Life Sentence: Two Tales of the Living Dead (2 page)

Of the five rejected so far, only the whiz kid seemed to be a career conman. The rest were serious researchers, seriously researching the subject, but years from selling a perfected cure. So, like all scientists—desperate for that big windfall that would let them continue their work—they tried to trick him into funding their work. He understood, though that didn’t mean they hadn’t paid dearly for the mistake.

Two more researchers came and went, and Daniel was nearing the end of the list when one at the bottom, perhaps hearing rumors, took it upon himself to make the initial contact. He came; he requested an audience; he was refused; he stayed. When Daniel left work, the man was still there. When he returned the next morning, he was still there. Daniel decided he could find a few minutes to hear the man out. And a few minutes was all it took, because the man followed Shana into Daniel’s office and announced, “I don’t have the cure you’re looking for.”

Shana sighed and started ushering him out, murmuring apologies to Daniel, but the man stood his ground and said, “I don’t have it, but I can get it. I’m just missing one crucial ingredient.”

“Money,” Daniel said, leaning back. “Lots and lots of money.”

The man gave a strange little smile, almost patronizing. “No, Mr. Boyd. I have many investors. What I lack are test subjects. Seems there aren’t a lot of people willing to die in hopes of being reborn in a rotting corpse.”

When Daniel didn’t respond, the man took that as encouragement and stepped forward, opening his briefcase on Daniel’s desk. He took out a folder the size of
War and Peace
.

“My project to date. I’m asking you to take this and have your scientists go through it. My work, I believe, will speak for itself. All I need is someone to provide me with an unlimited supply of test subjects.”

“Unlimited?” Shana said.

“My projections suggest I need between ten and fifty, depending on the number of stages required to perfect the serum. That is, however, an estimate at this point. More may be needed.”

“More than fifty?” Shana caught Daniel’s look and dropped her gaze, an apology on her lips. She stepped back.

Daniel took the file. He leafed through it. For show, of course—in high school, he’d blackmailed a fellow student to get him passing grades in science.

“Leave your card with Ms. Bergin. I’ll get back to you.”

Two days later, Daniel had Shana call and tell the man—Dr. Boros—that he’d get his test subjects, with a cap of fifty. Not that Daniel really intended to cut him off at fifty, but one had to set limits. And it placated Shana, which was, admittedly, important. He couldn’t afford to lose her now.

Within a week, Boros had the first subjects ready for Daniel’s inspection.

“They aren’t nearly at the stage you need,” Boros said into the camera. “But I want complete transparency, Mr. Boyd. You can see how far I’ve progressed and how far I need to go. No charlatans’ tricks. I believe you’ve had enough of those?”

“I have.”

Boros clearly wasn’t putting his money into his laboratory—a shabby set of basement rooms. It was clean and the equipment was top-notch, but hardly the high-tech, gleaming lab such experiments should have.

Boros also lacked assistants. Again, not for want of funds, but in this case, apparently, understandable paranoia. He trusted only one young man, a fellow scientist and fellow necromancer. Daniel understood the sentiment—he felt the same about Shana. But more staff would mean faster results, and at this stage, with only three months to go, Daniel desperately needed fast.

Boros’s assistant brought in the first subject . . . strapped down on a gurney. Shana’s sigh whispered across the audio connection.

“At least he’s conscious,” she murmured to Daniel.

“This subject has been zombified for a week, and if Ms. Bergin would care to examine him, she’ll see no signs of decomposition. However, we have another problem.”

Shana waved at the restraints. “He’s unstable?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

The assistant undid the restraints. The man lay there, blinking at the ceiling.

“Rise,” Boros said.

The man didn’t move. He should have—zombies had to obey the necromancer who resurrected them.

“Well, you’ve cured the control aspect,” Daniel said. “Thankfully.”

“Actually, I haven’t. On examining his brain activity, it seems he would respond, if he could. In attempting to remove the necromancer’s control, it seems he has lost all control.”

As if in response, a wet spot spread across the subject’s pants.

“That’s a problem,” Daniel said.

A small smile. “I suspected you’d say that.” Boros waved, and his assistant brought in the second subject. To Daniel’s relief, this one was walking. He was also leaving a trail of decomposing flesh, falling like dandruff in his wake.

“That, too, is a problem,” Daniel said.

“Agreed.”

Boros turned to the subject. “Clap three times.”

The man only looked at him.

“Touch your toes.”

“Why?” the man asked.

Boros stepped between the two subjects. “In one, I’ve stopped decomposition at the expense of bodily control. In the other, I’ve freed him of the necromancer’s control while accelerating decomp. Which problem would you like me to solve first? I know you’d like me to work on both, but my resources here—”

“You’re not working there anymore. Your study is coming here. I’m clearing my laboratory and putting my specialists under your control.”

“I’d really rather not—”

“You will. Or you don’t have a client. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“Sir?” Shana cut in. “The . . .” She paused and motioned for the assistant to remove the test subjects. When they were gone, she turned to Boros. “Can they be saved?”

Boros shook his head. “One will remain in a permanent state of complete paralysis. The other will continue to rapidly decompose.”

“So they’ll be terminated? Humanely?”

“Not so fast,” Daniel said. “If there’s still something to be learned from them, keep them.”

“But—” Shana began.

“Bring them to the lab. There’s a storage room we can use. We’ll keep them there.”

He flicked off the screen.

Within two months, Boros was getting so close to a cure that Daniel started postponing his visits to the doctor. His symptoms all but disappeared, as if driven away by the knowledge that cancer wasn’t going to be a death sentence, not for him. Even if it ravaged his body tomorrow, Boros was far enough along that Daniel could take the temporary cure, then wait out the final one.

He didn’t know how many subjects they’d gone through. Shana kept him updated every week, when Boros put in his requisition, but he paid no attention. It was during one of those weekly updates that she said, “We can’t keep this up, sir. He’s demanding ten more in the next week. There’s a limit to how many transients can disappear from a city before someone starts investigating—”

“Then send the team to another city.”

“We’re doing that. But it’s a slow process. He needs healthy, clean subjects. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find them among that population? We test them, but he still rejects a third of the ones—”

“Then we need to come up with an alternative.”

A soft sigh of relief. “Thank you, sir. Now, I’ve done the calculations, and if you were to take his cure in its present form, we could slow the testing, meaning we could cut back the number of subjects significantly and—”

“I’m not taking a substandard cure unless it’s an absolute last resort.”

“I understand, sir, but we
are
reaching that stage—”

“No, we aren’t. I want you to comb through the employee files. Find anyone with a terminal illness. Offer two years salary to their families in return for their participation. Emphasize the benefits of the procedure and minimize the side-effects.”

When she didn’t answer, he looked up from his computer golf game. She was staring at him.

“Employees, sir?”

“That’s what I said. If we don’t have enough with a terminal illness, make it a general offer and increase it to triple salary.”

She continued to stare.

“How’s Lindsey, Shana?”

She blanched. When Shana came into his employ, her eleven-year-old daughter had been suffering from a rare liver disease, on a transplant list and failing fast. As her signing bonus, Shana got that liver for her daughter, and all the care she’d needed to make a full recovery. And Daniel got the perfect assistant—one indebted to him for life.

“I-I think we can fill this latest requisition with transients,” she said. “I’ll split the team and send them farther afield.”

He smiled. “Thank you, Shana.”

She started to leave. He called her back and handed her a check for ten thousand dollars.

“A bonus. Buy something special for yourself and Lindsey.”

She stared at it and, for just a second, he thought she was going to hand it back. After only that brief hesitation, though, she murmured, “Thank you, sir,” pocketed it and left.

Finally, the day came. And not a moment too soon, as Daniel struggled to get into work every day, ignoring his wife’s nervous clucking, ignoring the little voice inside himself that said, “Take the cure as it is, before it’s too late.” Boros was close, though, and Daniel willed himself to hang on. The pain and exhaustion were simply more obstacles to overcome.

And then, it was ready.

Daniel made Boros go through the final stage twice—two batches with four subjects each time. When he was assured of the results, he ordered six of those subjects killed, the other two left alive and stored for long-term monitoring and potential future tests. He wasn’t sure what Shana objected to more—killing successful subjects or holding the other two captive. He had assured her, though, that once he’d been treated, all the failures could be terminated and sent on to their afterlives. That satisfied her.

Killing the successful subjects and keeping two for testing was but one of the precautions he took. He knew he was heading into the most dangerous phase of the testing. He was about to die and put his rebirth in the hands of others. It would be the final test of loyalty for his assistant, and while he trusted her more than anyone in his life, he took precautions with that, too, guaranteeing she wouldn’t decide at the last moment that he could stay dead.

Then he let Boros kill him by lethal injections. Not pleasant but, according to his research, the quickest and most reliable method. The next thing he saw was Shana’s face, floating above his, her pretty features drawn with concern, worrying that the cure might have failed. While he’d like to think she was worried for his sake, he knew better.

“Sir?” she said when he opened his eyes.

He blinked hard. “Yes?” He had to say it twice. When he spoke, the relief on her face . . . there was a moment there when he wished it was for him.

He tried to sit up. She helped him. She gave him a glass of water. She wiped his face, made him feel more himself, and he was grateful.

Daniel had undergone surgery a couple of times in his youth, and this reminded him of that, coming out of the anesthetic, slow and groggy. Boros bustled around, administering tests, checking his reflexes and responses to visual and audio stimuli. Shana kept him comfortable.

At last, Boros declared the conversion a success. He had Daniel get up and move around, doing a few tasks on his laptop, making sure his physical and mental capacities were normal.

“All right, then,” Boros said. “Go back to bed.”

Daniel didn’t want to go back to bed—he felt fine and he needed to relocate to the safe room in the basement, where he’d remain for a few days, presumably “on vacation” until he was fully recovered.

When he tried opening his mouth to refuse, though, he couldn’t. Instead, he found himself walking back to the bed. And, as he lay down, he realized with no small amount of horror that he’d been tricked.

Boros walked over. “Did you really think I’d give up the chance to have a man like yourself as my personal puppet?”

Daniel started to sit up.

“Lie down.”

He did.

Boros smiled. “Yes, I know, you checked and rechecked, making sure I gave you the right formulation. And I did. You can ask Ms. Bergin. Unfortunately, it appears there is no way to remove the control a necromancer has over his zombies.”

“But—”

“I know, I demonstrated it to you. With subjects raised by my assistant, meaning they would have no reason to obey
me
.”

Daniel tried to look at Shana, but she’d disappeared behind Boros.

“Don’t bother appealing to her. She’s been paid well for her cooperation. Yes, you’re holding a chit on her, but considering that you’re under my control, that’s a problem easily remedied. So let’s start there. Please release—”

The muffled hiss of a silenced gunshot cut him short. Boros slumped forward, a small-caliber bullet through the back of his head, Shana behind him with a gun. As Boros lay on the floor, blood oozing down his balding scalp, Daniel sat up, slowly, eyes on the barrel. She lowered it to her side.

“I trust you’ll make that call now, sir?” she said.

He did, having her daughter released, then giving the phone to Shana. Out of Daniel’s earshot she spoke to her daughter.

“You’ll be well compensated—” he began when she returned, and for the first time since they’d met, she interrupted him.

“I know. I’ll be very well compensated. And, as soon as I’ve set you up in the safe room, my employment is at an end.”

He understood and said as much. She called a pair of guards to come for Boros’s body and detain his assistant, then called in two shamans who’d been part of the research team and, as such, knew Daniel’s secret and would be tending to him during his recovery. The four of them set off for the room that would be his temporary home.

“There’s one last thing I’ll ask,” Shana said as they took the elevator to the basement. “You promised to release the other subjects—”

“Excluding the two successes. I may still need them.”

She nodded. “The others, though . . .”

“Can have their souls released immediately. And there won’t be any more. I presume that’s why you killed Boros.”