Chapter 14 - Specimen

Bright and ridiculously early the next morning, I was standing in the dining room. There were four doors leading into the room—three standard and one double—and all of them were sealed. I’d never seen a single one shut before, let alone locked. Six feet away from me, tied to the formal dining room table, was all that was left of a male zombie after Conrad had “dealt with it.” I knew it was Conrad’s work because of the jagged claw marks running from its neck to halfway down its chest. It was naked. One of its legs was missing at the hip. The other was missing at the knee. One hand was gone. There was a strong possibility they had all been torn off, but I was doing my best to avoid getting close enough to confirm it. It wasn’t bleeding anymore, but there were piles of foul-smelling black goo near the missing limbs.

It was still alive. If “alive” was the right word.

It wasn’t, of course, but I’m a simple person; when I see something moving around on its own, my brain files it under “alive” and doesn’t ask too many questions. I suppose it’s a lack of training.

The zombie was straining against the ropes that were holding it down. There was one around its torso and one around each of its remaining limbs. Each rope was tied to a different table leg, restricting the creature’s movements as much as possible. Where there was no wrist or ankle to help anchor the rope, it had been lashed down as tight as possible, with no mercy or regard to the thing on the table. I could see the dents where the ropes were squeezing the flesh. It rolled its remaining hand around in sporadic, restless circles, as if trying to reach something. Whenever Iset, Igor, or I spoke, it whipped its head to look at the speaker with its clouded eyes.

Looking at it made me feel cold.

“Okay,” I choked out. I wanted to sound cool and relaxed, but that would require me to have some kind of a voice to sound cool with. I gave up on that goal and tried for something audible. “How…?”

I had no idea what I was trying to ask. There was a question there, but it was swallowed up in the general how-ness of it all.

Igor glared at the thing. “We found it buried under a pile of other bodies. It must have been knocked unconscious.”

“They can be knocked unconscious?”

“It’s hard to say, but that’s what it looked like.” Igor picked up a wooden bat he’d found somewhere and advanced toward the zombie. “Maybe we should experiment.”

“Igor,” Iset said.

Igor stopped, glanced at her, then scowled and stepped back. He didn’t let go of the bat.

“Iset, are you okay?” I asked.

She was standing on the other side of the table, in front of the broken windows. Weak sunlight filtered through, setting off her form with a halo of light. It hid the details of her bandages, but that made it easier to see how her shoulders were curled over her slim chest. Her arms were crossed and tight.

“I suspect I’m as okay as you are,” she said with faint amusement.

Yeah. That sounded about right. But I was loud and wild and hysterical when it came to my emotions. Iset was quiet. This was not okay in a way that was too big to be quiet about. I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t burst.

She went on, “Igor and I have tried to learn as much as we can from it, but we need your help.”

“What did you learn?” I blurted out.

I was stalling, pure and simple, and I was pretty sure that Iset and Igor knew it. It wasn’t like I had a huge academic interest in the undead. I could barely be bothered with my own body.

If Iset knew I was stalling, she was too kind to call me out on it.

“From the clothes, we’re guessing he lived around the late eighteen hundreds,” she said. “Whoever did this to him did no major medical modifications to the body. It doesn’t have any noticeable reaction to natural or artificial light. It doesn’t seem to require rest or food to maintain a standard level of energy—”

The zombie thrashed in its ties. Iset paused, then went on.

“It has no heartbeat, no regular breathing pattern, and probably no standard bodily functions. It appears to be mindless—”

“It is mindless,” Igor said. “They all are. They’re things.”

Iset and I fell silent. We could hear the muted noise of the zombie’s head moving over the table and the breathy hisses coming from its slack mouth. I could hear Conrad, Mrs. Park, and Kappa in the kitchen. The closed doors made the easy cadence of their voices sound as if it was coming from a distance.

I had to tear my eyes away so Igor wouldn’t catch me staring at him.

Igor had always sounded grumpy, but I’d never heard any actual hate in his voice before. I was standing in front of a partially dismembered zombie, but it was Igor’s tone that made the hairs on my arms stand on end.

I broke the silence. “What…what does it mean, if they’re mindless?”

Iset said, “They seem to have no will of their own, and they don’t respond to standard stimulus.”

“What’s standard stimulus?

“We hurt them,” Igor said. “We threaten them, and we hurt them, and they don’t respond.”

I pinched my lips between my front teeth and nodded.

“They don’t respond to any attempt to communicate either,” Iset said.

“Can it hear?” I asked.

“It can hear,” Igor said. “It can see too—though, not well.”

“And it’s aggression level is…high,” Iset said.

I looked back at the zombie. Its teeth clacked together as its back arched off the table.

Yeah. High. That was a bit of an understatement.

“How is it still moving?” I asked. “Shouldn’t it be dead—or…dead-er?”

“That’s why we asked you to come in here,” Iset said. “We need you to look at it and tell us what you see.”

I took a deep breath in through my nose and let my glazed eyes rest on the zombie without really seeing it. I could’ve said that I didn’t want to do it, but I didn’t feel like challenging Iset for the Understatement of the Year Award.

I was sick with fear. It churned my stomach. The coldness had saturated all the way to the center of my bones. My breath seemed to float in my chest without ever reaching my lungs. It was hard to stand there and harder to move. I felt like I was partly detached from my body, with only a few thin lines connecting me to my senses.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

In the background, I heard Conrad call Kappa’s name. He sounded like he would on any other day: calm, if slightly exasperated—which is how any normal person sounds when they’re trying to get Kappa’s wayward attention.

It had been Conrad’s nightmares that I’d had last night. His memories had jolted me awake to find tears streaming down my face. And Conrad had been there, with his calm, everyday voice, shushing my fears and trying to comfort me.

It was my turn to do the ugly thing that no one wanted to do. And maybe I wasn’t strong enough. But I could try.

“Right,” I whispered.

I took a step toward the table, then stopped. “Is there anything in particular you want me to look for?”

“Magic,” Iset said, “and anything else you happen to see.”

It was a fine May morning, and I was about to inspect a zombie. What a way to start the day.

As I walked toward the table, the zombie’s thrashing increased. I didn’t stop, but I did start trembling. Igor came up to my side.

“Don’t worry.” His hand tightened around the bat’s handle. “I’m here in case it tries anything.”

That was both comforting and worrying in its own way. I wasn’t sure how to handle Igor the Blood-thirsty—or…goo…thirsty.

My eyes moved to one of the black piles sitting on the dining table, and my stomach heaved.

Focus on the zombie, Emerra! a voice in my head said.

Oh, yeah. ‘Cause that’s so much less disgusting, another voice replied.

I told them both to shut up.

I started by walking around the whole table.

“There’s no magic around it,” I said.

“Are you sure?” Iset asked.

“Yes.”

I stopped by its head. It kept gnashing its teeth and arching to try to reach me. I had to breathe through my mouth to avoid being overwhelmed by its smell. I tried to lean over it, but I jumped back when it snapped at me.

I put a hand over my face and closed my eyes.

Happy things. Think of puppies and Kappa.

“What is it?” Igor said.

“I want to look in its eyes,” I mumbled into the hand covering my face, “but it keeps moving.”

“I can cut its eyelids off.”

“Igor, stop it,” Iset said.

“I can hold them open for you,” Igor said.

“You don’t mind?” I asked.

“No.” Igor leaned the bat on the leg of the table, pulled a butcher knife out from his belt, and laid it a few inches away from the zombie’s head.

I noticed that he’d cleaned the knife.

He put his elbows on either side of the zombie’s head. It tried to bite through Igor’s arms, but Igor caught its face and held it steady so it was facing the ceiling. Igor peeled its eyes open using the thumb and index finger of both hands while the rest of his fingers pressed into its face, holding it still.

It hissed as I leaned over it.

I stared.

Nothing. I saw…nothing.

No, that’s not right. I saw the green-brown hazel eyes with madly dilated pupils covered by the fog of its cataract, but it was also somehow empty, and it was the emptiness that mattered. My eyes saw its eyes, and I saw nothing—except…

Buried a mile deep in the center of its black pupil was a tiny blue spark.

“The magic’s inside it,” I said.

I turned away. Igor let go of the zombie. When it lunged to snap at him, he elbowed the side of its head. It looked like an almost casual gesture, but the zombie’s head snapped to the other side. Igor picked up his knife and bat and stepped away.

I moved down the table, toward its leg and torso. Conrad had, in fact, torn its leg off. When I saw the ragged strips of skin hanging from the wound, a shiver danced its way through my whole body.

I gulped, took a deep breath, and held it while I bent down to get a closer look at the open wound of its empty hip socket. It moved, squeezing a dribble of black goo from the site with an appetite-demolishing squelch sound.

I had to put my hand over my mouth to keep from retching.

When I was sure I wouldn’t lose whatever was left in my stomach, I put my hand down and turned to Iset.

“Um…” I whispered. It wasn’t for effect. My voice felt light-headed. “Do we have…some kind of knife—”

I heard Igor move behind me.

“—a smaller knife?” I added. “Something I can use to…open it up?”

“I can open it faster,” Igor pointed out.

“We have one of the scalpels from the first-aid kit,” Iset said.

The words were out of my mouth before I could stop myself: “You were going to dissect it while it was still alive?”

“It’s not alive,” Igor insisted.

“We need information, Emerra,” Iset said.

I nodded. Sure, sure. Why not? It wasn’t like I could judge them. That was exactly what I was thinking of doing—except on a smaller scale.

I clutched onto the tiny, jangling brass nerves that made up the totality of my courage. “Can I use it?”

Iset passed me a set of gloves and a paper-wrapped scalpel. I put on the gloves, tore the wrapper from the scalpel, and walked back to the zombie.

“Igor,” I said.

He appeared at my side.

“I need to get at the…innards.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific than that,” Igor drawled.

“Veins, I think. It’s the stuff that blood flows through.”

“The wrist will be easiest,” he said. “I’ll hold it still.”

The coldness that had invaded my body increased as I leaned over the zombie’s arm. It took more pressure than I thought it would to split the skin, but once it had parted, the blade slid through the incision. The zombie didn’t make any noises of distress or change its thrashing. I worked slowly, slicing line after line in its arm—sometimes going deeper, sometimes moving a few millimeters to the side to make a new cut.

As I worked, I mentally vowed to never, ever, become a doctor.

When I was done, I dropped the scalpel on the table and turned away from the zombie. I walked over to one of the dining chairs that Igor or Iset had moved to the side of the room and collapsed on it. Whatever had been holding me up and keeping me relatively composed vanished. Everything in me was trembling—my thoughts, my heart, my stomach. A cloud of dust, a thousand miles wide, floating through space, would’ve felt more stable than I did.

I went to rest my head on my hand, but the glove shifted when my fingers slid over my forehead, smearing a thin coating of something jammy and rancid. I yanked my hand away. Black goo was everywhere—on all my clothes, my arms, my hands. I tore off the gloves and threw them away from me as if I was hurling away a spider that I’d caught crawling over me.

They landed on the lovely hardwood floor between me and the dining table. I cringed and waited for the tongue-lashing that I’d earned from Igor.

It never came. He picked up the gloves without a word and put them on the table beside the scalpel.

“Emerra?” Iset said.

“It’s in his—” I had to swallow. “It’s in his blood—not blood. It’s not blood, but it should be. I think it’s running through his whole body.”

“You’re talking about magic?”

“It’s bright blue. I can see spots of it in the…in the…stumps.”

Oh, geez. I did not have the vocabulary or stomach for this job. I was the only person in the entire house who could see this kind of stuff, and I had to stutter out my findings like a five-year-old.

I stuttered on. “It’s going, you know, all up and down its arm too. In the lines—veins.”

Igor looked at Iset.

Iset tilted her head. Another second passed before she spoke. “If the magician set the magic as an internal system, then there doesn’t have to be a master.”

“A what-now?” I said.

“So we’re not looking for a magician?” Igor asked, completely ignoring me.

“I don’t think so,” Iset said.

Igor swore and looked away while scratching his head.

“Is that a bad thing?” I asked.

Igor grumbled, “If they have a master, you can stop all the puppets by killing the puppeteer.”

“I thought they were already stopped!” My voice was loud and shaky.

“I hope so,” Igor intoned ominously.

“What do you think, Igor?” Iset asked.

Igor gazed down at the zombie. “If the magic is inside them, that means they’re moving on their own. That would explain their speed and adaptability.”

“What about their strength?”

Igor made a face—and with his lopsided features, when he made a face, you got twenty-percent more intensity in the expression. “Average.”

“You know what their average is,” I said.

It was more of a statement than a question—like my brain was trying to process yet another wild and improbable fact—but Igor answered it anyway.

“The same as a desperate human’s or a human who can’t feel pain.”

Iset sighed and tucked her hand back in her crossed arms. “We’ll finish up here, then talk to the others.”

“Even Mrs. Park?” Igor said.

“It’s an emergency. I’m sure that Big Jacky will understand.”

“Great!” I stood up. “So you don’t need me any more? ‘Cause I’d like to go change, burn these clothes”—I shrugged—“maybe cry a little.”

“You’ll stay here,” Igor ordered.

I looked at Iset.

“I’m sorry, Emerra,” she said. “Igor’s right. We don’t know what we’re dealing with. We should be careful.”

I could feel my distress building. More than anything, I wanted to be alone for a few minutes to deal with it all. Disgust, despair, hysteria, and a dozen other emotions—none of them happy—were stuffed into my body until I thought I would tear apart at the seams.

“Why does that mean I have to stay here?” I squeaked.

“Only suicidal idiots split up.” Igor pointed a crooked finger at me. “You need to watch more horror movies. The only people who go anywhere alone are me or Conrad.”

I pressed my lips together and bit down on them to hold the tears at bay for another second. When I opened my mouth to speak, my lips peeled apart. “I wasn’t kidding about crying, you know.”

The second was over. My eyes were shining.

Igor raised his voice: “Then cry!”

I clenched my hands into fists, digging my fingernails into my palms. It didn’t help. The tears spilled over and ran down my cheeks. I stormed over to one of the spare chairs that lived in the corners of the room, threw myself down on the seat, and hid my face with my hands. I didn’t sob, but the tears were running down in steady, silent streams.

I felt a light hand rest on my back.

Iset sat beside me while I cried. Igor finished dispatching the zombie, and I winced at every sound.