Dead and Alive Read online

  Bucky said, “He keeps staring. I can’t stand the way he’s just staring. It’s not natural, and tonight I learned what natural feels like. This isn’t natural.”

  “It’s supernatural,” Janet whispered.

  The back of Bucky’s neck was suddenly damp. A chill corkscrewed the length of his spine.

  Precisely when Janet spoke the word supernatural, the dog turned away from them and disappeared into the upstairs hall.

  “Where’s he going, going, going?” Janet wondered.

  “Maybe he was never there.”

  “I’ve got to know where he’s going, what he is, what he knows,” Janet said urgently, and hurried across the bedroom.

  Following her into the hallway, Bucky saw that the dog was gone.

  Janet ran to the head of the stairs. “Here he is! Going down. He knows something big, oh yeah, oh yeah, he’s going somewhere big, he’s something.”

  In pursuit of the mysterious dog, Bucky descended the stairs with Janet, and then hurried toward the back of the house.

  “Oh yeah, oh yeah, something big, big, bigger than big, the dog knows, the dog knows, the dog.”

  An instant before they entered the family room, Bucky was struck by the crazy, frightening thought that Charles would be there alive, Charles and Preston and Marcella and Antoine and Evangeline, all of them resurrected, furious, possessed of hideous supernatural powers that would make them invulnerable, and that they would do things to him that he could not imagine, things unknown.

  Fortunately, young Charles Arceneaux was the only one there, and he was still as dead as anyone had ever been.

  Seeing Charles dead and thoroughly dismantled, Bucky should have felt better, but his fear tightened like an overwound clock spring. He was electrified by a sense of the uncanny, by a recognition of mysterious realms beyond his ken, by astonishment that the world had suddenly revealed itself to contain strange dimensions previously unimagined.

  Janet bounded after the dog, chanting, “Dog knows, knows, knows. Dog sees, sees, sees. Dog, dog, dog,” and Bucky sprinted after them both, out of the Arceneaux house, across the veranda, into the rain. He was not exactly sure how the appearance of the German shepherd in the bedroom doorway had led to this frantic chase, what it all meant, where it would end, but he knew as certainly as he had ever known anything that an event of a profound and magical nature loomed, something big, something huge.

  He was not just nude, he was naked, vulnerable both physically and mentally, his tandem hearts pounding, flooded with emotion as he had never been before, not at the moment killing anyone and yet exhilarated. They ran through the neighborly gate, into the backyard at the Bennet house, alongside the house toward the street, the dog in the lead, and Bucky heard himself saying, “A terrible thing has happened, a terrible thing has happened,” and he was so disturbed by the desperation in his voice that he forced himself to stop that chant. By the time they were running down the center of the street, not gaining on the dog but not falling behind, he was chanting, “Kill the pizza guy, kill the pizza guy,” and though he had no idea what that meant, he liked the sound of it.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE MASTER SUITE of the Helios mansion included two bathrooms, one for Victor and one for Erika. She was not permitted to cross the threshold of his bath.

  Every man needed a sacrosanct retreat, a private space where he could relax and relish both the accomplishments of the day and his intentions for the morrow. If he was a revolutionary with the power of science at his command, and if he had the courage and the will to change the world, he needed and deserved a sanctum sanctorum of grand design and dimensions.

  Victor’s bathroom measured over sixteen hundred square feet. It included a steam room, a sauna, a spacious shower, a whirlpool spa, two under-the-counter refrigerators, an icemaker, a fully stocked bar, a microwave concealed behind a tambour door, three plasma-screen TVs with Blu-Ray DVD capacity, and an anigre-wood cabinet containing a collection of exquisitely braided leather whips.

  The gold-leafed ceiling featured custom crystal chandeliers in the Deco style, and the walls were clad with marble. Inlaid in the center of the polished-marble floor were semiprecious stones forming the double helix of the DNA molecule. The faucets and other fixtures were gold-plated, including even the flush lever on the toilet, and there were acres of beveled-edge mirrors. The room glittered.

  Nothing in this luxurious space brought Victor as much pleasure as his reflection. Because mirrors were arranged to reflect other mirrors, he could see multiple images of himself wherever he went.

  His favorite place for self-examination was an octagonal meditation chamber with a mirrored door. Therein, nude, he could admire every aspect of his body at the same time, and also see infinite images of each angle marching away to infinity, a world of Victors and nothing less.

  He believed himself to be no more vain than the average man. His pride in his physical perfection had less to do with the beauty of his body—though it was uniquely beautiful—than with the evidence of his resolution and his indomitability that was revealed in the means by which he maintained that body for two hundred and forty years.

  Spiraling through his muscular torso—here inlaid in the flesh and half exposed, here entirely embedded—entwining his ribs, coiling around his rod-straight spine, a flexible metal cord and associated implants efficiently converted electrical current into a different and arcane energy, into a stimulating charge that ensured a youthful rate of cell division and prevented time from taking any toll of him.

  His uncounted scars and singular excrescences were a testament to his fortitude, for he had gained immortality at the cost of much pain. He had suffered to fulfill his vision and remake the world, and by suffering for the world, he could lay claim to a kind of divinity.

  From the mirrored meditation chamber, he repaired to the spa, in which the air jets roiled the steaming water. A bottle of Dom Pérignon waited in a silver bucket of ice. The cork had been replaced with a solid-silver stopper. Settled in the hot water, he sipped the crisp, ice-cold champagne from a Lalique flute.

  As it unfolded, the day just past seemed to be a chain of crises and frustrations. The discoveries during the Harker autopsy. Werner’s meltdown. The first of Victor’s triumphs, now calling itself Deucalion, not dead after all but alive in New Orleans. The brief encounter with Deucalion in Duchaine’s house, the tattooed one’s mystifying escape. Erika having dinner in the living room—living room!—on a priceless eighteenth-century French escritoire, as if she were an ignorant hillbilly.

  The Harker and Werner situations might seem like calamities to unimaginative types like Ripley, but they were opportunities. From every setback came knowledge and stunning new advancements. Thomas Edison developed hundreds of prototypes of lightbulbs that failed, until at last he discovered the right material for the filament.

  Deucalion was a mere amusement. He could not harm his maker. Besides, the tattooed wretch killed Victor’s first wife, Elizabeth, two centuries earlier, on the day of their wedding. The freak’s return would give Victor a chance to take long-overdue vengeance.

  Victor had not loved Elizabeth. Love and God were myths he rejected with equal contempt.

  But Elizabeth had belonged to him. Even after more than two hundred years, he still bitterly resented the loss of her, as he would have resented losing an exquisite antique porcelain vase if Deucalion had smashed that instead of the bride.

  As for Erika Five’s breach of etiquette: She would have to be disciplined. In addition to being a brilliant scientist, Victor was to an equal degree a brilliant disciplinarian.

  All in all, everything was moving along nicely.

  The New Race that he had worked so hard to create with Hitler’s generous financing, the later effort financed by Stalin, a subsequent project in China, those and others had been necessary steps toward the glorious work at the Hands of Mercy. This time, thanks to the billions earned from his legitimate enterprise, Bio-vision, he was able to fund
51 percent of the current project and prevent meddling by minority partners, which included a consortium of South American dictators, the ruler of an oil-rich kingdom eager to replace his restive population with obedient new subjects, and an Internet superbillionaire idiot who believed Victor was creating a race that did not exhale CO2, as did humans, and would thereby save the planet.

  Soon the tank farms would begin producing thousands of the New Race, and the Old would be on the doorstep of oblivion.

  For every minor setback, there were a hundred major successes. The momentum—and the world—was Victor’s.

  Soon he would be able to live again under his true name, his proud and storied name, and every person in the world would speak it reverently, as believers speak the name of their god with awe: Frankenstein.

  When eventually he got out of the spa, he might return to the mirrored meditation room for just a few more minutes.

  CHAPTER 20

  CARSON AND MICHAEL SAT in the Honda, near Audubon Park, engine running, headlights on, air conditioner blowing. They were eating the crispy-fried-redfish poor boy and side dishes, their chins greasy, fingers slippery with tartar sauce and cole-slaw dressing, so content with the Acadiana food that the incessant drumming of the rain on the roof began to seem soothing, when Michael said, “Here’s something.”

  Carson looked up from her sandwich and saw him squinting through the sheet of water that shimmered down the windshield and blurred the view. She switched on the wipers.

  Sprinting toward them along the middle of the street—deserted at this hour, in this weather—was a German shepherd, and in pursuit of the dog were a man and a woman, both nude.

  The shepherd raced past the Honda faster than Carson had ever seen a dog run. Even barefoot, the man and woman were faster than Olympians, as if they were in training to compete in NASCAR without a vehicle. The man’s genitals flapped, the woman’s breasts bounced exuberantly, and their facial expressions were equally ecstatic, as if the dog had promised to lead them to Jesus.

  The dog didn’t bark, but as the two-legged runners passed the Honda, Carson heard them shouting. With the windows closed and rain pummeling the roof, she couldn’t discern what the woman was saying, but the man excitedly shouted something about pizza.

  “Any of our business?” Michael asked.

  “No,” Carson said.

  She raised her poor boy to her mouth, but instead of taking a bite, she returned it to the bag with the side dishes, rolled the top of the bag shut, and handed it to Michael.

  “Damn,” she said, as she put the Honda in gear and hung a U-turn in the street.

  “What were they shouting?” Michael asked.

  “Her, I don’t know. Him, I couldn’t catch anything except the word pizza.”

  “You think the dog ate their pizza?”

  “They don’t seem angry.”

  “If they aren’t angry, why is the dog running from them?”

  “You’ll have to ask the dog.”

  Ahead, the trio with eight legs turned left off the street and onto the Audubon Park entrance lane.

  “Did the guy look familiar to you?” Michael asked, as he put their bags of takeout on the floor between his feet.

  Accelerating out of the turn, Carson said, “I didn’t get a look at his face.”

  “I think it was the district attorney.”

  “Bucky Guitreau?”

  “And his wife.”

  “Good for him.”

  “Good for him?”

  “He’s not chasing naked after a dog with some hooker.”

  “Not your ordinary New Orleans politician.”

  “A family-values guy.”

  “Can people run that fast?”

  “Not our kind of people,” Carson said, turning left toward the park.

  “That’s what I think. And barefoot.”

  The park had closed at ten o’clock. The dog might have slipped around the gate. The naked runners had gone through the barrier, demolishing it in the process.

  As Carson drove across the rattling ruins, Michael said, “What are we gonna do?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it depends on what they do.”

  CHAPTER 21

  BLUE IS THE COLOR of cold vision. All things are shades of blue, infinite shades of blue.

  The double-wide restaurant-style freezer has a glass door. The glass is torment for Chameleon.

  The shelves have been removed from the freezer. No food is ever stored here.

  From a hook in the ceiling of the unit hangs a large sack. The sack is prison.

  Prison is made from a unique polymeric fabric that is both as strong as bulletproof Kevlar and transparent.

  This transparency is the first torment. The glass door is the second.

  The sack resembles a giant teardrop, for it is filled with fourteen gallons of water and is pendulous.

  Within the freezer, the temperature varies between twenty-four and twenty-six degrees Fahrenheit.

  The water in the polymeric sack is a saline solution treated with chemicals in addition to the salt, to prevent congelation.

  Although the temperature remains below freezing, although tiny ice particles float freely in the sack, the solution will not freeze.

  Cold is the third torment for Chameleon.

  Drifting in the sack, Chameleon lives now in a waking dream.

  It is not able to close its eyes to its circumstances, because they have no lids.

  Chameleon needs no sleep.

  Perpetual awareness of its powerless condition is the fourth torment.

  In its current circumstances, Chameleon cannot drown, for it has no lungs.

  When not imprisoned, it breathes by virtue of a tracheal system akin to but materially different from that of insects. Spiracles on the surface admit air into tubes that pass throughout the body.

  In semisuspended animation, it needs little oxygen. And the saline fluid flowing through its tracheal tubes is oxygen-enriched.

  Although Chameleon looks like no insect on Earth, it resembles an insect more than it resembles anything else.

  The size of a large cat, Chameleon weighs twenty-four pounds.

  Although its brain weighs just 1.22 pounds, Chameleon is as intelligent as the average six-year-old child, but significantly more disciplined and cunning.

  In torment, Chameleon waits.

  CHAPTER 22

  IN THE SPA, the hot water churned against Victor’s body, and the bubbles of Dom Pérignon burst across his tongue, and life was good.

  The wall phone beside the spa rang. Only select Alphas had the number of this most private line.

  The caller-ID window reported UNKNOWN.

  Nevertheless, he snared the handset from the cradle. “Yes?”

  A woman said, “Hello, darling.”

  “Erika?”

  “I was afraid you might have forgotten me,” she said.

  Recalling how he had found her at dinner in the living room, he chose to remain the stern disciplinarian for a while longer. “You know better than to bother me here, except in an emergency.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you forgot me. It’s been more than a day since you had sex with me. I’m ancient history to you.”

  Her tone had a faint but unmistakable sarcastic quality that caused him to sit up straighter in the spa. “What do you think you’re doing, Erika?”

  “I was never loved, only used. I’m flattered to be remembered.”

  Something was very wrong. “Where are you, Erika? Where are you in the house?”

  “I’m not in the house, darling. How could I be?”

  He would be in error if he continued to play her conversational game, whatever the point of it might be. He must not encourage what seemed to be rebellious behavior. Victor answered her with silence.

  “My dearest master, how could I be in the house after you sent me away?”

  He hadn’t sent her away. He had left her, battered and bleeding, in the living room, not a day previ
ously but mere hours earlier.

  She said, “How is the new one? Is she as lubricious as I was? When brutalized, does she cry as pitifully as I did?”

  Victor began to see the nature of the game, and he was shocked by her effrontery.

  “My darling, my maker, after you killed me, you had your people in the sanitation department take me to a landfill northeast of Lake Pontchartrain. You ask where I am in the house, but I am nowhere in the house—though I hope to return.”

  Now that she’d carried this demented charade to an unacceptable extreme, silence was not the appropriate response to her.

  “You are Erika Five,” he said coldly, “not Erika Four. And all you’ve achieved by this absurd impersonation is to ensure that Erika Six will be in your position soon.”

  “From so many nights of passion,” she said, “I remember the hard impact of your fists, the sharpness of your teeth biting into me, and how I bled into your mouth.”

  “Come to me immediately,” he said, for he needed to terminate her within the hour.

  “Oh, darling, I would be there at once if I could, but it’s a long way to the Garden District from the dump.”

  CHAPTER 23

  AS THEY REACHED the T junction where the entrance lane met the main road through Audubon Park, Michael drew the illegally purchased .50-caliber Desert Eagle pistol from the scabbard at his left hip.

  Carson said, “If they’re going to be trouble—”

  “I’d bet both kidneys on it.”

  “—then I’m thinking the Urban Sniper makes more sense,” she finished, turning right onto West Drive.

  The headlights washed across the pale forms of Mr. and Mrs. Guitreau on their rainy-night, fully-nude, high-speed dog walk.

  Michael said, “If we have to get out of the car, it’ll for sure be the Sniper, but not if I have to shoot from a sitting position.”

  Hours earlier, they had seen Pastor Kenny Laffite, one of the New Race, breaking down psychologically and intellectually. And not long after that, they were forced to deal with another of Victor’s creations who called himself Randal and whose rap was as creepy-crazy as Charles Manson channeling Jeffrey Dahmer. Randal wanted to kill Carson’s brother, Arnie, and he had taken three rounds point-blank from an Urban Sniper before going down and staying down.