Dan steps forward again, peering down into the open tarp bag. The zombie was a young, skinny guy. He’s lying in a fetal position, his head turned to the side, his eyes closed. He’s obviously dead, as William noted, but he doesn’t look undead.
“His skin color is different,” Liv says, joining Dan. “It’s normal again.”
“We should check his eyes,” Dan suggests.
“Wait,” William says, placing the rifle against the temple of the guy. “Okay, go.”
Dan reaches down and carefully pries open the guy’s left eye using two fingers.
“Holy shit,” William says, taking away the rifle. “His pupils and irises are back.”
“This is very promising,” Dan says, letting out a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding. “I think it actually worked …”
“We’ll have to test it some more,” Liv says, sounding elated. “We can try it on those outside.”
“Way ahead of you,” William says, grabbing the bowl and striding out to the stairs. Dan, Liv and Dennis all follow him upstairs.
They go to the room facing the courtyard, and William hands Dan the bowl. Then he opens both windows wide and brings the bowl. For a terrible moment, Dan thinks he’ll chuck the whole thing down over the zombies below, but he just holds the bowl ready.
“Come on,” he says, gesturing with his head while looking at Dan. “You already touched the shit, so I assume you won’t mind doing the honors again?”
Dan goes over and picks up a handful of the red water. He leans out the window, looks down at the dead people clambering away at the windows, and then he drops the water on them.
Liv and William and Dennis all squeeze in next to him, eager to look down at what happens.
The water spreads out as it falls, forming a shower of drops which lands across the herd of zombies. About a dozen or so collapse immediately to the ground.
“Holy shit!” William exclaims, laughing shrilly. “It fucking worked like a charm! Do it again!”
“No, wait!” Liv says, as Dan is about to grab another handful of the water. “We can’t use it all.”
“You’re right,” Dan says, biting his lip. “This is all the potion we’ve got.”
William sits the bowl down on a table, then begins pacing the room. “Fuck me. We’ve got the cure right here, but what good will it do? Even if we use it sparingly, there’s only enough for, what, a hundred zombies? That’s like pissing into a firestorm. There must be millions of zombies all over Europe now.”
“We need to replicate it,” Liv says. “Do the whole ritual again and make more of the potion.”
“How would we do that?” William says, flinging out his hands. “The woman who did it is dead—sorry, Dennis. It took her like four hours to do the ritual, and we have no idea what she said or did. And even if we could do it again, that would be late, too late, the Americans will have dropped their bombs by then, and we’ll all be—”
“Wait, what?” Liv blurts out.
William looks at her, then at Dan. “Oh, right. I didn’t tell you. The soldiers who brought me here … they told me some pretty bleak news. The day after tomorrow, they’ll begin flattening Europe, using nuclear weapons.”
“Oh, no,” Liv gasps.
“I know,” William says, shrugging. “I don’t know what I was thinking coming back here. Guess I was hoping for some sort of Hail Mary. But right now, that seems pretty fucking hopeless.”
“Can’t we just dilute it?” Liv suggests. “Maybe make more of it that way?”
Dan shakes his head. “You heard what Birgit said just before she died. It can’t be diluted.”
William slumps down onto a chair. Liv chews her lip, and Dan lowers his head. For several seconds, they all seem to work on the seemingly hopeless conundrum.
“That’s not what she meant.”
Dan turns to look at Dennis.
He holds out his hands. “When she said it couldn’t be diluted.”
“What did she mean then?” William asks.
“She meant the potion can’t be diluted.”
“I fail to see the difference,” William says.
“She wasn’t telling us that we mustn’t dilute it; she was telling us it will never dilute, no matter how much water we add.”
William looks at Dan, then back at Dennis. “Are you sure about that?”
“Absolutely,” Dennis says. “I knew my mother.”
“That means we can scale it up,” Liv says, hope coming back into her voice. “We can make a shitload of it.”
“Wait, how’s that even possible?” William asks. “I know we’re dealing with supernatural shit here, but how can you make a potion that won’t dilute?”
Dennis shrugs. “I have no idea.”
“I think I do,” Dan says, and the others look at him intently. “She said the spell was like a doorway, and that it could be bound to water. A doorway can’t be diluted. It’s not a thing; it’s a passage for things to go through.”
“Right, I remember that part about the Big Angel coming through or whatever,” William says. “But that still doesn’t explain why that spell won’t be diluted if we add more water.”
“Think of the zombie curse,” Dan says. “That doesn’t grow weaker with each new person it reaches.” He points to the bowl. “I think the spell in this water is like that. I think it’ll live on in whatever else water it touches.”
“So,” William says, “are you saying, if we put a single drop of it in a bathtub, that entire bathtub would become like the potion?”
Dan thinks, then nods. “It might take some time, but I think so, yeah.”
“If that’s true,” William says, “then we might actually have a chance.” He jumps to his feet. “What are we waiting for? It’s time for another round of testing!”
THIRTY-SIX
“Just use a very tiny drop,” William instructs him. “We need to see if it’s true this stuff doesn’t get diluted.”
Dan nods, concentrating on the bowl in his hands. He dips the tip of his finger in the potion, then holds his finger over Holger’s bathtub, which is filled to the brim with lukewarm water.
A single
