by Damon Novak
“I can get her with the boat hook,” I said. “Still want her, Georgie?”
“Purely out of medical fascination, yes,” said Georgina. “But I’m not sure if you’re going to want to watch.”
Ω
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In another twenty minutes, we’d fished the female zombie from the swamp and had her cuffed to one of the two Adirondack chairs sitting in front of our shop. Both were made of resin, and while one was painted with Flamingos, the one our zombie guest was in had a palm tree motif.
The livin’ dead thing wore dark red pants and a white cotton shirt, with both her feet bare – probably wearin’ sandals before they became too challenging.
We’d used rope to tie her legs, both at the ankles and the knees, and we’d done the same at her elbows and wrists, despite the handcuffs. We all wanted to be damned sure she wasn’t goin’ anywhere, even if she had an unexpected burst of adrenaline and was able to snap the rope restraints.
The additional time had done a number on her slashed face, her lower lip folding down against her chin, and her severed eyelid making her left eye appear as though it might pop out of her head. Her torso had huge gashes in it from the gator’s teeth as well, and some of her guts were beginnin’ to spill out.
“I’ll need a sharp knife,” said Georgina.
“You sure you wanna do this?” I asked.
She looked down at her clothes. They were blood-spattered, wet, and practically see-through. “These might as well be scrubs. Hold on.” She leaned forward and took the creature’s wrist in her hand. Her fingers settled where they would if she were reading a pulse.
After a few seconds, she looked up. “Dead.”
The zombie growled; it was a throaty sound that I couldn’t understand how she could make without air comin’ out of her mouth. Either I didn’t pay enough attention in biology, or she was … different.
“In my experience,” she added, “it’s never been unethical to gain knowledge from the dead. She’s essentially a cadaver, and since it’s unlikely we’ll be able to get consent from her family, I have to make an executive decision. With police approval, of course.”
I looked at Sonya. “You approve?”
Sonya nodded. “Cut that bitch. I seriously doubt she would’ve asked permission to eat your face off.”
“Now, now,” said Lilly. “I’ve never seen her here, but she might’ve been a customer. Let’s have a little respect.”
The growl almost sounded like a choking sound, and I mean a two-hands-on-the-neck, cartoon overdramatization of someone chokin’.
“Fuck this, hold on,” I said. I dropped down to the nearest toolbox and pulled out a roll of duct tape. “You gonna need in its mouth, doc?” I asked.
“Not right away,” said Georgina. “I’d actually prefer you tape it. That way I can put the worry of being bitten aside.”
I pulled a foot off the roll and held it, pushing it over her mouth. Then I stuck the one end to her hair, which didn’t work out so well. It was still wet. I ended up wrappin’ the tape around her head three times before I was satisfied.
As I wrapped her, my eyes were drawn to the gash I’d cut across her face with the Ka-Bar. It was deep as fuck, but the meat inside was almost brown.
“That will do. Now I need cutting tools.”
“You need a nice sharp knife, I’m guessin’,” I said. “Sorry I dropped the Ka-Bar. It was sharp as hell.”
“I have fillet knives,” said Lilly. “She’ll manage.”
She unrolled a knife-sleeve and said, “Here, have a look.”
Georgina stepped over and slid knife after knife out. She finally pulled one out and held it up. “This looks like it hasn’t ever been used.”
“It hasn’t,” I confirmed. “Too stiff for my likin’.”
“Perfect for my needs,” she said. “Have you got other gloves? Thinner, like latex?”
“I do,” said Lilly, just as I was about to blurt out a negative answer.
She ran back to the restroom and came out with a Kleenex-sized box filled with gloves.
“Need an assistant?” asked Lilly.
“You really wanna do that?” I asked.
Lilly looked at me. “First off, no. The gloves won’t fit your giant hands, and Sonya here risked life and limb to save that dog. It’s my turn.”
“You know what they say,” I said, “Big hands, big –”
“Ego,” blurted Lilly.
I shrugged and quit while I was behind.
As Lilly pulled off her top and shorts, revealing her white bra and blue underwear, I spun around, looking at the door. “Some warnin’, sis,” I said.
“Not anything you haven’t seen before,” she said.
I waited anyway. In about a minute I turned around and saw she’d pulled on her boat cleanin’ shorts and one of the hoodies we kept around the place. Red, with the Baxter logo on it. Nothin’ too creative; just a side view of a big gator with its mouth open.
“So, what’re we looking for?” asked Lilly.
“Well, any kind of pulmonary function. Vital signs, you know. Heart, blood flow, temperature. Stuff like that.”
“I have a meat thermometer,” said Lilly. “Will that help?”
“It will actually kill two birds with one stone,” said Georgina. “Pain threshold, if any, and temperature.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Give me the thermometer.”
Lilly got it out of our barbeque supply cabinet. Sometimes, we had little cookouts on the dock for our guests, so we were set up pretty good. I figured if we were forced to stay here a while, I’d be harvestin’ a gator and cookin’ it up, so it was a good thing.
Wasn’t so sure I’d use that knife, though.
“Okay, weak stomachs, go inside. It’s going to be hard enough for me to do this. They may be alive when I open them, but they’re sedated and still.”
“It’s in the name of science,” said Lilly. “Sonya, in or out?”
“If this is our new reality,” she said, “I’m not missing any of its lessons.”
Georgina looked at everyone, nodded, then jabbed the meat thermometer right through the pants, into the she-thing’s thigh.
It didn’t twitch, and its now-muffled moans were muted but unchanged. Her dead, white-coated eyes darted back and forth between all of us.
Me and Sonya twitched. I think Lilly was too fascinated to be shocked.
“That answers the pain question,” said Georgina. “That even made me wince.”
“I’m sure you’re just a touch subtler than that in the operatin’ room,” I said.
She ignored me. “While I know her heart isn’t beating, I still want to examine it,” she said. “And if there is a way – and I know this is going to sound awful – I’d like to cut the crown of her skull away and have a look at the brain. She clearly has some ability to understand what she wants and how to pursue it.”
I felt tiny, almost microscopic beads of sweat form on my upper lip and forehead. Then that tingly feelin’ came over me, and just the thought of what she wanted to do made me feel like pukin’.
“You okay, Cole?” asked Sonya. “You’re white.”
“Oh, never better,” I said. “Just warn me before you saw the top off its head.”
“We have a Dremel multi-tool,” said Lilly, looking over at me. “I’ve watched a lot of autopsy shows. They use something like it in the ME’s office, right?”
“I’ve never worked for the Medical Examiner, but I’ve watched the same shows,” said Georgina. “Is it electric?”
“Yeah, battery-powered, but it’s charged. All my stuff is,” I said.
I walked to the back room to get it off the table. When I returned, I squeezed the trigger a couple of times, fast. The sawblade spun as it whirred.
“Here you go,” I said.
“No time like the present. Getting through the chest plate will be easier with this, too.”
I hoped nobody look
ed at me. I was pretty sure the look on my face was fixed there.
“Do you have any goggles?” Georgina asked.
I smiled. “Yeah, you need a snorkel, too?”
“No,” she said, her face serious.
“I was just – never mind,” I said. I wiped the smile from my face. I supposed nervous joking wasn’t the proper approach right then.
“What did you expect, asking him?” asked Lilly, rolling her eyes before going back inside and leanind down behind the counter. She brought out a swim mask. Georgina took it and fit it over her face.
“It covers my nose, too,” she said. “Got anything else?”
“Let me see that,” I said, taking it from Georgina. I pulled another knife out of the sleeve and cut the rubber nosepiece off. I gave it back to her.
“Necessity,” said Georgina. “The mother of invention.” She put it on.
And without warning, she started cuttin’. As that circular blade spun, she put it against that female zombie’s head and it sank in fast. At one point, it appeared to increase in RPMs.
“I’m through. Now to cut around,” she said, pushing the device around the back of her head in a counter-clockwise cut. Chunks of skin with tufts of hair flew away as she cut, and I stepped back.
Now, I don’t know whether she cut that direction for a reason or not. All this shit was above my pay grade. Which was currently zero dollars per hour.
Still is, come to think of it.
I’ll admit, I had my eyes squinted most of the time, pretty much to the point I couldn’t see shit. I was back about five feet, but the zombie tied to the chair wasn’t the reason. Even Lilly was practically hidin’ behind the door to the shop, keepin’ out of the line of fire.
I can’t tell you how big a sigh I let out when that saw stopped.
“Now for the fun part,” said Georgina, setting the saw on the round wooden table beside her. “I need something to pry with.”
Lilly held out the thick-bladed knife. “This do?”
“A long-handled flat-blade screwdriver or a pry bar would be better.”
Without a word, I ducked inside and brought out a 16” flat blade screwdriver and a carpenter’s hammer.
Georgina took both from me without a word. I could tell she was focused on the task at hand. To her, it was like calling out, “Scalpel,” in surgery. No thank yous or your welcomes. Just business.
She put the tip into the cut just above the rotter’s left ear and tapped on it twice with the hammer. It slid in, the thicker part of it separating the two pieces of skull about an eighth of an inch to start. She pried up slightly, then pulled it back out.
She moved to the back of the zombie and did the same thing. Again, just over the right ear, and once more in the center of her forehead.
“Here goes nothing,” she grunted. She jammed it in again and pried it downward. The detached crown lifted with a disgusting sucking sound, like a boot gettin’ pulled out of thick mud.
I blew out hard and bit my lip. She put the screwdriver down, grabbing the top of the dead woman’s skull, twisting hard. The cap came off in her hands.
As she lifted it, I could see the inside of the crown was dripping black, like the nasty rain that had fallen. I could smell it; it was the same rank odor.
The brain was bathin’ in that putrid muck.
“I’d say that is a sure sign they can’t be cured,” she said. “That black liquid clearly penetrated the pores and seeped through the bone of the skull,” said Dr. Lake – because that’s who she was right then. “Unless it entered by way of the ears, nasal cavity, eyes and mouth and then permeated the rest.”
“Are our brains like that now?” asked Sonya, her eyes wide.
Georgina looked at her, then at me and Lilly. “God, I hope not. It doesn’t seem likely, but if any of that inky liquid did get inside of us, it may just work its way out of our systems.”
“I’m dreadin’ my next piss,” I mumbled.
She put her hand on the brain. “Hmm. Interesting.”
“What?” asked Lilly.
“Hold on.” Georgina reached down and plucked the meat thermometer from her leg. She looked at it, then eyed the thermometer mounted to the pole. “Both around 88 degrees,” she said. “She’s room temperature. Definitely deceased.”
I shook my head. This lady had balls on her. “Why’d you check that now?”
“Because her brain is warm,” she said. “It doesn’t make any sense. It’s … hold on.” She reached down and set the meat thermometer on the table. “I know cerebral trauma kills them, but I want to take a temperature of her brain. Unfortunately, this isn’t the right tool. It might kill her.”
I held up my hand. “I vote stick her.”
“Hold on,” said Lilly, ducking inside the office. In less than thirty seconds, she was back. “I bought this to have on hand. It’s one of those thermometers you just swipe over a kid’s forehead.”
Georgina held out her hand. “That should do it.” She pushed the power button, let it zero out, and wiped it lightly across the exposed brain. Looking at it, she said, “Amazing. It’s not just warm. It’s almost hot.” She held it up.
I read 105 degrees. “Is that right? Sure it’s not on centigrade or somethin’?”
“That’s a Fahrenheit symbol, so no,” she said. “I can feel the heat coming from it through these gloves.”
“What does it mean?” asked Sonya.
Georgina shook her head. “I don’t know, but it indicates something else is happening in this noggin of hers. All the others, too, most likely. Whatever was in that rain might be interacting with her physiology.”
“So, the question of the hour. Why her, Tanner, Clay and my Pa, but not me and Lilly? Or you, or Sonya?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t intend to get all the answers right now. This is the beginning, I suppose. I’m still not sure how she’s moving at all. You can see by the cuts on her face that she has no blood flow.”
“Somethin’ I noticed right away,” I said. “Not that I’ve ever slashed someone in the face before, but I know what I expected.”
“You still want to see her heart?” Lilly asked.
“Yes, but carefully. I don’t want to damage it.”
Without hesitation, she knelt down in front of the creature and unbuttoned her wet, stained blouse. She pulled it apart to reveal a white, lace bra with a front catch. She sprung it – that’s what I always called it – and it fell away.
I looked away. Too long a look at dead tits like that, and I might be ruined forever.
“Wussy,” said Lilly.
“I got my reasons.” Even as I said it, my curiosity got the better of me and I turned around again, eyein’ the pseudo-surgery out of my peripheral vision as best I could.
“I’ll cut around and pull the skin away, then use the saw to cut through her chest plate.”
She was cuttin’ as she described her intended moves, and before I knew it, she’d cut about a six-inch circle right around the middle of her chest. Utilizin’ the fillet attributes of the knife, she sliced the skin away, revealing the plate.
I swear, I would’ve leaned forward and handed her the saw, but Lilly did it first, and I wasn’t wearin’ gloves.
“Thank you,” said Georgina.
I gotta admit, I was a little slighted that my sister got a thank you and I didn’t. Maybe it was a woman thing.
When the saw started, I gritted my teeth. To my relief, it ended before any of ‘em shattered in my mouth.
“Let’s see what we see,” she said, probing the hole with her fingers. Then: “What the –”
“What is it?” asked Lilly.
“Do you have a flashlight?”
“Hell yeah, about twenty of ‘em,” I said. I went in and brought out a mini-Mag Light. “Here.”
She shone it in the hole. “My God,” she whispered.
“What is it?” asked Sonya. She glanced at Lilly and me.
“It is beating,” she said, her
eyes not leaving the interior of the woman’s chest. “But not really. It’s sort of … undulating. It’s expanding and contracting, but not the way a heart is supposed to beat.”
“If it’s doin’ that, then why doesn’t she bleed?” I asked.
Her eyes went down to the creature’s thigh where she’d jabbed the meat thermometer. She reached down and touched the hole.
She brought her hand up. It was coated in dark, red blood. “Well, I’ll be.”
“She is bleeding?” asked Lilly. “Then … why not her face?”
Lilly took the knife again and ran the tip down her forearm, from her elbow to her hand, lifting it to get over the handcuffs. The same dark blood pooled at the incision.
She then reached over and cut her other arm. She repeated this on both the thing’s legs and put the knife down.
“She’s dead. Or in some other highly abnormal state. There’s no healing her or any of them, but she’s existing in a state unknown to medical science, that I can tell you.”
“So she’s got blood flow through her extremities?” asked Sonya. “But not her face?”
Georgina began to look pale, and she steadied herself on the Adirondack. I leaned down and took her by the arm. “You alright?”
She shook her head and pushed herself to her feet. “I’m fine,” she said, but I knew she was lyin’. “This is the kind of discovery that throws my kind for a loop. There’s just no medical explanation.”
“How about a pissed-off Indian witch doctor explanation?” I asked. “That make more sense?”
To my surprise, she delivered a half-smile. “To be honest, I’d welcome a supernatural explanation right now. Medically, she’s an anomaly. So are the others out there.”
“You done with her?” I asked.
“I’ve learned all I can, I think. Not that it helps us very much.”
“I’m going to venture a guess that right now that we know more about them than anyone else,” said Lilly. “And no matter how weird it is, knowledge is better than the lack thereof.”
“Cut her brain, would you?” I asked. “Let’s see if it’s the brain that kills ‘em. Last experiment. Then I’ll kick her into the canal.”
