Kaz shrugged, but he kept quiet.
“Move,” Biceps ordered when the elevator doors opened onto the two-story atrium at the intersection of the building’s wings. He led us toward the hall opposite the residential wing, but the scenery outside caught my attention. A flagstone patio led to the pond that had been on this land since before the park was built, though it didn’t resemble the cattail-edged pond it had once been. It had been sculpted into an oval and planted with water lilies and overhanging willows. When I was a kid, the Morries used to fish there; now it was ringed by benches and picnic tables.
No one was enjoying the scenery now, though. In fact, there was no one in the hall besides us. Our footsteps echoed on the tiled floors, and I wondered if Prentiss was operating with fewer staff than had worked for Bryce. Had some of his team defected after the lab was destroyed? Or was it possible that they’d had second thoughts about the mission?
“I’ve got a little education in mind for you two,” Biceps said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“We could just wait in our rooms,” I suggested. “Until things are, you know… more stable.”
“Yeah. You could. That’s what Bonaventure would like, for us all to just sit around with our thumbs up our asses until Prentiss gets back here.” Biceps scowled. “Only, I’ve got a better idea.”
He stopped in front of a reinforced door. “The grand tour ends here.”
He flipped up the top of a keypad and punched in a long series of digits before the door clicked open.
“Ladies first,” he said, stepping aside with a flourish, and I stepped into the room.
It was all too familiar.
A choked gasp escaped my throat as I stumbled backward, but Biceps shoved me back in. I grabbed Kaz’s arm, pressing against him while my heart stampeded.
The room was full of them. Half a dozen zombies sat in folding chairs, only their eyes moving when they saw us. I recoiled, remembering the terrifying experience of being attacked a few months earlier in Bryce’s lab, when I’d accidentally stumbled on the room where he kept his specimens, a room very much like this one, right down to the folding chairs and the white T-shirts and khakis they wore.
I tried to turn away, but I found that I couldn’t stop looking. They had all been young men. Four of them looked as though they had turned recently, their skin mostly intact, though pale and waxy. One of these four was very thin and had lost all its hair and looked like it had been sick for a long time. The other three had been injured; they had jagged scars on their faces and skulls, bruises from IVs and feeding tubes, limbs twisted and mangled and in one case missing, with a bandaged stump where the arm had been.
But the two who had turned less recently were even more horrifying. When a Healer heals a person at the moment of their death, they don’t die, but they don’t live, either. They enter an undead state, able to follow instructions but unable to communicate, no longer human, just functional shells that once held souls.
The undead are hard to kill. They can be burned to death, or drowned or beheaded or torn limb from limb, but anything else barely slows them down.
Eventually, though, the undead deteriorate, just as any corpse does, and expire. Prairie had told me it takes about three times as long as an ordinary dead body, but these two zombies looked like they were getting close: their flesh had swollen and ruptured, viscous fluids seeping into their clothes, dripping puddles on the floor. One of them was missing an eye, the cavern of the socket dripping pus, and its tongue was blackened and swelling and protruded from its mouth. The other had lost entire patches of flesh, and its bones and tendons were visible in its arms and its neck; a flap of skin hung from its jaw, revealing its gray shrunken gums and teeth in a skeletal leer.
“Like these guys?” Biceps demanded, his voice laced with amusement. “Some of our finest. Too bad these are all still test models. Working out a few of the final kinks and then we start production for real. Want to guess what just one of these babies goes for on the open market?”
“Who are you gonna sell to first?” Kaz demanded angrily. “Who’s offering the most for suicide bombers these days?”
“Oh, that’s right, you’re the big patriot,” Biceps said. “Lost your daddy in Iraq, and now you think it’s your job to carry on in his shoes, is that it?”
I felt Kaz tense and I thought he was going to attack, but he forced himself back under control. “You don’t have to love your country to believe people shouldn’t blow each other up,” he said through clenched teeth. “And doing it for money’s evil.”
Biceps laughed. “Pretty boy, you ain’t going to hurt my feelings calling me names. I’m a capitalist, that’s all. An opportunist. You must not have been paying attention in history class, because that’s how this country got built-people taking advantage of their circumstances. You sit still, you get run over.”
While I watched, a glistening trail of pinkish fluid leaked from the damaged skull of one of the more recent zombies, trailing down the side of its face and dripping onto its lap. It didn’t blink, didn’t flinch, but a wave of nausea passed through me.
“Here’s a little something you ought to know about these fellas,” Biceps said almost cheerfully. “They’ve been trained to respond only to certain voices. It’s a new thing we’re doing, so we can set it up so they follow only the buyer’s orders. Bryce turned us on to it, actually.”
“I thought Bryce was dead,” I said.
Biceps chuckled. “Well, he wishes he was, anyway. Stay on track here, kids. This bunch won’t listen to anybody but Prentiss and his top people. Which includes me. Whatever I tell them, they’re gonna do, no questions asked. But you can holler at ’em all day long and it’s like they won’t even hear you. Got that?”
Of course I got that; I was a Healer. Didn’t he understand that? The knowledge of what had been done to these poor men-boys, really, no doubt taken from battlefields overseas, where they could be conveniently “lost” by Prentiss’s corrupt contacts in the services-weighed deep in my soul, because I too possessed the power to do this.
“Who did this?” I demanded. Somehow they’d found another Healer, but where? The Tarbells were the only ones left. Unless-
“You’re not the only Healer around, little miss,” Biceps smirked. “You should have been a little more careful when you sent your friend Zytka packing.”
I couldn’t breathe. I’d watched her wave goodbye. I’d watched her walk toward her gate at O’Hare, rolling her small suitcase behind her.
But I hadn’t seen her get on the plane, hadn’t seen it take off, hadn’t talked to her after it landed.
Prentiss had gotten to her. I didn’t know how, but I wasn’t surprised. The more I knew about him, the more I feared him; he had connections and resources far beyond my comprehension. Somehow he’d kidnapped Zytka and forced her to make zombies for him, just as he’d forced her sisters-just as he meant to force me.
“Now you’ve managed to piss me off,” Biceps continued. “So you’re gonna chill here for tonight. Don’t worry, if you follow instructions, you’ll be just fine. Okay, boys.” He addressed the zombies. “Our guests are going to stay in this box here, see?”
With the toe of his shoe, he traced a square on the floor, following the pattern of the tile. He pushed a few empty chairs out of the way to make the square about six feet across. “Now, if they stay in their box, you leave them alone, hear?”
The zombies stared at him, their eyes empty of emotion, but I knew they were absorbing his words.
“But if they step so much as an inch outside it, you tear ’em up. Kill them. Got it? Nod if you understand.”
As if they were puppets joined by a single string, all six nodded, the decomposing ones’ loose skin swaying gently.
“Now, I’d get on in there, if I was you,” Biceps said, prodding me forward.