by Jeff Rovin
DEATH IS JUST THE BEGINNING . . .
Medical student Herbert West is brilliant, obsessed, and working on a secret project: a serum that will bring the dead to life. First it was cats, then parts of human bodies—now he’s in the morgue, preparing his ultimate subjects to rise from the cool grey slabs. But West’s plan is flawed: the bodies are moving, but they haven’t come back to life! They’re re-animated corpses, quivering with mindless, uncontrollable fury . . . and they’re coming after the guy who made them this way . . .
Herbert Met His Roommate
at the Morgue . . .
“Dosage,” said Herbert, as he lifted the head and jabbed the needle into the base of the skull, “fifteen cc’s.” Daniel Cain repeated the information into the micro-recorder.
After fifteen seconds, Herbert snatched up the vial. “Increasing the dosage . . . twenty cc’s. of reagent.”
“Herbert you’re scatter-shooting,” Daniel said. “Let’s go!”
“No! We need the data!”
After a full minute, the big John Doe lay still, his lantern jaw and powerful hands unmoving. They pulled the sheet over the body, neither man noticing the fingers of the corpse’s right hand flick once, then again.
Daniel heard the popping and felt the spray of blood on his neck at the same time.
“What the hell—?”
Turning, he saw the corpse sitting up on the table, its joints snapping as they defied rigor mortis. Its arms were stretched rigidly before it, speckled with blood which was gushing in violent spurts from its mouth; the eyes, open wide, were glazed and dry.
Herbert’s eyes ignited with delight . . .
Books by Jeff Rovin
April Fool’s Day
Re-Animator
Stallone! A Hero’s Story
Published by POCKET BOOKS
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020
Text copyright © 1987 by Empire Entertainment, Inc.
Cover photo copyright © 1985 Empire Entertainment, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10020
ISBN: 0-671-63723-1
First Pocket Books printing May 1987
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Printed in the U.S.A.
CHAPTER
1
The sounds of Zurich bothered Herbert West as never before. It was only slightly worse than usual; he knew it was him—the experiment—and not the city itself. But it distracted him just the same.
He took the bottle from the refrigerator, held it to the bank of fluorescent lights.
“No separation,” he said. “It looks good.”
“Fine,” replied the only other person in the room, an elderly man in a lab jacket. He resumed his writing while West fetched a syringe from the cabinet.
Noise had always bothered him. Distracted him.
West remembered vividly when he was a child and there was a TV in his home in Canada. Westerns. Soap operas. Game shows. Bad enough to be distracted by noise, but to be distracted by idiocy . . .
He recalled how glad he had felt letting his parents’ executors sell it and give him the money. It was one of the few things that hadn’t been lost in the early-morning fire. The chemical fire. But his joy was short-lived. He quickly became distressed at the levels of noise generated by the kids at the foster home in Gananoque and, later, the hoots of derelicts and the melee of traffic in New York. It seemed that for all his life he’d been trying to measure out a powder or cut away some tissue only to have someone do something loud to distract him.
Then he’d come to Zurich. The city had been a refreshing change of pace, much quieter—or at least more consistent—than anywhere he’d ever lived; rarely in the last three years had he found himself wishing for a cave in the wilderness, a place away from civilization.
Until tonight.
The Montreaux Jazz Festival had brought crowds of people to the city, and they had all apparently chosen tonight to go shopping. Across the green, at Karmgasse 26, J. Otto Scherer’s antique clocks went off in unison every fifteen minutes, drawing ever more pedestrians to the shop; below, a small jazz band raised a din for people taking in the warm summer night.
Maybe it wasn’t much louder, he had to admit. Maybe the problem was with him.
Even as he pushed the hypodermic needle through the test tube’s rubber stopper and into the syrupy yellow liquid, Herbert West had mixed emotions about the experiment.
The dominant feeling, of course, was elation.
He hadn’t felt this good about a formula since the exquisite compound he’d developed for his meddling roommate, Joe, at the foster home. That one hadn’t been as spectacular, of course. It was only a variation of a mosquito-repellent suppository used by the military, a reformulation that turned Joe’s semen green and left him dateless for years.
This was more important, and not just to science. It was the culmination of seven years of dreaming, four of them fumbling blindly, on his own, at NYU, and three working with a master.
The four years at New York University still rankled him. He’d known in the first six months that the school was wrong for him, but he stayed because they’d given him a scholarship and he was able to use the labs. After having other kids at the foster home tamper with his chemicals and equipment for five years, the freedom of the university lab was intoxicating. That is, until he began discussing his work with his professors.
They’d encouraged him when he began experimenting with the magnetic field of the human brain, suggesting that it could be used to pinpoint epileptic seizures, monitor brain swelling.
Even keep it from dying.
That’s when the wolves descended.
West freely expressed his growing doubts about the inevitability of death, earning him the scorn of professors and fellow students alike. He insisted that, in theory, it should be possible to create a living fossil, an exact copy of a cell which replaced the original and continued its functions. On his own, he was able to create a very elastic copy of very simple cells—but the problem was, they weren’t alive. And no one would set aside the time or money to help him in his research.
West complained about the scientific community’s narrow-mindedness in a letter to Science News, which only made things worse; fortunately, Hans Gruber had seen the letter and sent for him.
Now, three years later, they were finally going to do it, and West found the prospects of triumph exhilarating. After the countless hours he’d spent huddled over beakers and microscopes, studying computer terminals and contemplating the wired limbs and chemically treated organs of shrews and dogs and, of late, more and more humanlike animals, he could taste success.
Even so, as the moment neared, there were doubts—nagging and profound doubts.
The doubts had nothing to do with the danger to Professor Gruber. Ever since West had joined the project three years before, they knew that one of them would have to do this, someone who could communicate exactly what was going on—how the dextroamphetamine sulfate was affecting the nervous system, whether the fluphenazine hydrochloride was doing the job for shock, if the next batch should have more or less prochlorperazine for nausea.
It had to be one of them, and—his sight already failing, his hands not quite as steady as when he’d won the Nobel Prize for chemistry twenty years before—Gruber had known that West was the man for the job. Now he was calm and ready. Seated on a stool by the lab bench, he was quietly savoring the moment in his own way, carefully spooning powders from a series of dark brown bottles and collecting them in a
petri dish. West admired his professional detachment more than he could say and only hoped that his mentor would be present to collect his second Nobel Prize.
The young man’s eyes narrowed, his thick brows folding over the tops of his eyeglasses. He studied the hypodermic carefully as the fluid climbed slowly into the barrel. He was tempted for a moment to stop at 15 cc’s. They’d asked two different computer programs for suggested dosages based on the results of the gibbon test. Adjusted to Gruber’s own system, both programs came up with 15 cc’s. However, after doing an autopsy on the ape and finding that the drug hadn’t saturated the thyroid gland and the lungs, Gruber had overruled the machines and decided to go with 25 cc’s. West didn’t agree, but Gruber had overruled him as well. “Better to overkill than to kill-over,” he’d joked. In any case, the question of who was right would be answered soon enough.
West had his doubts about the undertaking, not because of anything they were about to do; the experiment was absolutely necessary. He worried because if anything were to happen to Gruber he’d be alone . . . utterly alone. True, he’d done much of the research by himself while Gruber lectured in Switzerland and abroad, collecting hefty speaker’s fees which helped to pay for expensive materials they couldn’t justify billing to the university—like the two-toed sloth and the lar gibbon to test versions of the formula. The blind eye Dr. Willett turned to their work precluded any direct support. But the professor was always available with a helpful insight, a learned supposition, an inspired reformulation.
And Gruber had always called him Herbert or Mr. West. He didn’t have to be told or corrected, he’d sensed not to call him by a nickname from the start. He was a man of rare perceptions, and he deserved nothing less than sainthood. Unlike with most saints, however, West wanted him canonized while he was alive.
His impassive expression changing, West grinned as the fluid reached the 25-cc scale marking. The serum would work, they would publish and become famous, and—when their time came—not a soul from the foster home or the school or from Toronto and the Maple Leafs would get any of it.
Not a drop for them, West thought with some delight. He’d use it on another gibbon before he’d give it to the people who had made his life so unpleasant, so needlessly unfruitful.
Gruber looked back, his flesh taut over his bony face. “Are we ready, Mr. West?”
The young man slid the test tube into its rack and brought the hypodermic close to his thick glasses. The measurement was precise, the needle cannula was clear.
“Yes, sir. We’re ready.”
“Excellent.”
The large eyes of the elderly biochemist were solemn beneath the burst of white hair that hung over his forehead and back along his ears. The tall, lanky man weakly brushed the tangle from his brow and gazed at his lap. After a moment, he said in his thick German accent, “ ‘They scream when they’re born, and they scream when they die!’ ”
West looked at him curiously. “Sir?”
“Strindberg,” explained the professor. “From A Dream Play.” He looked back at the small mound of powders. “What do you think, Mr. West? Will we add a new dimension to the playwright’s line? Will I scream when I am reborn?”
The slender young man frowned and slid one hand into the pocket of his lab jacket. “That depends, sir. If you’re wrong about the extra 10 cc’s and there’s a buildup in the neuromuscular junctions—”
The professor interrupted with a slow wave of his hand. “I did not mean for you to take me literally, Mr. West. I was speaking about my soul. How will God respond to what we are about to do?”
The rebuke stung, but West didn’t let it show. He never claimed to be a scholar, he was a scientist. And from that sixth-grade science project, when he had kept a mouse alive for over a day using a quarter-pint of his own blood, he had resolved to be nothing more or less than the greatest biochemist since Pasteur.
“God should be delighted,” West replied. “After all, he hasn’t seen anything like this for nearly two thousand years.”
The professor snickered. “You know, Mr. West, you give me hope . . . you truly do. Whatever happens to me, you will make this project succeed. People who are unconstrained by propriety have always made the most effective scientists.”
This comment, too, West allowed to pass. Gruber always became a humanist when they were about to reach for a new plateau in their work. He had come to recognize it as the old man’s way of hedging against failure, of reminding himself and others that he was not a superman. West filled with fresh anticipation as he wondered if these ephemeral, nonbiological traits would survive the experiment.
The young scientist also felt a sudden bubbling in his stomach. He looked at the wizened man and then at the syringe.
“Professor,” West said, “there’s—something I wanted to say to you.”
“Yes, Mr. West?”
“You do know how I feel, don’t you?”
“About the experiment?”
“No, sir. About you.”
Gruber seemed pleased. He rubbed his knees. “I have my suspicions, Mr. West, but it would do my soul good to hear them—and yours good to say them, I think.”
West was clearly uncomfortable. “You’ve been like a father to me,” he said. “Whatever happens, I want you to know that I appreciate all you’ve done.”
“Appreciate.” Gruber played with his chin. “A rather mild word from some, but a serious confession when it comes from Herbert West.” He smiled. “I shouldn’t tease you, should I? In three years I don’t think I’ve ever told you that I love you like a son, and have taken a pride in your achievements that I never thought I would experience.”
Gruber was not surprised to see how uncomfortable the praise made West feel. He was not a young man who knew how to give or take anything that was nonintellectual, could not be weighed on a scale or measured using hashmarks on a beaker. But one day, perhaps, the moment they’d shared here would mean something. Maybe one day. In that respect, he wasn’t much different from Hill, whom he had caused to resign four years before for his shocking lack of ethics. Gruber only hoped that if something went wrong and he did not recover, his young associate would have the good sense, if not the charity, at least to stay within the law.
With a reassuring smile, the old man closed his thin lips over the spoon. He took the mixture down in a single gulp, and, almost at once, the compound went to work. The cocaine overdose shut down his heart, and with a small gasp he slumped over the bench; he was oblivious to the cyanide as it went to work on his bloodstream or the Acidulin as it generated enough gastric juices to eat through his stomach lining.
Gruber dropped from the bench to the floor, landing on his face with a loud slap. West hurried over and flipped him onto his back, pulling a stethoscope from his lab coat.
“August 24, ten-thirty P.M.,” he said evenly as he placed the instrument to Gruber’s chest, deftly pulling the binaurals around his head with one hand while holding the syringe, needle up, in the other. “Professor Gruber’s heart has stopped, and I expect the ingestion has also affected his circulatory system and stomach as we anticipated.” Tossing the stethoscope aside, he switched the hypodermic to his right hand and put it to Gruber’s hairless chest. “About to inject 25 cc’s of serum, which we’ve calculated will counteract the poisons and restore the professor’s dead tissue.”
Jabbing the needle into Gruber’s flesh, West pushed the plunger until he’d emptied the barrel, then sat back on his heels to await the results. The wait was not a long one.
Down the corridor, Dr. Margot Koslik was singing softly as she studied a tumor section under a microscope.
“Den atem des lebens hauchte er in sein angesicht—”
When she heard the scream, the portly radiologist snapped off the rest of Haydn’s Creation and stood with her ear cocked toward the corridor. The scream came again, louder than before.
“Professor Gruber?”
Of course it was Gruber, she told herself. He and his ass
istant were the only other people in the building, and Margot couldn’t imagine young West screaming.
“Nothing affects him,” she complained. Not a pretty girl’s smile or the triumphs of a hardworking colleague. Between the short-cropped black hair and expressionless mouth, his cold blue eyes were perennially slit and staring, focused on something only he could see.
Yes, the scream had to have come from Gruber. But if he were ill or had hurt himself, why hadn’t West come out to call for help? She hesitated to go over, not wanting to get into a debate with West over why she was interfering, why she wasn’t minding her own business. Falling into his mouth was an experience not even Dr. Willett enjoyed. If only the little bastard hadn’t had Gruber’s protection.
“Fuck him,” she decided.
The short woman rose from her stool and waddled past a shelf full of jarred organs. She poked her head into the dark hallway. Three rooms down on the opposite side, she saw hazy shadows moving violently across the bright, frosted glass of the door. She took a few steps toward it.
“Herr Professor?”
A third scream echoed from the room, followed by a low gurgling and the hollow thud of stomping feet; beneath these she heard West mumbling in his clipped, mechanical voice.
“Professor, are you all right?”
Another scream was followed by the shattering of glass, and, with a small oath, Margot spun and hurried toward the phone.
The police car swung into the parking lot just as Dr. Willett was climbing from his Audi. He stood rigid, impatiently tapping his toe as the two officers jogged over. This was all he needed, a scientific misadventure at the Institute. It would be the worst disaster to befall the local medical community since Mary Shelley had opted to make Victor Frankenstein Swiss. The three men entered the ivy-covered building together.
“Did she actually enter the room?” asked one officer as they walked briskly down the corridor.
“I’m aware of nothing more than I told you over the phone,” Willett lied in clipped, unpleasant tones. Willett had known what Gruber was up to, and that was what worried him. He’d let the professor use the facility because widespread honors and lavish grants would be accorded the Institute were he to succeed, and Gruber had promised, sworn absolutely to stick to animals.
