Damien pulled on handle after handle on cupboards and drawers, even tearing one off. Nothing—every cabinet was locked tight and no one had thoughtfully left keys or a pry bar lying about. The only knives were plastic ones nestled in a tray next to equally useless spoons and forks.
He did find two metal forks in the sink. Not much use as weapons, but he pocketed them anyway. The door to the old telephone exchange might well be locked, but as long as no one had replaced the antiquated lock, he would be able to bend the forks’ tines into useful tools for picking it. Mac would approve.
Mac. There was the war again. He couldn’t escape his memories tonight.
Yet Damien smiled a little as he headed for the stairwell. He hadn’t thought about Mac in ages. It was Mac—Colonel James McCallum—who had seen to Damien’s unorthodox training in the last war. Colonel McCallum had been a man ahead of his time. He was one of the first to realize that spying on other nations could not remain the hobby of gentlemen, and that while gentlemanly honor was a lovely and noble thing, the skills of thieves, pickpockets and assassins had their place in this new quiet kind of warfare.
The two of them—the colonel and Adrian Ruthven, as Damien had then been known—had spent many long nights sitting at the scarred wooden table inside the colonel’s tent, the apparently older man guiding Damien through a course in lock picking and eventually a more advanced one in safecracking. Every failure had brought out a fresh wad of pipe tobacco that was stuffed into Mac’s old briarwood pipe, every success a shot of singlemalt whisky from his family distillery.
It was shameful how often these skills had been of use to Damien even after he left the army.
“Thank you, Mac,” he whispered, laying an ear against the stairwell door. “You may, yet again, save my life.”
No sounds came from the other side, but something smelled wrong. There was a certain sharp odor…
Damien lay down and looked under the door. In the blinking red light of the stairwell smoke detector, he could see a faint shadow as fine as a thread hovering over the floor at the top of the stairs. A less suspicious person might have dismissed it as a stray cobweb.
“Dippel, you nasty, nasty creature,” he said softly. “Where did you learn such tricks?”
Damien rose to his knees and eased the door open. He looked at the line of filament that was tied to the pin wedged in the stairs’ ornate railing. It was a simple thing, this common fragmentary grenade, but it would have done the job if he had wandered into it.
“A bit out of your normal style, Doctor. You’ll regret this,” he whispered, for it must have been Dippel who rigged the trap. The zombies didn’t seem intelligent enough, and Damien had found no sign of any other humans left in the building.
The nice thing about this abandoned gift was that it didn’t care who its master was. Nor did it care when and where it exploded. It would work equally well for everyone, and would do just as good a job dropped on a zombie as it would on a poet in a stairwell.
Damien worked quickly and carefully, freeing his deadly discovery. His hands were steady but he was quick to drop the thing into a pocket. He found the metal device repulsive, and he wasn’t sure if there was any danger from the heat of his hands making it unstable.
“ ‘The benefit of training learned in desperate situations,’ ” he said, quoting Mac to the air. “ ‘Nothing like impending death to supply a man with much-needed inspiration.’ ”
His words were light but his mood was not. Damien had his fury under control, but he was still very angry—enraged at the death Dippel had wrought on innocent men in Damien’s employ, infuriated by the fear he had seen in Brice’s lovely eyes when he found her huddled on the roof, preferring to freeze to death rather than face the monsters inside. He was also very angry at having Damien Ruthven’s life upset years ahead of schedule—especially now that he had found Brice and wanted time to explain himself to her so his existence wouldn’t seem so unnatural.
He hadn’t said anything to Brice, but it could be that Damien Ruthven would have to disappear. It was a contingency he always planned for. He had gotten good at slipping away from tight situations, leaving no finger- or footprints behind.
But Brice had never faced a situation like this. He had watched her carefully while he described what his life was like, and he could see that she’d been appalled. Damien liked to think that she would go with him and eventually learn to be happy. But a part of him feared that she would never agree.
Brice wrinkled her nose and set the laptop aside. The bathroom looked fabulous, but the cleaning crew really needed to visit more regularly. It smelled as if something had died in one of the stalls and—
“Oh, shit!” She jumped off the counter and reached for her gun. A part of her couldn’t believe that she managed to locate and draw it without shooting herself.
There came a familiar wheezing, the sort of whistling sound that can happen when two pieces of pipe get misaligned and a breeze passes over them.
No, no, no, she prayed. Go the other way! But the whistling grew louder. It stopped right outside the bathroom door. The stink had grown even stronger.
It can’t get in. It was a thick, heavy door, and she had the key. She and Damien had checked. The door was locked. And it was built of solid oak panels, the hardware made of heavy brass. It would take an elephant to break it down. And anyway, the zombie couldn’t know she was here.
There came a scrape and a creak, and then, impossibly, the scream of splitting wood.
The whistling grew louder. The creature was in the room. With her. On the other side of the bank of stalls!
Brice’s mouth was dry with terror as her stalker rounded the bank and shambled toward her, but she didn’t panic, not even when its long, doglike tongue flicked out and passed quickly over its scaly mouth and jowls.
It’s not really human, she thought, aiming her pistol. Not human at all. You can do this.
Still, she hesitated for a moment. Her handgun could deliver a heart-stopping dose of lead—but would that be effective? If Dippel’s journal was truthful, stopping the heart didn’t mean stopping his creature. Not right away. As sick as the idea made her, Brice followed Damien’s harsh advice and brought the pistol up until it was level with the thing’s uneven head. She didn’t look into its eyes, not wanting to see if there was anyone at home there. She took a last deep breath and then, without any of the standard police stop-or-I’ll-shoot warnings, she pulled the trigger.
When the first bullet had no effect except to open up a small hole in the creature’s left forehead, she lowered her aim just slightly and shot again. And again.
Soon the head was ruined, but the creature kept walking toward her. She moved her aim down about forty degrees and pulled the trigger until all the bullets were gone. The creature finally toppled over about five feet away from her.
“Holy hell.” Brice sagged against the counter. The stench of gunpowder filled her nose, for a moment overriding the creature’s stink. Her ears rang and her legs felt weak.
She understood now what they meant by time standing still in an emergency. It couldn’t have taken her a minute—half a minute—to have shot the creature with everything in her gun. Yet those seconds just past had seemed like hours.
It was swell that the body had eventually fallen—after she’d switched from the ruined head to shooting the legs. The thing had not, however, stopped twitching and flexing its hands. It still wasn’t dead.
“What are you?” she whispered.
She started forward slowly, unable to look away. Her mouth may have been dry before, but now it was flooded with saliva, proclaiming her nausea just in case she hadn’t already noticed her upset stomach. Between the gunshots and this thing’s noisy exhalations—it was slightly quieter with the vocal cords gone, but still too loud—escape was proving a noisy, smelly process. It seemed that this creature wasn’t going to bleed to death quietly like a decent zombie should.
“Shut up,” Brice begged it, trying to lis
ten for sounds of other monsters who might have heard the gunfire and been drawn to the area. All she could hear was the wheezing and the hum of insects—blowflies. They were already gathering. They had probably already been here, riding the walking corpse.
The thought was too much. Brice gagged. She turned toward the sink and let her stomach have its way.
Eventually the spasm subsided. Hands shaking, Brice stood up and reloaded her pistol with the last of the spare bullets Damien had given her. The strange pistol carried only eight.
Only eight! That should have been adequate to any occasion she would ever face. It was hardly fair to fault the designers for not anticipating the situation she was currently in. Still, she wished she had something with more ammo and more power—an Uzi maybe.
Brice stared with intense concentration, slotting each bullet carefully, waiting for the zombie to die; willing it to give up the struggle and stop moving.
But the creature didn’t comply. It was still twitching, still trying to move when she had the gun reloaded. She thought about shooting it some more, but suspected it wouldn’t do any more good than the first magazine of bullets had done. She could shoot it into a dozen pieces and it would still move. And the noise might attract the wrong kind of attention—assuming she had escaped that so far.
“Damien,” she whispered, looking about quickly. The word was a prayer. “Please hurry.”
The body twitched violently at the sound of her voice and tried to sit up. Brice stepped back. It twitched again.
It is trying to get to me! Still!
Feeling panicky, Brice backed out of the bathroom through the broken door. The panel was split, cracked down the middle, and the wood scraped at her legs and tried to pull her robe away where the rough edge snagged.
Somehow the creature sensed where she was and spun what was left of its head toward her. A hand groped in her direction, and the body seemed intent on rolling onto its hands and what remained of its knees.
Should she shoot it some more?
No, she might need her eight bullets for someone—something—else.
But she had to stop it! She needed to get to Damien, and she couldn’t go up those dark stairs alone if she knew the thing would come crawling after her. It might attract other creatures as well—others that weren’t really dead. She could end up with a whole parade of zombies following her through the dark.
A padded chair stopped her backward progress. Clipped in the back of the knees, she sat abruptly, and rolled into a nearby desk with a small crash. Swiveling around quickly, she opened the nearest desk drawer, looking for another weapon or rope, a flashlight, anything—but just as Damien had discovered on their previous visit, there was nothing to be had. Just scissors, pens, papers, lipstick, a set of false nails, some kind of super nail glue…
Nail adhesive. Three tubes of it. Brice reached for the package of white tubes. Waterproof, peel-proof, stick it and it stays, the world’s best nail glue, it said.
“Will it work?” She hoped it lived up to its billing. There wasn’t any rope, and she needed to make sure that this thing didn’t get up and follow her.
She laughed once, a sound rough and devoid of any amusement. She stopped immediately, frightened by the hysterical sound.
Pulling open the package, Brice turned her chair back toward the twitching corpse, wondering what part of it she should glue to the floor. It was on its side, and only the ruined feet were still moving. Okay, hands and head seemed best. The nose was mostly intact and would make a good anchor. And for good measure, she’d glue the damaged right eyelid shut if anything was left of it.
A part of her felt sick at what she was doing. It was the smell—what a horrible stench, and getting worse all the time—but also at the idea of desecrating the dead.
Only, it wasn’t exactly dead. It was undead. Another legend had come to life for her. Wasn’t she a lucky girl? She’d remember this moment forever. There was nothing like shooting a zombie to leave a lasting impression on a stressed-out brain.
“Hell, I could end up in tabloids.” Her hands shook as she pulled off the cap of the nail glue tube, then inserted the sharp end into the tip, breaking the seal. A pungent, chemical smell drifted up to her nose. Brice welcomed it—anything was better than the smell of the monster.
“Just do it.” But she still hesitated, revulsion and fear making her reluctant and slow.
And there was something else too. It was that religious quagmire opening up in front of her again. It was all in her head, but it kept her stranded as surely as real quicksand would have done. She had to find a way to negotiate it.
Brice exhaled slowly. Fine. She could do this. She had become a master at using logic and rationalization.
To begin with, she had to believe that this creature—or rather, conglomeration of creatures—should be dead. In fact, whatever its movements, that it was already dead in every way that counted.
Therefore, she hadn’t murdered it. She’d shot it, but that wasn’t murder. She had really done it a favor, hastening it to a return to its natural state. She was not marked like Cain. And what she was doing now was not being done to a live person. This wasn’t a puppy or a baby or anything else alive. It was a dead monster. Gluing it to the floor wasn’t desecration, it was self-defense. Just as shooting the thing had been.
“I had to. I have to,” she said softly, making her voice firm and convincing.
Her childhood beliefs said that God was supposed to be merciful and all-forgiving. This monster wouldn’t be blamed for what Dippel had done to it. There should be a place for him—all of them—in heaven once the soul was forced away. Surely it would depart soon.
Was she sure about that?
Mostly.
But if there weren’t any accommodations there, or in hell, then she had to make sure that this thing didn’t come back to the earthly plane and follow her with its hideous, twitching body.
The quagmire slowly subsided and Brice could again see her way. She stood up slowly and started for the bathroom, eyes fixed on the shuddering ruin squirming toward the threshold. It was growing excited, agitated by her presence.
“I can do this,” she whispered, putting conviction in her voice. But before she had taken five steps toward the shattered door, something black and heavy fell over her head. Brice never even had time to scream.
Chapter Sixteen
One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I only know if mine gets out, I’ll have a bit of a tussle before I let it get in again.
—Byron
As long as men believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities.
—Voltaire
Brice awoke slowly. Her first thought was that someone had been using her mouth as a lint trap on a dryer. Her second thought was that her situation was probably worse than that.
She didn’t want to do it, but she forced open her dry eyes. It took them a moment to focus. When they did, she regretted her decision to rejoin the waking world.
“I am Johann Conrad Dippel,” the monster said, enunciating each word carefully.
Brice tried to answer but couldn’t.
The clock on the wall said it was 4:22—he’d been gone twenty minutes. Only twenty minutes, but the twitching corpse on the floor said he was likely too late. Dippel had probably gotten Brice.
They could now use the rotary phone to summon help. Had it been worth it?
Wanting to be certain that he had overlooked no clue—blood; her blood, don’t you mean?—Damien dropped to the floor and searched carefully. He found the casings from spent shells. Brice had obviously emptied her pistol into this creature to stop him. Shots to the head and to the knees, all well placed. That meant she hadn’t been too panicked to defend herself.
It was also a reassuring sign that there was no fresh blood anywhere, only the brown clotted stuff that the zombies bled.
Damien sighed, feeling slightly relieved. Brice had
n’t been hurt in the fight here—not enough to bleed. And the fact that she had been willing to defend herself said that she hadn’t been lost to blind terror; it was just possible that she had managed to get away before Dippel found her.
Kneeling, Damien found a tube of nail glue under the twitching corpse’s pantleg. He felt his heart contract as nascent hope died. Nail glue. An open tube. That was ingenious. Since it wasn’t likely that Brice had been taking time out to repair a broken nail, it seemed a good guess that she’d been intent on gluing this zombie to the floor so it couldn’t follow her.
But since she hadn’t finished the job, it seemed likely that someone had interrupted her while she was working.
The list of candidates wasn’t pleasant. Try as he might, Damien couldn’t bring himself to believe that she’d found an overdedicated Santa Claus, an overlooked janitor, or a third security guard doing his rounds.
Damien stood slowly, noticing the veil of disturbed vapor that hovered near his skin. He marveled that his body could be hot enough to cause steam when he felt so cold inside.
He also realized that he needed the bathroom. How could his bladder intrude at such a moment?
But that was the body for you—always needing something. Of course, you had to give it what it needed if you were to ask extraordinary things of it. And he would be asking.
Damien stepped into the nearest stall. He was calm. He didn’t hurry. But all around him, the cool air boiled as he made his plans.
“He must come. He wants you, and he was always foolishly brave.” Dippel spoke from behind the desk. The doctor used English, but it was heavily accented with German. The distorted voice echoed around her. It radiated insanity as surely as the sun shed light—and as effortlessly.
But Brice did not feel warm. Something about Dippel—perhaps his vaguely chemical smell—made her feel deathly cold. His repeated chopping at her manuscript and other documents with a surgical saw didn’t help her nerves either. It put him in a class with book burners. In her opinion, a man who would destroy books was capable of anything.
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