“Good. Glad to hear it.” He said, sounding like he actually meant it. “How can I help you?”
Crap, I probably should’ve rehearsed what I was going to say before calling and sounding like a moron. “Um, I was calling to find out if there’s been any progress with the heads.” It had been six months since his people recovered the zombies’ heads from Dr. Charish’s lab at NuQuesCor—heads of zombies Ed had killed.
“You mean with regrowth?” he asked, again surprising me by actually knowing what the hell I was talking about. I could be talking about heads of cauliflower for all he knew.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “Is anything happening? I haven’t heard any news, and, well, Kang was sort of a friend of mine, and I’d really like to be kept in the loop.”
“The regrowth itself hasn’t been attempted yet,” Pietro informed me. “It will be as soon as the right medium is developed.”
“Right medium?” I asked, puzzled. “You mean what to grow them back in? Why can’t you just put them in a big vat of brains?”
“According to one who knows far more about this than I do,” he said, “a big vat of brains wouldn’t be sufficient. Coming back from a head alone isn’t exactly natural. Kristi Charish was on the right track when using the pseudobrains mix to regrow Zeke Lyons, but she hadn’t tested it thoroughly and, as you know, the results were tragic. Finding the right formula is proving challenging, but we’re getting closer.”
“Oh. All right.” Disappointment curled through me, but I also understood. Zeke Lyons was one of Ed’s decapitation/murder victims, but when he was regrown he came back all screwed up—appearing at least twenty years older, and with a parasite that couldn’t heal the damage from the closed-head injury he sustained after a fall down a flight of stairs.
I resisted the urge to sigh. So much for getting answers from Kang, at least any time soon. “Will you please let me know once you have any news?”
“I will,” Pietro said, “but perhaps you’d like to get some direct answers? Maybe even see the heads yourself?”
I sucked in an excited breath. “Seriously?”
“Completely,” he replied, and I thought I heard a smile in his voice at my delight. “We did lose one, but the others are relatively stable.”
“I would love to see the heads!” Then I bit my lip. “Wait. Which one did you lose? Please don’t say it was Kang’s.”
“No. Kang is stable. It was Peter Pleschia.”
I racked my memory for which one that was. Oh yeah, the pizza guy. “Oh, whew. Er, I mean, not great for him, but…well, you know.” I made a face at my own idiocy. “Anyway. So, when can I go and see them?”
Pietro chuckled. “It’s all right. I know what you meant. Do you work today?”
A thrill of anticipation ran through me. “No. I’m off today, work tomorrow, then off again on Saturday, but I have the GED that morning.”
“I’ll have Brian pick you up at noon today at your place,” he said. “Will that work for you?”
Holy crap. Brian Archer, Pietro’s hard as nails head of security. “Sure!” I said quickly.
“You’ll be meeting with Dr. Ariston Nikas. He heads up all of my research and development operations. He’ll be able to answer your questions much more thoroughly than I can.”
Oh my god. I was going to get to visit a research lab? A zombie research lab?
“That is so cool,” I breathed. “Thanks!”
“You’re welcome, Angel,” he replied warmly. “By the way, apart from your ordeal last night, I heard you were in a pretty serious firefight the night before. Are you doing all right? Do you need anything?”
“Um, no, I’m cool,” I said, weirdly touched at the concern. “Your people gave me some stuff on the scene. And I, uh…” I gulped. “Well, I ate a bad guy.” I killed someone. And ate his brain. Sure, he’d been shooting at me, but…A shiver ran through me. It shouldn’t have been so easy for me to do it. I’d killed McKinney when I was escaping from Charish’s damn lab, but that was different. McKinney was a Grade-A bastard asshole and general all-around Bad Person who’d done terrible things to me and to people I cared about. I’d felt zero guilt when I smashed his head and feasted on the contents.
But the guy the other night…Just because he was working for the other side didn’t necessarily mean he was dipped in sin. Hell, I knew damn well that Pietro’s hands weren’t clean.
My shoulders hunched forward, and my chest tightened as guilt swept in. What the hell kind of monster was I?
Maybe Pietro sensed my attack of sudden remorse; when he replied his tone was surprisingly mild. “You made a decision in the heat of the moment. I’ve heard the reports. If you hadn’t taken him out and utilized the resources he had to offer, Heather would likely be dead now, and those men would have certainly captured you.”
“Right,” I said softly. He was right. I knew that logically, but I also knew I’d probably never shake that sliver of guilt. And that was probably a good thing. If I didn’t feel some guilt and shame, then I really would be a monster. “It’s kinda hard to get used to. Though I guess you know that.”
“Yes, I do,” he replied. “But killing him was a matter of survival for you. And as far as eating him goes, you’d have eaten his brain without hesitation had his body been in the morgue, yes? It’s simply a different setting.”
“Yeah,” I said, subdued. “I’m having a little trouble adjusting to the whole being-a-killer thing.”