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My dad has a date. How weird was that?
Chapter 4
I wanted a distraction from my worries about Saberton’s experimentation, and the universe happily obliged. I rubbed my arms against the frigid air of what I called the Head Room as I peered into the vat. About two feet across, the container looked like an oversized stainless steel crock pot, but I sure as hell didn’t want to eat what was cooking in it.
“That,” I said with a shiver of disgust and delight, “is seriously gross.”
Thick, dark pink liquid like blood-tinged mucus oozed its way around the vat, while something resembling a deformed fetus drifted below the surface of the snot. Stubby little hands curled up by its chest, and misshapen lumps like developing organs formed a weird pot-belly. Uneven legs splayed out in opposite directions. No umbilical cord, and the heart wasn’t beating, but I had the weirdest impression the entire thing was vibrating, like a buzz from a beehive.
From neck to butt, the fetus-thing was about two inches long, but the truly weird and gross part was the full-sized head. Wisps of dark hair clung to the skull, waving sluggishly in the thick liquid. The face had Korean features, though it was hard to tell right now with the blotchy grey and shriveled skin.
Kang. The first zombie I ever knew, besides myself. Or rather, the first zombie I ever knew who I knew was a zombie. Kang had taught me a lot about survival as a zombie: how often I’d need to eat human brains, how exertion increased the hunger, and how my mental faculties would degrade along with my body if I went too long without eating brains. But Kang hadn’t listened to me when it counted, and he’d ended up the victim of a serial killer who’d been targeting zombies and chopping their heads off.
And that was one hell of a seriously complicated story.
I pulled my gaze away from fetus-Kang. His vat was one of six in the dimly lit room. A pale and thin man with dark wavy hair crouched by a control panel as he made adjustments—Jacques Leroux, the lab tech and Dr. Nikas’s assistant. On the other side of Kang’s vat stood Pietro, the relaxed smile of earlier now hard and flat as he looked down at Kang.
Dr. Nikas stood next to Pietro, his arms folded loosely over his chest as he peered into the vat. Average height and unimposing, the director of the lab had light brown eyes set in a kind face, and brown hair pulled back in a ponytail that hung to his shoulder blades. I didn’t know exactly what Dr. Nikas was a doctor of, but I figured it was a lot of different things, especially since I had a strong suspicion he’d been around for more than a few centuries, even though he didn’t look older than late forties. While Pietro ran things, Dr. Nikas was the heart and soul of the lab and, from what I’d seen, had final say on what happened within it. On the outside, the lab was a drab industrial building smack dab in the middle of Nowhere, Louisiana with nothing but pines and swamp for miles in any direction. However, within those boring walls was a high tech research lab and small medical facility, like something out of a science fiction movie.
“Kang grew that much in only one day?” I asked Dr. Nikas. “I changed the fluid yesterday morning and he was still a prune-skinned head. Same as he’s been for months.”
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Dr. Nikas said. “My theory is that he hasn’t been quiescent at all, but rather, preparing.” He leaned over the vat and peered with avid delight at the deformed thing that could have been straight out of a horror flick. “Assessing resources and checking the DNA blueprints one might say.” He lifted his head and gave me a warm smile.
The hard line of Pietro’s mouth flattened even more. “Ari, how long before you know if the memory is intact?”
Dr. Nikas straightened. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to determine anything about his memory or cognitive function,” he said, and I didn’t miss the emphasis on “his.” This wasn’t an impersonal lab experiment to Dr. Nikas. Each vat in here contained a severed zombie head, and every single one was a person with their name on the vat handwritten on a card in elegant script. Little personal touches like that told me Dr. Nikas gave a shit. “It may not be until he fully regrows,” he added.
“How long will that take?” I gestured at fetus-Kang. “I mean, this happened in less than a day.”
“It’s one of the many things we still don’t know,” Dr. Nikas said with gentle indulgence. “This growth happened very quickly, but he has been in stasis again for the last six hours.” He spread his hands. “It may come in spurts. Or it may not happen again until we move him into the full vat where he has ample resources.” He gestured in the direction of the new coffin-looking container on the other side of the room. “It’s all very new territory. Theoretically, the potential is there for full regrowth to happen quickly—perhaps within weeks. We’ll know more after he grows again.”
Jacques moved around the vat to check another control panel, and I stepped back and out of his way. “You’ll, uh, track the rate of growth over time and then make a projection from that?” I asked Dr. Nikas. A year ago—hell, six months ago—I wouldn’t have known what any of that meant.
Dr. Nikas’s smile widened. “That’s right, Angel,” he said. “Jacques can show you how to access the charts and raw data on one of the workstations. You can see our current projections and watch as they adjust with additional data.”
Pietro frowned in obvious impatience. “Can’t the EEG give you some indication of what memory or cognitive function Kang will come back with?”
Annoyance whispered across Dr. Nikas’s face. “It shows us nothing more than it did before the growth,” he stated. “With the parasite fully encapsulating his brain, this is what we get.” He nodded toward a screen that showed flat lines alternating with wild spikes every few seconds. Even I could tell it was screwy. “Until the parasite activity returns to baseline, I can’t tell what Kang’s functional level is.” He exhaled. “Remember, he came in from Kristi, and her initial preservation and handling was far from optimal.”
I didn’t bother hiding my sneer. Dr. Kristi Charish was the neurobiologist who’d kidnapped me then used me for her psycho zombie experiments. She’d been under Pietro’s house arrest ever since he’d captured her after the secret lab fiasco and, like Dr. Nikas, lived at the lab 24/7. However, unlike the good doctor, she wore a tracking anklet and had round the clock supervision by one of her three assigned guards. Kristi had shown herself to be an unstable, reckless, and treacherous bitch, and had broken more laws than I could count, but we couldn’t exactly turn her over to the cops. Yes, officer, this respected scientist kidnapped me and made me chew on a couple of almost dead guys. Why? Oh, y’see, I’m a zombie and eat human brains, and she . . . Wait, what are you doing with that Taser? Hey, stop! Ow!
It would only go downhill from there.
She was currently working with Dr. Nikas to develop a nutritional substitute—a.k.a. fake brains—that zombies could survive off of instead of human brains. I had little doubt that if Kristi wasn’t such a sharp researcher Pietro would have made her disappear rather than keeping her, and I suspected that was the only reason Dr. Nikas tolerated the outright slavery under his roof. Setting her free simply wasn’t an option.
Dr. Nikas gave me a nod. “You can close it now, Angel.”
Pietro backed away from the vat as I replaced the lid, but his gaze lingered on fetus-Kang for another few seconds before shifting to Ari. “I want to be kept apprised of any changes,” he stated, then pivoted and briskly exited the room.
Dr. Nikas and I followed him out, leaving Jacques to finish his adjustments.
“Angel, I’ll meet you at the central lab in about five minutes,” Dr. Nikas said tightly as we reached a cross-corridor. “I need to have a brief chat with Pietro.”
“Gotcha.” I didn’t mind being left out of that particular chat. I continued straight while Dr. Nikas turned left, but when I passed the door to the lounge off the central lab, I spied Pietro’s head of security, Brian Archer, sitting on the couch and flipping through a decade-old magazine.
“Hey, you missed the freak show,” I said, ducking into the lounge. “Kang’s head is way gross.”
Brian set the magazine aside. “I think I get enough freak show without an extra dose,” he said with a casual smile. Brian didn’t have the kind of looks that turned heads, but he made up for it in presence. He looked like he was in his forties, but he once told me he’d been a zombie for a little over fifteen years, and I’d never worked up the nerve to ask him his age. I’d never seen him looking sloppy or dressed casually, and today was no different. Dark navy suit, cream-colored shirt with a tie that coordinated without calling attention to itself. Short brown hair and deep brown eyes. Nails neatly trimmed. No jewelry of any sort. Not a man to be fucked with.
