“A gold star for you,” Hennison said. “I see that you’re acquainted with our medical profession. That’s what I was accused of. My patients kept dying.”

“Must have been hell on the malpractice insurance premiums.”

“Not at all. It was a university hospital. The taxpayers paid the bills. What did I care?”

“Your patients died of…?”

“They didn’t die. I let them expire. There were no therapeutic misadventures. I was on a voyage of discovery. Would you call a mission into space a misadventure?”

Hennison absently rested his hand on the switch lever.

I gulped. “Of course not.”

Hennison pulled his hand from the switch. He paced in a circle between the switch and me. I hoped that can of Red Bull lasted a long time.

He said, “I was testing my hypothesis to unlock the greatest secret of all, the resurrection of the dead.” He waited as if he expected his zombies to cheer him.

They stared at him with empty eyes. Pus seeped from their wounds.

Hennison let out a sigh and puffed his cheeks in dejection. “Genius is a lonely vocation.”

Especially when you’re surrounded by zombies.

“I take it the medical board didn’t see it that way?”

Hennison wagged a finger. “You are so right about that. They acted as if my actions would damage the reputation of the hospital. How many patients died to perfect heart transplants? Were those therapeutic misadventures? I flatline a few patients-in the interest of science, mind you-and suddenly my techniques and procedures are called into question.”

If this delusional bastard didn’t have an advanced degree, I could see him hosing school buses with an AK-47.

I asked, “Didn’t you tell the board what you were doing?”

“You ever hear of something called intellectual property? If I blabbed to the administration about this”-he motioned to his lab-“then every idea would belong to the hospital and its corporate sponsors. I’d be given a plaque and a token honorarium for my efforts.” He crushed the can of Red Bull. “Instead they called me a criminal.”

“That was when you came to lovely Morada?” I asked.

“Not yet. I tried to interest the Defense Department in my work. I pitched to them, what better weapon against terror than terror itself? We’d free the suspects locked up in Guantánamo after I turned them into zombies. Imagine Osama bin Laden’s face when zombies come after him. We’ll send their dead martyrs back home and on our side. Brilliant, no?”

“Absolutely,” I replied.

Hennison’s expression darkened. Shoulders sagging, he turned from me. “Once again, I was cast out. A prophet is never welcome in his own home. The generals thought I was a lunatic. The government would rather waste billions on nuclear weapons, utterly useless toys except to keep their cronies fattened at the public trough.”

Kimberly’s hand grasped my ankle. Imagine a rotten orange with fingers. She licked her lips and slipped the repulsive hand under the cuff of my sweats.

I raised my head. “Hey, Doc? Little help here.”

Hennison stared at the floor and brooded. “Those were trying days. I felt I had nowhere to turn.”

Kimberly snaked her arm up my leg.

Cowboy zombie did his undead snicker. “Ghaw. Ghaw.”

“Hey, Doc. Help.”

“I watched a lot of television.” Hennison brightened. “There I found salvation.”

“You mean religion?” I raised my voice to get his attention. “A televangelist?”

“Of course not. Not those charlatans. I mean the queen of modern wisdom. Oprah.”

“Oprah?”

“An American treasure. She did an entire show called ‘Follow Your Dreams.’”

Kimberly’s cold fingers crawled up my thigh like a thawing tarantula. “Dreams.” The word came from her mouth like a gargle.

My johnson shriveled. It wanted a pair of feet of its own to run away. “Hey, Dr. Hennison, would you mind?”

Hennison was reaching into the cooler for yet another Red Bull. He did a double take on Kimberly and threw a can. It bounced off her head and sprayed Red Bull. She shuffled backward, giving a disappointed zombie mumble, and withdrew that cold serpent of her arm from inside my pants.

“Thanks,” I said. I let sensation return to my crotch. “You were talking about your dreams.”

“My dreams.” Hennison returned to the mirror. An expression of serenity soothed his face. “Oprah said, don’t give up. Every worthy cause is a challenge. The keys to success are faith, persistence, and to ground your efforts on gratitude.” Hennison paused to stare at himself. “I did exactly that. I downsized my life to the essentials and invested in my dreams.”

“Zombies?”

“It’s more than that.”

“The revenge thing?”

“Now that I’ve reanimated the dead, I’ve only whetted my ambitions. My goals before were laughably modest. Even juvenile. I wanted to even the score on every nuisance, every inconvenience, every parking ticket, every blind date who wouldn’t return my phone calls.” Hennison marched from the mirror. “Instead, my recent success has fueled my desire for complete mastery of the globe.”

“World domination?” I asked.

“For now.”

The world wasn’t enough? “And then?”

“Think of it, zombies in space.”

“I’m thinking. Yes, I see it.” I tested the metal hoops on my wrists.

“Do you think that’s too ambitious?”

“For you, of course not. Why would you say that?”

“Are you aware of Icarus?”

“I wouldn’t worry,” I replied. “Compared to you, the guy was a loonie. Come on, making wax wings and flying too close to the sun?”

“I’m glad you say that,” Hennison said. “Sometimes I think I’m getting carried away with my plans. It’s good to get a fresh opinion.”

“You want a fresh opinion? You sir, deserve a fucking Nobel Prize.”

Hennison saluted. “Thanks.”

I knew the way to his heart, on a wide avenue of flattery and bullshit. Now it was my turn to learn about his world. “Hey, Doc, how come some zombies are more animated than others? Take Lab Coat over there.” I motioned with my head.

“You mean Reginald?” Hennison asked. “The sooner to expiration I complete the reanimation process, the more animated-lifelike if you will-the revenant is. But I’ve discovered another phenomenon. Have you noticed that zombies don’t say much but they seem to know what the others are doing? It’s as if they have a collective consciousness. The deeper the zombification, the greater awareness they have of one another.”

Of course I had noticed how zombies cooperated to capture me. They moved as if they had one mind. They lacked auras so I assumed they had no connection to the psychic world, but I was wrong. What kind of mysterious connection, I didn’t know.

Hennison said, “Other than the affordable real estate, the country living, and great mountain views, let me show you why I’ve come to Morada.”

He motioned to Reginald, who went to the shelf and returned with a cardboard box the size of a small valise. He set the box on the workbench and lifted a metal case from inside the box.

The case had a transparent pyramid. This was no doubt a psychotronic diviner.

“Let’s talk more,” Hennison said. “But before we do, let’s look at this.”

Reginald brought a second box. From it he removed another psychotronic diviner, the one belonging to the Araneum, the one the zombies had stolen from me.

He placed the diviners side by side. Hennison’s had a plain aluminum case fashioned with rivets and welds and cheap switches. This diviner looked like a garage hobby project, especially when compared to the Araneum’s ornate version.

Hennison asked, “This is the device taken from your truck.” He caressed the filigreed case. “It’s beautiful but overdone. I would’ve spent the money on something else. Who made this?”

“I can’t say.” That was the truth. The Araneum could’ve jobbed out its construction.

“Where did you get it?”

“It was a gift.”