hung from the crevices in his teeth, drool poured out of his mouth and filled the cavity where I once had a circulatory system. I then had him gather as many lengths of wire as he could and wrap them around me, binding me into a sitting position. This was arduous for the mammoth ghoul; lacking the basic faculties to understand the difference between
wire
and
intestines
, he more than once scooped up handfuls of my past agent's colon and handed them to me. I had to mentally order him to
walk forward two steps, bend down
, and
pick up those things directly in front of you
. In this manner, I had enough cord to wrap around me fully, supporting my useless torso and neck. It was an ugly job, but then again, I was the wholly disemboweled remains of an up-and-coming Hollywood star; I was as ugly as it got.

Successfully trussed in my vehicle, I maneuvered the chair to the door and pushed the door lock button, releasing the five of us into the clean white hallway outside. Simon led the way, and I kept the others wandering behind me as spares. I collected all their weapons on my lap, thankful I had had one day's worth of arms training when I played Cop #7 on the set of
X-Men
. I couldn't have told you what kind of guns they were, but I knew which end would spit lead should it need to.

We unhurriedly shuffled to the elevator and waited while it rose to our level. A male nurse stepped out as the doors opened, saw us before him, and found himself gutted and decapitated before he realized that this wasn't his floor.

I couldn't swing the chair close enough to reach the buttons, and ordered the doctor to press level thirty-six. The good doctor had lost a lot of accuracy in his aim, and I had to have him mash his palm over every button, praising him with a
good job!
after every successful depression. We stopped at every floor on the way down. I kept a gun leveled at the door for the entire trip, but the complex was hardly fully manned, and we saw not a soul as we descended.

Sofa, as much as it is possible for a cat, looked pleased to see me. She jumped into my lap and purred mightily as I scratched her behind the ears and on the sweet spot between her eyes. She wasn't as pleased as I loaded her into her carrier, but I threw a few treats inside to keep her content. I directed Simon to carry the cage, and had the soldiers take point for our trip to the surface.

The doctor was more effective this time; we stopped at only five extra floors. I had to shoot a mercenary taking a cigarette break on level seventeen, and I allowed my soldiers to make short work of an unlucky trio of scientists on level five. Unbidden by me, one soldier ceased his munchings long enough to offer me a chunk of thigh.

Level one. The doors opened to the medical bay, each bed still occupied by one of my cousins in various states of disrepair. Doctors and nurses tended to the corpses, hacking at bone, withdrawing fluids, carving abstract sculptures from brains, not bothering to look up, not willing to admit that they weren't learning anything new, just going through the motions, another day at the bloody office, unaware that each of their charges had ceased its struggle and had swiveled its head in my direction.

I had the doctor walk calmly forward between the beds toward the far doors where two gunmen lounged, bored, on either side. They quietly mumbled to each other across the doorway, seeing only another doctor come to check on his patients, barely noting the slight stumble in his stride, the abnormal crook of his neck.
Nothing out of the ordinary here,
I thought,
just keep doing your jobs, please ignore the enormous wound decorating my throat.