Страница 38 из 59
“A gold star for you,” He
“Must have been hell on the malpractice insurance premiums.”
“Not at all. It was a university hospital. The taxpayers paid the bills. What did I care?”
“Your patients died of…?”
“They didn’t die. I let them expire. There were no therapeutic misadventures. I was on a voyage of discovery. Would you call a mission into space a misadventure?”
He
I gulped. “Of course not.”
He
He said, “I was testing my hypothesis to unlock the greatest secret of all, the resurrection of the dead.” He waited as if he expected his zombies to cheer him.
They stared at him with empty eyes. Pus seeped from their wounds.
He
Especially when you’re surrounded by zombies.
“I take it the medical board didn’t see it that way?”
He
If this delusional bastard didn’t have an advanced degree, I could see him hosing school buses with an AK-47.
I asked, “Didn’t you tell the board what you were doing?”
“You ever hear of something called intellectual property? If I blabbed to the administration about this”-he motioned to his lab-“then every idea would belong to the hospital and its corporate sponsors. I’d be given a plaque and a token honorarium for my efforts.” He crushed the can of Red Bull. “Instead they called me a criminal.”
“That was when you came to lovely Morada?” I asked.
“Not yet. I tried to interest the Defense Department in my work. I pitched to them, what better weapon against terror than terror itself? We’d free the suspects locked up in Guantánamo after I turned them into zombies. Imagine Osama bin Laden’s face when zombies come after him. We’ll send their dead martyrs back home and on our side. Brilliant, no?”
“Absolutely,” I replied.
He
Kimberly’s hand grasped my ankle. Imagine a rotten orange with fingers. She licked her lips and slipped the repulsive hand under the cuff of my sweats.
I raised my head. “Hey, Doc? Little help here.”
He
Kimberly snaked her arm up my leg.
Cowboy zombie did his undead snicker. “Ghaw. Ghaw.”
“Hey, Doc. Help.”
“I watched a lot of television.” He
“You mean religion?” I raised my voice to get his attention. “A televangelist?”
“Of course not. Not those charlatans. I mean the queen of modern wisdom. Oprah.”
“Oprah?”
“An American treasure. She did an entire show called ‘Follow Your Dreams.’”
Kimberly’s cold fingers crawled up my thigh like a thawing tarantula. “Dreams.” The word came from her mouth like a gargle.
My johnson shriveled. It wanted a pair of feet of its own to run away. “Hey, Dr. He
He
“Thanks,” I said. I let sensation return to my crotch. “You were talking about your dreams.”
“My dreams.” He
“Zombies?”
“It’s more than that.”
“The revenge thing?”
“Now that I’ve reanimated the dead, I’ve only whetted my ambitions. My goals before were laughably modest. Even juvenile. I wanted to even the score on every nuisance, every inconvenience, every parking ticket, every blind date who wouldn’t return my phone calls.” He
“World domination?” I asked.
“For now.”
The world wasn’t enough? “And then?”
“Think of it, zombies in space.”
“I’m thinking. Yes, I see it.” I tested the metal hoops on my wrists.
“Do you think that’s too ambitious?”
“For you, of course not. Why would you say that?”
“Are you aware of Icarus?”
“I wouldn’t worry,” I replied. “Compared to you, the guy was a loonie. Come on, making wax wings and flying too close to the sun?”
“I’m glad you say that,” He
“You want a fresh opinion? You sir, deserve a fucking Nobel Prize.”
He
I knew the way to his heart, on a wide avenue of flattery and bullshit. Now it was my turn to learn about his world. “Hey, Doc, how come some zombies are more animated than others? Take Lab Coat over there.” I motioned with my head.
“You mean Reginald?” He
Of course I had noticed how zombies cooperated to capture me. They moved as if they had one mind. They lacked auras so I assumed they had no co
He
He motioned to Reginald, who went to the shelf and returned with a cardboard box the size of a small valise. He set the box on the workbench and lifted a metal case from inside the box.
The case had a transparent pyramid. This was no doubt a psychotronic diviner.
“Let’s talk more,” He
Reginald brought a second box. From it he removed another psychotronic diviner, the one belonging to the Araneum, the one the zombies had stolen from me.
He placed the diviners side by side. He
He
“I can’t say.” That was the truth. The Araneum could’ve jobbed out its construction.
“Where did you get it?”
“It was a gift.”