Page 31 of The Undead

“Help you, Doctor?” Dr. Morton, the chief pathologist, asked. He looked genial and good-natured in spite of the sprays of blood across his smock and a few drops dinging tenaciously to his glasses. The corpse in front of him was a woman, dark-haired, unrecognizable in its splayed naked dismemberment. “Looking for something?”

“Sorry, I’ve been going from days to nights so much I can’t keep track anymore. What time do you expect Adam in?”

“Adam?” Morton’s dark eyebrows rose, a forest of hair that Groucho Marx would have envied. “Well, to be honest, I don’t. He called in and said he wasn’t well. Got his friend on a slab last night, you know. Must have been a bit of a shock.”

He indicated the body he was working on with a negligent gesture. I nodded without looking too closely.

“I imagine,” I said faintly. “Well, I’ll check back. Thanks, Doctor.”

“No trouble.” Morton watched me with bright eyes as I turned to go. “Glad I could help. We don’t get many visitors down here.”

You could say that again. I got out as quickly as I could. Behind me, a bone saw started its brutal whine, rising to a shriek as it bit into a skull.

Someone put a hand on my shoulder as I waited for the elevator. I managed to transform the escaping scream into a hiss and knocked the fingers away; there wasn’t any need for anything more violent than that because Rebecca Foster took a long step backward.

“Christ, A.G.,” I sighed, and bit my tongue. Her face closed up, a hermetically sealed mask with two burning coals for eyes. “Sorry, Foster. What do you want?”

“To warn you,” she said. I blinked. Foster bent closer. I flinched backward; the smell coming off her was a noxious blend of old sweat, old perfume, formaldehyde, and dead meat. Funny, I’d never smelled it on Adam. “Listen to me, maybe you can still be saved. Maybe you’re not lost yet.”

Oh,Jesus, not today …

“Foster, I’m not interested in a sermon today.”

“It isn’t a sermon,” she insisted, and her right hand shot out to grab my shoulder. Her fingers were so hot I could feel them through my coat. “You have to listen to me. He’s evil. I saw him, I know, he’s got to be stopped! He’s a killer.”

“He?” I repeated stupidly. The malice and rage in her blue eyes overflowed. She was crying, but they weren’t tears of grief; she wept from the violence of her hate and conviction.

“Him. The devil.Adam Radburn …”

I was stunned into silence. Her face lit up as if she were describing St. Paul’s conversion. In a way, she was.

“I saw him. He hunts at night, only at night; last night I saw him chase you, Doctor. I saw him follow you into that funhouse. I saw the police bring the bodies out. It’s up to me to stop him. You have to understand what he is—the harm you’re doing in protecting him. You’rehuman,Dr. Bowman. You have to stand with me.”

“Against Adam,” I murmured. She nodded, and her fingers tightened painfully on my shoulder.

“I saw that night, in the morgue. He revealed himself to you. I followed you home to be sure he didn’t take you and make you one of his creatures, but I can’t watch you all the time. You’re in deadly danger. You have to help me.”

Foster was, unquestionably, sincere. I licked my lips and watched her, the sheer malice and fury in her blue eyes, the sullen jealous set of her face. She wanted Adam dead. She wanted me to help kill him. I thought about Adam, aching with silent grief for Julie Gilmore. I thought about my panic in the park. There was something hot and feral about Foster, something fevered. There was madness lurking under there.

Adam’s menace was undeniable, and yet oddly controlled. There was nothing controlled about Rebecca Foster. She’d burn the hospital to the ground to destroy a microbe. She’d immolate the world to be sure of Adam Radburn. I could see it in the fanatic set of her jaw.

“No deal, A.G.,” I finally said. The elevatorplingedand opened. She stared at me, frowning. “No deal. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you keep following me I’ll make sure the chief of staff knows about it, you got me? I don’t want to see you again.”

She opened her mouth and screamed at me, a whining shrill so wordless that it was like the scream of the bone saw back in the morgue. I stiff-armed her backward, ripped her hand free of my arm, and hit the close button. She didn’t make any attempt to shove inside with me. Her eyes were brilliant and eerie.

“You’re de—” The dosing of the elevator doors cut her off, but I had a reasonably good idea of what she meant to say.You’re dead.

I needed to sit down. I punched the appropriate numbers for my office floor, walked like a zombie to the open door. Unlike my head, the office wasn’t empty; Nick Gianoulos, Maggie’s partner, straightened from his search of my desk drawers and smiled at me. He held my pocket dictaphone. As I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms he switched it on, and my own voice came tinnily back, dictating a report to my typist. He clicked it off in mid-Latin-syllable.

It’s important to get control of these situations. My first impulse was to reach out and grab my property out of his hands, but that would have reduced it to two grade-schoolers scuffling over a comic book. I just smiled.

“If you like it, take it. I can get another one,” I said. He shrugged and dropped it with a metallic bang on the desktop. Way to go, Nick. Show them who’s boss.

“Nah, I don’t think so. How are you, Doc?”

“Fine. Were you looking for something in particular in my office, or just bored?” I asked. I crossed to my desk and sat in my chair; Nick, after a moment of staring at me, walked over to the window and looked out.

“Maggie say anything to you about Angelo?” Nick’s voice was pensive: I picked up my recorder and played with it. It made a mournful jingling sound inside. Foster had threatened to kill me. Hadn’t she?

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