I landed on top of the zombies, not levitating so I hit them with all my weight.
They collapsed beneath me and I sprang away. The fine mist of the lingering garlic oil stung my nose and eyes. I reached clean air before shedding the tarp. I searched my pocket for another couple of cartridges for the elephant gun. The pocket was empty. No problem, I had plenty of ammo. I searched another pocket. My fingers poked through. The pocket had been sliced open. I tapped the other pockets, anxiously searching for more ammo.
We were getting deeper into the lair and losing our advantages by the second. Jolie landed beside me.
I asked, “How are you fixed for bullets?”
“Down to half. Sure are a lot of these fuckers.”
I threw away the elephant gun, drew my .45, and went through the door in the hall.
Banks of lights clamped to the ceiling illuminated with a brightness and heat as intense as a summer sun. The dirty humid air smelled like a polluted swamp.
Rows of aquariums sat on metal shelves, containing human parts instead of tropical fish. At the bottom of one aquarium, bubbles spewed from a plastic clam, a tiny frogman trapped inside its pearly jaws. The bubbles frothed around livers, spleens, and kidneys.
Pairs of eyes bobbed in Mason jars. As we walked in, the eyes followed us as if they had nothing better to look at.
A naked and legless human torso lay pinned with cabinet-maker’s clamps against a picnic table perched at a slant with a car jack. Stitches held the arms to the shoulders. An assortment of feet sat alongside on a workbench as if they were shoes to try on for size.
The top of the head was open, the cap of skull hanging off to one side. Wires and small colored cables were strung from the empty skull to a battery of cheap-looking electrical gizmos as if this were a kit from Popular Science.
As a vampire I’m an expert in corpses, dining regularly on the blood of the innocent and guilty, ripping the flesh off the bones of my enemies, etc. And having seen an alien hoodlum pull a prosthetic robotic eyeball from his head, in short, I’ve witnessed plenty of freaky ass, capital A-S-S, shit in my short undead existence.
But this house outside Morada, Colorado, took the cake. And the icing. And the creamy filling.
Jolie noted the bloody handprints smeared across the walls. “Hennison?”
“I hope so. If he’s lost this much blood, he’s close to biting the big one.”
Where were Reginald and Sonia? Maybe this was yet another trap?
Zombies dragged their feet on the floor above. Three, maybe four zombies gathered for another attack.
Jolie and I followed the streaks of blood to a second lab.
Another naked body lay on the table, feet and crotch toward us. It was a man, obviously. Tubes and wires draped from incisions in the arms, the legs, and the torso. Three ragged holes marred his chest, one by the sternum, the others closer to the left shoulder. Gunshot wounds.
The needles on the gauges of the adjacent pumps and electrical console twitched. A row of laptops presented black screens, and blinking power lights indicated sleep mode. This had to be the main reanimation lab, where Hennison created his zombies.
I kept my pistol ready and I advanced, my senses at maximum gain.
I stepped around the table to examine the face. As I got close to see over the chest, I discovered there was no head. The neck had been neatly sliced from the shoulders.
I started to ask myself who this man was when my foot dragged through a pile of clothes on the floor. Heavy shoes, black trousers, a white shirt and lab coat soaked with blood. Hennison’s clothes.
This corpse belonged to Hennison.
What happened to his head?
I tripped on something.
Something hairy and decayed.
Cleto’s head. Hennison had abandoned it to take parts from the canister.
He had mentioned refining the reanimation process so that even Reginald could do it. Rather than die, Hennison had himself decapitated to preserve his living brain and escaped. He would get another body later.
Where had he gone?
There was another door at the back of the lab. Dirty footprints led across this threshold.
I took one side of the door, Jolie the other. I signaled that she kick the door open and I’d rush inside first. With fingers poised over triggers and our fangs at combat length, we did the silent count head bob. On three, she kicked the door off its hinges and I rushed inside.