"Simmons,.Wm.Mark.-.3.-.Habeas.Corpses.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons William Mark)

My mutated blood had brought Theresa Kellerman back from the dead and, later, enabled her head to survive separation from her body. Could this be her heart? Had someone found a way to salvage her body beneath the tons of earth and concrete in the basement of the collapsed BioWeb complex?
I bowed my own aching head and rubbed my eyelids. Even though she had tried to kill me I couldn't help but feel remorse for her current plight. Was she aware? Had her brain retained some semblance of intelligence? Did she feel pain? Was she suffering unspeakable torment? It was my blood that had denied her the solace of death; perhaps I had some obligation in matters of her wellbeing and final disposition.
Living, dying, procreating, or passing along untold seeds of mischief and miseryЧfunny how even in matters of the occult, everything seems to come back to the difficulty of keeping our various bodily fluids in their proper places.
"You okay?" Deirdre asked from behind me.
"Migraine," I said, trying to shake off the aftershocks of nausea while trying to hold my head as still as possible.
"Want me to rub it?"
Yeah. Sure. I was hoping to set the right mood for a proposal tonight and all that I needed to make the evening complete was for Lupщ to walk into the study and find Deirdre caressing my fevered brow.
Poor Theresa Kellerman would have company because somebody would lose their head for sure.
"What would really help is for J.D. to stop bellowing!" I bellowed back as The Kid bellowed again. I waved her off and lumbered into the den.
J.D. took his new name in 1955, the day after a twenty-four-year-old actor had his own collision with immortality at the intersection of Routes 46 and 41 just outside Cholame, California. Sometimes, when he was tripping, he thought he was James Dean, immortal icon of the Fifties, rebel without a cause, come back to kick Raymond Massey's ass in East of Eden. He wasn't stupidЧwell, not in that way, at leastЧbut he had acquired a twisted taste for the veins of potheads and heroin addicts.
He met me just inside the doorway to show off his haul from the video store. "The original Frankenstein trilogy," he was saying, "newly repackaged on DVD!"
"Interesting choice . . ." I skimmed the titles on the packaging. "But 'original'?" I asked, trying not to let my right eyebrow go too high.
He nodded. "Black and white. Vintage. Universal. Karloff. Reet, sweet, and neat."
"Two out of three, Junior."
His eternally teenaged face squinched down into combat mode. "Whaddaya mean?" He fanned the plastic containers. "Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein."
I reached out and snagged the third rental, turning it around. "'Young' Frankenstein," I said, holding it up for his perusal.
"YoungЧ?" He grabbed it back and studied the fine print. "Black and white . . ."
"Nineteen seventy-four," I said, "Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Cloris Leachman as Frau Bl№cher, Peter Boyle as the Creature. Mel Brooks directed." I smiled, trying to make nice. "A classic in its own right. But not 'Son' of Frankenstein. Not Karloff. Not original trilogy."
"I thought . . ."
From the look on his face it was clear what he thought.
The Kid was becoming a regular cinephile under my expert tutelage. At least as far as horror movies were concerned. The previous week he had impressed me with a detailed comparison of the 1971 flick, The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant with its successor the following year, The Thing With Two Heads. My take on the double-header schlockfest was that one starred Bruce Dern just before his acting career took off while the other showcased ex-footballer Rosy Grier and Oscar-winner Ray Milland on their way to Hollywood oblivion. J.D., however, pointed out the pithy social satire that informed the second movie and opined that the Blaxploitation craze had never been better lampooned.
Still, he could be clueless at times. I had once asked him who the cinematic bogeyman of choice was: Jason or Freddy?
"Michael Myers," he replied with a shudder.
I'd started to agree. Never mind the sequels, the original Halloween had it all: killer theme music, Jamie Lee Curtis in peril, and, most frightening of all, an unstoppable force of Darkness wearing a Captain Kirk mask.
Then The Kid went on to say that the Austin Powers movies were the most disturbing things he had ever seen.
I patted him on the shoulder now. "Don't worry, Kid; if you haven't seen Young Frankenstein, you're in for a treat."
"Hey," he said, still immersed in the fine print, "Teri Garr! She's in this? Is it like a romantic comedy?"
"Well . . ." I tried to remember.
"Man, Teri Garr! She could eat crackers in my coffin anytime!"
"Uh . . ." There are all kinds of ways the undead can be unsettling without slobbering on your neck. "There is," I said carefully, "a scene where sheЧumЧhas a little roll in the hay."
"Hey, hey, hey, Daddy-o; I can dig it!"
"Farm out," I said.
And then the lights went out.
"Fuse!" everyone chorused. It was a logical deduction based on a dozen previous episodes.
"Well, duh . . ." Deirdre's voice drifted in from the study where a blue glow still emanated from the flat-panel monitor. The computer and the aquarium were plugged into UPS devices giving them a little grace period before their power supplies went down as well.
"I'm guessing more than one, dear," Lupщ called from the kitchen. "Looks like the whole house is out. Better hurry, the natives are getting restless!" Indeed, growling sounds were beginning to manifest from the backyard.
"You go settle them down," I told The Kid as I headed for the basement door. "Tell them if they break the TV or the VCR they'll be making do with sock puppets until next Christmas!"
The fanged runt scampered off with a little too much enthusiasm. He could be fearless in a fight, willing to face demons or vampires or even hordes of cranky corpses. But he had this phobia about electricity and I would have an easier time getting him to eat garlic over requiring him to change a fuse.
"Need help?" Deirdre called.
"I think I can manage." Heavy on the sarcasm there. "You just stay on task."
"I am."
Yeah? What task is that? Slipping enough innuendo into enough opportunities to wreck Lupщ's trust and self-esteem? The woman was incorrigible! And I wasn't going to incorrige her any further. Maybe after tonight she would get the message, loud and clear.
Maybe they both would.
I clomped down the basement stairs, grabbing the flashlight from the peg at the quarter-turn landing. It was easy to find in the pitch dark: it wasn't like we hadn't been through this before. A half-dozen times. A backup emergency generator was supposed to have been installed and operational by now, not just for creature comforts but for the security system, as well. Things kept happening. The first one didn't arrive. The second one was broken. The third was missing a couple of key parts. The replacement parts weren't the right parts or didn't arrive at all. Deirdre had to hire people to go and fetch the necessary parts and equipment in person as it became clear that someone (or something) was tampering with the third-party delivery services. Then our people went missing. Or came back with certain of their parts missing. Deirdre had finally gone, herself, and we now (presumably) had everything necessary for an emergency backup generator system.
Except the people to install it properly.
That wouldn't happen until sometime in late March or early AprilЧunless something happened to clear the local contractors' calendars. Another blown fuse or two and I was afraid that Deirdre or J.D. would slip out one night and do just that. Especially since my stern admonitions "not to" were becoming less stern of late.
The flashlight was dead.
Too bad there wasn't a wild storm outside; it would have all the hallmarks of a gothic thriller.
And then, all of a sudden, I broke out in an icy sweat. Gooseflesh pimpled my arms as I left the stairs and reoriented myself. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck start to rise as I plunged through the darkness on a trajectory toward the fuse box on the far wall. No . . .
Dear Lord, please . . .