The Shotgun Arcana (30 page)

“Grub any good here?” Clay asked as he sat and poured himself a glass of water from a pitcher on the table next to a small vase of violet wildflowers. Gillian set her menu down.

“Very,” she said. “Thank you for coming, Clayton. You and I have to discuss a few things. Are you sure this is the best place for such a delicate and morbid discussion?”

“I had to come down here to tell Jon Highfather what I gleaned from looking over that wagon the Dove killer used last night,” Clay said. “And then we have that thing to do this afternoon, so I figured, I hear this place has decent chow, so why not kill two birds with one stone. I can be discreet.” He picked up Gillian’s menu. “So are you telling Jon Highfather what I’ve been about? Grave robbing and such?”

Gillian gestured with her hands for Clay to lower his voice. Clay nodded and went on a bit lower, but it was plain to Gillian that Clay had no idea how to comport himself around people in public.

“If you do they will run me out of town as sure as I’m sitting here,” he said. “Not to worry, I won’t say a peep about Auggie being involved. I promise.”

“Clay, what you told us last night, what you showed us, what you did with Gerta,” Gillian said. “You are certain that there is no danger in using it, in doing what you’ve done?”

Clay waved dismissively. “Pishposh! What possible problem could there be, Gillian? This is the greatest scientific breakthrough of the nineteenth century. What problems could I have possibly overlooked?”

“The kind of problems you wouldn’t even think about,” she said. “The kind that blindside you because you don’t understand as much about life as you think you do, Clayton. Everything isn’t a problem to be figured out and solved, especially people, especially when you are talking about something like immortality.”

*   *   *

Last night, when Gillian had confronted Augustus and Clay about their nocturnal activity, things had gotten very heated, very quickly. Especially once Auggie discovered that Clay had not allowed Gerta to perish in the fire last year.

“What do you mean, ‘eternal life’?” Gillian asked, shaking her head. “You are talking nonsense, Clayton. All you are doing is tinkering with things that got a lot of people killed last year. Those worm things…”

Auggie grabbed Clay with a roar and lifted the smaller man off the ground by his collar. “
Gottverdammt!
What the hell did you do, Clay?” Auggie shouted, and smashed Clay against the wall of the barn. “You couldn’t let her rest in peace, could you? You couldn’t let me have the peace of mind that she was finally happy? No! You had to tinker, you had to meddle! Damn you, Clay!”

Clay was red-faced and obviously in great pain from the jostling Auggie was subjecting him to. Gillian had never seen Auggie so angry, so out of control.

“No!” Clay screamed back at Auggie. “No, damn you! Damn you for just giving up on her! I couldn’t just let her fade into memory! I couldn’t! Even if you could! You never loved her! Never!”

Auggie smashed Clay against the wall again. Clay drove his bony fist into the side of Auggie’s head. Gillian saw all reason leave both men’s eyes as Auggie growled and threw Clay across the barn, hurling him into his workbench. The frail old inventor and his tools crashed and tumbled to the floor.

“She was my wife, Clay!” Auggie bellowed, tears of rage and pain streaming down his crimson face. “When she died I wanted to die with her, for her. She was an experiment for you, a test subject,
ja
? How dare you tell me I didn’t care for her! She meant no more to you than these poor girls whose bodies you desecrate now! Her soul was at peace and you, you took that away from her, you arrogant bastard!”

“Shut the hell up!” Clay snarled and charged Auggie low, driving his shoulder into the portly shopkeep’s stomach and legs, knocking Auggie off his feet and onto the straw-covered floor of the barn. Clay smashed Auggie again and again with his fists and the bigger man blocked them as best he could with his forearms while lying on his back. Occasionally Clay got through and landed a solid blow to Auggie’s face.

“You shut your mouth, you stupid, blundering fool!” Clay barked as he punched his friend, over and over. Hot tears burned and blurred Clay’s eyes as well. “She’s the best human being I ever met on this cesspool of a planet! You were supposed to love her always, not just till her meat failed her, you sanctimonious hypocrite—all prayers and hymns to some imaginary God that does nothing for any of us! Nothing! You left her in darkness and patted yourself on the back that she was having tea in some Bible-school heaven! You idiot! Damn you, Auggie Shultz! Damn you to your childish Hell!”

Auggie bellowed and drove a massive right to Clay’s chin; the smaller man flew off Auggie’s chest and crumpled to the floor. Both men clambered off the floor and began to circle each other, fists raised. Gillian started to interpose herself between the two old friends, but something in her made her stop. This was old blood being let, poison drawn. They both needed this. The wound was too old and too neglected to remain.

“Who makes you God? What gives you the right?” Auggie said, his wet eyes hooded in anger and pain.

Clay stopped circling and dropped his guard. He looked at Auggie and for the first time the shopkeeper or Gillian could ever recall there was pain on Clay’s face, a grimace of soul-deep pain.

“I … I love her,” Clay said softly. His slight frame began to heave with sobs. “All my reason, all my skill, all of it falls away when I think of her. She … she’s the only reason I want to be in this world, Auggie. I knew it the moment I first saw her.”

Clay sobbed, wrestling with the pain buried in him. Auggie blinked and lowered his fists.

“You have someone else who loves you.” Clay pointed at Gillian. “You get to have another life, Auggie. Gertie, she was the only one ever for me. No offense, I know how much you loved her. I respected that and I stayed away. It’s just, she was the only one ever for me. It’s just how I’m put together.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say all that. You’re the best friend I ever had. I just love her and I know I can save her, give her another life, another chance. Even if she doesn’t want to be with me, even if she goes away or wants you back, wants another, I don’t care. I just want to know she’s in this life, sun on her beautiful face and happy and smiling and singing, like she used to. That will be enough to keep me going.”

Clay fell in a little on himself, crying, shaking from the tears. Auggie shuffled forward, all the anger gone from him. He wrapped his massive arms around his friend and held him tight.

“You … you are a good friend, too, Clay,” was all Auggie could think to say. The storekeeper held him tight and let the scientist sob.

*   *   *

It was the witch’s hour: three in the morning. Gillian had led them to Clay’s house on the compound and she made them coffee in the kitchen and got fresh water and clean towels for the men to clean up from the brawl in the barn. The three of them sat down at the kitchen table.

“Everything, Clay,” Gillian said. “Now.”

Clay sipped the coffee and winced in pain at the effort. “After last year—the fire at the store and all the townsfolk’s changing from exposure to the
lumbricina
-like creatures the infected possessed in their mouths…”

“Lumbricina?”
Auggie said as he dabbed a wet cloth at his swollen ear.

“Earthworm,” Clay said. “A very loose analogy to toss around, I assure you. But I was attempting to put you and Gillian at ease by using referential terms that you could understand.”

Auggie looked at Gillian. She smiled and shrugged, then patted Clay’s swollen, bleeding hands.

“Thank you, Clay. That’s very kind of you. Please continue.”

“The infected who suffered mortal injuries continued to function,” Clay said, “but once the epidemic was over those infected individuals were dead, while those who were infected and avoided life-taking injury were very ill, but recovered.

“It occurred to me that the process by which the so-called worms converted the host’s blood into a different substance also provided a method of regeneration and reanimation for the infected that had been effectively killed, keeping the body going past death.”

“So you took it on yourself to collect those things,” Gillian said, shaking her head. “They’re evil, Clay.”

“‘Evil’ is a word the superstitious use when they can’t discern a motivation that fits their view of the world,” he replied. “The physical world has no good or evil, Gillian. It has effective and ineffective and these worms and what they do is very, very effective. So, yes, I gathered as many as I could find alive and as much of the fluid as I could acquire as well. In the chaos of the first few days after the plague ended, it was easy enough, while the dead were delivered to me.”

Gillian sipped her coffee and said nothing.

“Go on, Clay,” Auggie said.

“There was also the matter of the late Arthur Stapleton,” Clay said, oblivious to Gillian’s silence. “He was poisoned, very effectively I might add, by the so-called worm-blood, which I analyzed and deemed to be highly toxic. So I concluded that the factor that allowed the substance to animate the dead or near dead and poison the living was the worm creature itself. Once I began to examine them and vivisect them, I began to understand what needed to be done and how to create a biorestorative formula from the creature’s secretions.”

“A bio what?” Auggie said, shaking his head.

“Biorestorative formula, Auggie,” Clay said. “It’s the secret to eternal life. Processed from the black worm venom and diluted and adulterated with certain other compounds—sodium bicarbonate, alum, garlic, to name a few, some other concoctions of my own manufacture. The end result is nothing short of astounding.”

“You sound like a cheap huckster, Clayton,” Gillian said, adding more sugar to her coffee. “Hawking your potions off the back of a wagon. I thought better of you.”

“And you will again,” Clay said, standing. “Not that I care. A moment.” He exited the room and Auggie turned to Gillian.

“How angry are you at me?” he asked. Gillian took his torn and bloodied hand carefully, and kissed it.

“Furious,” she said. “That you didn’t tell me what was happening. You do that to me again and we will have a most tempestuous falling-out, Mr. Shultz, I assure you.”

Auggie smiled and winced from his split lip. “I am a very lucky man, Gillian. Thank you.”

“Augustus.” Gillian held his hands tightly in hers and looked down at the table. “If what Clay is saying is true and he can bring Gerta back to life, then … I’d understand if you wanted…”

Auggie pulled her close to him. “No, you listen to me, Gillian. Gerta was my wife and I loved her—you know all that. You loved her, too, and it made me very sad when she passed and I … got … scared and did a foolish thing to try to keep her, a selfish thing. People are meant to grieve, remember, and continue living. I was in that half-life I damned her to as well. You saved me, Gillian—your love saved me, and it saved Gerta too.”

“I just know how much she means to you,” Gillian said. “And I want you to be happy and I love her, too, and…”

The tears were hot on her cheeks and Auggie pulled her closer to him, cradling her in his huge arms.

“Hush,
nun, meine Süße,
still,” Auggie said. “No tears, my love. Gerta is my past and it was a wonderful past. You are my future. Whatever happens with this … creature Clay calls Gerta, she is an echo of my Gerta, and I can’t go back anymore, can’t live in death anymore.”

“But Auggie,” Gillian said, wiping her eyes, “what if Gerta wants to be back with you?”

Clay returned to the room, a large, wide glass Erlenmeyer flask in his hand. He sat down and placed the glass on the kitchen table with a thunk. Inside the conical flask was a solution that looked like equal parts water and swirling ink, the two not entirely mixing. At the terminator of the ink cloud, the clear liquid had an almost purplish cast to it. On the bottom of the flask, curled and unmoving, was one of the black worms. The motion of placing the flask on the table made the thing twitch and drift a little. A small squirt of black ink-like substance excreted from its body.

“Is that thing
alive
?” Gillian said, scooting back from the table. Auggie pulled her close to him.

“Of course,” Clay said. “You need it to keep producing the substance, but at a less toxic level. Part of the formula I devised keeps it dormant. This is it, the biorestorative formula. It is capable of healing wounds, regenerating tissue and revitalizing and maintaining dead tissue. With this, death holds no more sting for mankind, and Gertie can live once again. It’s my life’s work.”

“Clayton,” Gillian said. “If you created this process and it is such a miraculous product of science, why do you need those … creatures for it to work, couldn’t you just produce the substance you need from them artificially?”

“Sadly, no,” Clay said. “But an excellent question, Gillian.” Clay sat down and placed his palm over the wide mouth of the flask. “The worms’ biology simply defies all I understand about biology and the process of life and death. They possess numerous traits that would indicate they are dead; however, they also possess characteristics that show they are very much not dead. It’s strange—the closest thing I can compare it to is that carnival of murderous hemovores that rolled through town some time back.”

Both Gillian and Auggie cringed a bit at the memory.

“Their bodies upon examination,” Clay continued, “showed similar signs to the worms … to what the superstitious might call ‘undeath.’ As with the worms, I was able to observe effects caused by their bewildering biology and produce effects I can replicate. As a matter of fact, I used some fluids I collected from their bone marrow in this formula.”

“So this gunk is made up of worm blood and vampire juice?” Gillian said. “Sounds terribly scientific, Clayton.”

“Science doesn’t promise us to unravel every mystery right away, Gillian,” Clay said. “It merely promises us there is an answer. One day, we will have the answer of how these creatures function. I think my formula is a large step toward that day. It shows that death is not immutable. It can be defied—cured, if you prefer.”