Page 4 of The Undead

The elevator wouldn’t go past the ground floor without a passkey. I fumbled for mine, but before I could dig it out of the lint desert in my pocket a woman stepped in and, without a word, inserted her own key in the slot. She was tall, angularly thin, weighted down with file folders in her arms; for the briefest possible second she looked at me and registered my presence. She had startlingly pretty blue eyes—startling because of the pallid plain expanse of her face and limp colorless hair. She was make-upless, and arrogantly proud of it. Her name was Rebecca Foster, but nobody called her Rebecca, Becky, or anything affectionate at all. To the doctors (at least to her face) the was Foster. To the rest of the staff she was known as A.G.—Assistant Ghoul.

She was the morgue assistant on the night shift, backup to my friend Adam Radburn. You’d think that having christened Foster as A.G. the staff would have referred to Adam as H.G.—Head Ghoul—but they didn’t. Everybody called him Adam, or buddy. Even when they called him names, they clearly liked him. Foster just as clearly resented it. Of course, Foster took a dim view of the world in general, and her boss in particular. Adam was just too avant-garde for her rigid tastes.

“Good evening, Foster,” I said, resisting the impulse to drop into my Bela Lugosi impression. Her eyes remained stubbornly on the panel as she turned her key; with a faint hiss of air, the elevator fell and left my stomach behind. She smelled like high-school science class, or those midnight cadaver sessions in med school. Not exactly the perfume I preferred in close quarters. “How’s business?”

Foster blinked, but she didn’t look at me. Her pale lips were compressed into a straight line as if she’d stapled them together.

“Fine,” she answered. As quickly as she could. Conversation was an unpleasant duty that she avoided at all costs—and with surprisingly little effort, since nobody ever felt compelled to keep trying. I sighed, and leaned against the rail that ran around the elevator wall, the one some med-school wag had joked was part of the physical therapy equipment. We watched the numbers pass in silence.

“How was church?” I heard myself ask—blame it on exhaustion, or pique, or just plain crazed self-abuse. There are people with whom you don’t ever, for the sake of your sanity, discuss animal rights. Or abortion. Or politics. The one thing you never—never—discussed with Foster was religion. It was dangerous. Foster was a rabid, frothing fanatic, and she’d been known to drone on for hours to those feebleminded enough to get her started.

Like me. Her blue eyes dowdy swiveled to peer in my direction.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t know,” Foster said with dry, superior hauteur. “But if it matters to you, it was very inspirational. I taught an adults class tonight, and we went over the trials of Job.”

“Cheerful,” I murmured. Whatever conversational engine had started to chum in her squealed, sputtered, and chugged on to new life.

“God doesn’t have to becheerful,Doctor. He isn’t the God of fuzzyheadedhumanists.”She spat the word out like a curse. “God isangry.He has a right to be, with all the sin that goes on in this world. You think we don’t see it every day in those pitiful bodies? Prostitutes and drag addicts, drunks and violent men. God isn’tsmiling.”

“Well, it’s great that you had dinner with him and I’m not just getting this secondhand,” I said, and immediately regretted it. You don’t slap the face of a martyr. It only pleases them, and makes you look mean and stupid.

Except that it didn’t please Foster, which meant she wasn’t much of a martyr. More of a martyrer.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t know God if you stepped on Him, Doctor,” she hissed, and theDoctorwas purely contempt. I wondered briefly if she was one of the fringers who believed only sinners went to the hospital, and that God healed all his chilluns who deserved it without medical intervention. Sort of like a cosmic video game and karmic shell game all wrapped up in one. “Maybe God will step onyouinstead.”

Anyway, it wasn’t fair. I was still listed in the rolls of the Clear Creek Baptist Church. I even attended sometimes. But, in the world according to A.G.—Foster,dammit, someday I was going to put my toes on my tonsils over that—anything less than attendance at every single church function from sunrise service to Thursday night freestyle Bible study made me a baby-sacrificing heathen.

If she was the mainstream, hurrah for baby-sacrificing.

“Not a very Christian sentiment, Foster,” I reproved mildly. She looked away, but not before I saw the dull fury in her eyes. Her face turned pink and blotchy. “But I’ll turn the other cheek.”

If there was anything that could have made her furious, that did it. When the doors hissed open, she took off as if shot out of a catapult, heading for the frosted glass doors markedNO ADMITTANCE. She banged into them so hard I expected to see the glass crack. Her passage sent a faint wave of music lapping along the corridor, nothing I could immediately identify; as I got closer I recognized it as New Age, something slow and luminous that reminded me of the lingering warmth of Maggie’s skin against mine. I’d bet big money Foster hated it. Smiling at the thought, I pushed open the doors and entered the morgue.

These halls of the dead tend to take on the character of their keepers, in a sterile sort of way; some attendants like the ordered peace of Vivaldi or Mozart, and some bounce Quiet Riot or Metallica off cold tile. Adam was different from either of those, in the same way his music was different; he’d stamped some of his quiet personality even on this coldly metallic room. His cubicle held relaxing pictures of clouds and sunsets, and sitting on one corner of his scrupulously neat desk was a tiny perfect crystal ball on a golden stand. Adam was, most certainly, different. I liked him one hell of lot—but not because I understood him, four-year friendship notwithstanding. Sometimes beerfests and pizza parties and movie marathons didn’t give you a clue at all to what went on inside, no matter how much fun they were.

We weren’t the sort of friends who unburdened our souls to each other. More like the kind who unburdened our wallets over poker.

Foster’s desk, by contrast with this warm (if slightly off-center) decorating style, held a severe-looking Bible. Small print. Going blind while reading the Good Book was evidently a plus in getting past Peter at the pearly gates, who probably was armed with an AK-47 and mortars for those pesky gate-stormers. The Bible was all she permitted herself; apparently even Precious Moments religious knick-knacks were vanities.

“Morning, Michael, or is it still night for you? I get confused.” Adam was standing in front of a lectern by the door, a pen in one hand as he carefully noted down facts on a new arrival. He paused and glanced at me over the top of his ridiculous Lennon glasses, brown eyes bright with curiosity. “Morning, I see. You look like you haven’t slept yet.”

“Yeah, you look just great too, Adam. When’s the last time you got a little sun, eh?” I leaned one arm over the lectern, more for the support than for the effect. He finished the entry in his precise, flowing script and capped the pen. The question seemed to amuse him all out of proportion to the feeble wit behind it.

“I don’t know. What year is this?” he asked, then wheeled his cart over to the rows of silver drawers. I automatically moved to help him, but he lifted the corpse and slid it into the drawer without needing my none-too-legendary strength. Foster, who was viciously slamming files one by one into stainless steel slots, didn’t even bother to volunteer. She sent me a hot acidic look when Adam wasn’t watching her, then bent to her mindless job as if it took all of her concentration. Adam shut the door on his new charge and followed me back into the little cubicle that served him for an office. He acted just as if Foster didn’t exist, evidently a truce they’d defined over these last few unpleasant months.

“Coffee,” I sighed worshipfully, and helped myself to the pot brewing on the single-burner machine in the corner. The smell helped to cut the reek of death and ammonia. When I offered some to Adam, he refused with a polite gesture. While I sipped it, Adam took the crystal ball and rolled it nimbly over the backs of his fingers. It dipped and bobbed like a yo-yo on a string. When Adam noticed me staring, he made a dramatic flourish and slowly turned his hand over. The ball was gone.

“I’m breathless,” I said in a bored tone. Actually, I did think it was pretty neat. He smiled and palmed the crystal out of the air, then replaced it on the stand.

“Finger exercises. Well, you didn’t jog all the way down here to watch me do magic tricks, Michael. What do you want?”

“Maybe I just craved the pleasure of your company.” I took a long sip of the coffee and made an automatic face of pain. “You know, you’re never going to get that Folgers commercial unless you learn how to make this shit right.”

Adam leaned back in his chair and tilted his head back against the cushions. There was something unnerving in the way he watched people, as he was watching me now. I’d seem him do it to others, principally Foster, so I knew it wasn’t anything personal, but my nerves prickled all along my spine anyway. It’s just exhaustion, I told myself. It couldn’t possibly have been what I thought—that his eyes were, just for a brief instant, strange. Impatient. The eyes of a stranger.

“Michael, I don’t mean to rush you, but the sooner you get to your point, the sooner you can get back to a warm bed and a warmer woman,” Adam prodded. I grinned a little guiltily, thinking about Maggie, and he smiled in turn. “I have a very accurate sense of smell. I don’t think you douse yourself in Poison on a regular basis.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t just say I smelled like sex, you asshole,” I said. His smile widened.

---