Re-Animator (16 page)

“My work!”

There were footfalls upstairs, and West staggered over, falling against the banister.

“Hill? Hill, is that you, you son of a bitch?”

He started up, stopping when Cain appeared in the doorway.

“Daniel!” he wheezed. “My work! He took my work!”

“Who did?”

West backed down the steps, bumped into the refrigerator. He threw his hand toward it. “Hill. He took my serum, too, except for what I have upstairs. He took my serum . . . my notes. Everything!”

Cain hurried down. “Herbert, you’re insane! What really happened?”

West clutched at Cain’s jacket. “He’s alive!”

“Hill? No kidding, and he’s been
very
busy tonight.”

“No, you don’t understand. I had to kill him.”

Cain grew rigid. “When?”

West looked at his watch. “About an hour ago. But he’s not dead anymore.”

Cain understood then, and shook his roommate violently. “Damn you, Herbert. This isn’t a goddamned science project—it’s murder! This has got to stop!”

“Daniel, you still don’t understand. He tried to blackmail me!”

“That doesn’t mean you had to—”

“And he wanted you to disappear!” he lied. “This is a conspiracy, Daniel. He’s trying to do with us what he did with Gruber.”

Cain released his companion and took a step back, almost losing his balance in the pool of blood. He looked at it, then at West. “You brought him back to life—and he left? With all his faculties?”

“He did. The miserable bastard is
perfect.
Well, almost perfect. He suffered a rather . . . disfiguring wound. His mind”—West jabbed at his own—“that, Daniel, is just as devious as it ever was. The serum works!”

Cain nodded with understanding. “A conspiracy,” he repeated. “Of course. That’s why he did it.”

“Did what?”

“Operated on Dean Halsey. He lobotomized him so he could control him in case he ever tried to talk or tell somebody what happened.”

West slammed the refrigerator door shut. “So he could protect
his
discovery. Very clever.”

Cain splashed through the blood to the steps. “Yes. I’ve got to tell Meg.”

“What does Meg have to do with this?”

Cain paused. He pitied West just then, less for what he’d done to Halsey and Hill than for the transparent resentment—or was it jealousy?—that he felt toward Meg. But he needed West’s help and explained, “Hill’s got this weird file on her, full of napkins and hair and photographs. I think he’s projected some sort of psychotic need onto her.”

West arched his brows comically as he tried to imagine Hill proposing to her, down on one knee, his head between his feet.

“I wouldn’t worry about Dr. Hill losing his head over her,” he said, laughing. “It’s too late!”

The laugh grew until Cain began to doubt West’s sanity. The night had taken its toll overtly and also in insidious ways; perhaps the fragile fence West had always straddled had been undermined, pitching him headlong into madness. He would see to him later. Right now, Megan was his concern. With the dean out of the way, he only hoped Hill’s compulsion was not among the qualities restored by West’s formula.

The lumbering body opened the door to Hill’s office and walked in, crashing into the bookcase, bouncing off, overturning a standing lamp, and pinballing into the filing cabinet before finally reaching the desk. There it felt around for a dissecting pan, one Hill had left there after the Halsey surgery. Finding it, the groping hands pushed away the small section of brain tissue and rested Hill’s head on the paraffin.

Its eyes shut, mouth sagging, the head sighed. The wax was softer than the cold tin in West’s lab, and it felt so good against the raw flesh of the neck. But he was tired, much too tired to open his eyes; he urged the body to hurry with the serum.

Fumbling in its pockets, the hands withdrew a vial and the hypodermic, clumsily stabbing its finger while trying to find the stopper. Finally filling the needle, it injected the head with a fresh dose. Hill rationalized that whatever hadn’t been absorbed by the brain had dripped out the neck; he made sure the needle went higher this time, almost vertically along the medulla oblongata and up the wall of the brain-case.

The serum worked almost at once. Hill felt the tingle of renewed vigor in his surviving senses, and his mind quickly regained its edge. But there was still a haze behind his eyes, and he suspected the reason for that. Ordering the body to inject itself again, he sent it off to a refrigerator beside the cubicle.

The body clipped the edge of the desk and caused the head to slide to its side. “Caaaareful . . . oooaf!” Hill scowled as, disoriented, he was unable to prevent the body from stumbling into the armchair. Righting itself, it groped for the refrigerator, spilling a shelf of croquet trophies beside it. Pulling open the door, it returned with a plastic pouch of blood. Unscrewing the cap, the body squirted it into the tin.

“Yeeessss . . .” Hill moaned as his hungry tissue soaked up the blood. When the pouch was empty, the body obediently followed Hill’s silent commands to pick it up—though by the hair, not the neck. The ragged edge was sore from having rubbed repeatedly against the overcoat sleeve on the way over. The body turned the head around slowly until its eyes came to rest on the cubicle. Smiling, Hill ordered that he be carried over.

“Allllaaan!” he suspired when his face was near the glass. “Allaan!”

Halsey stood, his dumb expression showing signs of comprehension. Still straitjacketed, he shuffled over, falling to his knees by the mirror. He pressed his face to the glass, saw Hill’s face beyond. He grunted in recognition.

Hill opened his mouth to speak, but blood oozed from the corners, obscuring his speech; he’d taken too much, wouldn’t be so greedy next time. Using his tongue to push out the rest, he said, “Allaan! I waant you . . . to come ouuut . . . noooow.”

Obediently, Halsey staggered to the door, where the body met him and released the latch.

Hill instructed the hands to raise him so he was eye to eye with his servant. Then, his eyes wide and bloodshot from the infusion, he patiently and meticulously explained what he wanted Halsey to do.

CHAPTER

11

C
ain drove the side of his fist against the six-panel door.

“Megan! Meg, are you there?”

He heard the sound of her slippers on the floor. “Dan?”

“Yeah. Are you okay?”

She flicked the deadbolt and opened the door. “Sure. Why?”

He stepped in and hugged her. “Nothing, Meg. I was just so afraid!”

“Dan, what is it? You’re shaking.”

“I don’t know, I was just . . . worried about you.”

She wriggled free, once again demanding to know why.

Cain shut the door and said evasively, “I just feel horribly about everything. I guess I’m getting paranoid.” He looked into her eyes. “It’s just . . . it’d be so hard to lose you.”

Megan pulled her robe tighter and wrapped her arms around her waist. “I think you should know, Dan, I tried to hate you. I wanted so very much to hate you.”

“I’m glad you failed.”

She looked at him. “I still love you, and I always will. But I’ve been thinking—in spite of that, you should go away. Transfer to another school, get away from the doubts and the stares. You need some time alone to think about all of this, and I need to think about what to do with Daddy and Dr. Hill.”

Cain smiled. “Then let me help you. Y’know, it’s funny. I came here to suggest that you get away, go and live your life. Find somebody. But when I try to imagine being somewhere or doing something without you, I know that what I’ll want to do is drop what I’m—”

The splintering of the door drowned out the rest of Cain’s words. The couple jumped reflexively as a pale fist came through, followed by another. The fingers splayed, and the arms withdrew, pulling the door with them; arms flailing, Allan Halsey stepped through the huge hole.

“Daddy!”

Before he knew what was happening, Cain was in Halsey’s grip, being pressed against the wall. Halsey dispatched him with a hard blow against the old plaster, then dropped Cain to the floor and turned on his daughter.

“No, Daddy!”

The zombie chased her into the darkened living room, exhibiting no trace of familiarity with her or his surroundings. There was only single-minded purpose in his wild eyes. When she bumped up against the piano and pleaded with him, he simply scooped her into his arms and headed for the door. When she screamed, he grabbed a lace coverlet from the arm of a chair and stuffed it violently into her mouth. She continued to struggle, and he swung her head hard against the brick of the fireplace. Megan went limp, and, with a snort of satisfaction, her father left the way he’d entered.

Lenny Wengler panted hard as he jogged down Wengler Street. The young attorney did it every day, rain or sun; his great-great-great-grandfather had built this section of town, and it filled him with satisfaction to run each morning past the old trees Isaac Wengler had planted with his own hands, the stately mansions he’d built, the rental properties he himself owned up and down the street. He liked to make sure everyone was keeping his homes neat, the grounds manicured, the façades clean. It was a heavy responsibility being a landlord in a town where appearances were important, and tradition—austerity, dignity, and pride—was expected to be upheld at all costs. He noticed a tag-sale sign on a tree and ripped it off without ever missing a step; he wadded it tightly and dropped it into a sewer grating as he crossed the street.

Wengler breathed deeply as the sun rose over the river. There was something awe-inspiring about the sunrise and money contemplated in tandem. One allowed him to enjoy the other fully, and he smiled as he savored the sweet new day.

As he always did, he ran toward the Halsey home, hoping to catch a glimpse of Megan leaving for her morning run. If anything could improve on the beautiful harmony of daybreak and money, it was the sight of the young woman in her shorts and T-shirt breathing heavily as she ran down the road.

Glancing toward the house, he saw something he couldn’t quite understand: Dean Halsey carrying his daughter in his arms. Halsey looked as if he’d fallen out of bed and down a flight of stairs. Sucking down a deep breath, Wengler hurried over.

“Allan, what happened? Is Megan all right?”

Thoughts of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation pranced through his head as he saw that Megan was unconscious. He hoped there hadn’t been an explosion; his most expensive home was right next door.

“What’s wrong? Can I do anything?”

Halsey continued walking, oblivious to Wengler’s approach. Wengler came around by Halsey’s side, saw his face and whistled.

“You look beat. Here, let me take her!” he said. He slipped his arms under Megan’s shoulders. “I’ll run her to the hospital.”

Halsey growled and tried to pull her away. Wengler reached for her again.

“Say, old boy, don’t be ridiculous! You’re in shock, and your daughter needs—”

Halsey jumped forward and locked his teeth on Wengler’s nose. The young man squealed as the zombie snapped it off and moved down to his throat. With Megan still in his arms, he held on to Wengler’s suntanned flesh, oblivious to the young man’s cries and the pounding of his fists. Jerking his head back, he ripped away most of the attorney’s windpipe. Wengler’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he dropped, blood pumping energetically from the wound.

Spitting out the nose and throat tissue, Halsey stepped over the body and continued on his way. Another early-rising jogger, engrossed in her Walkman, saw the zombie and his daughter and just shook her head. It was, she decided, one of the more transparent hazing gags she’d seen in recent years.

Dressed in his green surgical attire and carrying a medical bag, Dr. Hill strode boldly from the elevator and down the corridor toward the morgue. Perched on his shoulders was the head from his desk; hidden behind a mask and cap, it had not drawn undue attention from the few people he met. Hill’s real head was in the bag, held upright by surgical sponges stuffed on the sides.

It had been an unusually long ride from his office. Since the head couldn’t see, it had had the body press each floor to be sure and get the right one. The head had simply counted the “dings” as they descended and ordered the body out when they reached the basement.

Because the plaster head was held on with a carefully concealed neck brace, Hill’s body was able to move quickly down the hall. It breezed past Mace’s desk. The guard barely looked up from a copy of
Boudoir.

“Is that you, Dr. Hill?”

From inside the medical bag, the head said in muffled tones, “Yesss . . . it’s meee.”

“Gonna be here for a while?”

“Yessss.”

“Can’t here ya through the mask, Doc—”

“I—said—
yesss,”
he repeated distinctly.

Mace nodded with approval, then returned to the magazine, switching his cigar from side to side while Hill fumbled for his key. Finally opening the door, Hill accidentally brushed his head against the jamb as he entered, and one of his fake ears fell off; he left it, hoping Mace hadn’t heard. Listening just inside the autopsy room, Hill was delighted when the guard got up and left, mumbling about finally having time to bop his baloney.