Nightmare of the Dead: Rise of the Zombies (21 page)

"Give me the case with my tools," Saul directed. "It's lying by the door."

McPhee picked up the case and dropped it on the bed beside the doctor. "I'll give you two hours." He opened the door and left.

The man was clearly desperate, or else he would have already left. They'd made no formal arrangement between them; Santiago had taken care of the mercenaries. Who was this man to ask questions of him? He wasn't quite sure even knew what the man's name was. Hadn't he been a Union spy? Santiago may have mentioned it.

Saul was finally alone with his thoughts and his pain. While he failed to
convince
his sister to join him, he was left to wonder about the injection
that
he gave t
o
Santiago. It was a special cocktail, an experimental mixture; its power was so immense that Saul had actually been afraid to administer it. Mother had been designing it for years, and if it worked, then it could be used on her, finally. The latest mixture had been created and formed from ancient, arcane scrolls and recipes that had been composed through the centuries by Mother's family. His sister was supposed to receive the power, but it didn't work out. She refused to rejoin the family. Even after he wiped her memory clean so that she would forget their past conflicts, she refused to be his sister.

Since his sister survived, he had to assume that Santiago was destroyed.

If he was destroyed, so much the better. It was the only way to know if the formula worked to its fullest potential. But how long would it take to work? The Collective didn't know about this latest incarnation of their coveted weapon, because they preferred Mother's current state of incapacitation. Saul was a curious scientist, always interested in the results of his work. 

He withdrew a surgical saw from his medical case and tried to look over the edges to determine whether or not it was dull. The lamp's meager yellow light flickered. Whether or not the blade was dull hardly mattered, either. He would do what he needed to get the job done.

Thunder rattled the hotel.

A long smile spread over his teeth. "Ah, Mother, the things we do for love."

While he worked on his leg, he laughed manically, and whether or not Mother spoke at all, he couldn't tell, for his laughter was long and loud.

***

In a cold, dark place, voices formed from memory echoed in a multitude of languages through a long, narrow corridor of incomplete images. The experiences of a lifetime swirled within a muddled collage that accompanied a chorus of voices that seemed to grow louder with every passing moment. In that dark place, time stood still. Reality was undefined. Voices and images collided.

Beneath the earth in a chamber of gore and freak show medicine, the wet corpse of a deformed creature lay with a hole in the back of its head, the contents spilled out across the floor and across the room. An impartial observer would have found a desiccated man that had been seemingly flayed and dissected for purposes that no sane man would have attempted to understand.

The blood seemed to shine and coagulate. As if composing a solid state, the thick, oil- substance slid across the floor as if magnetized, joining a larger pool that flowed backward into the corpse's open skull. The chunks of brain that had been blasted apart reunited and slid across the floor slowly as if being sucked back into the top of the dead man's head.

Images and voices took on definition. These were experiences that belonged to someone, once. A woman upon a black horse, riding into a fiery town where a boy stood in the center. A younger version of the same woman standing in a barn while horses neighed, a touch of sunlight dappling across her braids. A thin, wrinkled man laughing, his eyes invisible behind the glare of eyeglasses.

The voices were attached to personas, to moments in time. There was knowledge, and sensation. As memories collected into the nightmarish imagery that could only belong to tales that were told to frighten children, actualization and awareness occurred. Identity and purpose collided. Words were spoken and understood, as consciousness returned in the guise of a man who'd been unconscious.

Not unconscious.

And not dead. Not anymore.

Among the cold corpses and the severed limbs, a thought accompanied a glorious resurrection.

I live again!