Thirteen Hours

by Francis Gideon

  Again.

  *~*~*

  "We should break into the building at night," Joan said over dinner. "Jus' sneak in, smash the windows, take the rest of the equipment we need, and be done wit it."

  "I know it's a tempting thought," Hans said.

  "Darn right it's tempting," Joan insisted. Each word was punctuated by a hand gesture. Forks and plates clattered against the table. "It's jus' not fair. Jus' not right."

  "I know, trust me. I hate the classes I teach. I don't believe in it as much as I want to. The students don't want to be there, but I can't say what I want to keep them there. We can barely live on what they pay me. You and Therese are both taking on too much laundry."

  "It's not too much," Therese said, though her hands were clearly red and chapped with work. "But all this equipment is getting expensive. We need to find a good solution and soon. I know it's not right to steal, but it may be our only option soon."

  Hans tented his fingers. He thought of the paradox between right and wrong he'd given his class earlier in the day, and didn't like how much he'd bled into these new teachings. What was right and wrong shouldn't matter when his action would be for the greater good.

  He shook off the thoughts of before and turned to Joan. "How is the garden coming? Have you taken a look at the plants I showed you?"

  "Yessum. All good," Joan said. "I'm pretty sure I found the repellent in that ol' blue flower."

  "Blue flower?" Therese asked.

  "Tulip," Hans said. "The black tulip, you mean?"

  "Yeah." Joan nodded eagerly. "It looks like the water on the ship, so I thought it was blue. My mistake."

  Hans nodded. He'd set aside that plant with particular interest. At one point, the entire economy of the Netherlands had depended on the black tulip because of its rarity. He was sure the economy would tip again, especially fused with the new bulbs that Joan brought, if they made something that could keep the zombies away.

  "For once, good news," Hans stated. "We will be sure to plant those soon, then. See if our hypothesis is correct."

  "Yes. But we won't know until the spring if the bulbs will bloom and if they'll work."

  Hans nodded. Just as he suspected. Hans raised his eyes to look at Therese. "I am sure our flower experiment will make us a fortune again. But can we make it through one more winter?"

  "I don't think we have much of a choice."

  "We always do. There is always a choice of what to do. Even if it is wrong by others, it is still right by some. We have to pick and choose how we want to live, because it will reflect how we die. If we die."

  "If... Oh, Hans," Therese said. "You've been reading your philosophy too much. But I do believe you and in you. So we choose to stay here. To help you. But you need to let us help. You can't take everything on yourself."

  "I have let you try. We were all sent away from the morgue. As if they knew we were all in this together."

  "That was the legal way. We're still clever enough to try others," Therese said, glancing at Joan. "We're still working on other solutions."

  "Oh?"

  "Yeah," Joan added. "I'm still tracking down all the people I met on board. Long ship nights, and I get up to mischief. I've just been busy until now."

  "With washing, I know," Hans said. "I'm sorry I've given you both so much to handle."

  "No apology needed," Joan said. "You've given me a home."

  "Me, too. But if you let us leave washing behind for a week," Therese said, "maybe we can try something else. It won't be the best solution, but it will be something. Will you let us?"

  Hans stared at his half-finished dinner plate. His stomach churned with worry. He didn't want to pull these women down to his level, make them become another aspect of his "dirty hands" but they were as industrious as they were clever. And it was for the greater good.

  When Therese and Joan slid their hands across the table, Hans took them. It took him a long, long time before he nodded.

  Chapter Five

  A week later, Hans worked through lunch and dinner in his office on campus. The philosophy rooms were cold and never faced the sun, but the dark atmosphere reminded Hans of the late nights he spent on his dissertation. He poured over the plans for the local cemetery and the meandering patterns of the partition that divided London from the outer lands. He was so engrossed it took several knocks on his door before he registered the sound.

  "Yes, yes," Hans said, climbing out of his chair. "I'm coming, I'm coming."

  He answered the door to see Mickey, a local boy of no more than fifteen years old, who often helped out in the science department for spare coin. He wore a grey cap and grey vest with black slacks, dirt marking his flushed cheeks. "Mickey. What are you doing here?"

  Mickey gestured behind him. A black cloth had been tied around a large weight on the back of a wagon. From the shape and contour, Hans knew it was a body.

  "What is this? You know I don't work in the science department anymore. This is the moral philosophy area. You are lost."

  "No, I'm not." Mickey stomped his foot, indignant. He turned towards his wagon load and pulled out several sheets of wrinkled paper. He held the documents an inch from his eye and read off the words. He butchered most of them, but Hans was used to his way of speaking.

  "'To Hans Metzger. Care of Bethany University.' They even have your office number here. Look." Mickey pointed to the sheet of paper. Clear as day, his office number in the philosophy wing was there. Hans tried to calm his heartbeat.

  "You don't understand," Hans said. "The university cut my funding. I can't take this. I cannot pay you."

  "But I've been paid. Or at least, I will be paid by someone else when I bring back the signed form. Here."

  Mickey gestured to the sheet of paper again. Hans didn't want to look, lest he tempt his fate. He knew how it would all end up. This had to be a trap from Stevenson—who else would have done this? Hans would sign for the body, start his experiments, and then he'd be charged with fraud and violation of his contract. If he sent the body back, it would only come back to him again and again, in some other form or by some other department, until he finally said yes. It seemed that when he was trying to follow the rules, people were determined he break them.

  "Bring him in," Hans said. "But only because I don't want you to be seen and rouse all my neighbours. It's bad enough one department hates me. I don't need two of them."

  Mickey shrugged and tugged the body into Hans's office. The back of the wagon hit the wall and stretched alongside the room, blocking the exit. Mickey shifted his weight and stepped over the body like it was nothing in order to get to Hans. To Mickey, the body probably was nothing, he'd been working with the science department so long.

  "Is it infected?"

  "Yes. Bit through the foot from what I can tell. I don't like to look. But the stem's been severed. Not gonna hurt anyone."

  "Hmm. How long as this one been dead?"

  Mickey looked at his forms again. He read off the time as three PM, two hours ago now. Meaning that by four in the morning, he'd be gone for good. "There are some other words, too, describing his body and stuff. But I don't like to know too much. So, can I have your signature?"

  Hans sighed. With the body in his office, and only two hours dead, he was tempted to keep it and send Mickey back along his way. If there was no signature, there was no proof, and maybe that would buy him some time before people traced the body back to him. Punishments be damned. But now it looked as if he was going to have to walk back to the morgue with Mickey and demand someone else take the body.

  "No, I can't sign. But give me a moment? I want to at least document him for myself. My notes. Even if I can't keep my funding, they can't take away my eyes." Hans chuckled, but an icy chill went through him. He had a feeling Doctor Stevenson would actually take Hans' eyes if given a good enough reason.

  Mickey stepped away, turning his head, as Hans pulled back the sheet. All other worries soon fell away from his mind.

  The m
an on the slab in front of him was beautiful. Dark curls clung close to his head. When Hans ran a hand over them, they were silky. A little filled with grit from his untimely end, but still wonderful. His skin was soft, smooth, and a shade darker than most. He was also quite young. No more than twenty-five at most. Hans was only twenty-seven himself. Am I only seeing myself in him? Is this why he intrigues me so? Hans didn't know how to answer that particular question.

  But it wasn't just his own ambition that made him look at this young man twice. There was something about him, something uncanny that Hans could not yet place. His face was heart-shaped like Joan's, but there couldn't be a relation; Joan's family tree was small and died out long ago. His clothing was in tatters, as though he'd been a beggar's son. When Hans flipped over his hands, he saw calluses on the thumb and forefinger. A musician? A busker? Hans's heart thundered. The tune of his favourite song he often played as he worked late at night came back to his mind. He wanted to know with all his heart if this young man also knew the song's soft strings that lead to a crescendo, which then faded out like the dark does to the dawn.

  "Where was he found? Do you know?"

  Mickey gagged. "I can't look at the body, sir."

  "Then give me the sheet of paper."

  Hans wrenched them from Mickey's hand, probably too roughly. But he needed to know. He ran his thumb alongside the intake information. No name, no date of birth. But the body had been found outside a local hospital near the outer lands. From the maps Hans had been reading all day, he knew the man was close to the zigzag fields to where the impoverished were pushed and forced to survive doing whatever was possible. The man probably played guitar when he was alone or around his family. When Hans examined the rest of the intake form, he noted many burns noted on the man's body, possibly from falling asleep too close to a fire. The man's brain stem was severed, but it was a sloppy, rushed job. And from what Hans could tell, the body had not been deafened, either. When Hans spotted the green markings of a bite wound, he nodded. This man was definitely infected, definitely doomed in less than eleven hours.

  Unless, of course, Hans could save him. It was risky. He'd never done it on a human before. But the body had come to him like a miracle. The probability it was a trap was still high. But a trap was only so if he failed. If he revived the man and gave him life again, then he could prove that zombies had a cure. People would have to listen to him, no matter what.

  Therese and Joan's faces came to his mind. They told him not to follow the rules anymore. This was the ultimate test.

  Mickey cleared his throat and stifled another gag. "So, sir. Should I take 'im back? Send him to another doctor? Or what's gonna happen now?"

  "No need, young man. He'll be fine here," Hans said. He signed with an X, hoping he could later claim forgery if he was caught. If I really have a future after all this is done. He signed his name and all possible future away.

  Chapter Six

  "Oh, no." Therese held her stomach as Hans wheeled the body into their house. "How did you get him here?"

  "Darkness covers much, and people don't look if you know how to hide."

  After paying Mickey for the use of his wagon, Hans had waited in his office until the darkest night fell all around them. He wheeled the body, along with some books stacked over his outline, to the front door of the house. Now, Hans pushed the wagon inside the small office he'd built the past months. He caught Therese up to date with the current situation, but it only seemed to make her normally ruddy complexion go much paler than he thought possible.

  "We finally have work to do," Hans stated. "And I only have until four in the morning. Give or take."

  Therese cast furtive glances to their grandfather clock. They were nine hours away from that deadline. "You don't have enough time. We don't have enough equipment. Or enough—"

  "You told me to do this," Hans stated. "You both did. Where is Joan?"

  She stumbled into the living area, holding two window boxes in front of her large chest, a bright smile on her face. When she noticed the wagon, her silver eyes widened.

  "You didn't!"

  "He did," Therese confirmed. "The body is a trick, though. Hans said so himself. We should take it back. Reject the charity. He'll be fired this way."

  "I know that. Don't you think I do? But we won't last through the winter if we don't try this. And we have to try this. Look at him." Hans removed the sheet from the body. In the better lighting of his house, under candles and oil lamps, the man's skin glowed like amber. His beauty was so striking he seemed preserved. Even Therese, who was not impressed by men's looks, let out a low gasp.

  "He's like you. Like your grandfather," Therese stated.

  "Not quite. Maybe he or his family is from another country," Hans said. "But it doesn't matter. He's beautiful. I need to save him."

  "You can't save someone just because they're beautiful," Therese said, but even she seemed unconvinced by her words. She stared at the man's dark skin as she sat down. When the dog jumped up and into her lap, she seemed relieved for someone to hold.

  Joan placed down her plant boxes and went right to the man's hands. She flipped them over inside her own, examining him with the keen eye of a scientist.

  "What do you see?" Hans asked. "The calluses? I think he played guitar."

  "I see dirt."

  "He was found by the outer lands. I'm thinking he was homeless."

  "Probably. But this isn't outer lands dirt. This is somethin' else." Joan took one of the instruments from Hans's table. She scraped the dirt from the man's finger nails onto a sheet of paper. She smudged it into the paper, leaving a red clay colour in this wake. "Exactly what I thought," Joan said.

  "And what is it?"

  "He lived by water. This dirt is only what you find by the rocks and sand at the shore. Probably infected by one of the undead that jumped off a ship ages ago."

  "And bit his ankle?"

  "Yes, probably when he went bathin'. He kicked it away, thinkin' it was a fish, an' tried to go on with his life. But then when he got a fever, he went to the doctors an' waited too long to be seen. He died, an' well, now he's here." Joan nodded, her assessment now complete.

  "You got all of that from the dirt?"

  "The dirt and the water. The man's hair is full of salt an' sand."

  "Right." Hans remembered the feeling of grit underneath his shoes in his office on campus as he moved the body. He hadn't put together the sudden sand in his soles with the cadaver in front of him; his excitement had blinded him and now he kicked himself for not being attentive. This was why he needed Joan—and Therese, too, for that matter. "I still don't know his name."

  "You don't need a name to reanimate him, do you?" Joan asked. She rose from her spot examining the body and walked to face Hans. Her eyes were bright, excitement clearly evident. "You have hours to work. You make 'im a new spinal column using what you did for the rats. Then you make him a new foot like Izzy over there. Then he walks. He tells everyone you've made 'im whole. Easy peasy, right? We done it before."

  "Not like this," Hans said. "But perhaps."

  "Why bother? People will shoot him in the heart all over again," Therese said despondently.

  "What, now?"

  Both Joan and Hans stared at Therese. She huffed and went over to the body. She undid the man's shirt until they both saw the dark wound twisted on the man's torso. "They do this in the outer lands--I've seen it in the archives. Years ago, when no one understood the epidemic, doctors thought being a zombie meant it rotted the heart and turned someone inhuman. Now they do both—sever the heart and then the spine. Just to be sure the zombie's all gone for good. "

  "Staked like a vamp and cut at the neck," Joan repeated somberly. "Poor soul. But what's the big deal? You can make a new heart, can't you, Hans? Isn't it like any other organ that a zombie may have bitten?"

  Hans closed his eyes, utterly devastated. The future he imagined felt as if it had been staked like the victim.

  "Hans?" Joa
n asked again. "Can't you just rebuild? Surely it's not the end of the world."

  "I've... I've never done that before."

  "Well, then I guess you will have to learn. Fix his heart and when he comes back to life, no one can hurt him there again. We can go and pick up what you need," Joan added. She stood with Therese by Izzy on the couch. "Where do we start?"

  Hans's gaze lingered on the man. "I still want his name. I can't bring him back to life without that."

  "If this works, though," Therese added, "can you not ask the man for his name when he wakes up?"

  "It's not the same." Hans pursed his lips. "Having a name is part of having life. I need it to create him. It is why we have nicknames and secret names... Names themselves are measures and expressions of love. And if I know his first, I can recreate him with that same spark of love."

  "I see," Therese said, her voice soft. After a moment, she added, "The archives, then. I know where to look in the stacks. We have enough time to find something there, don't we, Joan?"

  "I think so. We will hurry back if we don't, and confer with you," Joan said. "Is there anything else you need?"

  Hans finally tore himself away from the body. The clock chimed out another hour. He could already feel the boy's life slipping through his fingers like the sand in his hair. "Can you put on some music?" Hans asked. "If I get caught for this, I'd like to hear my favourite song before going out."

  Joan grinned. She slid the record on the gramophone, and she and Therese left. Hans rolled up his sleeves and addressed his metal work bench, already behind the clock.

  Chapter Seven

  Only two hours into working, and Hans hit a wall. The new brain stem designed for a human was set out on his desk, perfect and ready to be inserted. The new foot had been resized twice before it fit, but it was also fine. Perfect.

  But the heart wouldn't beat. Hans stared at the shell he'd created based on the medical textbook he'd studied. The metal was shiny, the screws in the right place to match where the blood vessels connected. He'd need to replace the entire circulatory system with something mechanical, like copper and chrome in order to allow the body to take the heart. He'd have to replace the blood with fluid that would only need to be changed once a month, too. Hans knew he could redo all of the body's insides and make him work again. It was never a matter of ability.