Re-Animator (21 page)

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 his 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.

The detective had a hunch Cain could explain it all, but after hearing about the bodies and thinking about Mace’s sudden departure—the guard was lazy, but he wasn’t a coward—he found himself hoping the young man stayed lost. Papa valued his sanity more than his track record and, shrugging and leaving the hospital with the queasy Karlin in tow, this was one time he wasn’t sure he wanted to know all the answers.