[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
red and yellow stains all over it. I didn't want to know
what they were. Now he was excited as he said, "What
we need is a living specimen of one of the big ones."
He grinned. Maybe he really was a mad scientist. I
had to ask the obvious question: "Would you be able
to control it?"
"We already handle the living zombies we have
here. That sounds funny, doesn't it? Living zombies."
"You have live ones?" I nearly freaked when he said
that. Being in combat had turned me into a killer . . .
of the undead.
"Sure, but they're easy to control. They don't have
superhuman strength. You know that from fighting
them."
"Have you fought them?"
"Well, no, but I've studied them."
"Trust me on this, Doctor--they're dangerous."
"But manageable. That's all I'm saying. If we had a
live cyberdemon, then we'd have a problem of con-
tainment. The same as if our mancubus was living. I
know you call them fatties."
"You have a whole fatty?"
"Fortunately it's dead. Unlike the specimen here,
he seems to be slowly decaying."
I laughed. "They smell so bad alive I don't see how
they could get any worse."
"The stench reminds me of rotting fish, sour grapes,
and old locker-room sweat. Come on. I'll show you."
He didn't need to take my arm, but I let him. He was
like a friendly uncle who wanted to show off his
chamber of horrors. We went past sections of flying
skulls laid out like bikers' helmets. I'd always wanted
a motorcycle.
"What do you call the Clydes?"
"We don't," he answered quickly. "We think your
friends were wrong to think they might be the product
of genetic engineering. They're probably the human
traitors who were given some kind of treatment to
make them tractable."
The fatty was behind glass and made me think of a
gigantic meat loaf that had been left out in the sun.
The metal guns it used for arms had been removed
and stacked up next to the monster like giant flash-
lights. He looked sort of pathetic without them.
"You can't smell it from here, but if you want to
step into the room ..."
"No, thanks." I turned him down, unsure if he was
kidding me. "Let's see the zombies."
I wish I hadn't asked.
He led me to the end of the warehouse, where I
finally saw some other people in white lab coats. For a
moment it had seemed as if the whole place belonged
to Ackerman and his monsters. We went out into a
corridor. I figured the zombies had been given a
special place of their own.
Like I said, what's great about scientists is the way
they refuse to talk down to kids. Ackerman started to
lecture, and it was fine with me:
"The most interesting part about studying zombies
is the residual speech pattern. We have recorded many
hours of zombie dialogue. Some of them fixate on the
invasion, speaking cryptically about gateways and
greater forces that lie behind them. Others pick up a
pattern from their own lives, repeating phrases that
tell us something about them. A final test group
doesn't speak at all. We are attempting to find out if
they retain any capacity to reason after the transfor-
mation."
"No," I said as strongly as I could. "The human
part of them is dead."
"I understand how you must feel," he said. "It's
easier for all of us if we assume we're not killing
anyone human on the other end of the gun barrel."
I shook my head. "You don't understand," I told
him. "I'll kill any skag who betrayed us. The traitors
are still human. I wouldn't have any problem pulling
the trigger on those creeps in the government who
helped the demons."
"All right, calm down," he said in a completely
different tone of voice. "I was really talking about
myself just then. It's easier for me to work on these,
er, zombies, if I think there's no humanity left."
Arlene keeps saying I can be a real pill, so I decided
to be that way on purpose. I asked, "What difference
does that make to you, Doctor, if they weren't gen-
iuses when they were alive?"
He laughed instead of getting mad. "You are smart,
Jill. I need to watch my step around you. I hope we'll
enjoy working together. We can start now. What's
your theory of why a few of the big monsters seem
able to reason?"
"You mean like the spider-minds?"
I didn't need to tell him what that word meant.
"Apparently all of them. Then there was the loqua-
cious imp whom Corporal Taggart reported encoun-
tering on Phobos."
He was on one of my favorite subjects. "We won-
dered about the smart ones when we were doing the
L.A. mission."
"What were your conclusions?"
I suddenly noticed how long we'd been walking.
"How much farther before we reach the zombies?"
"Not long. Just don't ask if we're there yet! It'll
make me think of you as a kid again."
"Is there a rest room I can use?"
"Just a few feet beyond the zombie pen." He
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]