13 Advanced Studies
We departed for HuSH Labs several days later, on a February morning of hard frost and an empty sky. Rachel, Sandy and I drove carefully in the wagon, avoiding ice and deep drifts. We were followed by a pickup truck loaded with supplies driven by a handsome brown-skinned lad of 20 named Hector. In years gone by I had schooled him in maths and a little science, but he was always more interested in the outdoor life. Rachel had worked with him in the intervening years, and pulled him for her hunting party. The last two of Rachel’s hunters were a very Nordic-looking brother and sister named Alfred and Jaida Eklund, relative newcomers to the Sojourners. The Eklunds had gone ahead to scout the HuSH grounds before our arrival, and radioed back that the area was safe.
When we founded the lab in November I was a tolerated fringe element working a crazy idea, with two friends and no support from the community. When we returned to HuSH the Sojourners had voted me in as a permanent member without bothering to ask if I wanted to join, then pledged full support of my work. I was to travel always with an armed entourage, and never into danger. Marta would check on me twice a week to monitor my health and pick up any new research. Father Caleb would curate the research and technical designs into a form useful for publication. Sandy became my dedicated assistant. Hector, Alfred, and Jaida were bodyguards and providers. Rachel was in charge of our group. I was more or less free to manage my own time provided certain doctor-approved daily requirements were met: at least an hour of exercise, three square meals, six hours maximum of zombie-lab time, an hour of group socialization, eight hours of sleep. The remainder I could use for engineering, study, or however I saw fit. Rachel added a minimum of one hour “family time” to the list in bold red marker.
Human Scale Homes looked very different after two weeks away. The row of miniature houses were quaint and clean under all the recent snow. With the workshop and warehouse doors closed, there was no hint of the bloody secrets inside. Snow was melting off the office and adjoining house, which told me someone had lit the stove.
As we circled around the back we were confronted by two huge mounds of discarded zombie parts, not as tall as in my dreams but taller than I was. I told Sandy to stop the car and got out to stare. “So many,” I said. There were limbs, hands, feet, heads, ribs, spines, miles of intestine running through it all. Subhuman faces showed me their blackened teeth, stares fixed in shriveled lidless eyes. Paris had its Empire de la Mort. The Toltecs built altars then drenched them in blood. Warlords put the bodies of their enemies on display. My death totem was a Heidegger sculpture rendered in shades of frost-glazed putrescence.
“You said not to throw anything away,” Sandy said, “so we just … piled them up.”
“A hundred and ninety four,” said Rachel. “You went manic for a while.” We stood there long enough for the cold to bite before getting back in the cars. “Mind your schedule from now on. I’m not letting you go down that road again.”
Jaida and Alfred held open the gate for us, and gave us a hand unpacking. Rachel, Sandy and I settled back into the previous owner’s house. Jaida took the mini-victorian house, while Hector and Alfred took over a model apartment constructed from a shipping container. Rachel kept me from the lab until everyone was moved in and we could all go together. They had a surprise for me, she said.
The surprise was in the subject room, naked and strapped to a dolly with layers of cellophane. At first I thought it was a fresh zombie, until I noticed it was breathing. I seized its hair in a gloved hand and tilted back the head, to see the state of its eyes. You can tell the general condition of a zombie by the state of its eyes.
It was Mike, slumped against his wrappings in sleep or unconsciousness, his life betrayed only by his breathing. The rest of him was pale and limp, which probably had something to do with the bullet wound festering in his leg. Rachel's crew had kept him alive, but hadn’t done much else for him.
“Who knows about this?” I asked.
“Just us. I won’t tell the Father if you won’t.” Rachel looked ready to spit.
I had a moment of pity for Mike but it disappeared under the weight of his victims, their gore and their limbs strewn about, forgotten by the eaters because their flesh had cooled too quickly. “I need an hour, then I’ll be ready. Get him some water, make sure he’s awake. Don’t damage him any more: this is for science.”
I had, in fact, prepared for this. It was only a wishlist when I wrote it down, not a real intent, there were things I wanted to know. I dug up those notes and reviewed them, and charted out the measurements we would take with growing excitement. I wouldn't get another chance at this, at least not one with so few ethical entanglements, so I needed a better plan than I had back when we brought Test Subjet One into the lab.
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I entered the subject room wearing a butcher’s smock and face shield, carrying a tray of various instruments: clippers, safety razor, scalpel, electrodes and leads, a tube of gel, thermistor probes, surface temperature gauges and a few other odds and ends. I could feel the others behind the glass, watching. I trusted Sandy to take notes.
“Subject one ninety five. Male, seventy two point two kilos. Left femur damaged by a single anterior gunshot wound, smells infected. Otherwise, condition is a five-plus. Known zombie age: minus one. Hello, Mike.” The man’s eyes were wide, his breath on the verge of panic. “There’s no need to talk, but if you have anything to say my assistant will record it." He shook his head mutely.
“All right. We’re going to start by connecting some basic heart and temperature monitors. Then we’ll shave your head so we can monitor your progress on the EEG. If you’re still, it won’t hurt a bit.” I took off all his scalp hair first with the electric clippers, then with the safety razor. He was weeping before the first strand of hair touched the ground.
“You can’t do this! You have to shoot me or let me go! I want to talk to Father Caleb.”
“You’re dead to the Father, Mike. I mean he thinks you’re dead so we can’t let you talk to him. This next part is going to hurt. I’m going to remove some skin from your arm, here.” In a stroke I sliced a two-inch square of skin cleanly from his upper arm leaving muscle exposed. You can imagine for yourself his screaming and thrashing. He called me all kinds of names, but I didn’t blame him for that. Nobody likes pain or wants to die. The sample went into a small jar for later study, then disappeared through the sample door. Sandy would put it into the cooler. I waited patiently for his screams to quiet into sobs. If I had had painkillers to spare I would have given him some, but those were scarce and we needed to save them for emergencies.
“What are you going to do to me?” Mike’s voice had fallen to a hoarse whisper.
“I’m going to kill you. Then, I’m going to study what happens when someone becomes a zombie.” I began connecting the network of electrodes to his scalp.
“You’re insane.”
“Not as much as you might think. I’ve made huge strides here you know, with the help of a few friends.” Each electrode had its own lead, which had to be connected to the right socket in the wall. The EEG reader was in the control room, with Sandy at the helm.
I talked casually to Mike as I worked. I don't know if I was trying to put him at ease, or put myself at ease, or if I was trying to drive him mad. "There's a certain irony here, you know? You were so hot to settle down in one place that you turned on your settlement, but if you had just waited a little longer, you could have had it. We can do it, now. We can control the zombies well enough to keep them away, or walk them right into their own extermination.
“But, that's no reason to sit on our laurels. I know you’re too selfish to give a damn or else you wouldn’t be here, but this could help a lot of people. I've never had a chance to study a freshie. This will give me context for all the rest of my data. And observing a conversion under laboratory conditions is usually so,” I gesticulated with the thermistor probe, looking for the right words, “ethically unsound.”
My clinical attitude began to slip, into cold rage.
“I think if it could be ethical to study a conversion, the subject would have to be someone just like you. Traitor. Murderer of children. I have to stick this into your liver now. It won’t hurt nearly as bad as the skin sample," I said with relish, "but you might find it hard to talk. Anything you want to say?” Mike shook his head, and started crying all over again. How could he cry, when he had done so much worse to so many people? “Yeah, I guess I wouldn’t want to explain myself either. People who trusted you got ripped to pieces and eaten so you could have, what? Free gas and food you didn’t need?”
I shoved the probe through the plastic and into his liver. “We’re almost to the end, Mike. It won’t be long now.”
“Please,” he begged, barely able to get out the words, “don’t do this.”
Fury overcame me. “You know the rules, Michael! You opened the fence!” I shouted into his face. “You turned off the alarms. You shot the Faulkners! You turned off power so people couldn’t call for help! After all that, you can’t be allowed to live. Nobody is going to take that chance with YOU!”
“Please, I’ll do anything.”
“I’m going to put this into your kidney now.” I showed him the needle, a foot long and wickedly narrow. “You’ll bleed out very slowly, but you’ll hardly feel a thing. It’s better than you deserve but, then again, this is for science. Are the monitors all on?” Two knocks from the window told me everything was running.
“I have a line of inquiry Mike, would you like to hear it?” He shook his head emphatically no. I took my position behind him. “Does the zombie mind form anew from our dead brains, or is it always there, waiting for a chance to get out? Maybe your zombie will give us a clue.” I stabbed him much harder than required but my aim was true. When I pulled the needle out a thin stream of blood flowed from the wound. I kicked open the floor drain, took my tray of instruments in my shaking hands, and left Mike to die alone.
In twenty two minutes and twenty seconds we had a fresh zombie and I had myself under some kind of control. We used an expanded battery of tests, given continuously for the first four hours while changes were rapid, and at two hour intervals thereafter. I wanted to give all the tests myself, but Rachel enforced the new schedule by threatening to put me in handcuffs and shoot me full of horse tranquilizer. I took a cold shower, ate, tried to read for a while, and finally collapsed into bed. I had worried all day about the state of my conscience, but as soon as I put my head down I slept.