Life Sentence: Two Tales of the Living Dead

Life Sentence

Daniel Boyd had overcome many obstacles in his life, and mortality was simply the latest challenge. He’d been born into an illustrious family of sorcerers, owners of a multinational corporation. Money and magical powers. The proverbial silver spoon ... or it would be, if your father hadn’t screwed the company over and gotten himself—and his sons—disinherited. But Daniel had surmounted that barrier, and so he would with this one.

“We’re heading down to the laboratory,” Shana said, her voice coming through his computer speaker. “It’s underground, so let’s hope we don’t lose the connection.”

They’d better not, considering how much Daniel had paid for the equipment. He leaned back and watched the screen bob as Shana descended the steps, the camera affixed to her hand.

The doctor had given him the death sentence two weeks ago. Inoperable cancer. Six months to live. Daniel didn’t accept it. He had money, he had power, he had connections; he would find a way to commute this sentence. So he’d begun his search, delving in the black market of the supernatural world.

Shana finally reached the underground Peruvian laboratory. As much as Daniel wanted this cure, he wasn’t flitting across the world to get it. There was no need to when he had Shana.

She was, as he’d always said, the perfect assistant. Loyal enough to follow orders without question. Astute enough to anticipate his every need. Attractive enough to make everyone presume he was bedding her, and smart enough never to correct that presumption.

She’d been with him for six years, and he didn’t know what he’d do without her. Luckily, he didn’t need to worry about that.

“Still there, sir?” Shana asked.

“I am. Audio and visual working fine.”

A man’s face filled the screen, coffee-stained teeth flashing. “
Hola
, Mr. Boyd! I’m delighted that you’ve taken an interest in my studies. May I be the first to welcome you to—”

“I have a meeting in twenty minutes.”

“Of course. You’re a busy man. I mustn’t keep you—”

“No, you mustn’t,” Shana said. “Now, this is the lab, I take it?”

The camera panned a gleaming, high-tech laboratory. Dr. Gonzales was funded by a European Cabal that wouldn’t appreciate him double-dipping with a Boyd for a client, but he’d been unable to resist Daniel’s offer.

Gonzales walked to a table full of beakers and tubes and started explaining how he’d distilled the genetic component.

“Not interested,” Daniel said. “I only care about the end result.”

“You can fax the results to me,” Shana said. “So our scientists can check your procedures.”

“Yes, of course. Well, then, on to the subjects.”

The screen dimmed as they returned to the hallway. Daniel answered three e-mails while they walked and talked about the cure. It wasn’t a cure for cancer; Daniel had realized early that was a band-aid solution to avoid tackling the underlying problem of mortality.

Vampirism seemed the best solution. Semi-immortality plus invulnerability. But as it turned out, the process of becoming one was far more convoluted than he’d expected, and promised only a twenty-percent chance of success . . . and an eighty-percent risk of complete annihilation of life and soul.

Most vampires, though, were hereditary, and therein, he believed, lay the answer. After some digging, he finally found a lead on Gonzales, a shaman who claimed to have isolated and distilled the genetic component that would make anyone a vampire, for the right price.

“Sir?” Shana murmured.

He glanced at the screen to see what looked like a hospital ward. He counted eight subjects, varying ages, all on their backs, unconscious, hooked up to banks of monitors.

“We began clinical trials five years ago, starting with rhesus monkeys—”

“Could you tell us about these subjects, please,” Shana cut in. “Have they completed the trial? How much attrition did you experience? Have you managed to induce invulnerability as well as semi-immortality?”

“They’ve all completed the procedure. We had two subjects whose bodies rejected the infusion. One survived. One did not. As for invulnerability, naturally, that is part of the package—”

Gonzales stopped as Shana stepped up to a sleeping subject and slid a knife from her pocket.

“—though it hasn’t been perfected yet,” he hurried on. “It will be, though.”

Shana wrote something on her tablet notebook. Sweat trickled down Gonzales’s cheek.

“Why are they unconscious?” she asked, still writing.

“We had some difficulty finding willing subjects, and while I’m sure they’ll be pleased with the results, we thought it best to . . .”

“Ease them into the reality of their new life.”

His head bobbed. “Yes. Exactly. Thank you.”

“Wake one up.”

Gonzales stared at her. Then he looked into the camera.

“When Ms. Bergin speaks, she is speaking for me,” Daniel said.

Gonzales blathered on about the danger of reversing an induced coma. Shana set the camera down, so he could speak directly to Daniel, then walked away, as if giving them privacy. She walked behind Gonzales, quietly opening a medical cabinet, taking out a syringe and scanning the bottles before choosing one. Daniel smiled. The perfect assistant. Always resourceful. Always anticipating his needs.

As Gonzales continued, Shana filled the syringe, stepped up to the nearest subject and plunged it in.

The man bolted upright, gasping and wild-eyed. Not unexpected, under the circumstances. The screams were. Unearthly shrieks filled the lab as the man grabbed at his skin, fingers and nails digging in, ripping, blood splattering the white bed, the white walls, Gonzales radioing for help as he ran to the medicine cabinet.

Shana walked over to the camera, then glanced back at the subject, still screaming and rending his flesh as if acid flowed through his veins.

“Well, now we know why they were sedated,” she said, and turned off the camera.

You didn’t reach Daniel’s position in life by giving up easily. Yet neither did you get there by clinging to hope past all reasonable bounds. He spent another month researching promises of vampire life, then gave up on that particular cure.

“They’ve been making huge strides in zombification lately,” Wendell said, between bites of his Kobe burger. Wendell was Daniel’s second cousin, a VP in the family Cabal. Relations with his family had greatly improved a decade ago, coinciding with his own company’s appearance on the NYSE. An independently successful Boyd could be useful to the Cabal, and Daniel felt the same about them.

Wendell swiped the linen napkin across this mouth. “Did you hear what I said?”

“I heard. I’m ignoring it, having no overwhelming desire to spend my eternity in a state of decomposition.”

“Oh, you don’t rot forever. Eventually the flesh is gone and you’re a walking skeleton.” He leaned over to thump Daniel’s shoulder. “I’m kidding. Well, not about the rotting part, but for years, scientists have been working on curing that little drawback. We had our own R&D department working on it for a while before we decided it was simpler to monitor the independent guys, wait until they’re done, then buy the research.”

“For zombies?” Daniel’s lip curled with distaste. The server—thinking he didn’t like his meal—rushed over, but he waved her away.

“Sure. Think of the applications. We’ve got a lawyer on his deathbed right now. Guy’s been with us almost fifty years. A wealth of information is about to disappear. We could change that.”

“Huh.” Daniel tore off a chunk of bread and chewed it slowly. “You have any names?”

“Not on hand. I can get them, though. If this works, though?” Wendell smiled. “Biggest favor ever.”

Biggest favor ever was right. Savvy businessman that he was, Wendell had known exactly how much his information was worth. If it worked, he wanted a new job—with Daniel’s corporation. That was fine. Wendell would make a good addition to the firm. Besides, if he had a stake in Daniel’s continued survival, he’d make damned sure he gave him every contact the Boyd Cabal had. Plus, if it worked, he’d be able to swoop in and snatch up the research from under the Cabal’s nose, in which case, Wendell wouldn’t have a job anyway . . . and might be in need of the immortality solution himself.

Wendell got Daniel the names, and Shana started making the appointments. The first was with a whiz-kid half-demon who’d recently parted ways with a renowned researcher and had accidentally walked out with the man’s work, which he’d refined and was now prepared to sell.

Daniel sat in the boardroom as the kid gave his spiel, Shana hurrying him along with reminders that Mr. Boyd was a very busy man.

“Your time is valuable,” the kid said. “Especially now, huh?”

He grinned. Daniel and Shana remained stone-faced.

“I believe you brought a test subject?” Shana said. “One you have successfully transformed into a zombie.”

“Right. Yes. He’s in the . . . Just hold on.”

The kid hurried from the room and returned with another college-age kid. He walked a little slow and his face was paler than Daniel liked, but at this point, he wasn’t being fussy.

“How long has it been since you turned him?” Shana asked.

“Three months.”

“Any side-effects?”

“His reflexes are a little slow, but we’re working on that.”

Shana motioned for the subject to turn. He did a one-eighty.

“He’s breathing,” she said.

The whiz kid smiled. “Yep. Breathing, got a pulse, eats, drinks, just like a living person.”

“Impressive.”

“Does he talk?” Daniel asked.

“Sure,” the zombie said. “What do you want me to say?”

“Recite the multiplication tables, starting at six.”

As the zombie performed, Shana eased behind them and removed a gun from her purse. She hesitated, just a second, but at a look from Daniel she nodded and shot the zombie in the back. He fell, gasping and clutching his chest. The whiz kid stared, then dropped to his knees beside his subject, who was bleeding out on the floor, eyes glazing over.

“Not a zombie,” Daniel said. “Next time, Shana?”

“I’ll ask for a demonstration of resurrection.”

“Thank you.”

“Is the lighting adequate, sir?” Shana asked.

She swept the camera around the dark cemetery. The image jittered as she shivered. November really wasn’t the best time for such things, but she hadn’t complained, of course.

“Dr. Albright is—” she began.

The shower turned on in his hotel suite’s adjoining bathroom, drowning her out. Daniel glowered, then scooped up the portable screen and moved into the sitting room. The girl in the bathroom called out, asking if he wanted to join her. He closed the door and settled onto the sofa, then asked Shana to repeat herself.

“Dr. Albright is setting up at the gravesite. I’m heading there now.”

A yelp, as she tripped over a half-buried gravestone.

“Careful, Shana. That equipment is very expensive.”

“Y-yes, sir,” she said through chattering teeth.

“Get yourself a stiff drink when you finish,” he said. “That’ll warm you up. Bill the company.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He smiled. Little things, but crucial in employee relations. Even watching the screen made him chilly. He reached over and jacked up the heat on the gas fireplace, then poured himself a brandy.

He turned up the sound as the girl in the bathroom yelled for the shampoo. He supposed she had a name, but he couldn’t remember it. Not as if he planned to. Just another young woman in a bar, who’d assessed the cut of his suit and spread her legs, a Pavlovian response to the smell of money.

Shana finally found Albright. Along with two assistants, he’d begun digging up a recent grave. It was long, cold work, and partway through, Daniel had to turn off the screen and bid farewell to the girl. Apparently, she’d expected to stay the night and complained bitterly about being sent out with wet hair, so he’d handed her the suite’s blow-dryer and hurried her out the door with couple hundred bucks “for the taxi.”

By then they’d dug down to the casket and were waiting for him, all shivering now, breath steaming in the air.

“I’ve resurrected the corpse inside,” Albright announced, talking loudly to be heard over the muffled bangs and cries.

“Mr. Boyd can hear that,” Shana said. “Now, the ritual you used is supposed to return the body to its original form, free of any after-effects of death, correct?”

“Absolutely, as you will see in a moment.”

The assistants opened the casket. The man inside jerked, all limbs flailing, then sat up, gulping breaths of air before frowning, as if only just realizing he didn’t need those breaths. He squinted up at the people surrounding his casket.

“Wh-what’s going on?” he asked.

“You’ve been resurrected, Mr. Lang. Congratulations.”

The man’s frown deepened as he seemed to consider this. Then he nodded and tried to stand. Shana motioned to Albright, who stopped him. Shana ran her tests, confirming he did, indeed, appear to be dead. Or undead, as it were.

She took out a folder and consulted a list.

“And you are James Lang, who died in an automobile accident on February 20?”

He nodded.

“You’re sure?”

“Course I’m sure.”

She plucked out a sheet of paper and showed it to him. “Because you don’t look like Mr. Lang. And I noticed, Dr. Albright, that you began digging before I arrived, contrary to our agreement.”

“I knew it would take a while and it’s a cold night—”

“I appreciate your consideration. I do not appreciate your duplicity. You started because you wanted to disguise any indication of recent digging; perhaps to lay a fresh zombie in Mr. Lang’s grave.”

“I didn’t—”

“Then you won’t mind me returning Mr. Lang to our offices, where he can be monitored for signs of decomposition.” She turned to the zombie. “Don’t worry. Having skipped the embalming phase, it shouldn’t take long.”

As expected, the zombie rotted and, in the meantime, Daniel knocked three more names off the list Wendell had provided, grumbling each time he did so, well aware that his cousin seemed to be getting the best of this deal. If Daniel succeeded, Wendell got a cushy new job. If he failed, Wendell could go to the Cabal board of directors and tell them he’d used Daniel to cull their list of zombification experts.