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I skimmed a glance around the room. “Maybe I should see if Reg needs anything? Or inventory the reagents?”
“Angel, you have inventoried, cleaned, organized, and labeled everything in this lab that can be seen without a microscope.” He paused. “And a few things that can’t.”
Damn.
A faint smile tugged at his mouth. “Don’t worry. You haven’t inventoried yourself out of a job. We’re simply in a holding pattern while Dr. Nikas works. You know how he can be.”
I snorted. Utterly absorbed didn’t even begin to describe Dr. Nikas when he was working through a problem. He would ignore everyone and everything, muttering to himself in languages no one spoke anymore, filling whiteboards with formulas and symbols and whatnot, and forgetting to eat or drink until Jacques gently pushed one or the other into his free hand—and even then surfacing from his deep focus only enough to chew and swallow.
“I’ll go check the heads and Kang,” I said.
“I’ll call you when I need you.”
Not if he needed me. When. That felt nice. I’d never be as kickass brilliant as Dr. Nikas, or even Jacques, but I could be the best damn assistant ever.
Chapter 5
“Kang” was John Kang, the first zombie who’d admitted to me he was a zombie. He’d worked at Scott Funeral Home, and not long after I started working at the morgue, he confronted me about brains missing from body bags—brains I’d harvested from autopsied bodies for my own consumption. Turned out he’d been running a side business providing brains for zombies who didn’t have any reliable sources. Lucky for me, once Kang was satisfied I wasn’t going to cut into his business, he helped me adjust to becoming a zombie. After all, he’d been one for seventy-something years. And though we never really became friends, we’d been fairly friendly associates who had a common goal: survival.
I’d warned Kang a serial killer was hell-bent on collecting zombie heads, but he didn’t bother to take precautions and ended up getting his own head chopped off. Several months later, I discovered Kristi Charish had orchestrated the zombie murders because she wanted the heads for her own depraved research. After a shitstorm of shenanigans and downright unpleasantness, the Tribe recovered seven heads, including Kang’s, from her private lab. Dr. Nikas then began the uncertain and monumental task of regrowing zombies from their heads alone.
And the regrowth lab—a.k.a. the Head Room—was my current destination.
I passed through the lab’s central rotunda and down a corridor with walls decorated in colorful tile mosaics. Near the end, I punched my code into the number pad on an unmarked door. The lock clicked, and I stepped into the room. Cold air sent goosebumps racing over my skin as I paused to let my eyes adjust to the dim lighting that was ideal for regrowth.
An empty, coffin-sized glass tank dominated one side of the room, and a counter along the far wall held four stainless steel crock-pot-looking vats. Each contained a zombie head and fifteen gallons of nutrient medium—an amount I knew all too well since one of my weekly duties was to change the snot-like goop.
Taped to the front of each vat was an index card bearing the name of the occupant. I peered through the glass cover of the vat marked “Adam Campbell.” Sightless white-filmed eyes stared up from the grey, shriveled flesh of his face—exactly the same as when I checked on him yesterday. Absolutely zero sign of regrowth.
The parasite activity indicators on the side of the vat were also the same as yesterday. The parasite was dormant but still viable—in stasis, according to Dr. Nikas. A quick check of the other three vats revealed the same: dormant but viable. Two of the recovered heads hadn’t fared as well. Peter Plescia’s parasite bit the dust a couple of days after arriving at the lab, and Timothy Kaye’s died while Dr. Nikas was in New York.
I dutifully entered the parasite activity data into the tablet on the counter then left and locked the room. Kang had been the only one to show any sign of progress. He’d spent the last few months regrowing his body in the coffin-tank, and four days ago he’d finally been transferred to a hospital bed in the lab’s medical wing.
Which was where I headed next—though it wasn’t so much a wing as a hallway with a half-dozen hospital-type rooms. Two of the rooms were for prisoners or hostiles—equipped with constant surveillance and steel doors that required a code for both entry and exit. To my annoyance, Kang was in one of the secured rooms. The reasoning was that, since he was coming back from a frozen head, no one knew what he’d be like when he woke up. He might be brain dead or Normal Kang or possibly even Violent Psycho Kang. Better to have him locked down, just to be safe.
But I’d seen him in the tank during the first attempt to resurrect him a couple of weeks ago. I’d met his eyes. I knew he was totally Kang and not some brain-warped crazy thing. Unfortunately, no one was willing to take my gut feeling as proof of his Kang-ness.
His door was half-open, and a woman’s voice drifted into the hall.
“. . . Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o’er Afric’s sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows,
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars”
Within, a dark-haired woman with a slim, athletic build sat beside the bed, reading aloud from a book with a tattered green cover. Naomi Comtesse—one of the few non-zombies who worked for the Tribe. She was actually Julia Saber, twin sister to Andrew Saber and daughter of Saberton’s unscrupulous CEO, Nicole Saber. Julia had worked in corporate espionage until she discovered the atrocities committed against zombies by her own company. Since she knew her mother wouldn’t hesitate to have her killed in order to protect Saberton, Julia had fled. After a rocky start, the Tribe took her in and helped her change her identity to Naomi—though unfortunately a surveillance device had blown her cover a few months back.
Kang lay motionless in the bed, wrapped in gauze from neck to ankles like a zombie-mummy. On the wall, an origami dragon perched atop a monitor, where squiggly lines crawled across the screen, tracking vital signs, brain activity, and heart rhythm. Kang was definitely alive, and all of his various parts seemed to be in order. Except, apparently, his eyelids, ’cause he sure as hell hadn’t opened them since he came out of the tank.
Naomi had read or talked to him every day he’d been in this room. A half dozen other origami animals lurked, crouched, or perched on the nightstand—swan, bear, horse, elephant, bird, and frog. Naomi did origami when she was stressed or bored. And she stayed far too busy to be bored.
She flicked a glance my way, lifted a “hang on a sec” finger, and kept on reading.
“With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
