Page 5 of The Undead

“It did cross my mind, but I’m a polite asshole. Come on, Michael, we’re on company time here. What’s up?”

He steepled his fingers under his chin, a curiously antique gesture for someone who probably got carded in every bar he ever stepped in; even with a ponytail longer than my sister’s, he looked no older than twenty-two. He was still staring at me—not rude, Adam didn’t know how to be rude. He simply had no conception of tact. In most situations, the difference between that and rudeness was pretty much academic.

I’d always had a secret fantasy of locking Adam and Carl Voorhees together in a room and letting them practice remedial conversation together. The winner could take on Foster.

“No, I can see why you need to get moving, your patients will get anxious. Look, I understand you booked in a couple ofmyex-patients tonight.”

Adam just looked at me, eyes blank. I took a long sip of coffee and waited. Adam never consulted records, only his memory, which was a damned sight more reliable than anything I’d ever looked up on paper—but it took time. Adam ran on his own schedule, as many irate administrators had discovered.

“Julio Ramos. He was your stab wound. Game in with his girlfriend.” Adam’s voice, when it finally came, was quiet and certain. I nodded. “Messy, my friend, very messy. You want to see the record?”

“I guess that’s what I came for.”

“You think so?” Adam asked obscurely, but turned and pulled two file folders out of his box. He passed them over, then stood up and walked to the far wall of the cubicle. He paused before a big glossy photo of sunset over the ocean, and stood there staring at it while I flipped pages.

The boy’s dad hadn’t wanted any survivors, that was for damned sure. I was surprised they hadn’t both been DOA; the amount of sheer will it had taken to hold Julio in his body made me feel sick at heart. All for nothing. Two lives, for nothing.

“Romeo and Juliet,” Adam observed quietly. I looked up from the file. He was tracing the outline of the setting sun with one long fingertip. “Not so romantic close up, is it?”

“More likePsycho,if you ask me.”

Adam turned to look at me, still holding his fingertip on the burning disk of the sun. His glasses caught the sterile white fluorescents and reflected; I was strangely and powerfully reminded of Little Orphan Annie and her cartoon pupilless eyes.

“You came here for some kind of explanation, Michael. I can’t give you one. All I’ve got is dead flesh and lots of questions.” He smiled slightly and the reflection passed over and away from his lenses. His brown eyes were again bright and vital. “You want to view the bodies?”

I almost said no, but then I got to my feet and followed him to the drawers. I wasn’t sure why; I’d seen enough death and bodily destruction in my years, and I didn’t want to carry the memory of Julio with me, not like that—but I followed anyway. Even doctors aren’t immune to ghoulish curiosity.

Adam turned, one pale hand on the metal, and looked at Foster, who continued sorting folders with scowling intensity. She didn’t seem to notice, but her shoulders tensed. He looked at her for several beats before he spoke.

“Foster, why don’t you take a break? Go get some lunch?” he asked. She didn’t look up at all, just dropped the folders onto a tray with a thump and stalked out the doors. I winced when she crashed into the doors again.

“Lunch?” I asked. He shrugged.

“Yeah, on our hours. On at eight, off at four, lunch is anytime you eat, you know? When I can get her to eat.”

“Is she always that pleasant?” I asked, and I didn’t care whether she heard or not. Adam gave me a weird deprecating smile.

“Not always. You must scare her; mostly she’s worse.”

Niceties done, Adam cracked open two drawers and slid the racks out. With a final glance at my face, he folded the sheets back. Quick, economical gestures, the movements of a man who knew his job and did it well. The blood and the violent horror didn’t seem to affect him at all.

I was used to the smell, at least. Julio looked a lot smaller in death, broken by the hail of buckshot that had removed part of the left side of his head. The right side was nearly untouched, a strange and awful contrast to the mashed collage of blood, bone, and brain beside it. His right eye, only slightly hemorrhaged, stared out in eternal surprise.

When I turned to his girlfriend, though, the hair rose up on the back of my neck.

Julio’s father had done this to her. I didn’t have any children, but I had a vivid and visceral image of my own daughter’s head dissolving in a bright red spray, of bone shards flying through the air to clatter against the splashed car window. One look was about all I could take. I jerked my eyes away and put them on some neutral, safe distance where fathers didn’t turn their children into corpses and little girls didn’t end up as raw meat on cold metal trays.

When Adam touched my shoulder, I yelped like a kicked dog. He drew back in surprise, then reached down to flip the sheets over the faces of our Romeo and Juliet.

“Sorry, man. Jesus.” I pulled in a deep breath. “I didn’t hear you.”

“It happens.” He shrugged, and pushed Julio’s tray back in with a metallic hiss of rollers. The dam of the morgue drawer was hollow and final. I looked involuntarily down at the girl again, but the sheet was a kind lie to the horror underneath; except for fluid spots, it almost looked like a real person underneath, not a body with a lumpen mass that couldn’t possibly be called a head. Adam took it away with a single push and shut it in the darkness.

“You all right?” he asked me. I nodded wordlessly. “Then maybe you should go home and get some rest.”

I nodded again. I didn’t realize that I was still standing there until he touched my shoulder, drawing my eyes toward him.

“Michael,” Adam said. His eyes were very, very gentle. “My sentimental friend, there wasn’t one goddamned thing you could have done, and you know it. I know you; you’re going to convince yourself it’s your fault, and it isn’t. Stop it and go home. There’s plenty of suffering in the world. Don’t add your own to it.”

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