Undead - One Foot In The Grave Part 11

I shook my head. "Not as a rule. But now that I'm starting a new life, I probably should be starting some new habits." I looked over various sized weights. "How long does it take to build a body like yours?"

He grinned. "About forty years."

"What?"

He eased the barbell back down to the floor. "I wasn't always into body building. I only started about forty years ago. And then your progress is determined by three things."

"Which are?" I picked up a pair of hand weights that felt light enough for a beginner's workout. I began a set of arm curls.

"Genetic predisposition, the frequency and intensity of your workout routines, and whether you're alive or undead."

"I follow you on the first two," I said. "I'm not sure about the last one."

"Weight training involves increasing muscle ma.s.s by breaking it down, first." He slid a couple more metal plates to the ends of his barbell. "You lift weights, which strain the muscle fibers and break them down so that the body replaces them with greater muscle ma.s.s.

"But once you become undead," he grunted, hefting the bar up to his chin, "your muscle tissues change, become denser, less susceptible to the breakdown process." The bar rose past his face to its straight-armed zenith above his head. "You can lift greater weights, but your body becomes more resistant to change-even positive change."

As the bar came back down, I counted the weights and did a little simple arithmetic. Damien was cleaning and pressing four hundred pounds.

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Csejthe," said a new voice. "How do you like our accommodations?" It was Deirdre, stilldripping from the hot tub. Gowned and coiffed the night before, she had been a real head-turner. Up close, wet, and nearly naked in turquoise string bikini, she was devastating. I felt my swimming trunks shrink a bit.

"It's all rather new to me," I stammered.

"Well, the Doman tries to provide us with the best and the people here are very friendly. Aren't they, my love?" She ran a slim hand across Damien's dark jaw as he lowered the weights to the floor.

He grinned and took her hand in his, kissing it.

"I'm going in for about ten minutes of steam and then I'll be ready to go back up," she said. "How about you?"

"I should be done by then."

She smiled and walked away, moving like a twenty-three jewel Swiss watch as she headed toward the steam room.

"I don't wish to contradict her," Damien said fondly, "but to Deirdre, everyone seems friendly."

"I can see why," I said.

"Not just for her looks, but for her personality, as well. 'What is beautiful is good and who is good will soon be beautiful.' "

d.a.m.n! He wasn't only good looking and charming, he read Sappho, as well!

And then I noticed that I had miscalculated the numbers on the weights we were using. The dumbbells that I had a.s.sumed were merely ten pounds were actually ten kilograms. That meant I was curling close to twenty-five pounds in each hand with no effort. And the plates I had a.s.sumed to weigh four hundred pounds on Damien's barbell were more than double that amount.

I devoutly hoped that he wasn't the jealous type.

Chapter Seven.

Three.

I opened my eyes. Looked up at Dr. Mooncloud's face. Pagelovitch was hovering nearby.

"How do you feel?"

"Calm and refreshed," I said. She gave me an odd look and I sat up. "So what did we learn?"

"Nothing, really."

"Dr. Mooncloud regressed you to the last twenty minutes leading up the accident," Pagelovitch elaborated. "We were looking for causal evidence that might link the accident to your condition."

"And?" I looked at Mooncloud who was flipping through her notes and then back at the Doman.

"Nothing evident," he said. "You had a headache. You stopped in Weir for aspirin. Shortly thereafter you fell asleep at the wheel."

"Or pa.s.sed out." This contribution came from Suki, who had returned to her post by the examination room's door."I've got something here. . . ." Mooncloud slipped a finger between two pages and flipped back through the note pad. "A few moments ago you were saying that you wanted to reach Frontenac before sundown, but that it was going to be close."

"Yeah, so?"

"Confirmed by the accident report filed by the county mounties."

"Significance, Doctor?" the Doman coached.

"Well, during our previous session, Mr. Csejthe made a comment about wanting to stop for lunch. . .

. Lupe, hand me the map."

Garou, her hair still damp from her swim, maneuvered her chair between us to deliver the Kansas state road map.

"See? Here!" Mooncloud's finger stabbed at the southeast corner. "You would have driven only two more miles, once you pa.s.sed Scammon, before you had to turn east onto 103. Then, three miles east to hit Weir and another four miles past Weir to hit Highway 69. No more than nine miles to cover from the time you were thinking about stopping for lunch to the time of the accident."

The Doman studied the map. "So?"

"Well, look here," she said. "Frontenac is just twelve miles up the highway from the point of the accident."

"So why would he be worried about beating the sunset?" Pagelovitch concluded.

I considered the numbers. "Somewhere, along that seven mile stretch of 103, I lost several hours.

Time I can't account for."

"Perhaps your amnesia is more than a post-traumatic effect of the accident," Mooncloud said.

"Perhaps your amnesia was in place before the accident."

" 'The Interrupted Journey,' " Suki observed.

"You said something about an old man," the Doman said suddenly.

"I did?"

"No," Mooncloud said. "You didn't say it: under hypnosis, you reported that your wife said it." She skimmed a couple of pages of shorthand notes. "Here it is. She said: 'I hope that old man is going to be all right.' Ring any bells?"

Not directly. "No." But suddenly I recalled the white face in the rear window of the antique Duesenberg the night before last. A face that I had never seen before and yet it persisted in my memory like something disturbingly familiar.

It was the face of an old man.

The cat dogged me almost everywhere I went.

I asked around, but no one would admit to owning the creature or knowing who did. It had to be a conspiracy: a cat with two tails doesn't exactly lend itself to anonymity.

"Is it bothering you?" Suki asked on one of the occasions that it wasn't around.

"No, not really," I answered. "Although an animal with two tails is a bit unnerving. And I can't help wondering why it's attached itself to me."

"Maybe it likes you. You look like you'd be a cat person."

"Great," I muttered as she walked away with a faintly catlike stride of her own. "From bat person to cat person."

But, all in all, I didn't really mind that much. Now that I was a freak, myself, it seemed comfortable having another freak around to keep me company. Even if it was only a cat.

If it was only a cat. If no one was going to tell me, then perhaps I could find out on my own. I popped out of bed the following night, threw on some clothes, poured another saucer of milk for my feline roommate, and headed straight for the Doman's library.

It was already occupied.

Damien looked up from one of the computer consoles tied to outside on-line services. "Chris, what a coincidence! We were just talking about you."

Deirdre poked her head out from behind one of the free-standing bookshelves. "h.e.l.lo, Chris!"

I smiled. "And why am I so interesting?"

"Well, Deirdre has her own reasons," Damien said, "but, come over here and I'll show you mine." I walked over to the console and he motioned me into a seat. "I've been a.s.signed to monitor the news in your area as a follow-up to your disappearance. The remains found in the fire are a.s.sumed to be yours and the case is pretty much closed. But, look here. . . ." He tapped a series of keystrokes and brought another file up on the monitor.

"Deaths and disappearances," he continued, scrolling the text up the screen. "Mysterious deaths and disappearances, that is."

"What about them?"

"I've been checking every police station and newspaper office within ninety miles of your home. I've culled all the funeral notices, accidents, and homicides, eliminating the ones where the witnesses or circ.u.mstances identified the a.s.sailant or eliminated the supernatural."

"And?"

He held up a hand. "I backtracked to the time your blood samples left the local hospital and were s.h.i.+pped to three independent labs for a.n.a.lysis. Since the New York team showed up at your doorstep the same night ours did, it's a good guess that the initial test results flagged their database simultaneously with ours. There's also the matter of that break-in and homicide at the Joplin hospital. One of your samples was routed there and is now missing."

"I guess as badly as they wanted me, they were more concerned about destroying evidence of my condition," I said.

"Maybe. Except the initial tests had already been run and the break-in and theft would only call more attention to it. They covered that, somewhat, by smas.h.i.+ng other samples and scattering files, but your records and sample seem to be the only ones that are actually missing. So, these guys are sloppy. But there is a pattern here that goes beyond mere sloppiness."

"What do you mean?"

"Look. . . ." He brought up another menu on the screen and selected a number. Maps of Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas appeared and conjoined. He executed a series of keystrokes and brought the computer's mouse into play: the maps were enlarged until the Kansas/Missouri border took up most of the display. "Here's the hospital break-in where the night nurse was murdered," he said, using the mouse to plant an electronic flag over Joplin, Missouri. "Here, here, and here, are the disappearances that occurred within forty-eight hours of the incident at your radio station."

I remembered the fireball bursting through the roof of the old dormitory. Incident. . . .

Damien was planting electronic flags in the Marais des Cygnes Waterfowl refuge in Linn County, another in Garland near the Kansas/Missouri border, and a third in the Prairie State Park north of Mindenmines just over on the Missouri side. "The one in Garland turned up the day after you were picked up."

I grunted. "A missing blood sample is one thing. A corpse missing its own blood volume is another."

"As I said: sloppy. If only that was that the worst of it."

"There's more?"He nodded. "As I was saying, I've monitored all reported deaths and disappearances since that forty-eight-hour period. There have been four more disappearances and another body since then."

"What? Why?"

"That's what I'd like to know. Ostensibly, New York sent a team to recover you and any evidence that might link you with vampirism. That particular goal and some very unprofessional blunders might explain the first three disappearances and the hospital break-in. Since enforcers characteristically travel in pairs, we a.s.sumed the New York team was completely eradicated with your second encounter in the cornfield. Obviously, we were wrong."

A lone flag popped up on the Missouri side, east by southeast of Joplin. "I'm not sure about this one."

"It doesn't fit the pattern?"

He shook his head. "Fellow by the name of Cantrell. Has a ranch over by Aurora, Missouri. Claims Satanists from Arkansas were trying to trespa.s.s on his property."

"Um," I said, "Satanists from Arkansas?"

"Said their cars had Arkansas plates."

"Oh," I said. "Of course."

"Said he proselytized them with a shotgun. Sounds like a crackpot."

A memory surfaced and I shook my head. "Harold Cantrell. I know this guy. He was one of our Public Radio subscribers: stable, rock-solid-owns a sizable spread. And while he used to claim Cantrell Ranch was the most lightning-p.r.o.ne acreage in the world, I wouldn't figure him for fringe. But Satanists from Arkansas. . ."

I watched more flags pop up on the map, all on the Kansas side: Arma, Girard, Pittsburg, McCune, Parsons. "More New York enforcers, tells us how. It doesn't tell us why."

"Why what?" Deirdre wanted to know.

Damien leaned back in his chair and stretched. "We know that they know that we have Csejthe.

They've already picked up all the existing evidence in the area that might link him with the wampyr. The additional disappearances have occurred since then. So why are they still running around Southeast Kansas? What are they looking for?"

I stared at the phosph.o.r.escent lines and dots on the CRT. "Dr. Marsh might have some notes-"

"Chris . . . Marsh is dead."