Husk (33 page)

So I lay there, angry and impotent. And after a time, I heard him through the silence.

Duane.

It was a feather touch tickling the base of my ganglia.

A sense of overwhelming appetite. Agony.

He was so very hungry.

I closed my eyes — ridiculous in the dark, but it helped in concentration — and stretched my mind up and out, visualizing my consciousness slipping through the crack beneath the door and down the hallways until I came to the elevator. I wasn't sure of the direction, but his hunger pangs guided me, as clear as the peals of an alarm clock. I passed effortlessly through the metal doors and rose up the shaft, the cries gaining strength in number. Nonsense vowels but the meaning was clear.

My children needed food. There was no anger in this, no malice to others, no philosophy of hatred dictating their actions. It was what it was, and they would strike the first chance they got.

A few more sets of doors and I emerged into the room, hovering above the pit. Duane's face shone like a beacon, glowing with inexpressible pain. His eyes met mine, despite my non-corporealness. I watched as the connection spread, geometrically, until the room was silent and still, the entire occupancy staring upward at nothing. Even those with sockets of dark where eyes used to be craned their faces up, sensing their leader.

Awaiting a command.

I pushed out a thought at them.

Move to the left.

The sea of undead shuffled one step to their left.

Lift your right leg
.

Knees were brought up in synchronized precision. A few zombies lifted the only leg they still had and crashed to the floor, their gaze locked on the ceiling.

Inhale.

The room wheezed as lungs long empty fought to inflate.

Scream
.

As one, the demons wailed.

“Sheldon?”

My connection shattered. I opened my eyes to painful fluorescence.

“Big day today,” Simon said. He had lifted Sofa from my legs and hoisted her onto his immense shoulders where she sat and looked at me.

“So they tell me,” I croaked.

He snapped his fingers and two soldiers from the interchangeable dozen or so I had seen around stepped out from behind his massive back. One pushed a gurney alongside me and together they loosened my bindings and tried to slide me over to the new surface. There was friction, and my back flesh began to peel as they shoved. Simon flicked open his knife and slid it underneath me, cutting at the dermis that had permanently adhered itself to the metal until I slid free with a squirmy
splort
. As they bound my hands to the gurney with plastic straps, I looked over at the table I had spent the past weeks in medical rape on. A sizable amount of my hide remained behind.

Another snap of Simon's fingers and I was wheeled out to the elevator, beginning the unscenic trek up to level two. The soldiers pushed me through another dozen hallways until we finally arrived at a pneumatic door. The men took up positions on either side, standing at attention, while Simon affixed a surgical mask over his nose and mouth and pushed the entry button. The door hissed and slowly swung open. A stream of sterile air washed over me as Simon guided me inside, last guest to the party.

A plethora of medical devices greeted me, all blinking lights and overpriced
bleeps
and
blinks
. A few doctors and nurses were briskly checking them over, confirming that the
pings
and
blorks
were accurate. I was sidled up next to a luxuriously appointed four-poster bed that brought the whole room together, Victorian décor meets Lucasfilm futurism. There lay the man of the hour, his eyes alert and searching as Simon brought me to a halt alongside him. Practically every piece of him was linked to one machine or another. He looked trapped in a multi-colored web.

“Nd tho id nds,” Dixon said. The clarity of his voice was dampened by the breathing apparatus enclosing his lower face, and muffled further by the strange apparatus that sheathed the entirety of his head. I couldn't put my finger on its medical label, but it resembled nothing less than a clear plastic fish bowl. Black rubber tubing was attached to its apex, just atop his skull, and pure oxygen was being pumped in. The few remaining wisps of hair flattened under the force.

His words were unintelligible, but I got the gist.
And so it ends
.

A masked face loomed over me. Doctor #3, I remembered, the one with curly auburn hair and eyebrows like bristling caterpillars. He would taste of back bacon and crushed black pepper.

“How are we today?” he asked me.

“It's a good day to die,” I said. “Again, I mean.” That earned a laugh from the doctor, a smirk from Simon.

“And why are you here?” I asked the figure lounging in the far corner of the room, the shape in a sharply pressed business ensemble of tasteful greens and yellows. The person I had sniffed from three floors down. The woman who would taste of beef and onions.

“I asked if I could attend,” Rowan said, removing her surgical mask. “Mr. Dixon saw fit to fill me in on his plans, and I felt, after all we've been through, you deserved a friendly face at the end.”

“But you came instead,” I said. “Thoughtful.”

Rowan walked over and laid an armored hand on my arm. “I do feel bad, you know, for this. From a professional standpoint, there was no limit to where we could have taken you. It would have been fun.”

“But all good things.”

She smiled, the grin never nearing her eyes. Her face was a slack plane of emotional numbness that exposed the Botox treatments she had undergone. “Sheldon, when the most powerful person in the universe orders you to do something, you do it. It's only good business. I've already been rewarded; you'll be happy to know you are looking at the new
CEO
of Masters Talent and all its subsidiaries. I am now one of the reigning queens of entertainment.”

“At least it hasn't. Gone to your head.”

“I
could
have retired of course, but I love my work. And as one added bonus, for all my efforts at controlling you” she mimed a gun with her finger “he is letting me put the final bullet to your brain.”

“Metaphorically speaking,” the doctor piped up. “There is still much to learn, so we're not
actually
going to shoot you.” He held up a disagreeable-looking electric rotary handsaw. “Miss O'Shea is going to sever your brain stem with this. You'll then be portioned out to several laboratories across the country, along with various other sections of your anatomy.” He handed the saw to Rowan with ersatz solemnity. “I'll let you know when it's time.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” She smiled again; this time it brightened her entire face. The moment passed, and a fog of contempt descended over her features as she looked back at me. “You really should have treated me better at the end, Sheldon.”

“Would it help if I apologized?”

“No, but I might have felt worse about all this. As it is . . .” She let the sentence trail off and tossed me a jaunty salute with the blade.

At a gesture from the doctor, Rowan stepped back and replaced her mask. The nurses tinkered with my gurney, swiveling the bed up on its axis until I was almost fully standing, the bindings around my chest and throat the only things keeping me from sliding to the floor in a puddle of bones. The doctor pointed to my lips, and I opened my mouth obediently to allow his metal-linked fingers access. He prodded my teeth, poked at the tongue, stroked the salivary glands at the back. “Teeth are a little loose, two missing, but still serviceable.” Satisfied, he withdrew and turned to Dixon's withered near-corpse.

“How is this supposed to work?” I asked.

“It's very simple,” the doctor explained as he checked over the headgear. “It's all
theory
, of course, but we have had extensive time and opportunity to examine exactly what is the difference between the unblemished human brain, we'll call it Brain A, your brain, Brain B, slightly abnormal, yet fully functioning, and the garden-variety zombie brain, Brain C. Aside from some slight irregularities such as the overacting ventromedial hypothalamus, which explains the constant hunger, there is very little overt difference between Brain B and Brain A. But Brain B, you, has actually evolved, for lack of a better word, to more fully employ those various recesses we humans theoretically never use. This accounts for how we have been able to carve away such enormous portions of your matter with no significant loss of either motor control or intellect.

“Here, you may find this interesting.” Doctor #3 pointed to something behind me and a nurse handed him two mirrors, one of which he propped up behind my head. He had the nurse hold the other up high in my eyeline. What I could see was my yawning brainpan, its lone resident a disfigured lump of putty left in an open sewage gutter. The doctor ripped the plastic wrap off; the rubber band
sproinged
away. “You can see here,” he continued, his reflected finger tracing the remains, “we have removed exceptional amounts of your frontal lobe, as well as,” he pried up the corner of the organ and poked a finger underneath, “your cerebellum, here. We've also scraped away much of the cerebral cortex to get at the thalamus, the amygdala, the pituitary gland, etcetera.” He slipped his finger out and let the mass plop back into place with a nauseating squelch. “All told, we have removed more than half of its total weight.

“Yet here you remain, conscious and alert. A complete enigma.” He held up a clear glass jar. Inside, a dull gray nugget morosely soaked in a pool of goo. “This is you. Your, um,” he checked the handwritten label, “pons. This little conglomeration of nerves and fibers connects the two hemispheres of your cerebellum. Plainly put, you should be spasmodic without it, the two halves of your brain fighting it out without a bridge to connect them. Yet, you function normally. And, as an added bonus,” he waggled the jar, bouncing the lump against the glass, “this little piece of you is still working. The neurons are still firing, even now, sitting in a beaker, unattached to anything. If I hooked electrodes to this, scanned it in an
MRI
, you'd see that it is still alive, that what we perceive as thoughts are still being generated. This little sample of dura is, right now, beyond all limits of rational science, contemplating something.” He held the container up to his eyes and peered at its contents. “What do you think is going on in there?” He tapped the glass with his finger. “Sheldon? Are you in there, Sheldon? Hello?” He chuckled, and tossed the jar to a nurse. “Fascinating stuff. I'll write a book when all this is done, now that Rhodes is out of the picture. And thank you for that, by the way. I didn't want to get merely a contribution credit.”

“Anything for science,” I croaked.

“Ain't that the truth?” The doc moved back to Dixon and checked the sealing around the dome. From where I lay, I could see a rough circle had been inked over the old man's neck wattle. “How are you feeling, sir?”

“
Llls gt nwt it
,” the mucho-geriatric skeleton mumbled.
Let's get on with it.
His chest rose and fell with the pumping of the air. I suspected that was all that was keeping him alive at this point.

“As you wish.” The doctor turned back to me and motioned to the nurses, who began loosening my straps. “You see, after much comparative examination of your brain with that of your compatriots, we've determined that somehow you sidestepped around a state of anoxia.”

“English, please.”

He sighed the sigh of university professors saddled with dim-witted first-years. “Your brain has remained oxygenated. All death can be traced back to the ultimate final step, the removal of oxygen to the brain. Without it, the brain simply starves. The heart ceases its blood flow, the brain doesn't get what it needs, and thus is rendered kaput. We feel that may be the main reason why your friends on level one are so, well, stupid. No offence.”

I coughed a cackle. “
Now
you take my feelings into account?”

“Without oxygen, their brains, while still somehow functioning at the most primal level of existence, have ceased their work at memories, personality, empathy, what have you. In effect, they've suffered monumental brain damage.”

“Retards,” Simon spoke up. “You've got a pit of retards. Hey, maybe they're not trying to eat us. Maybe they just want hugs.” A few of the nurses tittered, egging Simon on. “What about it, Doc? Think a plate of sugar cookies and a few ‘Great jobs!' would keep them in line?”

The doctor pursed his lips in distaste and continued. “As I was saying, we suspect anoxia is the crux of your unique development. We're going to continue the flow of oxygen to Mr. Dixon's brain as he dies, while your whatevers do their work. If the flow continues, we feel that his brain can bypass the damage you inflict on others while his body dies.” He looked over his shoulder at Dixon. “You see that circle? You're going to bite him, right there. We thought about extracting some of your matter, surgically injecting him with this virus rather than have you get one last meal, but all our experiments thus far have failed. There are quite a few” he air-quoted with his fingers “‘volunteers' in our pit because of our failures thus far. We feel that a fresh dose from your mouth is the only option left.”

“And if it doesn't work?” I asked. “If he's one of Simon's retards?”

Simon pulled out a massive semi-automatic pistol equipped with a high capacity magazine and cocked the trigger. “Then I put him down. One to the brain, one to the heart. As per Mr. Dixon's written instructions.” He looked to his employer and snapped a sincere salute. “It has been an honor working with you, sir.”

The doctor clapped his hands. “To work, everyone! Positions, please!” The nurses freed my hands and took a firm hold of my arms. Simon placed his massive gloved paws on the sides of my head.