Stay Dead: A Novel (21 page)

She attempted to feed the creature the cold
strips of flesh, but even as they dangled over its dry, cracked
lips the thing wanted nothing to do with it. She tried heating the
flesh but the soldier still wouldn’t take it into his mouth. She
tried asking him more questions but the guttural noises when played
back were just that: noises.

It left her with still more questions, and a
few that questioned her own sanity. But when she replayed the
previous session, the words were there. She couldn’t go to her
colleagues or superiors unless she had more to show them. She
thought maybe she’d have better luck with a fresher specimen. She
left the room, dissatisfied but with a sense diligence.

She went to the large lab room full of
specimens and limbs and she obtained more chunks of flesh.

“Hi,” she said to the lab technician seated
at the main station. “Is it possible to get a fresher
specimen?”

“Hey. What do you mean by ‘fresher’? They all
kind of have an odor—they’re rotting corpses.”

“Obviously. I’m looking for something that
hasn’t been deceased too long. Maybe something came in that just
died?” She sounded a little too hopeful, even for herself.

“Give me a second, and let me check the
charts.” The technician turned his attention to his computer
monitor.

He scrolled through a long list of specimens.
The list was sorted by date received. Looking at the last entry and
clicking on it opened a corresponding file that contained all
available information about the specimen.

“We got this one, came in yesterday; Private
First Class Nick Henshaw. Problem is Doctor Tran already has him,
says Henshaw died yesterday in the observation unit and Tran nabbed
him only a few hours later. He’s the freshest thing we got.”

“Great, Tran isn’t going to give him up. Any
chance you can notify me if anything comes in that’s been recently
deceased?”

“Sure thing. I can’t promise anything, but if
it comes in on my watch its all yours. You might want to see if
Tran will share with you: he’s got to sleep and eat sometime” He
said smiling.

“Thanks, but I think Tran might be a vampire.
And he seems to like talking to dead people over us living types,”
she replied.

Despite her gut feelings about Doctor Tran,
Rachel decided to see if it was possible for him to allow her some
access to his specimen. They were colleagues after all, and after
the same thing. But Rachel felt that Tran might not see things that
way. This was also a huge opportunity to save all of humankind, and
what person—especially a doctor—would not want to be the
responsible individual? Rachel knew she would love to be the one,
if only to end the long days and longer nights.

She found the room where he was stationed.
There was a similar guard stationed outside the room looking in,
and Doctor Tran was inside. He was sawing open the top of the
creature’s head. The fast whirring sound of the saw filled the
room.

Rachel stood next to the guard and waited.
She didn’t want to enter the room while he was performing such a
task. She would expect the same courtesy if the situation were
reversed, and she hoped he would appreciate the gesture.

The noise ended, Doctor Tran shut off the
saw, laying it down on a small stainless steel tray. He then held
onto the creatures head with the tips of his fingers and began to
pry off the top portion of the specimen’s head. Though Rachel
couldn’t hear it, she knew it was creating a schhllluck-like noise,
similar to the sound of suction. Tran placed the top of the head
onto the same tray where the saw lay. When he turned back around he
finally noticed Rachel looking into the room. He simply cocked his
head at her, surprised to see her standing there.

He walked to the door, opened it and a made
an overly dramatic and gentlemanly bow, extending his free arm in a
gesture for her to come inside. She smiled, and entered the
room.

“To what to I deserve this pleasure?”

“Well, Doctor Tran, I was wondering if I may
borrow your cadaver.”

“Please, call me Gregory. And as you can see
my cadaver and I are in the middle of something.” He gestured to
the creature with its brain exposed and glistening in the lab’s
diffused light.

“Yes, Gregory. I was hoping that maybe in
your down time I can examine him. Perhaps when you go for lunch or
sleep?”

“And what would you be doing with him?” Tran
seemed almost as if he already knew the answer.

“Just doing a cursory examination,” she
replied coldly.

“Don’t you mean an interrogation?” Tran
smiled, his small eyes gleaming.

“What do you mean Doc…Gregory?”

“Come on Rachel. You’re a smart girl, I’m a
borderline genius and we both know why you want to see this
particular specimen. The reason: because he’s fresh!” He emphasized
every letter of the word ‘fresh’, almost sounding like a snake.

“You’re right Doctor--”

“Gregory, please. There is no need for
formalities—it is the end of the world Rachel, we may as well be
janitors. You and I are on to something. You may be a day late and
a dollar short, but I’ll give you the dollar. And I’ll let you
speak to my dead friend over here who I’m sure has plenty to tell
you.” He sounded almost mad. But he wasn’t mad: he was
excited—enthralled.

Rachel was taken aback by Tran’s bluntness
and willingness to share. She had been totally wrong about him and
now felt foolish. “Would you mind telling me what you mean
Gregory?”

“Still with the games, I see.”

“No games. Let’s talk.”

“Fine, then let’s talk out of these suits and
with a cup of tea.” He exited the room.

***

Rachel and Doctor Tran sat in the break room.
Tran rhythmically dipped his tea bag in and out of his cup of
steaming hot water. The water grew cloudier with every dunk. Rachel
had another can of cola. It was cold, fizzy, and just as refreshing
as the one she had earlier.

“I’m assuming at this point you’ve discovered
that these things can in fact communicate?”

Rachel nodded.

“Okay, good, good. I discovered it on day
one—quite accidentally, but regardless I did. It was nothing more
than a few words, spoken backward, and hard to make out. It really
didn’t tell me anything we hadn’t already figured out at this
point: basically that they are hungry and want flesh, that much is
obvious.”

Rachel stared at Tran. She was fixated on
every syllable that fell from his lips. He was being dramatic and
stringing her along, and she wanted badly to be able to press a
fast forward button and speed up to the stuff she didn’t already
know herself. But she couldn’t. So he kept talking, and she kept
listening.

“I’ve found out that not every one of the
cadavers are capable of communicating. Maybe they are too far gone.
Whatever the reason is doesn’t matter. The trick I’ve found
out—which is what you would have learned on your own—is to find the
freshest specimen possible. And by freshest I mean those who have
recently reanimated, not the ones who’ve been dead for days.”

He paused to take a sip of tea and then
continued, “I assume the condition of the specimen can also be of
importance in the same regard.” Tran began to speak quietly. “Also,
it appears that whatever allows for the ability to communicate
degenerates over time, quickly I might add, and never comes back.
They are still able to ‘speak’ to some extent, but no exchange is
possible.”

“So, you’re saying we have a small window of
time where we can talk to the dead, and they can talk back?”

“Exactly! Though, I must warn you, the speech
is basic, and vague, and they have difficulty understanding
complicated sentences.”

“Let me ask you this: Do they remember who
they are?”

“Yes. From what I’ve gathered they are who
they were in life. Only now they speak of being trapped in a
darkness, controlled by hunger. Very vague statements, but
statements nonetheless.” Tran stopped dunking his tea bag and
sipped, allowing Rachel the time to absorb his words.

Rachel was shocked to hear the answer to her
question. It pained her deeply to know the answer and feared how
others would handle that knowledge. If people knew their loved ones
were still inside those dead husks, would they be able to dispatch
them to survive? She didn’t think so.

“Why haven’t you told anyone this?”

“I tried to, but it was dismissed as
nonsense. I was threatened with being removed from the premises
unless I focused on the task at hand—stopping the dead from coming
back.”

“Jesus,” Rachel said, unable to understand
why their superiors wouldn’t be interested in the knowledge. It’s
not like Doctor Tran is a crackpot—he’s one of the elite. He wasn’t
kidding in the slightest when he said, ‘borderline genius’, if
anything he was being modest by adding borderline.

“They are close-minded fools. There only
concern seems to be pinning the bombings on some
terrorist-harboring country even remotely capable of committing the
act. When in reality who is ever going to know?” Tran grew
angry.

“Pinning?” Rachel asked.

Tran looked perplexed. “Come on Rachel,
please don’t tell me you think anyone except our government dropped
those bombs?”

“Those are American cities! They couldn’t
have,” she protested, but had already considered it a
possibility.

“They did. It’s all strategy—just a group of
pieces on a chessboard—nothing more. And it makes perfect sense. I
understand why it needs to be done, but why worry about an excuse?
Is there anyone reporting this? No! Of course not.”

“No, can’t be…that can’t be true,” she
whimpered. She wanted to hold onto her idealistic view of the world
she once knew. From a military perspective it made perfect sense to
eliminate the places that harbored the largest numbers of hostiles
first. Even in painting you did your broad strokes first, then went
in and did the detail work as means of a finish.

After they talked some more, Tran left her to
fetch a few hours of sleep and relinquished his cadaver to her.
Rachel wasted no time in examining the specimen and hearing for
herself what the creature had to say. It didn’t say much, and much
of what it did say she had already heard from Tran. But hearing it
from the horse’s mouth was an entirely different experience.

The dead soldier, with its brain exposed, was
once a man with feelings and dreams, and aspirations. He had a
family and people who cared for him, and people he cared for in
return. And Rachel could hear his garbled pleas for release, for
flesh, and it sickened her right down to her bones.

What she had learned in the few hours she
spent with the soldier was that the consummation of living flesh
helped ease the pains of living death. And that there was no light
waiting for her at the end of her life, just a darkness waiting to
envelop her.

She ran her hand along the cadaver’s cold
arm. She could feel the hardened veins through the thick material
of the suit. She looked the dead man in the eyes, feeling sorry for
him. He was in there, staring through a darkness he didn’t
understand, unable to fight his urges for flesh. For whatever
reason, unable to rest.

C
HAPTER 24: Survivors

Sal left Dane and Keith where they were. One
of the cruisers worked well enough, and they had plenty of time
left on their shift. They’d continue with the ditch-digging, no
doubt griping about it the entire time, and hoped to have the rest
of their shift go by incident-free. They both held their
breath.

Danni and Clem sat in the back of Sal’s
cruisers. They looked filthy and disheveled and on the verge of
collapse. Sal continually looked at them from the rear view mirror
to make sure neither of them turned into a flesh eater. He had
asked them if either of them had been bitten, and they both said
‘no’, but by the looks of them they could’ve been dead already.

Sal pulled up to the station, parked, and
opened the back door for his two passengers. They got out with much
effort and followed him inside.

Sal led them through the desolate station to
the large meeting room where the map and the tacks remained from
the last time he was in there. He offered them coffee or water, and
they accepted gratefully. They sat in the room staring at the map,
curious as to what all the colored pushpins represented.

Once Sal returned with their drinks and an
added bonus of some stale cookies he informed them of what the
different colored pins stood for. Sal asked them if they could add
any to the map, but they declined.

“You’d be out of pins,” Clem said, munching
on a crunchy cookie.

“Well, if you want to add a few, by all
means, go ahead,” Sal suggested, waving his hand across the
map.

Clem and Danni nodded, too busy stuffing
their faces to respond with words.

“You two just sit tight for a bit till the
Sheriff shows up. He wants to talk to you two, should be here in a
few. If you want more to drink or eat, the pantry is right around
that bend.” He pointed and said, “first door on the left—help
yourself.”

“I think we might,” Danni said. “Thank
you.”

Sal smiled, and left the room. Clem stared at
the map and decided to add a few more tacks. Once he was done, he
pictured connecting the dots with an imaginary red line. The line
made a crooked trail to New Haven.

Danni pinched her nose softly. It was tender
to the touch and swollen, as were parts of her face. Her front
teeth were somewhat numb feeling, but felt firmly in place—she was
thankful for that much.

She got up and began to wander around, hoping
to find the ladies room. She found the pantry, grabbed another
cookie, and continued to wander. She eventually found the ladies
room, and looked at herself in the mirror. She remembered the last
time she found herself in a new place looking into a mirror and
trying to figure out who was looking back at her.