Read Online The Dishonored Dead by Robert Swartwood - Free Book Online

his knuckles, the sound of hollow wood momentarily joining the humming and bubbling.
    “That boy was me, of course. I was the one everybody thought would not last until he was ten. In fact, if it had been up to my parents and doctors, that parasite would have continued eating away at my body until there was nothing left. It was my decision, and I actually had to fight for it, an eight-year-old boy arguing with adults not to expire. In the end they took my legs, managed to stop the parasite, and here I am today. I might not be much to look at, but at least I’m here, and I’ll tell you—right after it happened, that surgery, I had a new appreciation for this … well, we call it existence, but I like to think of it as life. We are dead but somehow we continue living, even though almost all of our major organs have shut down.”
    The scientist moved back behind his desk, rested his hands on the desktop.
    “So I had this new appreciation, and I started studying the living. I went to the Internet, one of the few things that survived the Zombie Wars, and I started researching what you and almost everyone else on this planet call zombies. Long ago the Government went through and deleted all the sites about the living, but some still do exist. And from these I learned about them, their history, who they were. Yes, we did evolve from them, they are our inferiors, but still … Conrad, how much do you really know about the living?”
    Conrad was silent.
    “Do you know that they see colors? That to them the world is not just black, white, and gray. According to Gabriel, there are thousands of colors, different shades, different mixtures. And did you know the living can actually taste things? They can smell things, too. They have actual feelings. Verbs such as sad, happy, and angry are just words to us, but to the living they actually feel these things. And they dream , Conrad. They actually dream while they sleep.
    “Now I’m not going to answer your questions just yet, but instead ask you a question of my own. Here it is. How are zombies created?”
    The question caught Conrad off guard. So far he’d sat there, listening, trying to follow what the scientist was saying, but now this question caused him to quickly sit up in his seat. He heard the continuous bubbling of the fish tank and found his gaze shifting to where it was in the corner, those dead tropical fish moving through the water, and he remembered the fish tank in the zombie’s cell, those living tropical fish, and for an instant his dead mind played a very cruel joke and overlapped those two images, a perverted, unnatural snapshot that Conrad had to rapidly blink away.
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    “Don’t you think that’s strange? That through all your training, all your time at Artemis, and all the years you’ve been a Hunter, you never once learned how the things you hunt are created?”
    “I know that only children are vulnerable. Those around the age of ten.”
    “But do you know why ?”
    Conrad shook his head.
    The scientist picked up the phone from off the desk, pressed a button, and said, “Bring it in.” When he set the phone back in its cradle, he stared at Conrad for another long moment before speaking.
    “The living are created two ways. The first is what you had mentioned, though there is more to it. Yes, it seems that children around the age of ten are the ones susceptible, but it’s more than sheer randomness. The second is simple reproduction—a living male and a living female come together the same way a dead male and dead female would come together, and nine months later a living infant is born.”
    “But that’s impossible,” Conrad said. “Zombies almost never live to full adulthood.”
    Albert said nothing. He only stared back at him, his stiff face never changing, and after a moment Conrad got it.
    “You’re talking about Heaven, aren’t you?”
    The scientist nodded. “Despite what the Government tells the public, the