The Sinister Mr. Corpse (2 page)

Donald paused for a moment of reverent
silence, then continued. "The corpse in question is Stanley
Dabernath. An ordinary man, taken from this world far too early in
a tragic accident several weeks ago."

"And...we're clear," said the floor manager.
"Back in eight minutes."

Donald wiped the perspiration from his
forehead and forced himself to relax. The show had now switched to
a pre-recorded retrospective of the life of Mr. Dabernath, from his
normal childhood in Illinois to his sleaze-bucket years as a failed
film distributor in Florida.

"If this show ends and there's still a
motionless body on that table, I'm going to kick every butt in this
place."

"Don't worry about it," said the cameraman.
"If the guy doesn't come back to life, we'll just tie some strings
to him and make him dance around."

"Real funny." Donald ran his hand over his
forehead again. "Look at me, I'm sweating like a pig. I never sweat
like a pig."

Missy, the makeup girl who had refused to
sleep with Donald on seven different occasions but caved in on
three others, hurried over to touch him up.

Donald couldn't believe he was doing this.
The ratings were probably going to be killer, far beyond any of the
other Bizarre Reality specials he'd hosted, but the risk was
incredible. There was a damn good chance that he'd spend the next
hour of his life trying to convince the viewing audience that the
motionless dead body on the table wasn't the biggest dud in the
history of television.

Quite honestly, Donald didn't know why they
hadn't just prerecorded the resurrection and
told
everybody
it was live. After all, they were in an underground bunker in New
Mexico, whose location had been kept secret to avoid the
protestors. There'd been thousands of them gathered outside the
network headquarters for the past week, and in fact seventeen of
them had been badly injured when things got out of hand yesterday
morning.

In the most recent poll, twenty-six percent
of the American public was morally opposed to the resurrection,
while twenty-three percent were in favor. Fifty-one percent thought
the whole thing was bullshit.

Donald stood there for a few minutes,
sweating and wondering what hilarious jokes the talk show hosts
would crack at his expense if this was, in fact, bullshit.

"Did you all watch the show last night with
Donald Mandigan? We didn't get to see a body come back to life, but
we did get to see something die: his career!"

"We're back in five...four...three..."

At the floor manager's cue, Donald addressed
the camera again. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, let's go beyond
the steel door." He warned the audience again about the possibility
of being disturbed, offended, and/or terrified, and then opened the
door and walked inside the small room, followed by the
cameraman.

The cadaver of Stanley Dabernath rested on a
gurney, dressed only in a pair of white boxer shorts. Considering
the amazing talent of contemporary mortuary workers, Donald felt
they could've made the poor guy look a little less hideous, but at
the same time the visible decomposition would make the return to
life all that much more impressive. The cadaver's left foot was in
a white plastic cast. Two scientists in white jackets stood around
the gurney, and a dozen or so tubes were hooked up to the
corpse.

"Welcome, Donald," said the lead scientist,
reading off a cue card. "So glad you could join us."

"The pleasure is all mine. Ladies and
gentlemen, this is Richard Brant, head of Project Second Chance.
Mr. Brant, how do you respond to those who feel that this is
unnatural, that man should not be trying to conquer death?"

"I understand their concern," he admitted.
"However, I believe that if the Good Lord has given us the
creativity, persistence, and desire to bring a human being back
from the dead, we'd be turning our back on His gifts if we didn't
pursue it. As you know, Congress did not uphold the attempted ban
on our project, and I feel that the possible benefits of our
research simply cannot be overstated."

"Let's talk about another question that I'm
sure is on the minds of our viewing audience. Why Stanley
Dabernath? With all due respect to Mr. Dabernath and his estate,
he's not in the best physical shape at the moment, and I think
viewers at home can consider themselves fortunate that they aren't
here to experience the scent. Why wouldn't you use, for lack of a
better term, a fresher specimen?"

"That's an excellent question," said Brant.
"Of course, the body has been refrigerated for these past two
months or else it would look substantially worse than what you see
before you. However, while the science involved is too complicated
to get into in this forum, suffice it to say that a certain amount
of decomposition is required for our chemicals to work
properly."

"And what exactly are these chemicals?"

Brant chuckled. "Oh, no. You're not getting
that information out of me until we get the patent."

Donald returned his attention to the camera.
"We're only moments away from the attempted resurrection of the
corpse you see here before you," he said, perfectly aware that the
actual resurrection was at least three commercial breaks away.
"Please stay with us as we bring you this historic and
controversial moment, live."

As the show went to commercial, Donald looked
over the body. There was no doubt that it was dead. He'd touched
the body--the leg--before the broadcast and it was either a real
corpse or the most realistic artificial one ever created. And
having spent some time in morgues for his special on medical
malpractice, Donald wasn't sure it was possible to fake that good
ol' dead body smell.

The next segment was a pair of prerecorded
interviews, one with a New York pastor expressing his outrage at
this blasphemy, and one with a college professor and award-winning
author who felt that this was the dawn of a glorious new world.
After another commercial break, they went to a series of
grammatically questionable comments by normal people on the street.
After another set of commercials and a segment on the protestors,
the show returned live to the resurrection room.

"Let's talk about what exactly is going to
happen," Donald said.

"Though again the science involved is very
complicated, the procedure is relatively simple." Brant patted the
top of a large black cylinder, which held the other end of the
tubes that were in the corpse. "This machine will deliver the
chemicals in the proper doses into the subject. That should take
exactly three minutes and eight seconds. From then, we'll expect
the corpse to return to life within several minutes."

"And if this works, what condition will the
specimen be in, mentally and physically?"

"To be completely honest, we really don't
know."

"Let's say it doesn't work. Could you then
just hook another dead body up to the machine?"

"Ah, that would certainly be convenient,
wouldn't it?" said Brant with a smile. "Alas, it's not quite that
simple. Someday in the future we'd like to be able to just slap
another body in the machine and return them to life, but for now,
Mr. Dabernath is our only hope."

"So let's say that nothing happens tonight.
Where does that leave Project Second Chance?"

"Well, first of all, it leaves us looking
rather foolish on national television, as well as yourself, if I
may be so bold."

Stick to the cue cards, funny guy
,
thought Donald.

"Beyond that," said Brant, "I don't care to
speculate."

"Fair enough. Now, does the thumbs-up sign
that the other scientist is giving you mean that we're ready to
begin?"

"It does indeed, Donald. So I'm going to have
to ask you and your camera crew to leave."

Donald blinked.
What the hell?

"I'm only kidding. Just thought I'd add a
touch of humor to an extremely weighty moment in human
history."

"Ah, well, I'm sure millions of viewers out
there found it highly amusing."

Brant walked over to the machine and placed
his hand on the lever. "And so we begin," he said. After a dramatic
pause, he pulled it.

There was a loud hissing sound, several
multi-colored lights began to flash, and a motor began to whirr as
the machine started pumping chemicals into the cadaver. Donald felt
a tingle of excitement that did a bit to offset his horrible
stomach cramp.

What if this worked? What if this body really
did come back to life? He'd get to witness it firsthand, see this
miracle of human accomplishment with his own eyes.

For a brief moment, all thoughts of his
career vanished as he stared at the corpse, watching its closed
eyes.

Then he remembered that he was on live
television and supposed to be saying something. "Now, can we expect
to see any signs of change at this point in the process?"

Brant shook his head. "Nothing until the
chemicals have been fully infused into the body."

Donald watched the corpse anyway. The
cameraman remained focused on it as well, and Donald knew that the
television viewing audience was seeing a clock counting down the
time remaining until this stage was complete.

For the next two minutes, Donald explained
what was going on for the benefit of those viewers who were just
tuning in.

"We're at three minutes," announced the other
scientist.

Donald silently counted down the final eight
seconds, and then the machine stopped.

The corpse lay still.

"I need to remind you, nobody knows exactly
what's going to happen, or how long it will take," Donald said into
his microphone. "It could be seconds, it could be minutes. But
whatever you do, do not take your eyes off the screen."

Donald was sweating so profusely that it was
dripping off his nose, but that didn't matter. The camera wasn't on
him.

He took his eyes off the corpse for just a
moment and looked at Richard Brant. The guy was so excited he was
practically twitching. Donald wondered if he'd cackle and shout
"It's alive...it's alive!" if this worked.

When
it worked. He needed to stay
optimistic.

"One minute," announced the time-keeping
scientist.

"We've just passed the one-minute mark,"
Donald said. "As you can see, there are no external signs of life,
but again, we don't know how long this is going to take."

The second minute passed with no change in
the corpse's activity, as did the third. By the fourth minute,
Donald was becoming a bit antsy, and by the fifth, the stomach
cramp had far overtaken the tingle of excitement. The sixth,
seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh minutes consisted of
increasing degrees of being pissed off.

"I would like to stress once again that
nobody knows how long this is going to take," said Donald, who felt
that he probably had flop-sweat dripping from his
teeth
by
this point. "This type of human accomplishment has never been
accomplished by humans before, and so we have to be patient. Mr.
Brant, at what point would we consider Project Second Chance a
failure?"

"There are never failures in science, only
opportunities to learn from our mistakes."

"Okay, so, at what point do you decide that
tonight's experiment is an opportunity to learn from your
mistake?"

"Obviously we're going to continue to monitor
the cadaver for as long as it takes."

"I understand that, but let's pretend that
eventually we need to go to a commercial break..."

The time-keeper scientist pointed to the
corpse's hand. "We've got movement in the index finger of the left
hand."

Donald's frustration vanished. "Ladies and
gentlemen, if you'll look closely, you'll see that we do indeed
have a tremor in the corpse's finger. In fact...yes, it looks like
the middle finger is twitching as well. My God, this is incredible.
Approximately twelve minutes into the procedure, two of the
corpse's fingers are showing unmistakable movement."

And then, without warning, the corpse sat up,
screaming.

CHAPTER THREE

Stanley Dabernath sat up, tubes popping free
of his body, and shrieked as if waking up from the Godzilla of
nightmares. "
Shit!
" he wailed. "
Mother of fuck!
"

Where was he? What had happened to him? Who
was that guy with the camera?

"
Holy shitting damn shit!
" he
screamed, looking around the room, eyes wide. His vision was kind
of blurry, but he could tell that there were a couple of guys
dressed in white and some guy holding a microphone.

Had he been on the operating table? Had he
almost died? This place didn't look like a hospital room. Maybe
these people were conducting illegal experiments on him.

He screamed some more.

"Stanley, can you hear me?" asked one of the
men in white. "Can you understand what I'm saying to you?"

"
Shit!
"

"Stanley?"

"
Shit!
"

"Stanley?"

"
Shit!
"

His whole body felt like it was burning up
from the inside. He realized that the other man in white was coming
at him, holding some kind of freaky metal thing, so he punched the
guy out, sending him crashing into some black cylinder-shaped
machine with tubes connected to it. The force of the punch hurt his
hand so badly that he thought he'd shattered it, and he let out a
profanity-laced cry of pain.

Tubes. There were more of them in him. Who
knew what kind of stuff his body was sucking up? He yanked the
remaining tube out of his side, and then began to pull out the ones
in his legs.

Then his vision went into sharp focus as he
looked at his legs.