On each cuff was a small circular opening, and into each opening was inserted a long, thin needle attached to a length of clear tubing. Yellowish fluid filled the tubes, which ran beneath the table and disappeared into the floor.
“He makes the zombies here too?” Josh asked.
Scrawl nodded.
Josh reached out to touch the zombie’s skin, but Scrawl grabbed his wrist. “Don’t,” he said.
“Relax,” Josh said, irritated. “I just wanted to feel her skin. It’s amazing how he makes them look so real.” He pointed to the tubes. “What’s that stuff, hydraulic fluid for the robotics?”
“It’s blood,” said Scrawl.
“Blood?” Josh repeated. “What are you talking about?”
“These are bleeding tables,” Scrawl told him. “He’s not pumping anything in, he’s draining it out.”
Josh recoiled, staring at the girl. “I don’t get it,” he said. “I thought you said that this is where he makes Z.”
“It is,” said Scrawl. “But to make Z he needs blood. Zombie blood. And this is how he gets it.”
Josh waited for Scrawl to say he was joking. When he didn’t, Josh pointed to the girl and said, “You’re telling me that’s a real zombie?”
“She’s real, all right,” Scrawl answered.
Josh stared at him. Scrawl had to be kidding. But the look on his face was deadly serious. Could he be telling the truth?
Josh laughed nervously. “You’re messing with me,” he said. “Right?”
Scrawl shook his head.
“There haven’t been any in years,” Josh said.
“There are now.” Said Scrawl.
Josh looked at the zombie on the table. He couldn’t believe he had almost touched it. “Where do they come from?”
Scrawl looked at him. “This is the part you really don’t want to see,” he said. “Don’t freak out on me, okay?”
“I’m already beyond freaked out,” Josh told him. “It can’t get any worse.”
“Yeah, it can,” Scrawl replied. He walked toward a door to the right of the tables. When he reached it, he paused, took a deep breath, and pushed it open.
The stench was enough to make Josh gag. At first he was so busy coughing that he didn’t have time to look for the source of the smell. When he could more or less breathe again, he looked up. They were in a room lined with cells, about twenty on each side. And inside each one was a zombie.
Josh felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. “They’re real?” he said. “All of them? But that’s impossible. All the z’s were wiped out. The virus was wiped out.”
Scrawl shook his head. “That’s just what the government wants people to think,” he said. “They never wiped out the virus, just the people who had it. Clatter’s father worked on the project. He found a way to infect people and make them zombies.”
Josh crept closer to the cell that Scrawl was looking into. Inside it was a man wearing a tattered suit. His skin bubbled with lesions, and his eyes were filmed over. He opened his mouth, revealing stumps of blackened teeth and a swollen purple tongue. Seeing Josh and Scrawl, he beat his hands against the glass, coating it with blood-flecked drool.
“He’s alive?” Josh asked, still unable to believe it.
“Alive as he can be,” said Scrawl.
“And Clatter made him like this?”
Scrawl nodded. “Yeah,” he said.
Josh looked into the next cell. There a woman with a rat’s nest of hair sat in the corner, pulling her own fingernails off. Half a dozen of them littered the floor. Josh felt his stomach rise.
“But why?” he sputtered. “Why would anyone want to make meatbags?”
“Money,” Scrawl said. “Like I said, Clatter’s dad studied the zombie virus. He was a chemist. He wanted to find a way to wipe it out. But the government wanted him to do just the opposite. They wanted him to make a weapon that would turn people into z’s. Something they could put into the water or the air or food to infect a lot of people at once.”
“Biological warfare,” Josh said. “That’s sick.”
“That’s what Clatter’s father thought too,” said Scrawl. “He refused to do it. So they decided to give him a little incentive to cooperate. They kidnapped Clatter. He was maybe five or six. They told Clatter’s father that if he did what they wanted, they would give him his kid back.”
“An offer he couldn’t refuse,” Josh said.
Scrawl nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “He just wanted to save his son. He did what they asked, but they killed him. They killed his wife too. They would have gotten Clatter, but he got away. I don’t know who he was before, but since then he’s been Clatter.”
“And now he’s making zombies using his dad’s technology,” Josh said. “That’s messed up.”
“I think what happened to him made him a little crazy,” Scrawl replied. “He’s super smart, there’s no doubt about that. But he’s also twisted. He says making money off of z’s is payback for what the government did to him and his parents. The more zombies he makes, the more Z he makes.”
“Z is zombie blood,” Josh said, shuddering at the thought. Then he remembered that he had taken some himself, and panic filled him. “Z turns people into zombies?” he said.
“No,” Scrawl answered. “Don’t worry,” he assured Josh. “We’ve all tried it. It won’t turn you. Clatter has other ways of doing that. Z is made from z blood, but it’s a diluted form of it. Just enough to make you feel a little bit of what they feel, but not enough to turn you.”
Josh slumped to the ground with his back against the door of one of the cells. He heard the zombie inside start clawing at the metal. He tried not to listen. Scrawl came and sat beside him. “How long has he been doing this?” Josh asked him.
“A couple years,” said Scrawl. “It took him a long time to figure out how to do it efficiently. The first versions of Z really did turn users into meatbags. Then Clatter got it to where it only made them crazy. Now he’s got it pretty much figured out.”
“Pretty much,” Josh said. “Great. And how does the game come into this?”
“It’s another way to make money,” said Scrawl. “And it’s a way to get rid of z’s that are too far gone. That’s when he puts them into the game.”
Josh didn’t want to accept what he was hearing. “We’ve been killing… people?” he said. “I’ve been killing people?”
Scrawl took him by the shoulders. “You wanted to know,” he said as Josh took great gulps of air. “Now you do.”
“And you knew about it,” Josh said. “That makes you as bad as he is.”
“He helped me, Josh,” Scrawl said. “He’s helped all of us.”
“You mean he’s bought you,” said Josh, thinking about Scrawl’s nice apartment. Then he remembered how excited he’d been seeing his first paycheck, and he felt a little ashamed. “How many of the others know?” he asked.
“Only Seamus and Finnegan,” Scrawl answered. “I know they don’t look like it, but they’re science geeks. He’s teaching them how to make the Z and how to replicate the virus. I help him with business stuff. The others he just uses for the game.”
A thought occurred to Josh. “So if somebody gets bit in the game, they’re being bit by a real zombie?”
Scrawl didn’t say anything.
“What really happened to Stash and Freya?” Josh asked.
“Josh, it doesn’t—”
“What happened to them!” Josh yelled. “Tell me!”
Scrawl nodded toward the cells at the end of the row. “Over there,” he said.