by Jeff Rovin
Megan gagged, stumbled.
“I can’t . . . can’t move.”
“Don’t give up now—”
“Dan . . . everything spinning!”
He picked her up. “Hold your breath, we’re almost there!”
Cain wiped his eyes as he fought through the burning waves of smoke. He kept his gaze on the dim light of the hallway and, fighting unconsciousness himself, hunched over and all but fell toward the corridor. When they reached it, he lay Megan gasping on Mace’s desk and dropped beside her. Noticing Hill’s smashed head on the floor, he pulled her to him, making sure Megan couldn’t see it.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” he said into her ear. “We’re safe now.”
Somewhere in the distance a fire alarm sounded, joining the din of the zombies and the crackle of flames. Yet through the cacophony, Cain heard a faint, plaintive cry, a voice high and pained but clearly that of Herbert West: “Gruber, I join you . . . I join you!”
It was followed by a scream and then silence.
The silence, Cain reflected, of permanent death.
CHAPTER
13
Cain opened his eyes. It seemed as if hours had passed, though he knew only seconds had gone by. His mouth was dry, and he struggled to swallow down the flat, smoky taste that filled it.
The shadow crept slowly along the table. Cain saw it, and, his muscles aching, he turned over slowly.
“Mace?”
He looked up at features that were not those of Mace. Burn victim.
Reacting rather than thinking, Cain pulled Megan to the floor just as the zombie dumped two beakers of acid on the desk. He shielded Megan as they fell, droplets searing his back and neck. Cain shrieked with pain. Following the sound of his cries, the surviving zombies staggered from the autopsy room.
Roused by the pain, Cain jumped up and threw a block at Burn Victim. The surprised zombie fell back, and Cain helped Megan to her feet.
They ran for the elevator, Cain barely ducking in time as one of the zombies picked up Mace’s wooden chair and hurled it down the hallway. He lost his footing on some of Hill’s blood and fell. Megan helped him up, then slapped the elevator button, the two pacing frantically as the digital numbers clicked off above it. The initial sting of the acid had worn off on Cain’s back, and now it burned horribly; he asked Megan to tear open the holes it had burned in his shirt, to keep the fabric from rubbing.
The zombies paused to smash Mace’s desk and rip the telephone from the wall before continuing on. It didn’t comfort Cain to know that they meant him no malice, that they were simply destructive by nature. He picked up a leg of the shattered chair, swatted it threateningly against his open palm.
“Wish this thing had a nail in it,” he said.
“Why, would that stop them?”
He shook his head. “I just want to rip those sons of bitches apart.”
Megan watched the indicator while Cain watched the zombies.
“It’s here!”
The door slid open, and the couple jumped in, pushed the button for the main floor. Cain flung the chair leg at the zombies to dissuade them from approaching; the panel began to close and was nearly shut when a section of the desk came flying back in response to the chair leg. It wedged between the door and the return panel, the former opening obediently.
“Fuck me!” Cain roared and jumped behind the desk. He pushed; as the wood slid out, he failed to see Burn Victim reach for him, the zombie having hauled her scabbed body beside the carriage. She grabbed him by the hair and, using her own momentum, threw Cain down the corridor. Then she stepped into the elevator.
The door began to close again and the zombie began strangling Megan. Cain swore, but a powerful pair of hands grabbed him and flung him even further back. The remaining zombies turned on Cain, cornering him in the opposite end of the corridor. Thick smoke poured from the autopsy room and obscured the elevator, blocking all but Megan’s smothered screams. He called to her, was prepared to run into the approaching creatures when he remembered the axe.
Cain saw it hanging on his side of the autopsy room, just behind one of the approaching creatures. With a roar which actually startled the creature, he heaved himself forward and, spinning the zombie aside, grabbed the axe without breaking his stride. He raced to the elevator, where the leg of Burn Victim herself was preventing the door from closing, and it was the first limb to go. Cain lopped it off at the knee and jumped in. The door finally shut behind him.
Falling to one knee, the zombie pulled Megan with her, her hands still locked around the young woman’s neck.
“Let her go!”
Cain brought the blade down hard on Burn Victim’s shoulder, cleanly severing her arm. The zombie made no outcry. She simply rose on one leg and turned on Cain, grabbing his throat while the amputated limb still choked Megan. Her mouth hung open, showing blackened teeth where the lips and gums had burned away; she snapped at Cain as he clawed at her with one hand. Her seared flesh came away easily, and he exposed half her jawbone and skull in a mad effort to get to her brain and stop her.
Black circles swam before his eyes, but Cain was aware of Megan falling silent and slumping against the wall. With a burst of strength, he took the axe in both hands and swung it at Burn Victim’s head. Though he was pinned in the corner, Cain had put enough force into the blow to dig deeply. The zombie backed away, and Cain swung again. This time the head came off. It fell, still alive, but the shock had caused its arms to go slack. Before it could react, Cain swung the axe again, splitting the head lengthwise. Both halves fell away.
Its arm and body undirected, Burn Victim was no longer a threat. Cain pushed her aside and knelt beside Megan, felt her neck. Placing his hands on her chest, he began pressing down.
“Come on, Meg, breathe! Breathe!”
The elevator door slid open. From the corner of his eye he could see firefighters rushing into the lobby. There would be questions, and he had no time for them. Scooping Megan up in his arms, he punched the basement button. He stumbled over the medical kit on his way out, picked it up, and hurried toward the emergency room. The door shut behind him, carrying Burn Victim away.
Patients and hospital personnel alike looked up as Cain rushed by. He ignored them and also the firefighters as they hurried past him to the stairwell. He felt a flash of guilt for not warning them about the zombies, but Megan needed him more. And what would he tell them?
Several of the nurses and orderlies recognized Megan as Cain hurried past, and they dropped what they were doing to come along. The noisy queue snaked toward the room, and Dr. Harrod emerged to see what this latest commotion was about. When she saw who it was, she swore violently.
“Cain, what happened?”
“She’s got nothing—nothing!”
“Take her into number three!”
The group hit the cubicle and split like jet fighters, each one peeling away to his post.
One nurse pressed a mask to Megan’s face. “Air on.”
Another pulled away Megan’s blouse, while a third pushed the small, round sensors on her chest. A fourth switched on the monitor over the bed.
Cain dropped the medical kit and swung toward the defibrillator. Dr. Harrod was already there, and he snatched the paddles from her. She didn’t protest. Doctors were not supposed to be emotionally involved with their patients, but it might be the edge they needed to bring her back. Looking at the flat, green line on the monitor, she knew it would take some kind of a miracle to save Megan.
“Hurry!” Cain snapped, thrusting the paddles at intern Judie Reynolds. The young woman squeezed gel onto them and backed away. “Okay, everybody off!”
The nurse on the air bag stepped back, and Cain pressed the paddles to Megan’s chest. He shot her, and her body jumped.
“Nothing!” said the nurse on the monitor.
“Putting back air.”
“Pupils dilated,” said a third. “No response.”
Cain handed the pad
dles to Reynolds and began massaging Megan’s heart.
“Please, Meg, do something . . . anything.”
Megan’s head lolled from side to side, her face colorless, lips nearly so. Her eyes were open, and her fingers hung limply over the side of the table.
“Meg . . .”
Harrod laid a hand on the young man’s shoulders. “Cain . . . Cain . . .”
He ignored her. She was a quitter, he wasn’t. More time. Megan just needed more time. He continued pressing.
Harrod looked up, nodded to the nurses. The air bag was withdrawn, the sensors removed.
“No!” Cain blurted. “She needs them. Just a few more seconds—”
“Cain, we’ve lost her,” Harrod said softly. “There’s nothing more you can do.”
The young man stopped pressing. He stood over her, arms locked, hands on her chest, head bowed. He was overwhelmed with guilt as he considered all the things he could have done to make this turn out differently. If they’d only taken the stairs. If he’d taken off the zombie’s head first. If he hadn’t lingered just that extra moment to collect West’s medical kit in the autopsy room.
If.
Cain stepped back from the body.
“I’m sorry,” Harrod said. She motioned the others out the door. “We’ll use the other rooms . . . you can have a few minutes.”
Judie Reynolds brushed her hand across Megan’s eyes, shutting them, as she left her side. Cain acknowledged the gesture with a nod, then shook his head. He picked up the hand and rubbed the fingers slowly between his.
“I let you down,” he said through tears. “I failed you tonight . . . and when you tried to warn me about West. You were right about him.” He lowered to his knees, drew her hand to him and kissed it, put it to his cheek. “He was mad, and I didn’t listen.”
Megan’s hand was cold. He cupped it in his hands. “Just like in wintertime”—he smiled at her—“when we’d walk through Gaines Park. I’d hold it and breathe on it and bring back the circulation.”
It wasn’t fair. She would be alive and well if just a part of her hadn’t failed—
Cain looked up.
“Bring back the circulation . . .”
He looked behind him, toward the door.
If.
“If I hadn’t stopped . . . for the kit.”
No, it was insane. Yet every moment he hesitated, she slipped further away. He had none of her now. At best, she would return like Hill. At worst—at least he would have a part of her.
Leaping to his feet, he went to the kit and pulled out West’s notes. He had given Hill’s head 5 cc’s, his body 10. He’d been dead only a half-minute. Cain thought hard. Halsey had been given 12 after a minute. Obviously, that hadn’t been enough.
“Fifteen cc’s for thirty seconds was enough, so four minutes . . .” He dropped the notebook, picked up a vial of reagent. “Four minutes should take 60 cc’s.”
He ran to get a hypodermic from the stainless-steel cabinet and slipped it through the rubber stopper. Would 60 cc’s be too much? Gruber’s brain couldn’t absorb 25 cc’s, but he’d only been dead a few seconds.
He stopped at 25 cc’s and bent over her body.
“I love you, Megan. Forgive me.”
Cain bunched her hair to one side, exposing the back of her neck. He put the needle to the base of her skull and jabbed it in. His breath came fast, and his mouth grew pepper dry as he emptied the needle. Pulling it out, he shut the door and once again took her hand. Over the bed the clock ticked loudly.
Five. Six. Seven seconds. He counted them out—God help him, just like West.
There were noises in the hallway, loud voices and the crackle of a walkie-talkie. Cain couldn’t make out all of what was being said, but he heard that the fire was under control and that no additional help would be needed. He wondered what had happened to the zombies.
Ten seconds. Eleven. Halsey had come back at twelve.
Twelve, thirteen, fourteen . . .
Megan’s mouth twitched, opened. Then her eyes.
“Meg?” Cain said excitedly. “Meg!”
She looked at him. There was a moment of stone silence and immobility, and then she screamed.
“Let that be a lesson to you,” Vinnie Papa said from the back seat of the speeding cruiser. “When an officer’s got a hunch about something, he has to follow it. Otherwise, he may be upholding the law, but he isn’t doing his job.”
Dave Karlin nodded as he thumped over the curb and into the Miskatonic parking lot. He pulled beside Dean Halsey’s space.
Papa shook his head. “I should’ve booked him on something. Then I could’ve had the little killer instead of the coroner.” He sighed. Ever since they’d gotten Mace’s call, he’d been like a dog with a bone, railing on about West. He suspected Karlin had stopped listening after the first five minutes, but that didn’t stop him from complaining. He hated losing a killer, especially when he’d known in his gut that West was the man. He didn’t understand why evidence took precedence over instinct.
“Poor Halsey,” he said as he climbed from the car. “I understand West got him pretty bad. Chopped off his head and everything.”
Karlin burped behind his hand as he followed Papa into the hospital. There was a thin tester of smoke hanging in the lobby. Though the elevators had been shut down, smoke was creeping up the shafts and through the doors. Papa and Karlin headed for the stairwell.
The corridor outside the autopsy room was filling with smoke as the last of the fires was extinguished. Papa put his handkerchief to his mouth as he approached Captain Joe Orlando, whose black turnout coat was covered with water and blood.
“Someone hurt?”
Orlando followed his gaze to the coat and shook his head. He turned down his walkie-talkie and took a short breath from his oxygen mask. “There’s blood and shit all over the place, drippin’ from the walls. It’s like someone painted with the stuff, you can’t avoid it.”
Karlin coughed behind his own handkerchief, and his cheeks went green.
“What did it, Joey?”
The portly firefighter pointed to the autopsy room. “Looks like some kind of electric drill went haywire, started toasting things.”
“And the fatalities? All from the fire?”
Orlando shook his head. “Looks like there was some kind of explosion in there. There’re bodies and furniture all over. And we saw the weirdest thing when we came down.”
“Oh?”
Orlando took a whiff of oxygen and said, “Three men came runnin’ toward us. They were spastic, retarded I guess, but strong as hell. One of ’em threw that desk around like it was cardboard. They didn’t seem to understand when we yelled to get out. Then one of ’em picked up the door to the autopsy room and made like he was goin’ to throw it, which is when we hit them full-blast with the hose. They didn’t like that and ran into the room. Tore the goddamn exit door off its hinges, and that was the last we saw of ’em.”
“You get a good look at them?”
“No, their faces were all cut up. But they shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
“Why is that?”
“ ’Cause the three of ’em were naked as bluejays. Spastic and naked, not too common hereabouts.”
Papa sent Karlin to put out a bulletin on the men and then wiped tears from his eyes. The smoke was acrid, painful.
“Any survivors?”
“Just one that we know of. One of the medical students.”
“Tall good-looking kid?”
“He was tall,” Orlando said, “but that’s all I can tell you. He was covered with soot and blood.”
“Where is he now?”
“Upstairs. His girlfriend was hurt.”
“What about the guard?”
“Y’mean Mace?” Orlando snickered. “We saw him strolling down Kadeth with his tie loose and looking like he didn’t have a care in the world. I get the feeling this was his last day on the job.”
Thanking him, the detective put h
is handkerchief to his mouth and entered the room. Six firefighters were trying not to disturb any of the bodies as they used a pair of canvas hoses to put out small blazes.
Papa had been at Attica during the riots; this looked worse. There wasn’t a cabinet or table which hadn’t been smashed; disemboweled bodies were everywhere, blood and water running together in streams along the tiles. He knew at once there’d been no explosion. Blasts left burns and threw matter outward, and one strong enough to cause this much destruction also would have damaged the walls.
Nor would a blast have explained what had happened to Herbert West.
West lay near the sink, sprawled across an unidentified body. The body had been opened from chin to genitals, its viscera and bone hanging from every side. Only its intestines were intact, tangled around West’s neck and torso.
He felt a certain sadness. Obviously, a trio of lunatics had escaped from the psychiatric ward and gone on a rampage. West hadn’t done anything, he was merely an innocent victim. The day was suddenly dark and unhappy. He looked down at Dean Halsey’s head, watched as rushing water pulled licks of blood from the neck.
“It’s been a bad day for all of us, huh?”
He happened to notice, then, what looked like Halsey’s body nearby; he went over and crouched beside it. It would have been tough to be certain, what with the arms and head missing, but the shirt pocket was monogrammed, and he was sure the shoes were Halsey’s. They were orthopedic, specially made.
They were also caked with mud—mud, Papa was certain, from the lawn where they’d found the body of Lenny Wengler.
It was too much to believe—West innocent and Halsey a killer. He intended to grill Daniel Cain more than a little.
Feeling lightheaded, Papa took a hit from Orlando’s air before heading upstairs to talk to Cain. Upon reaching the lobby he was informed, much to his chagrin, that Cain was gone. Dr. Harrod informed him that Megan Halsey’s body was also gone. Papa immediately called security and ordered the hospital searched, then phoned headquarters to have squad cars sent to the Cain and Halsey homes.
A half-hour later, Cain still had not been found. All that police had discovered were the three lunatics, all of them lying dead by the side of Kadeth. One had obviously been killed by a shotgun blast to the head, another by a slit wrist, the third by some kind of vehicular accident. The reports were one thing more which didn’t make sense to Papa. Those injuries were the same causes of death listed on the tags hanging from their big toes. That meant they’d been fatally wounded long before they died.
