Kill the Dead (Sandman Slim 2)

“She was bitten by a damned zombie. How about something for that?”

Allegra ignores me. She takes the lid off the canopic jar and I get hit with a smell that reminds me of the Drifters at Springheel’s. She upends the jar and a pile of fat, wriggling worms falls out. Each one is the size of my thumb.

“What are those?”

“Pharaoh grubs. They’re like maggots. They eat dead skin and leave clean, healthy tissue and they’re about ten times faster about it than maggots.”

Allegra puts several of the grubs on Brigitte’s wound. They go right for her discolored flesh. Vidocq puts his hand on my arm and raises it so I’m holding the lamp at a better angle for Allegra to work.

“Thank you, dear.”

“Of course.”

I look at Vidocq. Lit from below by the lamp, he looks old and tired.

“You’ve been around two hundred years, man. Tell me you know something to fix this.”

“I do know something. But I know that what you want doesn’t exist. There is no cure for the bite of a revenant.”

“You have all these books. How do you know there isn’t something you’ve missed?”

“I’ve read all these books many times and more besides. I’ve traveled the world hoping to cure my own involuntary immortality. I learned from magnificent alchemists, witches, and magicians. The few times the subject of revenants came up, all were in agreement. There is no cure. The best you can do is leave the afflicted in the Winter Garden.”

“No way.”

“Where’s the Winter Garden?” asks Allegra.

I say, “It’s not where. It’s what. He wants to put Brigitte into a fucking coma. Like suspended animation in a science-fiction movie.”

“It will stop the infection from consuming and killing her. It will halt her transformation.”

Allegra picks up a couple of the grubs.

“How long can you keep her like that?” she asks.

“In theory, forever. It will give us time to look for other possibilities.”

“You just said there weren’t any possibilities,” I say.

“There aren’t. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look.”

“I don’t like it.”

“No one ever does, but there’s nothing else to do. Unless you want to do nothing, wait for her transformation, and release her yourself.”

As Allegra packs the wound with cotton, Brigitte opens her eyes. Allegra gently holds her shoulders so she doesn’t try to get up.

“James?”

“Brigitte.”

“Where are we?”

“With friends. You’re all right. They’ll fix you up.”

“Bullshit. I’ve been bitten. Kill me, James. You can do it.”

“No I can’t.”