Iâve studied them.â
âTrust me on this, Doctorâtheyâre dangerous.â
âBut manageable. Thatâs all Iâm saying. If we had a live cyberdemon, then weâd have a problem of containment. The same as if our mancubus was living. I know you call them fatties.â
âYou have a whole fatty?â
âFortunately itâs dead. Unlike the specimen here, he seems to be slowly decaying.â
I laughed. âThey smell so bad alive I donât see how they could get any worse.â
âThe stench reminds me of rotting fish, sour grapes, and old locker-room sweat. Come on. Iâll show you.â He didnât need to take my arm, but I let him. He was like a friendly uncle who wanted to show off his chamber of horrors. We went past sections of flying skulls laid out like bikersâ helmets. Iâd always wanted a motorcycle.
âWhat do you call the Clydes?â
âWe donât,â he answered quickly. âWe think your friends were wrong to think they might be the product of genetic engineering. Theyâre probably the human traitors who were given some kind of treatment to make them tractable.â
The fatty was behind glass and made me think of a gigantic meat loaf that had been left out in the sun. The metal guns it used for arms had been removedand stacked up next to the monster like giant flashlights. He looked sort of pathetic without them.
âYou canât smell it from here, but if you want to step into the room . . .â
âNo, thanks.â I turned him down, unsure if he was kidding me. âLetâs see the zombies.â
I wish I hadnât asked.
He led me to the end of the warehouse, where I finally saw some other people in white lab coats. For a moment it had seemed as if the whole place belonged to Ackerman and his monsters. We went out into a corridor. I figured the zombies had been given a special place of their own.
Like I said, whatâs great about scientists is the way they refuse to talk down to kids. Ackerman started to lecture, and it was fine with me:
âThe most interesting part about studying zombies is the residual speech pattern. We have recorded many hours of zombie dialogue. Some of them fixate on the invasion, speaking cryptically about gateways and greater forces that lie behind them. Others pick up a pattern from their own lives, repeating phrases that tell us something about them. A final test group doesnât speak at all. We are attempting to find out if they retain any capacity to reason after the transformation.â
âNo,â I said as strongly as I could. âThe human part of them is dead.â
âI understand how you must feel,â he said. âItâs easier for all of us if we assume weâre not killing anyone human on the other end of the gun barrel.â
I shook my head. âYou donât understand,â I told him. âIâll kill any skag who betrayed us. The traitors are still human. I wouldnât have any problem pullingthe trigger on those creeps in the government who helped the demons.â
âAll right, calm down,â he said in a completely different tone of voice. âI was really talking about myself just then. Itâs easier for me to work on these, er, zombies, if I think thereâs no humanity left.â
Arlene keeps saying I can be a real pill, so I decided to be that way on purpose. I asked, âWhat difference does that make to you, Doctor, if they werenât geniuses when they were alive?â
He laughed instead of getting mad. âYou are smart, Jill. I need to watch my step around you. I hope weâll enjoy working together. We can start now. Whatâs your theory of why a few of the big monsters seem able to reason?â
âYou mean like the spider-minds?â
I didnât need to tell him what that word meant. âApparently all of them. Then there was the loquacious imp