Dr Oystein waves away Master Zhang’s help and rushes down the corridor, calling his Angels to arms, demanding all entrances be secured and the building searched for intruders. I remain with Burke’s revived corpse as everyone else races round in a panic. Nobody’s sure if there’s an army outside, ready to break down the doors, or if Burke acted by himself.
Finally the doctor and Master Zhang return. Dr Oystein hasn’t changed clothes or bandaged his wound. There’s a small web of thick blood spreading slowly from a hole in his left shoulder. He winces as he squats beside me, but otherwise ignores his injury.
‘I am sorry,’ he says softly as he examines the newly created zombie. ‘Billy was a good man. He deserved better than this.’
‘He was vaccinated,’ I remind the doctor. ‘He might revitalise.’
‘I will pray for him,’ Dr Oystein says. ‘And we will guard him safely and keep him fed and comfortable.’
‘For how long?’ I ask.
‘As long as you wish,’ he says, then gently prises Burke away from me and helps him to his feet. As the zombie looks around blankly, Dr Oystein asks one of the Angels to take him to a nearby room and lock him away. ‘We will sort out more fitting accommodation for him later,’ he vows.
‘What the hell happened?’ Zhang snarls as the walking dead teacher is led away. ‘Why did he want to kill you?’
‘I do not know,’ Dr Oystein murmurs. ‘He was calling me a demon, but I have no idea what I could have done to enrage him.’
‘I don’t think it had anything to do with you,’ I sigh. ‘He said something else when I was holding him, just before he died. He said … Dowling.’
Dr Oystein tenses. Zhang looks furious.
‘You think Mr Dowling was behind this?’ Zhang snaps.
‘He must have been. Otherwise why would Mr Burke have tried to warn me about him?’
‘Oystein?’ Zhang asks. ‘Did you hear Burke mention the clown’s name?’
‘No,’ Dr Oystein says. ‘But I am sure that B is right. That must have been what happened. Billy was our friend. He would not have tried to assassinate me out of the blue. My guess, based on what B has said, is that Mr Dowling injected Billy with some sort of drug which scrambled his senses, then programmed him to turn against me.’
‘He couldn’t have done that,’ I frown. ‘I saw him just a while ago.’
‘Mr Dowling?’ Dr Oystein gasps, eyes widening with fear.
‘No. Mr Burke. He was with Rage and me in the East End. We left him to come back here. We stopped to play football. Then you summoned us and we came in. There can’t have been time for him to be brainwashed.’
Dr Oystein rubs the area around his wound and looks thoughtful. ‘That is strange. With time, a man of Mr Dowling’s resources could turn any one of us, but I am not aware of a drug which could make a puppet of a man so quickly. Then again, Mr Dowling has access to chemicals that most people know nothing about. Perhaps it is something he developed himself. Either way, this is a worrying development, something new that we have to be wary of. I will investigate it further, flush out Billy’s system, try to unlock the mysteries of the drug from whatever traces it has left behind.
‘At least he went down fighting,’ Dr Oystein says, squeezing my arm to show his support. ‘Whatever Mr Dowling did to his mind, it wasn’t enough to break him completely. By warning you at the end, he has done us a great service. We might have thought him a traitor otherwise. This way we know that he was simply a victim.’
‘Only a coward uses a man’s friends to try to destroy him,’ Zhang grunts. ‘If Dowling had any honour, he would never have resorted to such an underhand tactic.’
Dr Oystein smiles bitterly. ‘Nobody ever accused Mr Dowling of being honourable.’
‘I want to kill him,’ I growl. ‘I want to run him down and rip his grinning head from his body.’
‘We do not know where he is,’ Dr Oystein says.
‘We could find him.’
The doc shakes his head. ‘That is what he wants, to lure us on to his turf, to hit us when we are disoriented and not thinking clearly. He would have known the odds were stacked against Billy. If he had seriously wanted to kill me, he would have devised a more cunning plan. This was nothing more than a provocative gesture designed to stir us up, perhaps a spur-of-the-moment whim when he found Billy alone and unprotected. We must not grant him the satisfaction of a reaction.’
‘So we’ll do nothing?’ I yell.
‘We will remember,’ Dr Oystein says calmly. ‘And when the day comes for us to move against Mr Dowling, we will do so in Billy Burke’s name, as well as in the name of so many others who have been killed or tormented by that accursed clown.’
I stare at Dr Oystein helplessly. I don’t want to wait. I want to make Mr Dowling pay immediately. But I know the doc is right. Patience isn’t something that comes naturally to me, but I’ve been working on it and I’m learning to tell when it’s time to rush into action and when it’s time to hold back.
‘I want to help set up the room for Mr Burke,’ I mutter.
‘Of course,’ Dr Oystein says. ‘We will see to it tonight.’
‘I will organise another escort for Emma and Declan in the meantime,’ Master Zhang says.
‘What are you talking about?’ I snap.
‘I do not think that you will want to go on a mission given what has happened,’ Zhang says, ‘and I will not send the rest of your group without you, even assuming that they wish to proceed with it.’
‘You think I’d rather sit here and brood?’ I shake my head. ‘That’s not me. I can’t think of anything better at a time like this than keeping busy.’
Zhang’s eyes narrow. ‘I will not send you out if you are an emotional wreck.’
I grin like a tiger. ‘I’ve seen lots of friends die. Burke’s death won’t put me off my stride. If the others are game, count me in.’
Zhang studies me for a moment, then nods. ‘I have taught you well.’
‘Don’t give yourself all the credit,’ I tell him, standing and pointing to the hole in the left side of my chest. ‘I was a heartless bitch long before I came here.’
Dr Oystein and Master Zhang smile sympathetically, then take me to organise a room for Burke, where we can store and feed his reanimated corpse. In theory we’re setting him up here so that we can assist him if he revitalises and becomes a thinking zombie like us. But realistically, as Zhang reminded me, there’s little chance of that. It’s far more likely that the room will serve as a cell for him until we give up the ghost and either set him free or put him down like a rabid dog.