'Yeah, you're right. Let's raid his office.'
'Wake up, Mr. Sleepy,' said Stanley, tapping the dart gun against Brant's nose.
Brant opened his eyes and groaned. 'I never should've given you the antidote.'
'No, probably not. Hopefully you've learned your lesson. Now tell me the code to the lab.'
'Go to hell.'
Stanley tapped him with the gun again. 'The stuff in this dart hurt really bad. I don't know if it has the same effect on non-zombies, but you implied that it was a pretty unpleasant experience. We couldn't find any more antidote. Please tell us the code.'
'No.'
'Pretty please?'
'You'll just have to shoot me.'
'You think I'm bluffing, don't you?'
'Yes. Because if you kill me, you'll never get into the lab, and you'll never get any more of your injections, and you'll die.'
Stanley thought about that. 'Okay, I'll admit that you've got a pretty good theory about why I'd be bluffing. Lucky for us, we found a knife in your office.'
Martin held up a blue pocketknife and snapped out the blade.
'It's not a very big one,' Stanley explained, 'but I think that if we stuck the blade under one of your fingernails and pushed really hard, you'd scream like a baby. Or at least a baby that was having a pocketknife blade shoved under its fingernails. Don't be that baby.'
'I know that we don't trust each other,' said Brant. 'But please trust me when I say that you do not want to see inside the lab. I promise you, you will not be a happier person for it.'
'I'll get over it.'
'I doubt you will.'
'Code, please.'
'No.'
'Are you really going to make Martin do the fingernail thing?'
'I don't think Martin has it in him to do the fingernail thing.'
'You just tried to kill Martin. He'll do the fingernail thing.'
Martin gave Brant a look that indicated that he was not only willing to do the fingernail thing, but relished the opportunity.
'Very well,' said Brant. 'I'll take you inside.'
Stanley kept the dart gun pointed at Brant's back as they walked into the empty room and over to the door of the lab. Brant typed in the code and the door clicked.
'Oh my God, you used your birthday for the passcode?' Stanley asked, incredulous. 'Even I'm not that dumb!'
'That isn't my birthday.'
'Oh. My bad. Did I miss your birthday?'
'Yes.'
'Sorry. Open the door.'
Brant slowly opened the door. The lab itself was slightly smaller than the room they were currently in, lit by several dozen flickering candles, and had the walls, floor, and ceiling covered with bizarre symbols.
A really bad song was playing.
A girl, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, was chained to the wall, naked except for a bra and panties. Her entire body was pale. Her eyes were open and her face was frozen in an expression of pure terror. The girl's skin had been flayed apart in several spots on her arms, legs, and stomach, and she had a couple of silver bowls at her feet to catch the blood.
A man who looked about fifty knelt on the floor, wearing only a pair of blue boxer shorts. He had some sort of weird symbol drawn in blood on his chest. He looked really annoyed to see Stanley, Brant, and Martin.
'Ferocity, ferocity, I ain't got no sanity,' went the lyrics playing over the stereo.
'What the hell?' asked the man, standing up. 'Rich, what the hell is this? What's he doing here?'
'Henry, just calm down,' said Brant. 'We have a bit of a problem here.'
'Yeah, we have a problem! Dammit!' Henry walked over and shut off the stereo. He gestured to the girl. 'Now she's no good to us. I've spent three days draining her for nothing. Why would you interrupt me?'
Stanley stared at the girl in horror. 'Who is she?' he demanded.
'That would be the virgin.'
'One of the virgins,' Henry clarified.
'Be quiet!' Brant shouted. 'What's the matter with you?'
'Hell, I figured you told him the whole story! Why else would you have brought him in here? I can't believe you interrupted my ritual with only five hours to go.'
Stanley pointed the dart gun at Henry. 'How many have there been?'
'Don't point that at me. I don't even want to be here. I could be at home with a cold beer right now.'
'Tell me!'
'Just chill out, will you? I've got a headache and this last part of the ritual always makes my arm cramp up. Bug Rich with your questions, not me.'
'How many?' Stanley asked Brant.
'Each victim, done properly, creates enough blood to sustain you for about a month.'
'One a month? You kill one virgin a month?'
'And their families,' said Henry. 'The families are important.'
'Oh my God.'
'Plus a couple of them just didn't take.'
'Enough!' Brant shouted.
'Hey, I didn't bring these guys in here. I figured the beans were already spilled.'
'Let her go,' said Stanley.
'Who? The chick on the wall?'
'Let her go now!'
Henry rolled his eyes. 'She's not going to walk out of here humming a merry tune if I unchain her. She's pretty much dead already. It's really not a pleasant business, and by interrupting me, you made it so that it was all for nothing. Wasting virgins is not a nice thing to do.'
Stanley desperately wanted to fire the dart into the back of Brant's head, and then shoot another one into that asshole Henry, but he kept himself under control. He only had one dart anyway.
'All right, both of you, put your hands behind your head and face the wall. Now!'
'Is he serious?' Henry asked Brant.
'Don't talk! And of course I'm serious! Move!'
Henry let out a deep sigh. 'So are you slow or just stupid?'
'I beg your pardon?'
'I'll go with slow. I'm not kidnapping virgins, slaughtering their families, chaining them to walls, and draining their blood for seventy-two hours because it's how I get my kicks. I'm doing it so that the world's most famous zombie stays upright. That's how I make my living. If I quit doing this-and believe me, I've thought about it a million times, especially in moments like these-you die for good. So by preventing me from doing my job, you're essentially committing suicide. Which means that I've wasted all this time and effort, and that really annoys me.'
'I said to get against the wall.'
'No, you said to face the wall.'
'Do it!'
'Suicide. Su-i-cide. What makes this a difficult concept to grasp?'
Veronica's scream startled Stanley so much that he nearly pulled the trigger.
