Return of the Jed (23 page)

It was as violent as it was stupid, and I wished I could un-watch it. Now every scene ran through my head.

I turned toward Tread, lying there with his eyes closed and legs twitching. What do zombie dogs dream of? Running free without fear of losing a leg? Or biting the mailman and turning him into a zombie? Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.

Tread had turned out OK after being brought back to life, the poster dog of reanimation. But everything had lined up perfectly. I was at his side seconds after he was run over, and he died as I watched. Ooze mixed with my tears fell into his wounds, creating a tiny lightning storm of chemical reaction.

He’d opened his eyes, and the rest was history. Sure, Tread still had the occasional accident in the house, but he never showed interest in eating anyone.

Talk of reanimation still made me uncomfortable.

Dad cleared his throat as if about to speak, but said nothing. The look on his face told me everything I needed to know.

He didn’t like where this was heading either.

“What have you reanimated?” Luke asked, to no one’s surprise.

Dr. Armendariz inhaled deeply and theatrically, letting it out through his nose.

“Nothing that can be proven scientifically,” he said. “I was convinced I’d brought back a cricket, but it may have been dazed rather than dead.”

Two questions occurred to me, so I waited for Luke to ask them. He did not disappoint.

“How do you daze a cricket?” he said on cue. “And why would you want to bring back a cricket? Better yet, bring a sponge to life. Though I think that’s already been done.”

“You’re thinking SpongeBob Squarepants,” I said. “And that’s animation, not reanimation.”

“Right,” Luke said. “Sorry.”

Dr. Armendariz merely smiled and continued. “As I said, there are bugs, so to speak,” the doctor said, working in some pun action. “All will be well when I figure out this mysterious substance. You mentioned Ooze? Is that what you call it?”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” I said, wondering if Dr. Armendariz knew far more than he was letting on.

“Son, it’s clear you referred to the substance in the test tube. I knew immediately what you were talking about, and I apologize for playing coy.”

I stared at Luke and counted down. Three, two, one.

“What’re you looking at me for?” he said. “You think I’m going to make some goofy comment about playing coy, right? Like, ‘Do you need dice for that’?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Absolutely.”

“For your information, I know what ‘playing coy’ means,” Luke said. “But I do have a question for the good doctor.” Pivoting his gaze to the resident physician, he asked, “Where did you get Ooze, assuming you even have genuine Ooze, and what the heck are you planning to do with it?”

“Finally, a meaningful question from my curious friend,” Dr. Armendariz said. “I must begin with describing an incident from about four years ago.”

“On a dark and stormy night?” Luke quizzed.

“I don’t recall. Is that important?”

“It is to me. Great stories begin with either ‘Once upon a time’ or ‘On a dark and stormy night.’ Your choice. One always has a happy ending. Guess which one?”

“On a dark and stormy night,” Dr. Armendariz started.

When Dr. Armendariz finished his story, I checked my lower jaw to make sure it was still there.

It wasn’t. Luke picked it up off the floor. And the fact Dr. Armendariz hardly reacted at all indicated his story was true, as worrisome as that was.

“First time I saw a literal example of a jaw-dropping story,” Luke said. “Definitely worth the wait.”

“Thanks, Luke,” I said. Tried to say, anyway. It came out, “Thaw yah,” as I discovered a lower jaw is essential to proper pronunciation.

“Hold on, I’m going to get staples and some napkins. Staples to put you back together. Napkins because you have some serious saliva production going on right now with nothing to catch it.”

Dad wrapped his arms around me, and I was happy to disappear inside them. He whispered, “He may be full of crap. Let’s just see if any of this is true before we take the next step. One day at a time, OK?”

I sank deeper into his chest, still trying to wrap my undead brain around what I’d heard.

Dr. Armendariz started by defending himself, saying he had been the butt of several scientific-community jokes when he appeared at his first conference to reveal breakthroughs in reanimation, a field at the time pioneered only by fictional characters.

The audience rejected his theories revolving around electrically charged nanoparticles and their effect on soft tissue. They stood and applauded when Dr. Armendariz’s two-hour talk ended, more because he was finally finished than for his claims. The crowd remained unconvinced because of one irrefutable fact of his research—he had yet to reanimate anything, be it insect or animal.

The problem, Dr. Armendariz believed, was his audience rather than his research. He sought like-minded scientists and soon appeared at a conference hosted by the Bureau of Unexplained but Reasonable Phenomenon, a group dedicated to the advancement of paranormal research. He advanced his reanimation theories in an article published in BURP’s newsletter,
Findings and Accomplishments of Research Tribune
.

“The group embraced me even without knowledge of my years of work in the paranormal field,” Dr. Armendariz said. “My first breakthrough occurred three decades ago, yet went largely unnoticed for reasons I can’t explain to this day.”

That discovery? A werewolf in Romania. Having read stories of a beast terrorizing the countryside outside Bucharest, Dr. Armendariz traveled to Mizil, the attacks seeming to center around the village.

“This was back in the 1980s, years before you could Google ‘werewolf’ and find exactly what you’re looking for,” he said. “Such a pain. Paranormal scientists have no idea how easy they have it today.”

Dr. Armendariz said townspeople led him to a man named Costel, who had an unsightly skin condition as well as a taste for human flesh.

“He confessed to the skin condition,” Dr. Armendariz said. “But he insisted he ate only lamb with an occasional goat, poached from neighboring farms, a habit that got him in trouble with the locals. I did the only thing I could do. I waited for the full moon, and sure enough, he’d had a definitive five o’clock shadow by four o’clock in the morning—”

“That’s hardly proof,” Dad said.

“I’d expect that reaction from someone who has not spent a lifetime in the paranormal field,” the doctor said. “But trust me, a werewolf that can control his transformation like that is the most dangerous werewolf of all.”

Dr. Armendariz moved on to his greatest triumph, stumbling across indisputable evidence of a vampire. Not just any bloodsucker, but Vampire Zero.

He beckoned us closer, having us gather around him as he flipped through the menus on his phone. He tapped a few buttons, and a grainy black-and-white video played. On screen, an upright casket burst open to reveal a tall, lean figure with pointy ears and a hooked nose wearing what appeared to be a very nice suit. The video flickered, and now the shadowy figure leaned toward a woman cowering in fear. She disappeared within the folds of his cape before the screen went black.

“
Nosferatu
,” Dad said.

“So you’ve heard of my research.” Dr. Armendariz grinned. “Splendid. I do enjoy meeting people who have heard of the vampire Nosferatu, an indication my reputation is growing.”

“No, not Nosferatu the vampire.
Nosferatu
the silent film.”

Silent film?
I thought.
Who’s ever heard of a silent film? Dad’s losing it.

“Yes, this particular bit of vampiric evidence does not have sound, I’m afraid,” Dr. Armendariz said. “One of my great regrets to this day. Yet it is understandable given this evidence—which goes on for some time—is nearly one thousand years old, and long before the invention of film.”

“No, that’s not true at all,” Dad said.

“It has to be that old because sound wasn’t even invented yet,” Luke said. “Let’s watch it again.”

“Of course,” Dr. Armendariz said, tapping his phone to launch the ghostly images again. It sure did look almost a thousand years old, but I knew Dad was right. It was an old movie, shot when people couldn’t afford color.

When the screen dimmed to black, Dr. Armendariz cleared his throat.

“But these success stories are merely a prelude to what I really want to talk about.” He paused. “The first time I saw a zombie.”

“You mean Jed,” Luke said. “We all know that story.”

“No, not Jed,” the doctor said. “I was never told his name, but I call him Ron. Ron the Zombie.”

Dad smiled. “Not Rob Zombie?”

“No, why?”

“No reason.”

I knew Dad didn’t believe any of this, but I listened closely.

The doctor hadn’t even gotten to the jaw-dropping point yet. Even after my jaw dropped off.

“It may or may not have been a dark and stormy night when I met Ron,” Dr. Armendariz began. “I do remember it was seasonable, about what you’d expect that time of year.”

“What time of year was it?” Luke asked.

“Fall. Or spring. One of the in-between seasons. I’m not sure. What I do remember is that I’d just emailed my research to leaders in the paranormal field, who then invited me to present my findings at the BURP conference.”

I stared at Luke, daring him to interrupt.

“So this would have been four years ago, when the conference was in Mexico City,” Dr. Armendariz went on. “I finished my presentation to great applause. Or they were clapping for lunch, which had just arrived. Doesn’t matter.”

“I’d applaud for lunch.” Luke again. I shot him my “You need to shut up forever” look.

“I gathered my materials and went backstage,” Dr. Armendariz said. “I was headed back to the waiting room where I’d left some of my journals when I noticed a gentleman paging through the very journals I’d been on my way to retrieve.

“I was stunned, but marched over to him and snatched them from his hands. ‘How dare you,’ I said. And I will never forget what he said. He looked straight into my eyes and said, ‘Well, ain’t you as bent out of shape as a horseshoe on an elephant.’ Who says things like that?”

I knew exactly who said things like that. I pictured the jeans, the shiny belt buckle, the plaid shirt, and the cowboy hat.

I remembered how Spike had been focused on springing Tread from canine jail after he was arrested for impersonating a chupacabra. And how he was there to save us when the cops suddenly showed up, which now seemed much more than coincidence. Maybe that was Spike’s goal all along. It wasn’t about Tread. It was about luring me into a trap.

But why?

“Dude, you OK?” Luke asked. “You’re slightly grayer than usual, like your winter complexion just went to dead of winter.”

Snapping me out of it, I leaned toward Luke and whispered, “Spike.”

“That goofy guy in the big hat? And every time he speaks, you look for subtitles so you can understand him?”

“Exactly.”

I turned back to Dr. Armendariz’s story.

“After I snatched my journals out of his hand, he told me to, ‘Whoa down, podner,’” the doctor said. “Just like that. ‘Whoa down.’ He steals my work, and I’m the one who is supposed to relax. But a few minutes later, he had my attention.”

Dr. Armendariz swiveled his head to look from Dad to me, Luke, and Tread.

“I get it, we’re supposed to be in suspense,” Luke said. “Like right before we find out it wasn’t the butler who did it after all.”

I didn’t say a word, staring at Dr. Armendariz. I knew what came next, and still felt Ooze tingling along my forehead.

“This strange man told me that not only did he believe in my research, he had proof,” Dr. Armendariz continued. “He took off that ridiculous hat, reached into it, and withdrew a vial with a syrupy substance in it. The vial you have now, Mr. Rivers. And you all know exactly what’s in that vial.”

My mind spun. Four years ago, I had been just nine years old and still getting used to who and what I was. Ooze was more of an annoyance. When I exercised or became nervous, my clothes would go into the laundry with unsightly Ooze stains. Mom had to wash everything by hand.